Following Your Heart Is A Recipe For Disaster—Use Your Head, Ladies

When dispensing love advice, most people would probably guide you to “follow your heart.” While this cliched advice is totally optimistic and comes from a good place, following your heart is probably the worst thing you can do when it comes to making important decisions.

  1. You’re making decisions based on your emotions rather than common sense. Following your heart means that you’re deciding something long-term based on a temporary feeling. Although it’s not always a bad thing, the more intense your emotions are, the more you’ll feel like you need to make a decision on the spot. Quick and spur-of-the-moment decisions usually don’t end well, so you might want to take a breather and leave your heart out of this one.
  2. Your heart is incapable of being rational. In the heat of the moment, everything seems so intense, as if someone’s life depends on it, but it’s not really that serious. Because emotions and stakes are high, it’s easy to blow the situation out of proportion and make problems bigger than they really are. Taking a step back and making decisions logically will serve you way better.
  3. Your heart was not made to make decisions. That’s your brain’s job. Your brain was designed to store information, send signals to your body, and to help you use reason to decide on what’s best for you. Your heart was not made to do any of that. Its main function is to pump blood throughout your body and to make you feel things. That’s it.
  4. You’ve been led to believe that things need to feel right to be right. When you feel at odds with choosing to listen to your heart or your head, your heart will always win because “it just feels right.” Making any other decisions that don’t align with what your heart desires won’t give you the satisfying feeling that letting your emotions lead does. This is why you’ll feel like any other decision is the wrong one when the reality is sometimes the exact opposite.
  5. Following your heart doesn’t set you free. Some believe that following your heart will free you from the boring, monotonous routine of life. However, it has its setbacks as well. It’s a path you travel alone, people will think you’re out of your mind, and you’re gambling on something that could either go right or extremely wrong. Just because you’re making decisions that are more authentic doesn’t mean that everything is going to be all rainbows and smiles from here on out. You have to be ready to defend and protect your heart from all of the judgment and repercussions you’ll likely face because of it.
  6. Your heart lies to you. Your heart is an extremely powerful and dangerous vessel. It can be your worst enemy when not in check. Following your heart can push you to dismantle and disrupt everything that you’ve worked for in your life. It has the power to put you into situations that you swore you’d never find yourself in such as quitting your stable job on a whim to pursue a pipe dream or making moves on a married man because you swear up and down that he’s the one for you. Your heart doesn’t need reason, logic, or analysis. It’s a bulldozer on autopilot that just keeps on going as long as you let it.
  7. Your heart likes to pretend it’s your gut. Another popular phrase we’ve all heard was “go with your gut.” This is not the same thing as following your heart but people usually confuse the two. Your gut is connected to your intuition and your heart controls your feelings. However, your heart likes to pretend that it gives you the same hunch as your intuition, tricking you into following it. Be smart enough to know better.
  8. Following your heart is the quickest way to heartbreak. Imagine you’ve made the courageous decision to follow your heart and stray from the path of predictability. You’re excited, overwhelmed, and 1,000% sure that you’ve made the right decision… only to find out that the outcome isn’t what you expected. Now you’re disappointed, dissatisfied, and heartbroken. All that’s left to do now is to pick up the pieces and start all over. Just like a breakup, you need time to heal and figure out what’s next. It won’t be easy to recover from such a letdown.
  9. You can’t go back. Once you make the decision to follow your heart, there’s no going back. Like all decisions, they’re difficult to reverse. You can’t just go back to the job that you randomly quit because your dream didn’t work out. You can’t just go back to the man that you were engaged to because the guy you thought was your soulmate didn’t work out. Following your heart is a big decision that’s irreversible. Once you set foot on a path, there’s no turning back. Are you OK with that?
Katrina Torrijos is a lifestyle blogger and YouTuber from San Jose, Ca. She is passionate about helping young professionals find their footing in the real world through advice, conversation, motivation, and affirmation. Read more of her work at www.hellayoung.com
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