follow your HEART

“You must never doubt your ability to achieve anything, become anything, overcome anything and inspire everything.”
― Tasha Hoggatt 

If you’ve ever taken a world history class, you’ve probably heard about a woman named Florence Nightingale. A passionate nurse, she was able to cut the mortality rate in the hospital she worked at by 2/3rds by changing their hygiene practices. 

Her work changed the face of medicine, and has saved many thousands of lives, but she almost didn’t become a nurse. She came from a wealthy family who expected her to marry and raise a family, certainly not to work.

She followed her heart, and because of this brave and beautiful decision, “The Angel of Crimea” changed the world. 

As parents, we naturally want many things for our children. We want them to be successful. We want them to have a good job so they never know the pain of hunger or homelessness. We want them to be happy in their careers, and to live a fulfilling life. Helping them to figure out what that might be can be very difficult, just as it must have been difficult for Florence Nightingale’s parents to agree to let her become a nurse.

Teaching your kids how to follow their heart can help them in choosing a path in life they find satisfying. As parents, there are many things we can do to help them learn to listen to themselves.

provide opportunities to grow
You can’t follow your heart if you don’t know what that feels like. If you’ve never played basketball, you won’t know if you have a passion for playing it. If you’ve never conducted an experiment, you may not realize how fun being a scientist can be. Prepare your kids to follow their heart by showing them the world.

While a toddler probably isn’t ready to start learning how to put out fires, you can still introduce children to a wide variety of experiences by taking them to meet-and-greets, providing plenty of opportunities for dress up play, and reading books to them. If something sparks their interest, pursue that with them, but don’t be surprised if their interests change in just a few weeks. Kids are still learning and growing, and change is part of learning to follow your heart.

word things carefully
Chances are, when your child first explores a new topic, they won’t be very good at it. As parents we want to help our children improve, and that means helping them see where they are going wrong. Criticism is a helpful and necessary part of learning, but be careful how you word it. Accoding to an article by Your Modern Family, “the way that we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.”

When your child makes a mistake, focus on the action and what went wrong—not on them as a person. Whenever possible, use even these mistakes as an opportunity to build up your child. The results are almost always more effective, and results in both a happier child, and a happier you.

regret is not a good feeling
As adults, we probably have a handful of things we regret from our past. Whether it be something we did or something we did not do due to fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, or whatever the case may be. We know just how much that feeling of regret sucks, and had we just listened to our heart and intuition,  we wouldn’t have that ever looming “what if” over our hearts and minds.

Let’s be a good example to our children and take healthy risks ourselves every now and then to show our children that regret is much worse than most alternatives. Take a new dance class you were too afraid to try when you were younger, take on painting for the first time since you were too busy to take an art class, or take on learning a new instrument that you’ve always wanted to learn.

a happier self
Allowing our children to be true to who they are and encourage to listen to their heart will ultimately make for happier humans in the long term. It’s safe to say that we all want to see our children be happy, self-aware, confident members of society. One way to help them blossom into this happy self is for us to be open and encourage them to listen to their heart. Not only will they grow up to be the happiest versions of themselves by following their heart, but they will also positively affect those around them.

We can’t control our children’s interests, or what they will do in life. What we can do is provide them with the opportunities they need to grow in life, and to find the most important thing of all—what truly makes them happy.

books to encourage children to follow their heart
Genevieve’s Gift: A Child’s Joyful Tale of Connecting with Her Intuitive Heart by Rosemary Serluca-Foster teaches children and adults how to connect with and follow their intuition, through the fun antics of a feisty little girl named Genevieve. Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by Mo Willems is a fantastic story about Wilbur marching to his own rhythm, finding his own happiness, following his heart, and not being afraid of going against the grain of his fellow mole rats. Me…Jane by Patrick McDonnell is about Jane Goodall as a young girl who followed her heart towards wanting to “live with and help all animals” and later realized that because she followed her heart her dream came true.