Live Your Life: Lead with Your Heart, Follow with Your Head

Ask me why I married Carol, the woman with whom I’ve spent more than half my life, and I won’t take long to answer. It’s really pretty simple: I loved her. I still do.

Ask me why I pursued degrees I no longer use and careers I ultimately left behind, and I’ll ask you to grab a chair. It’s kind of complicated, but here I’ll be brief; I was trying to be practical. I no longer am.

Who’s in Charge?

It’s odd how I followed my heart to choose a life partner, but tried to follow my head to choose my life’s work. I have no regrets regarding the first decision and about a million regarding the last.

I’m not suggesting we lop off our heads; we’re going to need them. We just don’t need to lead with them.

Hearts Are Bullheaded

Have you ever found yourself trying to be practical, failing, and feeling practically dead inside? I think that’s what happens when you lead with your head and force your heart to follow.

You probably thought your head could persuade your heart to love things it didn’t.

“Look,” your head would say, pointing to charts and graphs, quoting statistics, and offering your heart a thousand reasons why it should be more practical.

But no matter how often it heard the pitch, your heart did one of two things. It either continued gazing out the window, dreaming its impractical, little dreams, or it started forgetting how to dream altogether and wondered why everything felt so wrong.

There’s no getting around it. Hearts make lousy followers. They were born to lead, and heads were born to do their bidding. Turning this process upside down just leads to depression, resentment, and confusion.

Let’s Be Honest

To live your life, to be authentic, you first have to consult your heart, and that requires honesty.

You have to be honest about your preferences, wishes, desires, and dreams.

You have to be honest about what you value and believe.

You have to be honest about what matters to you and what motivates you. There’s simply no use in pretending.

When you’re pretending, your head’s in charge, and though your heart won’t exactly follow, it might forget how to lead. But it can learn to lead again.

Leading from Within

You may have to start small and practice merely stating your preferences. Maybe you prefer chocolate over vanilla, country and western over rock and roll, working outdoors over working indoors. Keep a list and look for patterns.

Move onto bigger desires: the work you wish to do, the part of the world in which you hope to live, the kind of people you want to attract. It helps to determine your priorities. Which of these desires are deal breakers?

For example, would you live in a climate colder than the one you prefer if it meant working with a group of creative and enthusiastic people? There are no wrong answers, unless they’re less than honest.

Eventually, you can give yourself permission to answer the really big questions with the same degree of honesty. What do you want your life to be about? Before you leave, what contributions do you want to make to the people you love and the world in which you live?

Honest Wishes

You may not get everything you want. In fact, there’s a good chance you won’t. That’s the reality of life, but you’ll get even less of what you want if you can’t be honest about what that is.

Get honest, however, and your head can be your heart’s greatest ally, serving as the seeker of ways.

Put Your Mind at Ease

If you’re worried that your heart might get it wrong, you needn’t be. Preferences can change as you do. Greater understanding, new appreciations, and changing sets of needs can alter what your heart desires. It’s okay to adapt and grow.

If you’re worried that doing this is selfish, you needn’t be. You’re only being honest. If pursuing a preference truly meant harming others, I would forgo the pursuit. I’m assuming you’d do the same. Besides, such dilemmas usually exist only in our minds.

Living your life doesn’t hurt the people you love. It gives them permission to do the same. And a world filled with authentic people using their heads in the service of their hearts is precisely the kind of world in which I’d prefer to live.