The Grasshopper showed up at the gym yesterday wearing his “Pepsi Generation” headband and had this to say: “Logic won’t get you through an emotional jam.”

How many times will we attempt to solve an emotional situation with logic before we finally get the gift of awareness that it never works?

Emotions are emotions and logic is logic and the trains will never meet because they run on separate tracks. That doesn’t prevent us from trying to hook the two of them up.

Since we’re probably never going to completely stop doing this, let’s explore an alternative.

Years ago, I heard my friend Jerry Stocking say, “Judge quickly.” My takeaway from that was that we are going to judge anyway, so do it quickly and let it go before it turns into drama. “Look at that supercilious S.O.B over there holding court for anyone he can corral to listen to his sanctimonious and worthless drivel” becomes “Look at that S.O.B.”

We’ve shortened the storm and we move on without letting it take on a life of its own.

The same quick approach can be applied when we catch ourselves attempting to negotiate our way through an emotion with logic. Notice that you are attempting to put a logical band aid on an emotional gash and then let the logic go.

You are then left with only the emotion.

The way through an emotion is to feel it without comment. Feel where it physically resides in your body and sit with it without attempting to logically chase it away. Emotions have transformative power when they are fully felt.

To transmute an emotion you have to go through it, not around it as logic would suggest.

Logic will keep you churning out ways to avoid the emotion, thereby keeping it in place.

“Logic quickly” doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi as Jerry’s phrase but the lesson is the same: Avoid the drama by acting quickly.

Logic is the Swiss Army Knife of rationality but it will never fix a broken heart.

All the best,

John