I’d Follow My Heart…If Only I Knew Where It Was Going.
Follow your Heart! Do what makes you Happy!
It sounds so easy doesn’t it? Nearly all self-help advice is founded on this premise and for good reason – it is a simple and common-sense approach to wellbeing. We all KNOW deep within us that we are here to find contentment and meaning in our lives. Yet this simple advice to follow your Heart and do what makes you happy can become altogether annoying and frustrating when you have NO CLUE where your Heart is headed and NO IDEA what makes you happy. How do you follow your bliss if your Inner Compass seems to be broken?
I find it fascinating that something so simple – knowing what makes you happy – is such a common problem. It is one of the most popular topics for client sessions. So many clients feel that they have lost touch with their Inner Compass (that deep, innate part of you that knows the direction in which your happiness lies) and sadly they are also beating themselves up for it. Let me assure you – if you feel like your Inner Compass is broken and you don’t know what your Heart wants or what makes you happy, you are not alone and there is nothing wrong with you. I believe that the broken Inner Compass is one of the primary symptoms indicating a disconnection between Mind and Body.
Let me illustrate how this disconnection plays out in the form of a dialogue with the Self-Help World. At the start of my journey, this is how it appeared to me:
Me: Dear Self-Help World – Therapists, Coaches, Self-Help Books and Gurus…Anyone! SOS! I need help! I am suffering from debilitating fatigue, depression, low motivation, a deep disillusionment with everything I have learned and worked for to this day and I have an unsettling confusion as to who I am and what I should do. Please help me, how can I resolve this?
Self-Help World: Just follow your Heart! Do what makes you happy!
Me: Huh? Did you hear me? I’m distressed, disenchanted, despondent and downright exhausted. I don’t even have the energy to get off the couch to shake the potato chip crumbs off my pyjama top. What can I do?
Self-Help World: Follow your Heart! Do what makes you happy!
Me: I don’t think you heard me. I am in a bad way. My ‘Heart’ seems to be quashed by years of physical exhaustion, emotional repression and corporate bullshit overload and I think my aptitude for happiness burned out a long time ago along with my adrenals. Tell me what I should do?
Self-Help World: Drink celery juice and then…follow your Heart! Do what makes you happy!
When you have lost complete touch with yourself it is near impossible to know what makes you happy, yet you may be continuing to place unnecessary pressure on yourself to ‘find your passion’ and ‘follow your bliss’ often when you’re still in the midst of recovery from trauma and at the mercy of a deeply entrenched mind-body conflict.
While common sense tells us that we ‘should’ know the route to our own happiness, common sense would also tell us that if the mind and body are in complete disarray and turmoil there is no way that you are all of a sudden going to have an epiphany and rediscover your long-lost passion to run an Alpaca farm.
It is time to go easy on yourself and foster a trust that you will find your way back to yourself. Your Inner Compass is still there and it is operative and it will come to life and guide you as you heal your traumas, resolve your inner conflicts and nurture your real self, not the self you have thought you ‘should’ be for everyone else. When you stop ‘pushing’ and exercise patience and compassion with yourself with the intent to restore your mind-body harmony, your Inner Compass naturally awakens.
Could it be that the approach to repairing your Inner Compass is not to deliberately try and ‘fix’ your Inner Compass but rather to release your baggage and nurture yourself so that your Inner Compass is naturally activated within you?
In this case, this is how the dialogue would continue:
Me (feeling nauseous from celery juice): BUT you’re still not listening! I don’t know HOW to follow my Heart! I don’t know WHAT makes me happy! How can I get well if I don’t know this? Just tell me!
Wiser Me: I can’t just tell you. If I revealed to you, right now, that in 10 years’ time you will be extremely happy laying out crystals under the light of a full moon and talking to clients about their chakras you wouldn’t believe me. So, let’s just take this thing step by step. Perhaps, for today, let’s simply focus on shaking off the potato chip crumbs (and perhaps washing that pyjama top). Breathe. Be patient. Your body has been through a lot. Why don’t you start by investigating your resistance to your body? How can you get to peace with your inability to ‘succeed’ in the world at the present time? When you’ve nailed that I’ll be back in touch with some guidance. Cheerio.
Of course, this is still extraordinarily frustrating to the Ego. It needs to know what it must DO to aid the process. It wants activities and challenges to ‘identify’ and ‘implement’ happiness. And you know what? This is fine. Feed it! Go out there and experiment with all the wonderful intuitive tools (Tarot, Astrology, Numerology and of course Kinesiology!) that have been used for centuries to help people hear their Heart and its guidance. But remember that these intuitive tools are just that – tools. They are the ‘training wheels’ which support you and provide a means of communicating what is in your Heart until such time as you have clear and direct communication. We all need training wheels as we find our way back to ourselves and you might just find that the journey begins to make you happy.
If you want to get practical tools and techniques to better tune in to your inner compass, then check out the Path of Purpose – a series of virtual workshops to help light your path.