“Follow your heart.” “Do what feels right.” “Let your emotions lead”. We’re told this by countless popular songs and films. Not that I’d know, being more of a “Newsnight man”… but I was surprised about how many of the following even I instantly recognised.

"It mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you," says Dumbledore to Harry Potter.

“Search your feelings, you know it to be true,” says Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker, right after saying “I am your father”.

Many songs – from Aretha Franklin to Billie Eilish – are literally called “Follow your heart”, and while I appreciate Swedish rock ballads are a tad niche, Roxette’s “Listen to your heart" sums it up, as well as being – to use a technical musical term – a proper 80s banger.

Can you finish this one…? “Reindeers are better than people; Sven, why is love so hard?” … “You feel what you feel, and your feelings are real… c’mon Kristoff, let down your guard”? And if you can’t get advice from a talking reindeer…

You feel what you feel, and your feelings are real… This contains truth: feelings matter. Empathy drives ethical behaviour. Fear highlights danger. Persistent feelings of worry tell us something isn’t right. Our bodies give us vital signs: stress, exhaustion, illness, low mood. Those feelings matter; don’t ignore those.

But how often does “following your heart” actually lead you to start a long, difficult homework task? Upper 5 and 6: you know this: when you just don’t feel like that next revision slot; when you feel less like locking in, and more like lying down and waiting ‘til you do feel like it.

In 2004, I worked in a window-frame warehouse. It was exactly as exciting as it sounds, and such were the friendships I’d made on the job that I’d spend lunchbreaks in my car, by myself. Those lunchbreaks blur in my memory, apart from one: a speaker on the radio was saying that we so often let actions follow emotions – we listen to our hearts, we do what feels right – not realising that, more often, emotions follow actions.

This felt like news, but I bet you already know that emotions follow actions. How often do you just not feel like getting on the bus into school, or going to training in the rain – only to feel better when you get there? You felt what you felt – but now you feel loads better; emotions followed actions.

I started to see this everywhere. C. S. Lewis, author of the Chronicles of Narnia, applied it to the issue of faith:

“Faith,” he said, “is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. Moods will change, whatever view your reason takes... Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable. …Unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off, [you’re] just a creature dithering to and fro, its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.”

Emotions matter, and sometimes we’ll need support to work through them – I’ve certainly been there – but it can also be empowering to know that we aren’t always bound to follow how we feel. The talking reindeer tells us to let down our guard; but our reading today said quite the opposite: guard your heart; fix your eyes ahead.

In two places, I’ve found this game-changing. First: friendships. Falling-out is inevitable in relationships, and often, the last thing we feel like is speaking to the person. But two people have taught me to guard my heart on that one.

One is Nelson Mandela. Mandela spent 27 years imprisoned by a white minority government. Released in 1990, Mandela felt real resentment towards those who locked him up – but here’s what he said about it:

“Our emotions said, the white minority is an enemy – we must never talk to him. But our brains said, if you don’t talk to these men, your country will go up in flames… So we had to reconcile that conflict: our talking to the enemy was the result of the domination of the brain over emotions.”

I also learned this through scones. Eating scones in the kitchen of an older relative shortly before my wedding, she told me: “scones have saved my marriage”. Now, I like a scone, but this confused me. She went on: whenever she and her husband fell out and could barely speak to each other, she’d bake a batch of scones, which she knew he liked. She didn’t feel like it: she’d begin angry and resentful – but acting in love always helped rebuild the feeling of love she didn’t, at that moment, feel.

 “Emotions follow actions” also applies to work.

Do you ever try waiting until you “feel like” doing homework or revising, only to find out – shock-horror! – that the feeling never arrives?

Let’s see how Frozen 2 reindeer wisdom sounds here. A pupil might say (perhaps even sing): “TV feels more fun than learning – Sir, why is work so hard?” How to respond?! “You feel what you feel, and your feelings are real… c’mon pupils, put down your flashcaaards…”?

As much as we love the talking reindeer – and as much as we really do need to listen to our bodies and reach out for help around tiredness, stress and low mood – we’re often going to need to tell our moods where to get off when it comes to revision.

Because, yes… Movies feel more fun than mind-maps… Block-blast feels more fun that blurting… Posts feel more fun than past papers… And Traitors feels more fun than spaced retrieval practice (and that one doesn’t even alliterate).

BUT—but… often, emotions follow actions. It’s why my relative baked scones. Why Mandela talked to the enemy. Why you drag yourself onto the bus or out to training: so often, emotions follow action; it feels better when you get there.

Reaching across a relational breakdown helps rebuild the love you didn’t feel. Cracking on with revision creates the positivity you were waiting for, but which would never have arrived without that first step.

So often, we linger outside the door of hard things, waiting for good feelings to carry us through.



But when we guard our hearts and get in the room, we so often discover those feelings – confidence, energy, the satisfaction of learning well done – they were on the other side the whole time, waiting for us to walk in… not like a dog, who bounds up to meet you the moment you get through the door – or is that just my rasculous hound? No: more like a cat, who, invisible at first, waits to check that you’re really home, but before you know it slips in silently to purr by your side.