How to Follow Your Heart in the Age of Anxiety

A straightforward guide to acting with love

Photo by S Migaj on Unsplash

21st-century industrial society is a world built on anxiety. So many aspects of our lives (like our jobs, our laws, our habits and priorities, not to mention the systems that condition them), are designed by and for fearful thoughts about the future. We’re so entrenched in habits of worry and overthinking that the age-old advice to “follow your heart” might as well come from a different planet. In this Age of Anxiety, it’s something we have to make ourselves practice if we’re to do it at all.

Following your heart isn’t difficult per se, but it is very different from the way we usually think about decision-making. That’s exactly the difference: we’re used to thinking about decisions. Following your heart means feeling the right decision.

To the mind, that statement is vague to the point of meaninglessness, so we’ll draw it out in terms the mind can understand better:

How the Mind Makes Decisions

When we make decisions with the mind, we look at a situation and break it down with our thoughts. We analyze different variables, imagine different outcomes and try to assess the appropriate course of action based on where we think it will lead. The right choice is determined by an imagination of how the future will look, and the right next step to take is a specific action we think will move us towards that outcome.

Here’s the thing: when we want something to happen, what we actually want is how we believe that thing will make us feel. We think certain events will make us feel better (happier, more satisfied or fulfilled, less afraid or in pain, etc.), so we want them. If the event doesn’t make us feel the way we’d hoped, we feel disappointed and switch our desire to something else. It’s not really about that event at all; what we want is the state of being we think it will induce.

The mind has a hard time remembering this, because the mind exists for imagination and analysis. That’s all it can do. It’s not that the mind’s brand of decision-making is bad; it isn’t. It’s crucial in certain contexts, but over-reliance on the mind means basing more of your decisions on fear and avoidance (of a future outcome you…