What it truly means to follow your heart

Speak from your heart.

Listen to your gut.

Do what feels right.

These expressions point to something important. And yet for most of my life I saw them as just metaphor.

They were mental concepts, rather than experiential realities.

I thought ‘following my heart’ was just doing what I most wanted. Which for me meant sifting through my thoughts to find the ‘truest’ one and acting on it.

How misguided I was…

Thinking is king

In school, I was encouraged to think my way to solutions through essay writing, research and debate. The truth could be found at the end of a process of comparison and refinement.

Thinking was rewarded.

But feeling? Feeling was uncomfortable and nebulous. No one else could experience it and point it out to me.

So I learnt to ignore my feelings.

I became a people pleaser, so I didn’t have to experience conflict.

I numbed myself with media so that I didn’t have to sit with unpleasant sensations.

And over the years, I created internal division between my thoughts and my feelings.

Every time I went along with someone else’s desires instead of my own, I learnt to silence myself.

Every time I bottled up a feeling and kept it to myself, I learnt that my feelings weren’t important.

Every time I stopped myself from pursuing something I wanted to do for fear of being judged, I learnt that external validation was my GPS.

I no longer trusted my internal experience.

Lost and found

It’s no wonder I didn’t know what to do with my life or who I was. I was caught adrift in a sea of thought.

Ironically, it was only by paying attention to the currents of thought that I was able to rescue myself from them.

Daily meditation created space for other sensations to be noticed.

And a focus on embodied, somatic meditation dialled them up.

In particular, I spent a year following the meditation program Awakening The Heart by Reggie Ray.

In his course, I explored the felt sense of the heart.

By gently bringing my awareness to the middle of my chest, I was able to discover a landscape of feeling that had long been neglected.

Pain that I had pushed down over the years gradually bubbled up to the surface.

Deep tears poured out of me, creating cracks that allowed my heart to breathe again.

And by being with my pain, I was able to make room for joy too.

Little jolts of excitement became present, pronouncing themselves when certain opportunities arose.

These sensations in my heart were like flashing neon signs, lighting me up, telling me to pay attention and head in that direction.

Often they required me to step out of myself, to be vulnerable, to do something totally out of whack with society or the people around me.

They didn’t ‘make sense’.

But I’ve learnt that’s OK. The intellect is not necessarily the right place to be making decisions.

What’s wrong with being right?

Let’s get something straight…

There is no right or wrong way of doing things. What even is that code based on?

What was right in yesterday’s society is wrong in today’s. Take for instance slavery, misogyny, or child labour.

And the same will be true for tomorrow’s world too. Hello fast fashion, phone addiction, and ultra-processed food.

If I follow thought, I’ll simply be following the logic of the day.

But I can follow my own inner compass.

Whether that be powered by feeling, intuition, or my value system.

After all, only I can live my life.

Fulfilment is uniquely personal to me.

That’s why I do what feels right.

I listen to my gut.

I speak my truth, from my heart.

That for me is a measure of a life well lived.

Better that I use my own measuring stick rather than society’s.