Follow Your Heart
To follow your heart is a process that needs no prior intellectual thought or reasoning and is void of strong emotional influences. It is a process that merely needs you to be aware and have faith.
To follow your heart you need to acknowledge your connection to nature and then rely on that connection to guide you during your lifetime. To follow your heart often involves making decisions that defy conventional wisdoms and social expectations of you, which is the cause of most suffering in our lives. Tradition dictates that we live linear lifestyles, but our essential nature craves diversity and adventure.
We, human beings, depend on the earth to feed and nourish us, we live in circadian rhythm with the sun and moon and are members of the animal kingdom. These are not spiritual beliefs, they are facts, yet despite these facts it is interesting that so many people tend to shy away from acknowledging our individual and collective connection to nature simply because they so conditioned to associating with the tangible and scientific world, cold hard cash and all the material possessions they can get their dirty little hands on. To recognize and acknowledge that we, as human beings, are as much a part of nature as the birds and bees, would be considered to be ’spiritual’ and “being spiritual” has the connotation of a bunch of hippies running around a paddock with flowers in their hair – an image that most people (understandably) try to distance themselves from and so they instead live in ignorance, completely blinded to our intricate connection to our world and the joy we could be experiencing if only we were aware of our connection and knew how to tune into our inner guidance to follow our heart during our life’s journey.
When you are faced with difficult choices during your life and are uncertain about what decisions to make, it is always best to follow your heart because you will never regret a decision based on your inner guidance because it will always be the most rewarding decision to make based on a life full of experiences and wisdoms gained through our experiences.
If you are at a crossroads in your life where you can either continue on with your life’s unhappy current trajectory, or you have an opportunity to take a different path, but are uncertain of what to do, the best advice you could ever receive is : follow your heart.
But how?! These six steps explain how you can tune in and follow your heart :
1. Firstly, go to a quiet, comforting place – preferably outdoors in nature so you can breath in some fresh air and listen to nature
2. Relax for a few minutes and just focus on taking long, deep, slow breaths
3. Be aware of any emotions you are holding on to. Identify your emotions : any anger, fear, sadness, guilt, excitement and purposefully let them go with each breath you take until you come to a very calm state of being void of influencing emotions
4. Be aware of any beliefs you are holding on to. Identify these beliefs, such as limiting thoughts of “I can not”, “Nobody will like me”, or “I will not feel comfortable” etc, or any expectations you feel you have to hold yourself up against, such as “my parents / partner / friends will not understand / approve” or “they will hate me if I leave now”. Identify any of these beliefs and with each deep breath release them until you come to a very calm state of being void of preconditioned beliefs.
5. Maintain this pure state of being and relax. Continue focusing on your breathing, listen to the birds, gaze up at the clouds, distract yourself from your current dilemma and focus on peaceful yet powerful natural world
6. When you are ready, consider the situation you are facing while maintain your pure state of being, free from emotions and thought, be aware and conscious of what answer arises.
Once you have allowed all the unnecessary clutter of limiting thoughts, emotional reactions and preconceived notions to fall away, the answer will remain quietly within your consciousness, but do not expect a thunderbolt and lightening type realization of a certain and definitive answer. The answer will come to you very subtly, perhaps even manifest as a very slight preference for one answer over another, so slight that your intellectual mind could easily reject and dismiss the answer by rationalizing why it is not a good idea to follow your heart in this instance by making a mental list of reasons why the other answer is a “better” decision to make. Be conscious of this and stay vigilant to not involve your intellectual mind when trying to follow your heart.
Once the answer has arisen and you are aware of it, you then make a conscious decision to act on the guidance you received, but often, the guidance that arises when you follow your heart is difficult to act on because, to follow it, may mean that you have to make major decisions and drastic changes in your life, something you may be reluctant to do because whether we love it or hate it, the status quo where most of us reside, though it may not be ideal, is comfortable and safe. This is why you need faith also. You need to have faith that as long as you follow your heart, every step you take, every word you breath, every person you speak to, every road you drive down, every word you read, it is all meant to be and leading you to where you are supposed to be. Let this faith give you courage to act on the guidance you received when you tuned into your inner guidance.
Think back to a time when you were young and wild (aka young and dumb) to a time when you did something wrong and later felt guilty for your actions, a time when you felt bad. Can you remember that feeling? Can you remember instances in your life when you have felt various intensities of ‘feeling bad’? From mild guilt to outright shame. Learning to follow your heart, is learning to tune into those feeling, recognizing when an intellectual decision is overriding your heart because you are plagued by an uneasiness and remorseful feeling for not following your heart. You never feel regret or uneasiness when you follow your heart because you just know that it was the right decision to make.
Ultimately, you need no explanation or reasoning to follow your heart – regardless of what the decision entails, it just feels right!
What is your view on this? Share your thoughts and experiences below in the comments section.
If you are interested in Free Life Coaching, then please feel free to contact me, I will be delighted to support and encourage you to follow your heart and start to live your best life now.
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“The purpose of the life is to experience and be happy”
“Follow your heart and see what adventure it takes you on”
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When you are faced with difficult choices during your life and are uncertain about what decisions to make, it is always best to follow your heart because you will never regret a decision based on your inner guidance because it will always be the most rewarding decision to make based on a life full of experiences and wisdoms gained through our experiences