We hear it all the time. “Follow your heart.”
But should we?
And then we’re told to, “Trust your gut.”
So which is it? It can be confusing!
For a while, I thought that trusting your gut and following your heart were pretty much the same thing.
I was wrong.
The thing about following your heart is—your heart can be stupid.
But your gut isn’t.
Why? Because your gut is connected to your brain. So it’s smarter than your heart.
In fact, scientists call the gut our “Little Brain.” It’s part of the Enteric Nervous System and it communicates with our brain.
So it can be trusted.
The heart isn’t part of the Enteric Nervous System. There’s no back and forth communication with the brain. The brain tells the heart to beat and it obeys.
So when it comes to the heart vs. the gut—Listen to your gut.
They say, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” But the gut (our intuition) protects us from the foolishness the heart wants.
I should know. Like most of us, I’ve thrown caution to the wind and followed my heart in the past.
And it always ended up disastrous!
But when I’ve followed my intuition, things have worked out wonderfully.
And by the way, when things work out wonderfully, your heart is happy—because it gets what it wants.
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Photo Credit: Jay Evans