Live Within Your Heart Part Two, an extension of the piece that I wrote the other week. The first part focused on allowing emotions to flow instead of blocking them, which we do often by distractors or pushing feelings away. It is very important that if we are to live in the heart space that we are able to embrace our emotions. For this second part of Live Within Your Heart I am going to expand on how we use our emotions to live in the heart space and what comes from this way of living. When we start incorporating our heart into our day-to-day experiences and follow what resonates within ourselves, we will see the external changes. The external starts to reflect what we feel on the inside. Change starts within and subsequently the world around us will change. Heart living will be demonstrated by deeper relationships, inspiration in our work and greater joy with our hobbies. Fundamentally, life will just flow easier.
Many do not live through the heart, many live exclusively through the mind. The question is, why do we do that? We do this simply because we are taught to live from the mind. To be able to step out of the logical mind and live with an open heart is not taught and is not encouraged. It is something that comes easily to us when we are younger, but as we progress and become trained by others (most often who are not living through their hearts) we learn to disregard living in the heart space. We are taught to use our logical and rational minds to create plans and make decisions that are best for us. I am not saying to stop using the rational mind, what I am suggesting is, to not operate solely from the mind. Allow your heart and intuition to guide you as well. For instance, if someone was living only through the mind and they were seeking a new job their decision making would be based on practical reasons. Specifically, they would consider their ability to pay the bills, receive good health insurance, an opportunity toward a leadership role, the chance to impress a parent, spouse or teacher or it fits the vocation they chose at an age that was most likely a bit too early to make that choice. When we go through the “which job should I take checklist” we typically do not note if it will bring joy, fill our soul or develop and use our gifts. Gifts we probably are not even aware we hold since we tend to be encouraged to determine our gifts from a list of predetermined ideas of talent. That is a whole different article, so I will let that comment stand for itself as of right now.
We become computers without our hearts guiding us. Young people are deciding what type of future they want to have based on how much money they can make or the availability of jobs in a particular field. Articles like which career path to take based on the amount of money you will make are readily available to be used as guidance for choosing the right career. No wonder so many people become disenchanted with their careers. People are deciding their relationships by a checklist of what they want a partner to possess. Most likely that list is made without any idea of what would truly be inspirational for that individual’s life. Living within the heart will feel fulfilling. Deep levels of joy and love will be experienced. Living from the heart is living from within. To make choices and take action from love, compassion and passion. It is limiting the ego and the technical and logical decision making skills that are highlighted and celebrated in society and incorporating feelings and intuition to guide us.
Living within the heart embraces those emotions and guides us on the best course of action for ourselves. If you are constantly feeling negative emotions like anxiety, worry, fear, boredom, lack, then you are being warned that you are not living from your heart. You are predominantly living from your mind. Your mind is dictating what you should or shouldn’t do, but that doesn’t mean that it is in your best interests. The mind has been programmed to respond in certain ways based on our upbringing. This is not limited to just our home life, but includes everything that would have told us how to behave, such as school, friends, adults in our lives, television, social media and so forth. Unless we have been taught to live within our hearts and use our intuition to guide us (or in some cases just have always lived by the heart) then our behaviors are representative of beliefs that we developed over our lives that may have nothing to do with our potential.
Living within the heart is living in the present. Not thinking about what happened in our past or what may happen in our future, but just experiencing what is now. Living from the heart is being able to feel the guidance we are receiving. Our intuition begins to kick in and we are guided by a deeper knowing that extends beyond the rational mind. As I mentioned before, the rational mind is important and should be appreciated and applied, but our experiences should incorporate the heart and intuition into our decisions. Our negative feelings indicate to us that we need to process something to center ourselves or that we are not living within the heart, that we have become disconnected. When we are living in the heart space the positive loving emotions will be emanating from us and freely shared with others.
If we begin to integrate the heart into our life experiences and decisions we end up in circumstances that bring us great inspiration and joy. The ability to connect with our hearts gives us a chance to have compassion, forgiveness and appreciation for ourselves, and in turn we express those loving feelings toward other people in our lives. Our environment would move away from being filled with sadness, hate, anger and justice seeking to being filled with love, empathy and understanding. We would become more accepting and less judgmental of ourselves and others. We would begin to feel more secure with who we are and able to express that in positive and creative ways. I consider the mind working in coordination with the heart is a true connection that allows us to expand further as our most authentic selves.
Our feelings indicate to us that we are disconnected from living within the heart when we are more negative in nature. Specifically, feeling hate, anger, disgust, fear and so forth. Whereas, when we are living in concert with our hearts we experience more love, appreciation, forgiveness, compassion, joy and so forth. We are all human and will have experiences with less than loving thoughts and feelings about others, but to live through the heart means we stop and recognize those feelings and thoughts that are not positive in nature and allow ourselves to experience them and then let them go. Holding on to grudges or hate for others doesn’t do us any good. It just perpetuates more of those feelings and creates an environment where we are stuck and cannot move forward with our own potential.
Living in the heart space would lead us to live more moment-to-moment and less in the past or in the future. We would allow for synchronicities to occur that lead us on an adventurous path of serving the world with our natural gifts. We’ve been taught to live in the mind, that what benefits you most in life is your intelligence and primarily an academic intelligence. What you are able to retain, what you are able to apply and what gives you an edge in making money. It is rare for people to be taught to live from their heart, to go after their passions, to use their intuition in experiences, to exhibit and appreciate our emotional side, to live an inspired life. When we live from the heart we are giving our truest selves to the world. If we take a moment and pause to think about how we navigate our day-to-day world we may notice that we are trying to complete a checklist and if that overwhelms us, then we may find ourselves stuck and making no progress in anything. Living within our hearts, removes the checklists of pros and cons and intuitively guides us toward choices that will bring us joy. We are equipped with a heart that helps to guide us and that is connected to our emotions. As long as we are not disregarding our emotions, pushing or hiding them away, we are able to use them to determine what action we should take and what is best for our overall potential.
Thank you for the Photo from Pexels