What Does It Mean to "Follow Your Heart"?

Image by Art of Sun

Undoubtedly, you’ve heard the well-intended counsel to “follow your heart” many times before. Especially in this day and age, where millennials value authenticity and being true to themselves, those words constantly swirl around us on coffee mugs or in self-help books. 

But what does this phrase mean, exactly? We hear it and nod with complete agreement, without knowing what it looks or feels like. 

Naturally, people associate heart with feelings. If you’re a big feeler like me though, you may have learned over the years that it’s not always the soundest decision to follow your emotions. 

I’ve made numerous mistakes in service to my big feelings. Thank God that life is infinitely generous, offering second, third, up to a million chances.

The problem with following feelings, is that they’re just that—feelings, which are constantly shifting and shaped by external circumstances.

Seeing Instagram photos of a couple in Paris may provoke envy within you but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should abandon your current life. 

Those feelings of envy shouldn’t be ignored or pushed aside, either. They can serve as signposts toward the kind of life you want to craft. Your feelings help you to learn more about yourself: what you need more of, what you need less of, etc.

So going back to the subject of following your heart and what that means. If heart isn’t necessarily equated with feelings, then, how is it identified? And how can it be heard?

Most simply, it’s the steady and unwavering (as opposed to the wavering nature of feelings) sense beneath the feelings. This is how I often describe it to individuals I work with: if your feelings are characters on a stage, who go on and off the stage, with different roles, then your heart is the stage upon which the characters play. The stage doesn’t move. It doesn’t go in and out, up or down. It just remains. 

Sometimes, when certain characters (i.e. feelings) are really compelling or loud, we can confuse ourselves into thinking they’re the fullness of our identities, when they’re not. They’re temporary and shifting emotions playing out in our lives.

This doesn’t mean they’re not important or shouldn’t be seen and heard. When suppressed, they get even more obnoxious by pestering us to the point where they end up running our lives. Acknowledging them and their important roles in our lives, soothes them and keeps their desire to control our lives at bay. They need to be understood with compassion, embraced even. Fusing too much with them, or the other extreme, hooking them off the stage, only makes them return with a greater vengeance.

Unfortunately, listening to the stage is infinitely more difficult. It’s not as captivating or provocative as the characters. And the only way to turn your attention towards it, I’m sorry to say, is through a two-part process: raising your awareness of this dynamic and mindfulness practices. 

I say this apologetically because most people don’t like hearing that they need to do more work to listen to their hearts. Because it sounds so easy, they think it’s easy. It’s not. 

While it was when we were younger, we’ve absorbed a lot of social messaging over the years about what kind of person we’re “supposed” to be, which has crowded the stage with an infinite number of compelling characters. As such, we need to do the integral work of identifying these different characters, why they're there, what they want us to know, and then ultimately, put them in their place. 

I have a special practice that I lead clients through, which helps them to separate their true selves from their emotions. For some clients, this is really hard because they’re resistant to separating themselves from their emotions and for good reason! Their emotions and the voices in their heads have been with them for most of their adult lives and exist to protect them from any kind of anticipated pain. 

The second part of the process consists of regular mindfulness practices, which include any number of practices, spiritual or secular. My favorite is centering prayer and the best book I’ve found on how to do it is this one. Mindfulness practices enable us to keep a healthy distance from our emotions and to then, listen beyond the emotions, to the much more quiet voice of the true self.

There, in the stillness, we hear the steady hum of our hearts and follow it. 

The primary way to differentiate the voice of the heart from the voice of emotions is that the voice of the heart fills us with peace rather than anxiety, impulsiveness, or fear. Along those lines, emotions are usually past or future oriented while the heart is present oriented. 

During the many years I dated James, my now husband, I kept going back and forth between marrying him or breaking up with him. On the days my emotions were high and giddy, I wanted to shout from the rooftop that he was my soulmate. Then, on the days when my emotions were low and angry with him, I regretted ever having given him the light of day.

There were oh so many differences between us. I wrote about this in great depth here. 

Here’s how I knew he was the one for me. 

Whenever I would set aside time to listen to my heart, the stage beneath the loud and compelling characters shouting for me to do this or that, it always

chose 

him. 

Here’s to following our hearts. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.