---
title: "Your feelings come first, your mind comes later"
description: "We think we choose consciously, but our feeling was already there before we started thinking. What that means, and where emotional awareness really begins: in your body."
language: en
source: https://coachsteff.live/en/je-gevoel-is-er-eerst
---

# Your feelings come first, your mind comes later

In a workshop on emotional intelligence last week, I talked about buying a house. You go to visit it, you stand in the living room, and somewhere inside you it thinks: I am going to feel good here. At that moment, the decision has actually already been made. The calculation comes later.

## The illusion of the rational human

We like to live in the belief that we are rational beings who constantly make conscious choices. That is not the case. What ends up in your shopping trolley is largely impulse. And the biggest financial decisions in a human life, the house, the car, are exactly the ones most driven by emotion. A car that you would buy purely on features is perfectly comparable to others. You still buy that specific one, because it looks nice.

Afterwards, your brain does something clever. It looks for an explanation. You start to rationalise, and you believe that explanation yourself too. That is not a weakness, it is simply how we are built.