Your Head, Your Heart and Your Career

A complete turn

I gave up any active involvement in engineering more years ago than I care to remember but the civil engineering institute chose to keep me on their newsletter mailing list (perhaps in the forlorn hope that I might sometime return to the fold??)

I\’m always curious to read the latest news in \’Construction World\’ – I suppose it resonates with part of my past. But it also serves the purpose to make me stop and think about how, over many years, my career – and life – did a complete turn.

 

The head-heart battle

One of the most important life lessons that I learnt is this:

Although we are all endowed with a head and a heart, none of us have an instruction book telling us when to follow one and not the other. Thus, we easily fall prey to dithering and procrastination as the two battle it out for our attention.

 

The head

The \’head\’ is the home of the rational mind and the voice of the ego.

The head helps us to navigate the world by referencing the learnings we have accumulated from our education and upbringing, experiences, the media, our peers and other influential people in our lives.

The head provides us with direction based on what should be the best approach, as seen from the perspective of the world we live in, or what I call the ‘external world’.

In the external world, there are rules that govern what is possible and not possible; rules that determine what is \’the right thing to do\’ and what is the \’wrong thing to do\’, what is expected of us and what we should expect of others.

By following the direction given by the head, we safeguard our reputation and place in the external world and thereby appease the protector of our identity, the ego. However, this often involves sacrificing inner peace and contentment.

 

The heart

The \’heart\’ is very different. It is the connection with our source and the voice of the inner being.

The heart helps us to navigate the world by referencing our authentic purpose in life.

It provides us with direction based on what would be the best approach to deliver on the mission that we came to earth to fulfil, as seen from the perspective of our spiritual core, or what I call the ‘inner world’.

The inner world ignores any societal \’conditioning\’ and refuses to accept that any activity that is aligned with and promotes our purpose is ‘impossible’ or ‘wrong’ for us.

By following the direction given by the heart we follow the path towards personal freedom, joy and happiness. However, the sacrifice we make is to risk being ridiculed or rejected by people in our external world.

 

A tug of war

The \’head\’, if you like, is there to protect us from the \’pain\’, embarrassment or rejection that we could experience from trying to go beyond our self imposed limitations and the real or perceived societal expectations.

The \’heart\’ is there to protect and promote our true best interests, spurring us on to do whatever it takes to carry out our mission.

Choosing a career often involves a great tug of war between head and heart.

The former places great store in what others think, the demands of society and the likely propensity for financial reward and prestige. The latter cares only about whether the work is aligned with our authentic values and our true life purpose.

 

Under pressure

A great many people, under pressure to live up to the expectations of others, follow the course that they are led to believe others see as important, meaningful and in their best interests.

They allow their heads to prevail even though their hearts are nudging them to follow a different path.

Material rewards – sometimes quite substantial – may flow, but ultimately feelings of frustration, discontent and lack of fulfilment will set in as their inner beings alert them to a divergence from their values and their purpose.

 

Change and the illusion of pain

As I personally experienced, when contemplating moving from corporate life – where I had been practising the many so called ‘hard skills’ that I had learnt – to running my own business – and peddling the ‘soft skills’ of personal development and life coaching – change can be painful.

Or at least, it can bring with it the illusion of pain!

I say ‘illusion’ because the ego employs the emotion of fear and uncertainty of the unknown to great effect in its fight to resist change and perceived damage to one’s identity in the external world.

 

The magic of action

I’ve saved the great news for last.

You can overcome fear – the protective tool of the ego – by simply taking some small but decisive action to switch over to the path advocated by your heart.

One small action will, almost like magic, serve to build self confidence and expose the fear for what it is, imagined and not real. That will encourage further and bigger actions and resulting leaps in self confidence and inspiration.

A virtuous cycle will soon replace its vicious cousin and feelings of personal freedom and a renewed sense of meaning will flood you with energy to continue on the path of change.

When you choose to follow your heart, the universe will open up avenues of possibility that you never knew existed before.

 

Have courage

Those who have the courage to change to the path of the heart, are ultimately richly rewarded!