During the day, do you focus on thoughts or feelings? This is so subtle, it is hard to really know. That is where you place your focus during the day. Is it on your thoughts? Is it on your feelings? Or, is it on the combination? The combination is definitely used by a majority of people. This article will help you create an equal balance.

The easiest way to study this is to step back and objectively view it. To help you do that, we will create nicknames for each kind of focus. The reason we give nicknames to these characters is that it brings you closer to the characters, while the nickname represents how you feel about thought or feelings.

1 Give a nickname to the part of you that focuses on thinking _______________ (for instance, if a person was cheated and hurt by a business transaction, that nickname could be ‘anger.’) This part of you I consider being the “Doer,” for it identifies with thoughts and actions. It controls feelings with logic. Because the reaction of anger is so dominant, the subtle feelings that can help the person can be overlooked. A rational thinker often sees their thoughts as reality. Attachments happen when you identify with that thought and can’t let go of it.

The Doer files everything in the folders in their mind. If there isn’t a folder it fits in, they can’t process it or they ignore it. The Doer feels a disequilibrium until the new folder is created because it is difficult for the Doer to change their programming and grow. Very few people use this focus exclusively.

2 Give a nickname to the part of you that focuses on feelings ___________________ (for instance, for a person who is just going through an unhappy divorce, the nickname could be ‘hurt.’) This part of you is the ‘Receiver’ and is more intuitive than logical, more spontaneous than controlled. This part of you is free from emotional control by the thinking mind. The feeling part of you is more creative than logical, more “Receiver” than “Doer” and is open to grow and change.

We all have both qualities within us, but one quality may be more dominant than the other. What do you identify with the most? What represents you…I think or I feel? There are no right answers; this is to define where you place your attention the most.

On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is low & 10 is high:
Rate how much your focus is on thinking _________
Rate how much your focus is on feelings and intuition _________

After you see your ratings, the goal would be to create a balance between feelings and thinking. This does not have to be 50-50. It just can’t be that your dominant focus ignores the other. This could be the way you create that balance:

Pick an area of your life that bothers you the most. Using our rating scale from 1 to 10, rate how much of your focus in this area is on thoughts and how much is on feelings. Use the nicknames you created.

Let your 2 characters talk to each other.
Let your feeling character tell your thought character why feelings are important
Let your thought character tell your feeling character why thoughts are important
Then:
Let your feeling character tell your thought character why thoughts are important
Let your thought character tell your feeling character why feelings are important

The closer these character get to each other, a balance naturally occurs.
(C) 2015 Marc Lerner

Author's Bio: 

Marc Lerner has been a life skills coach for 25 years and has been working to empower patient participation, to improve the quality of life and to improve attitudes when facing challenges. Marc has had multiple sclerosis since 1981. He had to tap inner resources to cope with his illness because he could not rely completely on help from medical professionals.
In 1982, Marc founded Life Skills Institute and served as its president to 2013. Through the Institute, he worked for 25 years at the VA with veterans with PTSD, cancer and AIDS patients and the mentally ill homeless. In 2002, Marc was named Outstanding American with Disabilities Business Person in Los Angeles.
In 2008, Marc’s health worsened and he was forced to retire from giving seminars. At that time, he began to reflect on what he had learned and to write books about the struggle he was in. His first book, A Healthy Way to be Sick, was based on the struggle he was going through, but was written for people with similar struggles. He felt, no matter what condition a person was in, they could go deep and tap the wisdom of the body.
His second book, The Positive Self: Change Your Self-Image and You Change Your Life, focused on the part of us that can best deal with struggles. This part of us naturally seeks a quality life under any circumstance. As his health deteriorated, he wrote The End: A Creative Approach to Death. His insights were shared through creative writing and poetry.
These books are available as e-books at Amazon/Kindle.com.
Today, Marc deals with his struggle with a high priority on the quality of his life.