Following Your Heart Versus Your Head

For a short time, I was a star pupil in a productivity workshop being sponsored by a former manufacturing employer. I was enthusiastic, did the exercises, and participated in the discussions. However, one question near the end of the workshop obliterated my star pupil status. Her question was, “When push comes to shove, do you follow your heart or your head?”

In a room full of engineers, I was the only one who said, “I follow my heart.” I knew it was dicey thing to say amongst a group of men and women who value their analytical thinking skills above all us. But I couldn’t betray my heart. It is the one thing that has NEVER steered me wrong. This didn’t matter to the facilitator who admonished me, “I can’t believe you of all people said that.”

The funny thing was, I actually felt sorry for her! As far as I’m concerned, a person that prizes their analytical skills above all else is navigating the ocean of life with only half a sail! Truth is we shouldn’t prize one more than the other, we should use them both. However, when “push comes to stove” … my heart’s wisdom tips the scales.

The Science Behind the Heart’s Wisdom

I’m not alone in this as science is now beginning to confirm the wisdom of the heart. According to the Institute of HeartMath, which conducts research on the heart-brain connection, heart intelligence, practical intuition emotional energetics and coherence:

• In fetal development, the heart forms and starts beating before the brain begins to develop.
• Your conscious, thinking mind is your slowest processor by far.
• The subconscious mind processes millions of times more information than the conscious mind, but it still only knows what it learned. Most of what it has learned is based on the emotionally-charged memories you encoded before you were 7-years old, which is based on a rudimentary classification system that divides the world into what is safe and what is unsafe. What is unsafe is encoded much more strongly than what is considered unsafe.
• The heart can process far more information than even the subconscious mind; its qualities and information are unconditioned, meaning they are not restricted by the learning and limitation of the conditioned subconscious mind.
• The heart brain, like the brain proper, has an intricate network of neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins and support cells. It can act independently of the cranial brain and has extensive sensory capacities.

The Heart’s Link to the Divine

Now that you know a little of proven science behind the heart’s wisdom, what exactly does it look like when one follows their heart? First of all, and probably most importantly, it does not mean that I let my emotions decide for me. In fact, it surprisingly has little to do with emotions at all! For me, my heart center is the seat of my soul. It’s where my intuitive sense hooks up to the Divine — where I’m tapped into my higher wisdom. For me the insight comes through more as a persistent knowingness rather than a feeling such as desire or yearning.

Following Your Heart Requires Courage … But the Payoff is Huge!

Following one’s heart is not for the faint of heart! Your heart’s wisdom will call on you to do things that make absolutely no sense to the rest of the world but ultimately end up bringing about your highest good. At least this has been my experience, when:

• I felt the calling to leave a Vice President position with an ad agency for a Community Relations Director position in a then moderately sized home health agency. The agency tripled in size during my tenure and helped me build a strong reputation in the business community, which eventually paved the way for me going out on my own and successfully running my own marketing & design firm for 25+ years.
• I left the security of a marketing position with the previously mentioned manufacturing firm during troubling economic times to give myself a shot at art licensing (another calling of my heart). During this three-year period, I spent half-days doing contract marketing and the other half creating an extensive art portfolio that I launched at SURTEX in New York City in 2013. This was one of the most demanding and yet sweetest, happiest times of my career. What’s more, the timing of this move back to self-employment later enabled me the freedom to move to anywhere I wanted to, following the end of a 29-year marriage several years later.
• Following said divorce, I honored the promptings of my heart when it said it wanted “Sunshine” to grieve and heal, and moved to Sedona, Arizona ….to a place that boasts sunshine 300+ day of the year and gave me more blessings and gifts then I could have ever dreamt up with my own limited thinking!
• And now, inexplicably, my heart’s intuition is calling me to leave this beautiful, amazing place called Sedona to move near the ocean and to launch a healing practice or center there.

In every case, the guidance from my heart was gentle, yet persistent. The promptings came up repeatedly in my meditations, journaling, and as I opened up my intuitive senses further, through external sacred messengers. Now the entire Universe seems to speak to me! I receive guidance and encouragement from animal appearances, passages in books, bits of conversation, license plates & signage, and random individuals reaching out and saying, “I felt compelled to share this with you.”

The Intuitive Compass of the Heart

Throughout each of these experiences, my heart’s calling has been my compass. It sets the direction, then I’ve used my left-brain analytical/organizational skills to help make it happen in a responsible fashion. In other words, I don’t receive a calling then quit my job the next day. This, to me, would feel entirely risky and irresponsible. Instead, I honor the calling by doing some left-brain planning followed by inspired action. In some cases, it meant saving up enough money to support the transition from full-time to self-employment, while in others it called for writing and sending a letter of intent, researching industries or locations online, or reaching out to people in my network for information or referrals. In every case, “the leap” was prompted by my heart and implemented with the assistance of left-brain practical planning.

By now, I hope you can see that my experience of “following my heart” is not some mamby-pamby experience where I let my emotions rule. It’s more about trusting that the inspiration from my heart is divine guidance. Yes, it can be scary to follow its calling especially as it rarely reveals its whole plan up front. Yet for me, it’s no longer as frightening as you’d think. Following my heart has led me to the most juiciest, joyful experiences of my life. Considering all this, which would you rather have leading your life, your heart or your head?

With heaps of love & light,