Wise Mind: Seeing the Whole Road Before You Choose
Imagine the scene: it’s late at night after the most exhausting day ever. It was one of those days when you can’t even recall what happened because every event was just a blur of color. Unfortunately, upon arriving home, you’re greeted by a mess. It looks like a tornado passed through the house, and that’s not even an overstatement. Laundry is strewn all over, dishes are piling up in the sink, and to top it off, a shelf of books got completely knocked over. You see this, and all you want to do is go to bed.
A part of you thinks: I’m tired. I don’t care about this. I’m going to leave everything as it is and get some sleep.
Another part of you thinks: These things need to get done. It doesn’t matter that I’m tired– I’m going to clean everything up until the house is spotless.
Your first approach was driven by Emotion Mind: letting how you feel in the moment determine what you do. The second approach was driven by Reasonable Mind: focusing completely on what logically needs to be done without taking into account your feelings.
In DBT, we have a concept called “Wise Mind”, which is a state of mind where we balance the reasonable and emotional parts of our mind. The goal of Wise Mind is to stay aware of our emotions (like wanting to rest after a long day) while also staying aware of facts and logic (like knowing the house needs to get cleaned). Wise Mind can be described as “walking the middle path”. The goal of walking the middle path is to have clarity in difficult situations.
Human nature is sometimes to stray off that middle path. We might find ourselves listening almost exclusively to the emotional side of ourselves, or almost exclusively to the logical side. In these scenarios, it is often to our detriment. The schedule has a gap, so I have time to put a meeting there instead of relaxing (reasonable mind). My neighbor is being too loud, so I’m going to head downstairs and give them a piece of my mind (emotion mind). I should quit my job because my boss was a little rude today (emotion mind).
In these thoughts, the decision didn't come from a balanced perspective. Wise Mind asks us to take a step back and ask: Are we taking into account both our feelings and our logic? When we consider both, we are more likely to make choices that align with our values.
Maintaining a Wise Mind perspective takes effort. It asks you, in the moment, to take a step back from your situation and look at it from different angles. Ask yourself two simple questions:
What am I feeling emotionally?
What logically makes sense with the facts I know?
Acknowledging both sides enables you to see the bigger picture. It gives you the chance to make choices that don’t only feel right, or only feel logical, but instead choices that truly benefit your individual situation.
Going back to our introduction, you might still decide to leave the mess for tomorrow. Or you might decide to clean the entire house before going to sleep. The goal is not to prevent those choices. The goal with Wise Mind is to stay aware of and acknowledge both logic and emotion. Keep on that middle road, seeing both sides of the path as important factors to consider. Wise Mind isn’t about always choosing the middle. It’s about seeing the whole road before deciding where to go.
