Follow Your Heart: Finding Purpose in Your Life and Work Andrew Matthews Book
by Andrew Matthews

When you first come across Follow Your Heart on a bookshelf, there is a strong likelihood that you might not pick it up because it's yet another self-help book. A detailed analysis of this book will, however, reveal that it is a grave mistake to not take a closer look at it.

Looking at the 'Contents' page of Follow Your Heart, the structure of this book is not immediately clear as the chapters have simple titles like 'Chapter 1' and 'Chapter 2'. Still, turn the page over and you'll find that Matthews does give a clue of how he's planned the book with what he calls 'The Ten Concepts', which are as follows:

1. We are here to learn lessons, and the world is our teacher.
2. The universe has no favorites.
3. Your life is a perfect reflection on your beliefs.
4. The moment you get too attached to things, people, money ... you screw it up.
5. What you focus on in life expands.
6. Follow your heart!
7. God is never going to come down from a cloud and say, "You now have permission to be successful!"
8. When you fight life, life always wins.
9. How do you love people? Just accept them.
10. Our mission is life is not to change the world – our mission is to change ourselves.

Upon reading the book, you'll discover that each chapter in the book relates to one concept and is explained in detail.

In this 43rd reprint edition of Follow Your Heart (published in April 2010), Matthews boasts that over 1 million copies of the book have been sold. The true import of such a boast can only be appreciated when one reads of the amount of effort Matthews has put into publishing and marketing his books. On page 87, writing about the success of his other book, Being Happy!, he says:

'I spoke in warehouses and prions, and cartooned in a thousand shopping centers ... For the most part I revelled in the project. But there were days when I would wake up in some hotel room and think: "If I go into another book store I'll vomit!"

... People ask me: "What did you do to sell a million books?" I tell them: "I flew a million miles, gave five hundred speeches, a thousand interviews – and lost my baggage twenty-three times!"'


Matthews has mastered the art of conveying a meaningful message using humor. Here's an example: 'How many of us display our apples and bananas in scratchy old plastic bowls, while our beautiful dishes remain locked in the cupboard? Then we die and leave all the crystal to our kids, so they can smash it! I say, if you have something beautiful, smash it yourself!'

Obviously, the beauty of this book is in the details. For instance, many a self-help guru will tell you that to overcome a problem, you must detach yourself from it. What does this mean, though? How do you detach yourself from a problem when all you can do, day and night, is to think about it? Matthews shows the way by giving a very specific example and the words to use to facilitate such detachment:

Detachment is not disinterest. It is possible to be detached and still be very determined. People who are detached and determined know that effort and excellence are ultimately rewarded. ... Disinterested people say: "Who cares and why bother?" Desperate people say: "If I don't get this I'll die!" When you are determined and detached, you say: "One way or another, I will get a good job – and I don't care how long it takes."

Matthews has included little cartoons (all drawn by him) where appropriate. They convey, in pictorial form, what may be too hard to convey in words. All of them are funny and lighten the serious nature of the messages that Matthews is trying to impart.

Ultimately, the overall feel from reading Follow Your Heart can be summed up in the author's own words: 'This story is not about books or business – it's about any successful project you care to name. You start wherever you can. You do everything you can. It's more about effort than luck.'