Thinking With Your Whole Self: Why Sound Decisions Require Your Head, Heart, and Gut
I still vividly remember the day when my friend and colleague T.J. Jourian asked me, "Have you ever heard of holographic thinking?"
We were in the middle of a dream-to-reality planning session, designing the Kaleidoscope coaching program we envisioned as a resource for fellow queer and trans people of color navigating major career and life transitions. We'd already clarified the outcomes we wanted to create and were brainstorming the frameworks, activities, and content that would get us there.
The term "holographic thinking" caught my attention immediately. I'll admit that part of it was pure aesthetic appeal. Like any good queer person, I naturally gravitate toward colorful and shiny things like holograms. (You've seen my nails, right?) But as T.J. explained the concept in greater depth, I felt something shift. The style caught my eye, but the substance won my heart.
Three Brains, One Whole Self
As T.J. describes in his excellent writing on the topic, holographic thinking recognizes that all of us have at least three different sources of knowledge we can draw on when making decisions: head (intellect), heart (emotion), and gut (instinct). A fully considered decision integrates all three of these sources. Yet many of us default to just one or two of them … and often, we pay a price for it, missing important information that could help us make wiser choices.
It turns out there's a neuroscience dimension to this idea of "three brains." As Grant Soosalu and Marvin Oka explain, recent findings in the field of neuroscience provide evidence that both the heart and the gut have neural networks that function much like the brain in our head. These networks generate vital information about our emotions and intuition. Each of these "brains" has a distinct set of functions that matter for how we make sense of ourselves and our world.
The Heart Brain processes:
Emotions: your emotional responses (anger, grief, joy, happiness, fear, and everything in between)
Values: what's important to you and your priorities, and how emotionally connected you are to your dreams and desires
Relationships: your felt sense of connection with others, whether it's compassion, indifference, love, or care
The Gut Brain governs:
Core identity: your deepest sense of self; what feels like "you" versus what doesn't
Self-preservation: your sense of safety, your boundaries, what you're hungry for, and what you naturally avoid
Mobilization: your capacity for action, your courage, and your will to move forward
The Head Brain handles:
Cognitive perception: how you notice patterns, process information, and perceive what's around you
Thinking: how you reason, analyze, synthesize, and make sense of complexity
Meaning-making: how you use language, story, and metaphor to understand your experience
When these three work together, you have access to a level of wisdom that no single brain can offer alone. The head brings clarity. The heart brings purpose. The gut brings conviction. Together, they create the foundation for decisions that make sense, feel right, and move you forward with confidence.
What Gets in the Way?
If the value of this kind of integrated thinking sounds obvious … well, you're not wrong. But even so, most of us operate often with these three brains fragmented rather than unified. Three obstacles stand in the way of thinking with our whole selves.
Dysregulation and overwhelm. Stress, burnout, and exhaustion make it nearly impossible to access the wisdom of all three brains at once. We may be receiving signals from all three, but rather than experiencing them as valuable information, they just feel like noise and chaos. This is true for anyone facing ordinary human stress. But for many of us who've experienced or are experiencing historical and systemic injustice, the sources of that stress run deeper, and the challenge of accessing our integrated wisdom becomes even more real.
Social pressure to privilege the head. We live in a world that has decided the head brain is the only one worth trusting. Logic is good; emotion is suspect. Analysis is reliable; intuition is flaky. This bias is especially strong in leadership cultures, where the stereotype of a good leader is someone rational and in control who never lets feelings or gut instinct cloud their judgment. The irony, of course, is that integrated thinking actually leads to much better decisions. Yet we're constantly pressured to ignore what our hearts and guts are telling us.
Habit. Without conscious awareness of these three ways of knowing, we drift toward the ones we've practiced most. This isn't about capacity: you absolutely have the ability to use all three brains. It's about conditioning. But here's the good news: just as you can build strength in underused muscles, you can develop the capacity to purposefully use all three of your brains.
How to Integrate Your Three Brains
So what steps can you take to leverage all three sources of wisdom when you're at a personal or professional crossroads?
Prioritize rest and healing. This is not a luxury or an indulgence, no matter what the hustle culture wants you to believe. Rest, self-care, and receiving care from community are essential practices that position you to think clearly. Dysregulation makes holographic thinking impossible. When you're running on empty, your three brains aren't communicating; instead, they're competing for your attention. Even in difficult and unjust circumstances, you have agency. Any amount of rest and healing you can give yourself creates the space for more integrated decision-making.
Get clear on your habits. Self-awareness is half the battle. Knowing which brain you tend to lean on and which ones you neglect is the first step to building new neural pathways. Do you lead with your head, analyzing every angle before moving forward? Do you trust your gut instinct above all else? Do you make decisions based on how you're feeling in the moment? There's no "right" answer, but knowing your default pattern opens the door to accessing what you're missing.
Purposefully consult all three brains. When facing a significant decision, use reflection questions that specifically activate the wisdom of each brain. Rather than relying on habitual thinking patterns, you're intentionally gathering information from all three sources.
Reflection Questions for Integrated Decision-Making
When you're standing at a crossroads and need to make a powerful decision, try asking yourself these questions:
For Your Head Brain (Clarity and Analysis):
What are the objective facts about this situation?
What patterns do I notice? What has worked or not worked in similar circumstances?
What assumptions am I making, and which ones are based on evidence?
What are the logical pros and cons of each option?
What would I advise a trusted friend in this same situation?
For Your Heart Brain (Values and Connection):
How do I feel about each option? What emotions arise when I imagine choosing each path?
Which choice aligns most fully with my core values?
Who and what matters most to me in this decision, and how do my options affect those relationships?
What would this choice mean for how I show up in my important relationships?
What does my heart most want for my life? What am I deeply yearning for?
For Your Gut Brain (Identity and Action):
What does my gut tell me about this decision? When I drop below the noise, what does my body know?
Which option feels most authentically "me"?
What am I protecting or preserving by choosing each option? What boundaries matter here?
What would it take for me to feel safe–or brave–enough to move forward?
If I choose this path, do I have the courage and will to see it through?
Take time to sit with these questions. Write about them. Talk them through with someone you trust. Notice what comes up when you genuinely consult all three of your brains rather than defaulting to your usual pattern.
The Power of Support
You can absolutely use these tools on your own. Self-reflection is a powerful practice. But many people find that additional support helps them develop the capacity to think holographically, especially when they're trying to break long-standing habits. This is part of why I'm so passionate about coaching. It's not because I have all the answers–I don't, and even if I did, that’s not what coaching is about. It's because the coaching relationship creates a container where you can slow down, become aware of your patterns, and practice new ways of integrating your wisdom.
Whether you're working through career transitions, navigating organizational change, or wrestling with life-changing decisions, the ability to think with your head, heart, and gut is non-negotiable. It's the difference between choices that look good on paper but feel hollow, and choices that align your whole self with your future.
That's the work I do with leaders across industries through individual coaching; through the Evolve Institute for Higher Education Leadership; and through Chrysalis, the suite of programs T.J. and I designed specifically for queer and trans people of color navigating major transitions. In each of these spaces, we create the conditions for you to slow down, access your three brains, and make decisions that don't just make sense but feel deeply right.
Traveling Song – "Head and Heart" by MNEK and Joel Corry
I listen to this song a lot, especially when I'm navigating the tension between what I think I should do and what I actually want to do. There's something about the way MNEK manages to sing with both power and vulnerability that captures the real struggle of living as a whole person in a world that constantly asks us to fragment ourselves. And I love that this song spotlights MNEK, a queer Black artist whose artistry and authenticity remind me why this work matters.
The song's central tension is the very one we've been exploring throughout this post. MNEK finds himself caught between the head and the heart, unable to tell them apart. "My head tells me to run, but I can't," he sings. It's the voice of someone experiencing dysregulation, of competing signals demanding attention all at once.
But here's what I love most about this song in the context of holographic thinking: it names the problem without resolving it. The song doesn't tell you to pick one brain over the other. It doesn't say, "Trust your head" or "Follow your heart." Instead, it holds the tension. It honors both. And in doing so, it mirrors the actual work of integration: not choosing sides, but learning to listen to all three sources of wisdom working together.
My head tells me to stop, but my heart goes Ba-ba-ba-dum ba-ba-dum ba-ba-dum
When all three of your brains are speaking at once—your head analyzing, your heart yearning, your gut sensing danger or possibility—it may sound like a mess, but it’s actually the moment before breakthrough. It’s the threshold across which integration becomes possible.
The work is learning to listen, to honor each voice, and to make decisions that don't deny any part of who you are.
That's when we're at our most powerful.
