Neuroscience: Closing the Gap Between Intellect and Heart

Having a neuroscience background and having owned and operated a surgical and medical practice for many years prepared me for the new next level expression of my life purpose – to restore vision. It’s obvious how an eye surgeon restores vision. Then there’s expanding the vision for one’s life – that’s where my gift is focused now. Helping people to be themselves ‘Magnificently’ by closing the gap between their own intellect and heart is the new vision I have. Each and every one of us is unique and can make our own unique impact – if we learn to get out of our own way.

I needed to be able to diagnose brain tumors and neurologic disease every day I went to the office. At the same time I needed to hone my leadership skills if I wanted to have engaged, happy employees and deliver excellent customer service. Little did I realize years ago just how visionary my intentions were to combine the two. While I obviously had the intellect to become an eye surgeon, over the years decisions I made during my journey had caused me to close my heart down, except when working directly with my patients. From my teen years forward, I began a descent into the valley of over-valuing the intellect part of my mind and disowning the emotional aspects of my mind.

While I was quite good at repressing my feelings, I began about 20 years ago to recognize that ‘repression’ was really ‘denial’. If you are alive, you have a heart and have feelings. Heart is associated with feelings, the right-brain, and wisdom. Yet this wisdom is made conscious to our ‘ego’ through the portal of our intellect if we are to communicate it to others. It was when I began to listen to the Wisdom of my heart that I began the search for how to integrate my intellect with the heart – The Ultimate Power Couple.

Initially, because it was during the 1990s that I made my decision to recover from denying my feelings, I didn’t have any science to support me. The science and business community derided anything that had to do with intuition or feelings. Admittedly, I was terrified of feeling anything, really.

Yet, I intuitively knew that my health and peace of mind would suffer as time went on. In fact, signs were starting to show up in my physical body even at that point. Through spiritual reflection and a determined will, I begin to become aware of thoughts, feelings, and emotions and how they impacted our spirit, decision-making, and experiences. It was my recognition of the power of feelings that allowed me to turn the curve and accelerate my journey toward personal wholeness.

I have found that Neuroscience has been the impetus to allow the scientific and business communities – communities that I lived much of my life in – to begin to address ‘feelings’. As little as two years ago when I wrote about emotion or feelings, people seemed to avoid engagement. Coupling leadership with words like ‘emotion’, ‘vulnerability’, and ‘empathy’ was a rarity. Yet, because research is revealing the power of the right-brain and the importance of creativity, emotional intelligence, and life purpose a new conversation is emerging. The rapid changes we are facing are moving this new conversation forward.

“The most successful leaders will not necessarily be those with the highest IQ. Of course, they will need to be intelligent. But they’ll also need to have a high level of cultural and emotional intelligence.” ~Bill George, Professor, Harvard Business School

Well, it is about time. I give Bill George credit for being a courageous trailblazer. For years I felt like the proverbial voice in the wilderness. When we lean too heavily on our intellect or too heavily on our feelings without having the brain awareness to manage the subtleties of these areas wisely, we are not able to optimize our gifts, talents, or life purpose. We will not be most effective as leaders.

Transforming our ‘blind spots’ involves engaging mind and heart, intellect and spirit. I can say from the vantage point of operating as a leader – as a human being – one part of our brain/psyche is not more important than the other. Our intellect and heart both need each other to effectively live and operate on planet Earth. If Neuroscience is the instrument that helps us to understand the various aspects of our self instead of living in ignorance, I’ll take it. I’m about results and improving the quality of our lives.