You probably can't take the natural veer out of your walk, you will forget after awhile and your natural gait will take over. Pick an object that is far away and in your direction of travel and heads towards it. Always shoot an azimuth to an object and heads towards it then pick the next object etc.

Wow, that is one of those things that I can show you better than explain. I hope someone chimes in. I am not much of a technical explaining type writer. I can teach hands on better.

It looks easier when Bear Grylls magically finds a farmer in the middle of no where. You need a good map of your area and compass at all times regardless of gps stuff.

Do a search for FM 21-6, that is the Army manual for land navigation. There may be better resources out there but I learned in the Army. I can not reccomend enough the importance of land navigation skills with a map, protractor and compass. Land Nav. is a skill set that is much needed and is worth the time spent learning.

Compasses are broken down into degrees and sometimes mils (mils are for artillary uses)360 degrees on a compass. Lets pretend your north is actually at 0 degrees and you want to head south that would be a 180 degree azimuth. That was just an example though.

The idea is to know where you are and where you want to go and have a map. It also depends on type of compass. Get away from metal and hold the compass to your eye looking thru the sight window and sight to the object and determine at which degree it is, that is the azimuth.
Or you know the direction of travel and the azimuth you determined using uour map and protractor and you sight that azimuth and see what stationary object in the distance intersects your azimuth and head towards it then do that again unil you reach your point. That keeps you from loosing your bearing.

Very basically you can not have a bearing without an azimuth because the whole head east thing is great but in some parts of the woods just heading east and you are still 5 miles away from civilization and don't know it.

Find a readily visible land mark in your direction of travel and take a few paces towards it then turn around and identify another landmark above your starting point and in line with your direction of travel. As long as the first landmark is ever before you ant the second stays directly behind you, you are walking in a straight line. Use the same marks in reverse order for the return trip.