Heart Song… or Heart Playlist?

They always say that each of us has a Heart Song.

The movie Happy Feet made it particularly and adorably popular as animated penguins found their lifelong loves through singing their Heart Songs.

But real life isn’t quite that Disney is it? Human beings aren’t so simple and neither are our hearts.

I would venture actually to say that we don’t have Heart Songs at all. Instead, I submit that we have Heart Playlists.

I discovered this somewhat by accident this weekend and I’d like to take you through this impromptu exercise I did…

Because many of you ask me what Intuition is, how to connect to it, and what it feels like when you receive it, so you too can take action on it.

I hope that in sharing how my intuition throttled me smack dab into a Heart Playlist… that you’ll have something tangible to grasp (plus a fun exercise to try!).

You game? Good.

First, let’s tackle what I mean by a ‘Heart Playlist’ and then I’ll take you through how I created mine and the deep integration transformation it gave me…

What IS a Heart Playlist?

Your Heart Playlist is a series of 3 to 20 (and maybe sometimes more) songs that penetrate you so deeply that you 1) have an emotional reaction and 2) feel that it speaks of your heart or to your heart.

But here’s the key: your Heart Playlist is NOT a series of songs that all say basically the same thing. That’s just a Heart Song with Remixes… you know those singles albums with 4 remixes that all sound basically the same? That’s not what we’re going for, and you’ll see why in a moment.

No, what you want is a collection of songs that are not necessarily thematically or genre related. This surprised me, and at first I resisted it. Yet what presented itself was magical when I allowed the complexity and discord among my playlist!

How to Create Your Heart Playlist

Don’t think on it too hard. This is where intuition comes in.

Also remember that your playlist can change over time and it’s not set in stone. So experiment! Have fun. And trust your first instinct before your brain has had a chance to botch the whole thing.

For me, I woke up on Friday and had this insane urge to create a new iPod playlist. I didn’t know what it was for but I absolutely knew certain songs that had to go in it. I wrote them down and started a list. As I began to pull them from my digital collection, I noticed other songs that called to me, and more still that entered my mind. When I was done, my playlist had over 15 songs.

Don’t try to get too many songs, and don’t think you have to limit either. Just feel into it. Connect with your gut. Which songs are simply screaming at you to be listened to right now? It doesn’t matter if it’s Sublime singing about drugs or Johnny Cash crooning for June Carter. Just trust it. Trust yourself. Because I guarantee you, if you do it right, most of the songs probably won’t quite make sense to you!

And my first reaction was this: Why the hell do I have a dark “Undisclosed Desires” Muse song kicking it with a bunch of sappy love songs (which I RARELY ever listen to) and intense blues songs??? Why are some about love and some downright angry?

I started to break them out into separate playlists, but something kept itching at my back, right between the shoulder blades. This is where I usually feel intuition tapping me and tugging me to NOT do what I’m about to do, or to pay attention to something I’m about to miss.

So I left the playlist alone, with all songs intact.

Then I went about my day until late that evening when I decided to take a bath and unwind.

Armed with a glass of wine and my new playlist, I fired up the bubbles and hot water and attempted to soak away the stress of the day. Destiny, it seemed, had other plans…

The Power & Point of the Heart Playlist

As I put the playlist on shuffle and let it play, I began to really listen to the words. I had added songs that I’d never listened to the lyrics for, and as I was curious why my intuition selected them, I paid close attention. Other songs were from my high school days that I hadn’t heard in 15 years. I was doubly curious why they were here too.

And suddenly a beautiful, haunting and deeply affecting story began to thread itself through every song. They were the pieces of me screaming for attention – for INTEGRATION.

You don’t have a single Heart Song because your heart is probably fractured or broken – not necessarily by a relationship… but by life. This is by design as we often must be broken open to truly break through to a new, higher, delicious version of ourselves.

This is why our Heart Playlist is often disjointed and cross-genre/cross-meaning. I had songs that spoke to my desire to finally step into intimacy and trust falling in love. I also had songs that spoke to the anger and betrayal I have felt in the past and am still healing/releasing.

There were songs that spoke to the hope in me that a man would seek out my undisclosed desires and welcome my mess… that a man exists out there who would sweep me up and hold me down in a safe space of surrender and vulnerability with another human being – both of us okay with my mess.

To my logical brain they didn’t make sense. But to my heart, they sang of my deepest truths and listening to them dislodged something in me. I emptied out my sorrows, my fears, my deeply painful desires and needs that begged for a voice.

They spoke to my hopes and most secret dreams so that I was giddy with their liquid poetry, drunk on that elixir of Spoken Truth.

These are the pieces of my heart.

They will not be the same as yours. But you will have pieces just the same. Disjointed, complex, contradictory and beautiful in their terrible ugliness.

And somehow… giving each piece its own voice through a song that evoked its feeling, tone and secret truth… gave me a beautiful and unexpected gift: integration.

As I let the playlist wash over me, each song called forth its corresponding Heart Shard, and slowly, I felt myself piecing back together. Yes, I’ve done so much work to piece myself back together over these past years. And this was another beautiful way that simply added to that process. Added to my wholeness.

I offer this exercise to you too, to hopefully give you a similar experience. It was hauntingly beautiful for me.

What Does All This Have To Do With Intuition?

If I’ve learned anything in healing myself and teaching others in these ways, it’s this: there’s no one path to healing. What works for me might not be the magic formula for you. This is why intuition is so important, and so I give you this exercise, not to tell you that this will be the answer for you… but rather to give you a story that grants you permission to seek your own gift.

Your heart – your soul – speaks to you just as mine speaks to me. Donning the ears to hear it is all that intuition really is. People over-complicate it. But I find always that what is simple is true.

If you take anything from this blog post, take this: that there was no clear reason for me to create a playlist suddenly, nor to pick the songs I picked. I didn’t know at the time what I would do with the list, nor did I really have time to put toward the effort.

Yet something subtly gnawed at me and asked me to do it. So I did.

Hours later, a new gnawing asked me to take a bath, and then there was the bright idea to listen to the playlist… so I did.

What I’m trying to say is listening to your intuition is like driving at night with only one headlight. You can see very little of the road ahead. And what you see is vague, shifting, and questionable. Yet you know your car, and you have no choice but to trust the little that you can see.

Don’t expect that it has to be an entire download of information which you believe in with utter certainty. It will often feel questionable… an easily-ignored itch or a random idea or urge that has no clear point or end result. And though it’s annoying, you often won’t get the next bit of information or guidance until you’ve acted on the first.

And so it’s like walking the Yellow Brick Road in complete darkness, with only one little piece of the path lit at a time. But you keep walking… and only after you’ve traversed several steps do you start to see the point of it all. So just. Keep. Going.