There are four basic types of heart lines.

Your heart lines reveal your emotional style. Your dominant-hand heart line is your emotional style “at work” and your non-dominant hand heart line is your emotional style “at home.” Today’s article will focus on your emotional style at work.

The Hermit Heart Line

Hand analyst, Pamelah Tablak, calls the Earth -element heart line the “Hermit.” This heart line begins beneath the pinky and travels across the hand to stop beneath the middle finger.

If you have a Hermit heart line, you like your personal freedom. You do well working on your own and/or being your own boss. You can’t stand someone breathing down your neck or micro-managing your projects. Many owners of Hermit heart lines are entrepreneurs. Your favorite phrase is, “Not now. I’m busy.” You ARE busy – busy working!

You also like to be the “master of your environment.” You like to have your own working space and are keenly aware if someone has swiped a few stamps or moved your stapler! You also like projects completed in an organized manner – you understand the concept of “beginning, middle and end.”

Since the Hermit heart line is a straight line, rather than a curved line, you tend to keep your feelings close to the breast rather than openly displaying them in the moment. You may find that talking and feeling at the same time is rather challenging. You prefer to get some “cave time” – hermit that you are – so you can process your feelings on your own schedule.

The Romantic Idealist Heart Line

Tablak calls the Air-element heart line the “Romantic Idealist.” This heart line begins beneath the pinky and travels across the hand to stop beneath the pointer finger.

If you have a Romantic Idealist heart line, you like romance, long conversations and creating understanding. You seek first to understand before seeking to be understood. You like forward-thinking approaches to problems since you want to create an “ideal” future scenario.

Common professions for Romantic Idealists include: law, copywriting, coaching, writing, architecture, music composing, brainstorming and other fields that focus on conceptualizing future, ideal scenarios.

Your challenges include over-analyzing (“analysis paralysis”), justifying, rationalizing and explaining as well as becoming too critical of yourself or others if things aren’t “ideal.”

Since the Romantic Idealist heart line is a straight line like the Hermit heart line, rather than a curved line, you tend to talk and talk (… and talk!) about your feelings, feelings, feelings… rather than openly display them. How improper and messy! You want your emotional presentation to be ideal, so you could potentially spend a lot of time fantasizing about the ideal time and place to reveal your true feelings – positive or negative. The question is: Can you reveal what you are REALLY feeling right now, in the moment?

The Passionate Heart Line

Tablak calls the Fire-element heart line the “Passionate.” This heart line begins beneath the pinky and travels across the hand and upwards to stop at the base of the middle finger.

If you have a Passionate heart line, you tend to know what you want – and you want it NOW! The gift of this heart line is passion, vivaciousness, and charisma. You are here to teach other people to discover what they want by being clear about what you want. You are a lightning rod for CLEAR desire!

In the workplace, Passionates need a lot of variety, as they HATE to be bored. (Notice the word “hate” – very dramatic and very Passionate!) If you have a Passionate heart line, you need to be interacting with lots of different kinds of people and do well when you have an audience. Professions can include public speaking, sales, acting, information marketing, singing, dancing, public relations – basically anything that puts you front and center as “the star.”

Your challenges include denying your true needs, which can lead to inappropriate acting out and passive-aggressive tendencies or just total chaotic drama-queen drama-trauma. These types of episodes can occur when you think your not getting enough attention and can lead to situations where you get “negative” attention – such as for your myriad problems, phobias, addictions, and so forth. Remember, drama is for the stage! LOL!

Since the Passionate heart line is a CURVED line, unlike the Hermit or Romantic Idealist heart line, the “curve” lends emotionality to your emotional expression. The more “curve” a line has, the more the heart and its feelings are involved. Firey, Passionate heart line owners have the least amount of delay between feeling a feeling and expressing it openly. Anger might show up as a red face and dishes flying where as happiness could result in a giant smile and teary eyes.

The Big Heart Heart Line

Tablak calls the Water-element heart line the “Big Heart.” This heart line begins beneath the pinky and travels across the hand and upwards to stop at the base of the pointer finger.

If you have a Big Heart heart line, you have a non-negotiable need for emotional connection. Non-negotiable means you need to have it – you can’t bargain for it. You NEED to have emotional connection to “feel okay” and alright with the world.

In the workplace, Big Hearts do well working intimately with others, in such professions as networking, coaching, nursing, healing, hospice, counseling, and so forth. They dislike the feeling of disconnection and hence, may sometimes stay too long in a dead relationship simply to avoid the disconnection (which has already happened anyway).

If you are a Big Heart and you’ve noticed that you’re feeling a little clingy and needy, the question to ask yourself is: What do I need right now? Having healthy “self-ish ness” doesn’t come easily to Big Hearts, but without it, you could become a martyr – and that’s not pretty, no matter how you slice it!

The Big Heart heart line is CURVED like the Passionate heart line, (the “curve” lends emotionality to your emotional expression) and you tend to easily show your hurts, joys, and pains.

President Barack Obama is left-handed. Only 10% of the population is left-handed. It is my observation of left-handed folks in general that they tend to be less prone to listening to others and more prone to follow their own convictions, whether those convictions buck the trend or conform with it. (Right handers can certainly be mavericks, too! It’s just that given the smaller population of lefties, there appears to be a larger population among them that has that desire to stand out from the crowd and simply do things differently.) They think creatively about situations and do have maverick streaks. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman are all lefties, too, for whatever that’s worth.

Obama’s little finger curves in a bit towards the palm which indicates a fear of being too vulnerable and seeking protection. He works toward tremendous self-control to not show his vulnerability. The finger is also a bit curved, like a crescent moon, indicating trust issues, possibly relating to early abandonment by his father.

His heart line, which starts beneath the little finger and curves up between the middle and pointer finger. This is the Big Heart heart line, indicating that Obama is a nurturing, generous and caring person. He has a non-negotiable need for connection. His heart goes out to the wounded birds of the world – the less fortunate.

His head line, which begins on the palm between the pointer finger and the thumb, is separated from his life line, which happens in about 20% of hands. It indicates “independence of thought.” Obama absolutely thinks for himself and comes to his own conclusions. Because of this, he is unlike to be bought or sold very easily.

His head line is also a gift marker, know as the “Hal 9000″ – named after Hal 9000 in the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. This type of head line goes almost all the way across the hand, but stops about a ¼ inch from the edge of the palm. This gift indicates that Obama’s mind works like a super computer, able to parallel process huge amounts of data quickly. He is the grand synthesizer. He needs a job that is big, complicated and important. Being President of the United States would certainly satisfy this headline.

Most folks who have this thinking ability have a mind that is chronically underemployed. If YOU have a gifted problem-solver head line, you need a large, world-scale issue to solve or your mind will create large problems, particularly in your personal life, to keep itself occupied.

You can choose: solve a world-scale problem or create tangled webs all over your life to try to untangle. (If you want to find out more about the Hal 9000 head line, why not join our Master Mind this month which focuses on this gift? You can find out more here.)

The vertical line extending upward toward his little finger is a “line of insight” indicating that Obama is introspective and interested in the deeper meaning of life. He asks questions such as “Why are we here?” and “What is our purpose?”

Our finger zones indicate our business niche. Obama’s two largest zones on his right hand are the middle zone of his pointer finger (goals) and the bottom zone of his middle finger (nature, the environment, values and moral code). Obama’s personal goals are goals that improve quality of life, particularly as it relates to open space, undeveloped land and natural resources. He is likely to be a big advocate for environmental protections and conservation. (I also get the sense that Obama said as little as possible during the campaign about his BIG plans for the U.S. in terms of being an energy leader. Time will, of course, tell.)

The tip of his thumb is very large, indicating enormous drive and will power. The way his fingers sit on the ridge of his palm indicate he is a teacher and leader called to the spotlight. The mounts of Venus (at the base of the thumb on the palm) and the Moon (across from the Mount of Venus) are large, indicating that Obama is a phenomenal storyteller with a romantic bent and love of culture. He is a sensitive, thoughtful person who is more likely to become sad than angry when he sees injustice in the world.

Baeth’s Coach’s Challenge: What is YOUR large, world-scale issue to solve? If you didn’t see it as a ‘problem,’ who would you have to BE-come to make inroads to change?

Before I bring you an analysis on Hillary Clinton, our new Secretary of State, I thought it might be fun to see what Sarah Palin holds in her hands.

No matter what you may think of Ms. Palin, she holds up a hand that loves politics – and the spotlight. It’s actually quite similar in shape to Hillary Clinton’s hands. Her index/pointer finger is tucking in front of her middle finger, indicating that she is not showing her “full hand” in terms of her real political ambitions. She wants more power but is playing it cool.

Her thumb bends at the top joint toward the palm, indicating that Palin is a traditionalist with nostalgic notions of how life used to be (and how she thinks it should be again).

Palin possesses a large mount of Venus, like McCain and Obama, so her lust for life is also very large. This large mount of Venus coupled with her long ring finger indicates that she is physically attractive and a ‘beauty queen’ type. We know this of course, from her bio, but I can identify this beauty trait from the hands without ever seeing the person. This is the hand of a physically attractive person.

She is good-natured as evidenced by the pink color of her skin.

The large Mount of Jupiter under her pointer finger indicates she is drawn to leadership roles. Compared with Obama and McCain, Palin is the most natural for “living in the spotlight.” The spotlight loves her, whether it’s television, politics or the movies.

Despite the election loss, I suspect that Sarah Palin will be in the spotlight for many, many years to come.