What Does My Heart Say?

Your heart helps your gut and coordinates your inner voice and feeling so that you are able to feel and respond to your emotions. The tricky part is, our heart assessments aren’t entirely tangible either. You know how you are doing. Take that assessment a step beyond that account balance looking back at you and think about how that makes you feel. How does the balance in your bank account make you feel? When you think about how you feel, you begin to align your heart. What does my heart say? What did I hear when I listened to my heart? In the bank account example, you may feel differently if the number is a high versus a low balance. It’s all intertwined, but while your head is packed with subconscious programming, your heart is not. In more than a few instances, my clients have produced decision charts. The pros even outweighed the cons. He was contemplating changing jobs. What does your heart say? He said, My heart says, I’m miserable at this job and I want to move. I said, Well, there is your answer.

The Price You Pay

You see, it really isn’t that hard. You know what to do. It’s just that the actions that go after following your heart are mostly back in your head and you begin to think things through. Stay in your heart and think with your heart, and the actions become easier. Tim knew he wanted to leave his job because he was miserable, so keeping that in mind and not losing sight of it, he began to shift course and make changes. He began looking for another job while having the security of this one. In just four weeks, he was hired at another company, which included a salary increase of 35 percent, better benefits, a shorter commute, and more fulfilling work. Here is another example. When I was recently working with my client Janet, she was saying she wanted to do a list of five things she had never done. Frustrated with herself, she hadn’t done them already. It was an impressive list. When I asked her to cover her heart with her hands and give me the list again, she began crying.

Believe Me

This time, she recited the list slowly, weeping, and she gave her reasons why she wanted to do what was on the list. She also left the last one out this time, as that was something her former husband, John, wanted to do. It wasn’t really her dream. The first assessment took Janet about an hour, with her writing notes and really thinking about it. Janet said in the first time doing this, she was actually thinking about how she felt others would score her, but this time through she would actually assess herself. So we went back and did the assessment again. Janet has put in the work and aligned with her highest, best self. It was transformative to see Janet begin to trust herself more and more, listen to her own self, and develop incredible confidence. Like Tim and Janet, you may be feeling like changing something or doing something a certain way for a reason. You may not have every answer, so listen and tune in. Sometimes these moments make for a great journaling session. Trust your heart.

Forgive And Forget

Over and over, I encounter those who have lost their heart hearing, often because they have been let down or feel fooled by following their heart, so they move into their heads and overthink. Now, there are many kinds of assessments. Some are easy and routine, the ones you do without much thought. For example, we suddenly notice it’s dark or darker than normal. We look up to notice a lightbulb is out. We change the lightbulb. We have some simple changes that are generally a quick fix. This got me thinking, and we had some fun in our house with this one. Oh, that’s a mom’s sigh of relief right there, and 150 people surveyed said the same answer. This is the moment we picked our oldest son up after his first year of college. We were helping him pack up his stuff and load the car, and I noticed the sheets were still on the bed. Well, that feels like a waste of money. When is the last time you changed them? If you think it was like a month ago and that would be a reasonable college response, keep reading. So what is that process going on in our heads when we know we need to change something and we don’t? Sometimes it is the hassle factor or laziness, superstition if you ask a baseball player, or lack of a second set of sheets to put on while the other ones are in the laundry basket for the year. Often you can quickly assess a situation, make a choice, and that was that moment of change. Other require a more lengthy process, or while some are quick and routine, they may have ripple effects. Those are often my favorite ones. For example, you may open your refrigerator to take a mini assessment of what you need to buy at the store and go buy those things. However, more change may happen if at the store you see a new product you buy or you unexpectedly bump into someone you haven’t see for a long time and you decide to get back in touch. I think that’s why staying highly tuned in to your surroundings and people is so important. It really is true that your life can change in a moment. I know mine has on multiple occasions. Your actions foster change and everything is always changing. You have the abilities to create lasting change within, to adjust due to circumstances, and to affect others in multiple ways. All of us are rippling change across the universe, and some ripples are ones you never want to change. As you are assessing your life, root that assessment firmly in gratitude.