The Spectrum

I've already touched upon the enigmatic expanse of confidence, yet feel something remains amiss. I hadn’t yet sussed out what constitutes true, authentic, confidence. How do we know when it’s real, either within ourselves or others? Humans are both competent in and capable of appearing confident when we actually feel almost debilitatingly insecure. Call it ‘fake it until you make it,’ or 'doing the duck;' each carries an element of chaos hidden underneath what would otherwise seem a smooth forward trajectory to others.  Conversely, we can remain entirely blind to these underlying insecurities and subconsciously overcompensate by blowing straight past confidence to conceit. Somewhere between the two extremes we achieve a notion of ‘I've got this’ with no other residual emotional undertones whispering in the depths of our psyche, the sweet spot of security. So how do we know when we've hit this fulcrum upon which we can BALANCE and maintain a healthy sense of Self? 🐇😵🐇

Luckily, a friend who shares my enthusiasm for esoteric gymnastics helped me locate the missing piece of this puzzle. A culmination of what I attempted to describe as dichotomous emotions along with leveling-up in the worth department. These concepts lay on a SPECTRUM 🌈. What we think versus how we feel constitutes the axis of this spectrum, and our inner dialogue allows those two intelligence centres to communicate (or argue, depending on where we are in our adventures 😅). Conflict does unfortunately reign however, as the western world socially conditions us to rely heavily on our logical brains, leaving intuitive feelings for post-modern hippies and batty new-age spiritualists 🙋. This often leaves us confused and frustrated, THINKING our feelings rather than actually FEELING our feelings; receiving the 'communication' as a tried and true heartfelt sense, instead of a thought solely from the Brain (a subtle difference that eludes us until we experience it first-hand). 🐇🤯🐇

Here's my hypothesis after nearly 14 years of polking both head and heart with the double-edged sword of awareness... The interaction between these two sources of information, Head IQ Vs. Heart EQ, establishes a critical relationship within ourselves. For myself, I've discovered that this is the most essential and meaningful relationship I will ever be in, yet I was dangerously unaware of how past traumas had obliterated this precious partnership. My brain grew accustomed to bullying and asserting its control over the calm and quiet pleads from my heart, smothering that intuitive voice, willfully deaf to its input. A rather f&*#-ing BLEAK end of the spectrum to be on! Still, I know others who predominantly ‘follow their heart’ and wind up in the shit for making blatantly illogical/impractical decisions, all in the pursuit of the warm fuzzies, perpetual happiness, or love/attention/approval from others. Worse yet what of those people, dare I say 'The Donald' who seem blissfully unaware of any shortcomings they may have, going through life blaming others for any misfortune they might meet or believing they're legitimately better than them and thus deserve a bigger slice of the pie. Yikes 😳. I'd strongly argue that their inner relationship and heart/brain communication circuits is just as dysfunctional as mine were before undertaking the mammoth effort of healing. 🐇🙏💖

Balancing on this spectrum requires us to REFLECT, become aware and get f**#$ing honest about what we think and how we feel; owning both our strengths and opportunities to develop further, and accepting the current version of ourselves with integrity without regret. Allowing Brain and Heart to listen  to each other, reconcile any points of contention, hopefully resulting in more balanced decisions and growth spurts in our sense of 'wholeness' and wisdom.

And since this is the Rabbit Hole, here’s another caveat to consider: I find that emotions which arise from my hearts' intuitive vibes tend to be more stable and consistent throughout time, that fundamental “I know who I am, what I like, and what pisses me off”... no matter how many times I try to convince myself otherwise to suit the current situation and/or relationship. Alternatively, slippery emotions that arise from thoughts are much more turbulent and transient. These thought-based emotions were almost exclusively instigated by social conditioning and past experiences, which at times make them inherently flawed false beliefs. My hyper-analytical brain tends to operate at squalling extremes, whereas my heart takes a more patience and steady approach. For example, my heart would never feel that putting my hand in a boiling pot is a good idea but my brain might if it thinks I need the $100 simmering at the bottom. 

Our intuition lets us know when something is good (🦋) or bad (💩), and these sensations persist over time; they stay with us for a while. How do I know?... because the phrase 'I should have listened to my gut' is so f*%#ing common! By comparison, the rapidity of analysis, complex interpretation of 'go'/'no go' inputs, has our brains' undergoing emotional whiplash as we transition from loving to hating something, and back again, in a matter of mere seconds. And hey, this is just a 'brainy' concept formed at this specific stage of my evolution, so maybe it'll change... but it feels right. 😂😉🐇

I happened upon this hypothesis honestly as I began to sort through my inner bullshit; sorry, 'opportunites' (it's all about perspective after-all 😝💖😇). The scars left by my aforementioned trauma had these two voices in ceaseless conflict; severe and diagnosible anxiety ensued. My heart yearning to love and trust, my brain opting for rationality and risk-aversion. Allowing my brain to prevail seemed the safer option, in a misled yet well-intentioned attempt to protect my heart from further suffering. Ironically the panic I experienced swinging wildly between IQ and EQ, racing along the axes of the spectrum at a pace even The Flash would envy, literally had my heart beating to bursting point. I’d then beat myself up with a ten tonne naughty stick for making such a righteous mess of everything and failing to be more compassionate. IRONY. Buying into the toxic lie that I deserved the torment because I was imperfect, broken. Intuitively however, I knew all I had to do was sit back and watch things unfold, get out of my own way. Without a belief of the bigger picture, something that knew more than my tiny human ego, what I came to treasure as an avid faith in the Universe, my intuition scarred the shit out of my brain because it was foundless and risky. If I'm honest, it still does. The difference is that I'm now conscious of this spectrum, of the two voices and why they might get it a pissing match from time to time. This allows me to deliberately balance and remain within the Sweet Spot... Plus or minus the odd-tainty. 😂😖😎 

I reckon if having a healthy inner relationship was easy, there would be a lot less assholes and pain in this world.  This is why I strongly feel that the gateway to the sweet spot, to balance, is trust. Trust in ourselves to take care of situations that directly involve us, and trust in the Universe to sort out everything else that’s outside of our scope of our influence.

The result of this integrated TRUST is security. 🔐🙏💖

Original Publication Date 02 February 2019, Revised 25 June 2023