Wise Mind Living is when you approach your life with mindful awareness, compassion and perspective…when you live in balance between your emotions and logic. It’s when you have the confidence to deal with difficult decisions or situations because you’re in charge—not your emotions.
Everyone has the capacity for Wise Mind Living because we all have wisdom within us. However, to fully understand this concept, it will help to understand Logic Mind, Emotion Mind, and Wise Mind—the three states of mind coined by Dr. Marsha Linehan, the founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).
Logic Mind uses logic and cause and effect reasoning to guide you. Although Logic Mind is crucial to dealing with reality, many of life’s problems have an emotional aspect that pure Logic Mind ignores. Remember Dr. Spock from Star Trek? He only made choices in Logic Mind, and that proved to be very awkward, to say the least.
Emotion Mind is characterized by your emotions guiding how you think, feel, and behave. If Logic Mind runs cool then Emotion Mind runs hot.
When Romeo drank the poison because he thought Juliet was dead, he was making a decision in Emotion Mind. If he had taken a few deep breaths and calmed down before doing anything rash, the messenger would have arrived and the story would have had a very different ending.
The synthesis of Logic Mind and Emotion Mind is Wise Mind.
When we bring together the rationality of Logic Mind and the sensitivity of Emotion Mind we create a balanced state of mind called Wise Mind.
Mindfulness and emotion regulation are the keys to Wise Mind Living.
Both are skills that can be learned. Increasing mindful awareness and mastering your emotions takes practice, but just like driving a car or learning to play piano, the more you practice the better you’ll get. Ultimately, when you live in a way that puts mindful awareness, perspective and balance front and center, that’s Wise Mind Living
Written by: Erin Olivo, PhD