Are you a thinking person or a feeling person?

Are you a thinking person or a feeling person?

It’s a question I ask many people as I get to know them, hoping to learn something deeper about them. The interesting aspect is not their answer, but their justification behind it. Which leaves me with the question: if someone intuitively answers this question, what aspect of themselves are they describing?

So what do you mean when you describe yourself as either a thinking person or a feeling person? Stop for a moment and think about this for a bit.

The best approximation I have so far is that it describes how a person perceives and makes sense of the world, meaning both externally and internally. It’s their preference for how to evaluate incoming data and what to base their decisions on.

Thinking and feeling people value different parts in personal conversations. If people prefer to interpret the world through either thinking or feeling, then they like to spend their time relating to other people in the same way. It’s a measure of what aspects of a conversation they might value. Do they like to talk about their thoughts, or their emotional experiences? I definitely have friends with whom I talk mostly about our thinking side, and then others with whom it's mostly about feeling.

This is not the same as being a cold or warm person. It’s also not the same as being intellectually intelligent or emotionally intelligent. These are orthogonal but related dimensions. I suppose they can go hand in hand with this preference, but they describe something different. A thinking person can be both warm and emotionally intelligent, they just enjoy relating to the world more through thinking (and vice versa).

My guess is that most people's answer would not be one or the other, but rather a combination of the two. That's why I see it as a spectrum. Personally, I'd put myself somewhere in the middle, with a slight preference for thinking. But there are still some decisions that are based purely on intuition.

And since this is a spectrum, both aspects can be useful. Neither is inherently better or worse.

You may be a thinking person, but if you have a growing intuition that something isn’t right, you’ll likely try feeling inside more deeply to find out what’s going on. Similarly, there are benefits to thinking about a situation even if your first instinct is to trust your intuition.

Knowing your own preference and position on this spectrum can be very useful. Because with this preference comes the opportunity to consciously invite more aspects of yourself to your subjective experience.

I strongly believe that we should all try to move closer to the center of the spectrum by cultivating both parts. Because much like using both eyes instead of just one, we gain perspective on our inner and outer worlds and can make better decisions.

So how do you do that?

I think the best way is to become aware of your default position on the spectrum. And then, as you process reality, actively try to look at it through the lens of a different position. Ask different parts of yourself what they think and feel about it and what they would do. This way, you open up your experience to additional aspects of your intelligence.

So where do you see yourself on this spectrum? Are you a thinking or a feeling person?