“All we need is love,” yet for many of us, love can feel distant and elusive. Jumping between appointments, tangled in confusion, and drowning in worries, life is too busy for joy, playfulness, and love.
Infusing every moment with our full attention, with ease and grace, may seem like an alien concept when our minds seem to run wild without our control.
How can we possibly put the heart back behind the steering wheel of our lives?
Here are eight signs that you are disconnected from your heart — difficulting your joy to emerge.
1 Bleak and Serious, Life Feels Like a Struggle
Lightness and playfulness are vital qualities of the heart. When life loses its spice and becomes nothing more than a dry to-do list to be checked off, we’ve lost touch with our hearts.
As a result, we become tense, stiff, and stressed.
A side effect of living in our minds is that we think everything needs to be efficient and have a practical reason for being. By doing that, we suffocate our hearts forgetting that pleasure and fun are great reasons in themselves.
2 Feeling Unhuman; Numb and Empty Inside
Despite the world’s chaos, you seem detached, as if nothing touches you. Life might seem dreamlike, and even the presence of loved ones feels off. This detachment can manifest as emptiness or exaggerated emotional reactions to situations — two different sides of the same coin of disconnection.
Caring is a quality of love; when we can’t care about anything, we are far from our hearts.
3 Negativity, Heaviness, and Bitterness
Disconnected from the heart, modern life can harden us. We lack compassion and become judgmental — with others and ourselves. We don’t accept the errors of others, and we might even be unforgiving.
This lack of acceptance leads to bitterness, as we find it challenging to be grateful for anything.
4 Difficulty Committing to Anything
Commitment, whether to ideas, projects, or relationships, feels suffocating because deep down, we don’t know what you want.
Isn’t it beautiful watching people committing to each other and creating kickass relationships? What about people committing to their visions and creating massive projects that were only possible because of their dedication? Even if these commitments don’t last forever, it doesn’t remove from what they have created.
It is the mind that wants everything, that experiences fear of missing out, that wants to shoot everywhere. This is because the mind is full of fears, afraid of closing doors for it doesn’t know what door it wants. It might even be afraid of truly wanting anything, for this would imply surrendering to the heart. Control is in itself a side effect of fear.
In our minds, freedom equates to avoiding commitment, yet freedom lies in the possibility of choosing what we commit to ourselves, guided by our hearts that know what we truly want — and don’t fear it. This allows us to stop struggling with ourselves and surrender to the deepest yearnings of our souls.
Connect to your heart: watch my free miniclass “Live from the Heart,” a concise miniclass demystifying the obstacles to joy.
5 Focus on the ‘What’, Not on the ‘How’
Are you prioritizing tasks and efficiency over the quality of your actions?
How often are you aware of these aspects: Why are you doing what you are doing, what is the point? Are you enjoying what you are doing? Are you stressed or are you at ease? Are you acting on love or fear? Are you cultivating good relationships with the people involved? Are you relaxed or tense while you are at it?
Being connected to our hearts means being aware of how we experience life and bringing that intention to all we do.
This is how we get to live from our hearts: not as a task to be done, but as a way of doing anything.
6 Expecting Salvation from Relationships
Love lives within you — a lot of love. Expecting a savior to rescue us shows our difficulty in accessing that love and taking care of ourselves. We can all nourish our hearts, and refill our cups, with a good amount of self-love.
Be it a romantic relationship or looking for better friends to enrich our lives, relationships go both ways, and the ultimate relationship is the one that we have with ourselves. That is the relationship that dictates how mature and fulfilling our other relationships (and our own lives) can be.
We are our own saviors. On top of that, we cannot give what we don’t have.
Be your own best friend. Love yourself, love all, love life.
7 Excessive Worrying
Constant worrying, overthinking, and stress stem from fear — whereas the heart is based on love. Shifting from worrying to caring brings us back to our hearts, where fear dissipates.
You might feel like you have zero control over what your mind is up to. The thing is, there’s nothing to worry about, but there is a lot to care for. That is because worrying comes from fear — and caring comes from love.
The mind worries, and the heart cares.
This is one of my favorite subjects, and I have a whole piece on it, read here:
Love Is Strong Because Love Cares
The Power of Caringmedium.com
“Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.” William Shakespeare
8 Confusion: You Don’t Know What You Want
A consequence of disconnection is a lack of clarity. As we can’t hear the whispers of the heart, all we can hear is the shouts of the mind: things to worry about, fears of commitment, stressful lists of things to do.
The result: lack of alignment, as we struggle with ourselves.
Many think clarity is a quality of the mind, but truly it is a quality of the heart: clarity is a consequence of self-connection, of self-acceptance.
That also means the more you let worries, judgment, overthinking, and stress dictate your life, the more confusion comes up. As we calm our minds, we have a chance to see clearly.
9 Disconnection from Your Feelings
You might have a million different opinions to share — yet, you don’t know what you feel.
Here is the thing: it is not because we can’t recognize your feelings that they don’t exist. They are just under the carpet, hidden by all that overthinking. Under the carpet, they can still bring stuckness, agony, and stress.
You might even oversleep, overeat, overdrink, and use different escapes to avoid dealing with your feelings.
Disconnected from our hearts, we struggle to recognize and connect with our feelings. Cultivating the ability to feel, rather than overthink, balances the heart and mind.
10 You Are Always Busy
The busier we are, the harder it gets to acknowledge what is going on inside of us.
To connect with our hearts, we must listen to them, and this requires creating space, with silence. Just as we wouldn’t interrupt a friend sharing something important with us, we must afford the same respect to our hearts.
It doesn’t require hours: it is about creating a habit of regularly checking in with ourselves, and not running on autopilot. However, we don’t allow even five minutes of silence when we fill every single moment with distractions like phones and multitasking.
It’s important to recognize that silence isn’t merely the absence of external noise; it also necessitates quieting the inner chatter of our minds. When our thoughts are in turmoil, inner listening becomes impossible, preventing us from truly connecting with our hearts.
How Is Your Heart Doing?
In reflecting on these signs of disconnection from the heart, consider this: When was the last time you listened to, trusted, and acted on the whispers of your own heart? How was this experience for you?
Amidst the chaos and noise of daily life, it’s easy to lose touch with our innermost selves. Yet, within each of us lies a reservoir of love, purpose, and joy waiting to be tapped into.
Truly, your heart never leaves you — it is about tuning yourself to its whispers.
Are you willing to reconnect?
I am Aline Ra M, a spiritual teacher, healer, and mentor. Thank you for sharing your time and energy with me.
I invite you to watch my free miniclass “Live from the Heart,” a concise miniclass demystifying the obstacles to joy.
In this session, we delve deeper into unlocking the wisdom of your heart, demystifying the obstacles to joy, for a more fulfilling life.
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