How to balance logic vs emotion:
To balance logic versus emotion, it’s crucial to realize that logic is defined as your ability to use your conscious mind to assess information and make decisions. Emotion, by definition, is useful and essential for this process as well because it gives you information based on your senses, surroundings, and the unconscious workings of your mind. Both of these things must be taken into account and utilized to create a balanced approach to achieving goals and being successful.
When I was a younger man, I was often ruled by my emotional feelings and tendencies.
If I felt really strongly about something, I generally took that as a sign that I was right about it.
But this was a beta mentality tendency, and it only led me toward greater failure, destruction, and disappointment in life.
The truth of the matter was that I was using an imbalanced approach to decision-making because I was giving far too much of my power over to my emotional self.
Don’t get me wrong—being in touch with our emotions and understanding their role in the decision-making process is crucial to us on our human journey.
However, it’s also important to understand that we need to balance logic and emotion in order to make the best choices as we move forward in our lives.
Once I learned the delicate nature of the ‘balancing act’ between logic and emotion, I started making much better choices in my life.
Some people stray too far into ‘logic territory,’ and leave emotion behind.
But this is also the wrong approach.
See, we’re humans—not robots.
You really need to balance both of these elements in order to create the best human destiny and experience for yourself, your loved ones, your family, your circle, and your tribe.
So in this guide, you’re going to learn the 6 steps that I’ve used in my life to balance logic and emotion, to make the best decisions for not only my future, but also for difficult circumstances and challenges I’ve faced along the way since embracing the alpha mentality.
Let’s dive into it.
Note: If you’re interested in the content matter of this post, then you’ll definitely be interested in our master guide to minding your business. Make sure to check that out to get a complete rundown of the entire ‘minding your business’ part of the alpha process, from beginning to end.
6 Steps For How To Balance Logic Vs Emotion
1. Understand That You Are Both A ‘Logical’ And ‘Emotional’ Being
Are humans logical or emotional?
Well, thankfully, they’re both.
As a human, you have a conscious capacity to use reason, rationality, and logic to create theories, solutions, and ideas about the real world.
And when you leverage these ideas in the proper manner, you can help yourself to have a better life, further your goals, and make forward progress toward your purpose in life.
But here’s the thing.
As humans, we are also deeply emotional.
And this is not a bad thing.
Sometimes, people associate emotion with weakness. But this isn’t true.
As alpha mentality men and women, we are only emotionally weak when we allow our emotions to override our logic and dictate exactly what we’re going to do.
The truth is, we must embrace both of these crucial aspects of our humanity to become maximally successful.
2. Understand That Emotions Are Actually Evolved Information Systems
If I were going to define what human emotions are, I would describe them as such:
Human emotions are streams of information fed to us by highly evolved warning and information systems that are deeply embedded in our psyche and subconscious mind.
See, our bodies obtain an incredible amount of information every single second through all five of our senses.
And to be honest, we take in far more information than our brains process into logical, conscious data.
Therefore, our emotions can help us to make sense of some of the stuff that isn’t getting directly processed into the ‘logical’ portion of our thinking system.
I believe that this is where the terms (and phenomenons) ‘gut instinct’ and ‘sensing energy’ came from.
See, our emotions aren’t always correct about situations—and the feelings associated with those situations, as prompted by our emotions, aren’t always correct either.
But it’s always important to at least pay attention to them, and to take note of what they may be trying to tell us in regard to what’s going on in the current moment, and what decisions we need to make to be maximally safe, healthy, well, and successful in life.
Why?
Because sometimes, your emotions are correct. And it pays to take them into account.
Are Emotions The Opposite Of Logic?
No, not at all.
Emotions manifest from sensory information that we either have or haven’t fully processed within our rational, conscious minds.
Therefore, they can contain important and crucial information that our logical brain should take into account when making choices.
Is Emotion Stronger Than Logic?
Yes—to a fairly substantial degree, it is.
In the primitive times of our ancestors, emotions would have helped to make sense of situations that they didn’t directly understand—but that could have been dangerous to their survival.
For example, you may feel jealousy, anger, and pain when you catch your partner cheating on you with someone else.
These are powerful negative emotions, and they’re probably going to weigh heavily into your decision on whether or not to end that relationship.
See, even though these emotions are very negative and strong, they also tend to give you beneficial information that’s crucial for your survival.
If you just continued to stay in relationships with people who were willing to cheat on you, this would probably end up being bad for your overall life, health, wellness, and survivability.
In this sense, strong emotions can really help us to pay attention to things that we need to pay attention to in order to live the best life possible.
But it’s also important not to let emotion control your logical frame of mind, either.
3. Understand That Emotions Don’t Understand The Entire Context
The thing about emotions is that they are they’re really just information systems.
You can think of emotions, and the feelings they produce, as very similar to how you would think of data obtained by a radar sweep.
When you turn on a radar to look for aircraft in a particular flight zone, you’re basically using a set of systems to give you data that would otherwise not register on your senses—data that you can then use to make logical decisions about what that data might mean, and how it might factor into your plans and goals.
However, the radar is simply a tool being used to achieve a certain end goal.
Just like the radar system doesn’t understand what the goal of the mission is for the radar operator, your human senses and emotions don’t necessarily understand what your goal is as a human.
Our senses and emotions just give us information and make us feel things as a means to alert us when certain thresholds, held within our subconscious and unconscious mind—associated with what we perceive as being ‘normal’ and ‘optimal for health and survival’—have been breached or surpassed.
It is then in our best interest as humans to take that information and use it in a logical fashion.
What’s The Difference Between Logical Thinking And Emotional Thinking?
The truly logical thinker will always take all information into account when making a decision, including information obtained from their emotions.
By contrast, emotional thinking is a type of thinking where you react based only on your emotions—thus leaving the ‘logical’ part out of the equation.
This generally leads to trouble, because your emotions simply don’t understand the entire context of the situation.
This is why it’s so crucial to blend logic and emotion when making decisions about your future.
This is also why the alpha mentality demands that we be ‘proactive and wise’ instead of ‘reactive and emotional’ when making choices.
4. Understand That Your Logical Brain Needs Your Emotions To Understand The Entire Context
While emotions can sometimes cause us to make poor decisions when we leave logic out of the equation, it’s also crucial that we understand that ignoring our emotions when trying to make logical decisions can also lead to trouble.
As humans, it’s important that we use our empathy and our emotional responses as a ‘checks and balances’ system when making logical choices.
You need all of this information to help you understand the best way to move forward in your journey.
What Is The Relationship Between Emotion And Logic?
Emotion and logic represent two sides of our inner human nature—and we must always take emotion into account when making logical choices.
Can Emotion And Logic Coexist?
Absolutely.
In fact, as humans, we should always strive to be aware of both of these human modes of being—and we should always work toward a mental place where we can allow emotion and logic to coexist within us at all times—so that we can make the very best choices for our future and journey forward.
Why Do Emotions Sometimes Override Logic?
Emotions sometimes override logic because they can create incredibly vivid and powerful feelings within us. And sometimes, these feelings are very difficult to resist.
For example, if you catch your partner cheating on you with someone else, you may feel a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to either attack, assault, berate, or to otherwise do harm to the person you caught them cheating with.
Obviously, if you feed into this emotion and use it as your only decision-making protocol, you can get yourself into big trouble, hurt someone, and just in general derail your whole life.
It wouldn’t serve you very well to go to jail for assault in the wake of being cheated on, would it?
By contrast, it would be a much more logical approach to use your emotions to understand that this situation is not good for your health and wellness.
Then, you could make the logical decision to walk away from the relationship and find a better relationship with a partner who’s more trustworthy.
However, in the moment, those emotions and feelings can be very strong—and sometimes they can be so strong that they cause us to override our own logical thought processes.
This is why we must be so careful as we embark on the journey of life, and strive to always act in wisdom—always balancing our emotions with logic when we find ourselves in situations that could have an incredibly extreme effect on our feelings—situations that could threaten to compromise our ability to act and true logic and wise leadership.
5. Decide What Your Goal/Purpose Is
As you embark on your hero’s arc, it’s crucial that you understand what your purpose is.
See, unless you know what the goal is, you’ll constantly be facing the problem of being tempted to let your emotions dictate your actions toward chaos—instead of allowing your logical mind to guide your actions toward a specific, intentional, desired outcome.
6. Use Both Logic And Emotion To Make Choices That’ll Lead You To Success
At the end of the day, it’s crucial that we learn to use our emotional information to make logical choices that will help to lead us forward toward success.
Don’t forget—the goal is to succeed in maximizing all of the 9 vital life domains, and to achieve a truly alpha state in life.
This is how we achieve success as alpha mentality men and women.
And in order to conduct this journey correctly, most efficiently, and with the greatest odds for success, we must learn to balance our logic and emotion to help us make wise choices that will keep us out of trouble and create greater abundance and power within our lives.
Best Books To Help You Balance Logic vs Emotion
By Jordan B. Peterson
An amazing book that would be helpful to any human who wants to start succeeding in life in all of the ways that matter the most.
By David Goggins
If you really want to develop your mental toughness and overcome the victim mentality, this book is a MUST READ.
By Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
If you want to level up in the areas of leadership and radical self-responsibility, this book is an absolute alpha MUST READ.
By Robert Augustus Masters
If you’re on a journey to learn how to become a healthy, healed masculine man, then this book is a MUST READ.
By Frans De Waal
If you want to understand your emotions and utilize them to help you succeed in life, then this book is a MUST READ.
Final Thoughts
That’s all I have for this one.
I hope that this has helped you to understand my thoughts on how to balance logic vs emotion. And I hope that it has helped you to understand that you truly need both if you really want to win in life.
Go with grace, my friends. And never give up your power.