What does it mean to let the heart lead?
Essentially, to allow your heart to lead means you’re letting your ego drop – and being less judgemental with yourself and with others. When you lead from the heart, you’re more open to your true purpose.
Episode 50 – Allow Your Heart To Lead
Essentially, to allow your heart to lead means you’re letting your ego drop – and being less judgemental with yourself and with others. When you lead from the heart, you’re more open to your true purpose. Try embrace those thoughts with your heart’s energy and with a sense of forgiveness; a forgiveness for the challenges that might be arising.
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At the moment, this is a challenge because people are suffering deeply due to COVID-19. Before going further along in a discussion over suffering, I’d like to take a moment to breath and hold your heart. Close your eyes, put your hands at your heart. If you’re sitting, feel your feet on the ground. If you’re lying on your back, even better, feel your entire body relaxing. I want you to really focus on that heart space….the organ beating, its rhythms, feeling your chest rise and fall. Feel the air passing through your nose and out your mouth. Feel the belly rising and falling.
Now, pay attention to the thoughts that are going through your mind. Mind wandering is totally normal. Try to embrace those thoughts without judgement, and embrace those thoughts with your heart’s energy – allow your heart to lead. Feel that heart beating underneath the palm of your hand. Embrace your thoughts with a sense of forgiveness, for the challenges that might be happening around us. Be mindful of the beauty within.
Rather than feeling anger or fear, or even a bit self-righteous, can you relax a bit more? Can you flow into a state of gratitude? As a collective, we’re all faced with daily struggles. Let us breath life into the world as a whole…and give life to others. We do this through a sense of gratitude for one good thing in your life right now. Feel that 1 good thing, from the heart, and if you want to tap into gratitude a little bit more, I have a podcast episode on this if you go to the show notes. I’ll also link up to some mindfulness episodes in the show notes. So let’s open our eyes…. and discuss what it means to let the heart lead.
The Power of Gratitude & Letting The Heart Lead
My last comment was to embrace those thoughts with your heart’s energy and with a sense of forgiveness; a forgiveness for the challenges that might be arising. And also, allow your heart to lead with gratitude. Might there be something else that you can feel grateful for through all of this?
When you let the heart lead through gratitude, you’re simply bringing awareness to what’s not working. You’re softening the mind’s eye, and turning it over to a better thought. Gratitude will not take away the pain and suffering, but it’ll ease that sense of burden that we’re carrying for so many others.
Some of us have family in different provinces and states that are in lockdown right now – unable to go out of their homes. Others are facing mental health issues and deep financial burdens as a result of the current world economic circumstances. These are all facts. However, by leading with the heart, we’re protecting the body, and all of its organs, from the burden of that stress. Stress puts strain on the kidneys and the heart, so by turning it over to a better thought, you’re in a better place.
How Can Gratitude Help You Receive More Joy In Your Life?
Gratitude is proven to offer people a dose of optimism. Gratitude also provides us with a sense of happiness because it reminds us of what we do have, particularly in a culture of desire.
As I said in the blog post on gratitude, when you have an attitude of gratitude, there is a realization of having plenty in your life. In other words, you don’t lack things. When we’re faced with adversity, be aware that you have the power to shift your thoughts because our thoughts become energy (see episode 35) an energy that can be depleting, or invigorating. Gratitude can help you see the positive angle of your challenges, as opposed to always seeing and fearing the worst case scenario. Try to let a soft heart lead the way as much as possible.At the moment, there’s plenty for people to fear. People are walking around with masks on their faces – if you’re even allowed to leave the house. So gratitude and leading from the heart will help you shut-out the ego (temporarily), and exercise self-regulation and far more self-compassion.
Leading From The Heart Can Also Help You Slow-Down
If you’re working on a busy hospital unit, your work environment is definitely cursed by fear. By incorporating a heart-led sense you have an opportunity to reap the benefits of everyday mindfulness and compassion. This will help you slow down a bit because you’re taking a moment to “pause”. Depending upon the the stress management strategies you implement in your life, you could potentially slow-down your life for up to 20 minutes (ex, mantra-style meditation).
Leading from the heart can help you to break those bad habits of constantly wanting to “go go go”, and facilitate better health habits. This slowing-down allows your heart and body rhythms to take-in the experiences of your daily life and transmute the stress and discomfort of a hectic and complex life.
Ask yourself this:
- Did you enjoy that morning cup of coffee, or did you simply drink it by habit?
- What roast did you use this morning, and was it a mindful choice to enhance your own coffee experience?
- Can you slow-down a little bit more by removing social media?
When COVID-19 hit, I even shut down my personal social media. If you haven’t noticed already, I’ve not posted anything on Facebook. I felt a sense of urgency around removing this type of content from my life, mostly because I had to become a teacher as well as parent 24/7 with my daughter being home from school. And I didn’t want the distraction that would take me away from my precious moments of solitude (See post on Slowing Down With Coach Lynnie).
I shifted my social media focus to being more on Linked In which is a professional platform. This way I was still involved in my professional relationships and I felt would serve my audience, you guys, in a better way. So I slowed down my life and shifted away from social media and preserved my time in devotion of service. It was a powerful shift for me and an evolution of my spirit. Can you do this too…and lead from the heart in service?
Calming The Monkey Mind Through Letting The Heart Lead
When you lead from the heart, you’re making a conscious effort to become more aware and close the door to the “mind chatter”. You’re choosing to become an observer to the mind’s eye, just like we did in our meditation earlier. But shifting to a presence within the heart.
The ego is powerful, but you can choose to make the heart and your body more powerful. If we all can shift our hearts and minds more regularly, as a collective, we could learn to tune-out the media’s messages, and stop allowing the negativity of a fearful citizenry become a distraction, and create more meaning in our lives.
Calming the monkey mind and letting thoughts pass without judgement, is practice you can learn through mantra-style meditation. You can join my next meditation course if you go to the show notes, I’ll link up to it. When you let the heart lead, we can all become more whole and adaptive. This can lead you to having a stronger sense of faith – which we all could use in these times of uncertainty.
What Are Some Further Benefits To Having A Gratitude Practice?
Some further benefits to having a gratitude practice, is that it is a “strategy” in building a happier life. Strategies reinforce some deeper benefits of improved coping, personal growth, kindness, and even healing our blocks.
As a coach, I’m always advocating for building “a system”. Systems are based on strategies in which we do consistently throughout the day or week. Having a cup of green tea is a strategy. Having a cup of bone broth is a strategy. Taking your supplements regularly is a strategy. Put ’em all together – you’ve got a powerful system of living a healthy and balance life. Put some love in there – Shazam…you’re rockin’ it.
When you struggle through life, or look superficially for the shiny object, you can miss the deep underlying meaning to being here on earth; to your spirit and awakening. With a solid gratitude practice, one might take the opportunity to bath in the simplicity of the heart’s rhythms. This can reinforce internal happiness.
What Does Tomorrow Look Like?
Do you want a future that’s deep and enriching? Do you want to shift away from the darkness that’s pervasive, hopeless, and fear-based? Are you willing to deliberately create a life of power and depth that speaks to the life you want to lead?
The practice of meditation is one of the most powerful ways to help you shift to a place of releasing daily stressors to sustain a life of health and wellness. Consider joining me in our upcoming monthly group program, Learn To Meditate. With the use of a mantra, you can learn to appreciate the space and stillness within you. It requires practice, but when you make a decision to show-up, you’re choosing to be a part of the creation of your life. You’re choosing to listen to life’s messages. (https://satorihwcoaching.ca/blog/lifesmessages/)
Other episodes of interest:
Meditation Episodes:
1) 5 Interesting Facts About Meditation
3) Create Your Meditation Space
4) Meditation Group – Learn To Meditate
Mindfulness Episodes:
1) Baking and Cooking As Mindfulness Activities
3) The benefits of everyday mindfulness
4) Your Own Happy Pill Through Mindfulness Coaching
5) Episode 48: Are you listening to the messages life’s giving you?
thanks for sticking with me to the end. Let’s pull a self-mastery card –
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