In the adventure of life, you will inevitably encounter a fork in the road that forces you to choose a path.
The proper path won’t always be obvious. When this happens, you can roll the dice. Or you can put that big ol’ noggin’ to work.
Regardless how you proceed, you must act. Standing still at the fork is not an option.
Inevitably, you’ll also experience the whole spectrum of emotions.
Swings from fear to a false sense of certainty. The roller coaster of anxiety to determination. And on an on.
Your emotions can alert you to legitimate, potential threats. But they can also distract you.
Your reason can enable you to calculate and acknowledge risk. But if can also blind you to your own unarticulated concerns – or to the concerns of others around you.
You must pursue a marriage between these two faculties. If you are to survive.
In-synch, your emotions and reason converge into a superpower. Prioritizing one at the expense of the other creates wrinkles into the future, which must eventually be addressed (and if left unaddressed, will leave you exposed, even to the point of becoming crippled).
When you encounter the inevitable forks in the road, you must act.
You can do so blindly. Or you can do so deliberately.
If you make a decision without your proclivities fully on board, you create a future hurdle for yourself.
Post-hoc rationalization can only help you so much if your gut instincts disapprove of your decisions.
Similarly, you can only negotiate with your emotions so much.
How to Navigate Complexity
If you are to survive this world, you can’t be wholly ruled by your emotions. Just like you cannot fully ignore your emotions, either.
You must strike a balance.
One way to do this is by changing your behavior – act in such a way that you approve of yourself. So as to avoid any moral sanctions from your consience.
Still, it’s not a perfect solution. Because inevitably, you will still face challenges where competing priorities or values must be acknowledged.
Another way to proceed is to [attempt to] reorient your emotions to reason.
How can you reframe your situation so as to change your view of the circumstances?
This is not to say you should delude yourself to the truth or reality. (That won’t help either.)
But you do get a choice of your opinions of things, and you can alter your emotional responses – if you can alter your perception to a specific event or circumstance.