When You Don't Know Which Voice to Trust
When I was in my 20s, I spent some time in Bali.
During that time, I spent 10 days on a juice cleanse, practicing yoga and learning meditation daily.
I remember taking a meditation class, and at the beginning, the teacher went around the room and asked each of us to share why we were there.
When it was my turn, I responded—not exactly in these words—but essentially said that I felt disconnected from my mind and my heart.
I felt like they were pulling me in two different directions, and I wanted them to be on the same page. I wanted to feel more connected to myself so I could make better decisions for my life.
What I was really trying to say was:
Something inside me feels divided, and I want to understand myself well enough to feel whole.
The teacher essentially told me that wasn't the purpose of meditation. The purpose, he explained, was to quiet the mind and cultivate more present awareness.
My face got hot.
I felt embarrassed and ashamed.
What he didn't know—and will never know—is how powerful that moment was for me, even though it was probably completely insignificant to him.
I was the quiet one. I never put my hand up. Whenever we had to go around a room and share, my palms would get sweaty. While everyone else was talking, I'd be rehearsing what I was going to say in my head, and then I'd rush through it when my turn came.
So for me to answer that question so honestly was actually a big step.
And it felt like my honesty was met with a giant "EHHHH!"—like the sound of a buzzer when you get the answer wrong.
Needless to say, I wasn't excited to go back.
I told my friend she could keep going, but I came up with an excuse for why I couldn't, or why meditation just wasn't for me, and I stuck with my yoga practice instead.
And for years, that moment stayed with me.
Looking back now, I realize:
I wasn't necessarily looking for meditation. I was looking for clarity and a deeper connection with myself.
I just didn't have the language then that I have now—values, identity, conditioning, nervous-system patterns, alignment, coherence.
Recently, that memory resurfaced as I've been learning more about the nervous system and head-heart coherence.
And I found myself thinking about what that teacher could have said to the 20-something-year-old version of me.
Maybe something like:
The goal isn't necessarily to make your head and heart agree. It's to create enough quiet to hear what each is saying—and enough self-trust to know what is yours.
What does head-heart coherence mean?
Essentially, it means bringing your thinking mind (head) and your emotional and embodied experience (heart/body) into greater alignment, rather than having them constantly pull you in different directions.
Maybe you've experienced this:
"My head says one thing, but my heart says another."
"On paper, it makes sense, but something doesn't feel right."
"I know what I should do, but I don't want to do it."
"Part of me wants this, and another part is terrified."
"I can't tell if this is my intuition or my fear."
"I know the logical answer, but my gut is telling me no."
"I keep going back and forth."
"I know what I want, but I keep talking myself out of it."
"I can't tell whether I'm avoiding something because it's wrong for me or because I'm scared."
Your head might be saying:
"I know what I want."
"This makes logical sense."
"I know I'm capable."
"I know I need to raise my prices."
But emotionally or physiologically, you might be experiencing fear, uncertainty, tension, self-doubt or a desire to retreat and avoid.
There's an incongruence between what you consciously believe and what you emotionally and physiologically experience.
Coherence, then in this broader sense, is when what I think, feel, believe and how I act are in alignment.
What this can look like in real life
A great example is a client of mine.
He knows he is capable of earning a million dollars a year. He has done it in the past. And yet he struggles to get there and sustain it.
In the past he witnessed is father make substantial money and success but then lose it all.
So consciously, he may be thinking: "I want to be financially successful."
But underneath that, there may be a learned emotional association:
More money equals danger + loss + suffering.
So it can look something like this:
Head: "I want to earn $1M."
Body/emotional learning: "Having a lot of money isn't safe."
Behaviour/Action: He approaches the goals and his anxiety increases which leads to avoidance, impulsive decisions or overextension.
Result: He returns to familiar financial territory.
Simply giving him a new thought like "Money is safe for me" doesn't necessarily resolve the discrepancy.
The work is creating greater congruence between what he consciously wants, what he believes, what his body has learned and how he behaves.
Eventually, that might look more like:
Head: "It's safe for me to earn more."
Heart/body: "I can feel grounded rather than threatened as I earn more."
Behaviour/Action: "I can make the offer, receive the money, keep it and continue behaving consistently."
This is how I think about coherence as an outcome of the work: when someone's conscious desires, beliefs, emotional responses, identity and behaviours are no longer constantly fighting one another.
So, which do you listen to your head or your heart?
Honestly, neither really.
The goal isn't to "follow your heart and ignore your head."
Your heart can carry fear, old conditioning, attachment and emotional reactions.
And your head can carry other people's expectations, social conditioning and very convincing rationalizations.
Instead, we want to understand where is each signal coming from.
Imagine an entrepreneur who wants to grow her business (aka me)
She knows that becoming more visible would help. Sharing her ideas, talking about her work, showing her face, letting people know what she offers.
But she keeps telling herself:
"I don't like social media."
"I don't have a clear message yet."
"That's just not me."
And maybe that's true, perhaps social media genuinely isn't aligned with how she wants to build her business. Or the other possiblity is that's not the whole story.
Maybe underneath "I don't like social media" is:
"I'm afraid of being seen."
"What if people judge me?"
"What if I say something stupid?"
“What if nobody responds?"
"What will people I know think?"
“Who am I to position myself as an expert?"
The behaviour can look exactly the same - she doesn't post, or she overly perfects and plans and delays posting. But the reason behind the behaviour changes everything; one is a conscious decision based on her values and how she wants to build her business, while the other is based on fear and self-protection.
And this is why I don't think the answer is always "listen to your heart" or "trust your gut." Sometime what feels like something isn’t for you is actually a signal of fear that something doesn’t feel safe to you yet.
The work is learning to tell the difference.
So instead of asking: “Do i listen to my head or my heart?” Check in with yourself and explore what is each one trying to tell me.
You can begin to explore:
HEAD
What do I think?
What makes logical sense?
What are the facts?
What am I telling myself I should do?
HEART
What do I actually want?
What feels meaningful, exciting, important or true to me?
BODY
What am I experiencing?
Expansion? Contraction? Anxiety? Calm? Activation? Relief?
PATTERN
What might be influencing this?
Is this fear? Conditioning? An old identity? A familiar protection strategy? Someone else's expectations?
VALUES
What matters most to me?
Which choice reflects who I am and how I want to live?
Coherence doesn't necessarily mean that you experience no fear.
You can feel afraid and still know that this is what you want, and that it aligns with your values. The fear means growth, that you are leaning into an edge. And that is different from forcing yourself to do something because logically that is what successful people are supposed to do, when your entire body is saying no.
Often people think they don’t know what they want, but what is really going on is there are so many competing voices inside us that we don;t always know which to listen to.
The work becomes learning to separate the signal from the noise. This is where clarity comes in, not necessarily from figuring out the one "right" answer, but from becoming able to recognize what is actually true for you versus what is fear, conditioning, expectation or habit.
Twenty-something-year-old me didn't have the language for any of this.
She just knew that her head and her heart were pulling her in different directions, and she wanted to feel more connected to herself and make better decisions.
All these years later, I think she may have been asking exactly the right question afterall.
The goal isn't necessarily to make your head and heart agree. It's to create enough quiet to hear what each is saying and enough self-trust to know what is yours.
If your head and heart have been pulling you in different directions, I created a short Head–Heart Coherence Meditation to help you slow down, quiet the noise, and reconnect with yourself.