What is a heart led life?

Living a heart led life is choosing to become aware of where your fears come from, understanding how they keep you small, and then making the internal changes to that you can choose to move forwards towards love regardless of that fear.

When I describe the work I do, I often talk about the fact that we have a “beauty” and a “beast” inside of us.  The beauty comes from the heart and embodies an energy of love, wisdom, feeling alive, truth.  The beast comes from fear and embodies an energy of confusion, limiting beliefs, staying small, and a dislike of change.

The beast is linked to the part of our brain that looks out for threat - the amydyla.  Our survival mechanism is on high alert when we are in this mode.  We are looking out for danger and our nervous system is unsettled.  On the flip side, the beauty is the part of us that is rooted in our hearts.  It’s the part of us that has an innate sense of wisdom, compassion, kindness and most of all it’s that feeling we get when we feel truly alive.  Unfortunately the beauty and the beast are often arguing against one another which makes our lives pretty confusing.

The heart says:

“I can go for the job promo.”

The fear says:

“No you aren’t qualified enough.”

The heart says:

“I am excited to go to a new gym class.”

The fear says:

“What if you embarrass yourself?”

The heart says:

“I am growing and learning even in moments of difficulty.”

The fear says:

“You have failed.”

So how do we live a more heart led life?

The 5 main ways to live a more heart led life are: identifying the voice of love / your gut intuition, stop comparing to others, tuning inwards, stop being in scarcity, embracing change, get creative.

1. Identify the voice of love.  

This is the voice the comes deep from your gut intuition.  Ask yourself is this hurtful or is this helpful?  Does the voice align with your values and needs?  Does the voice seem to come from love?  Does this voice offer expansion or does it offer limitations?

Take time to get to know who you are.  What are your values?  What are your needs?  What drives you?  What inspires you?  What helps you feel alive?  Creating a daily practice where you spend time with yourself in order to honour and nourish the relationship you have with yourself is imperative to living a heart led life.

2. Stop comparing.  

I know that’s easier said than done but one of the tools I teach my coaching clients is to click their fingers and speak to themselves and say something along the lines of “Sophie, we are not going there.”  It’s a pattern interrupter.  It’s stopping the spiral of doom and gloom that comes from comparison.  Nothing good comes from comparing - it's totally futile.  We are not supposed to be carbon copies of one another.  We are supposed to be unique.  The more you embrace this, the less suffering you will go through.  You are on your own path.

3. Tune inwards.

Stop looking at what society expects and start to tune inwards.  Spend time being still.  If there’s a sense of urgency, stress & panic then this is coming from fear.  Give yourself time and space.  Hand on heart.  Take time to connect with you.  Using the body as a guide - how does something make you feel?  Your feelings are a wonderful guide to recognise whether you are coming from a place of love or fear.  Does a decision feel expansive, exciting, loving?  Or does a decision feel panicky, anxiety inducing and limiting?  We have to learn to fight for our expansion not our limitations.  Remember to try to tune into how it feels, not what the head is saying to you. 

The likelihood is, the head will be in fear around any decision that creates change because our ego and survival mechanism hates change and uncertainty.  So a good question to ask yourself: is this fear coming from my ego?  Am I afraid of stepping outside of my comfort zone?  Is this fear because I am leaping into an unknown?  Recognise that the head likes to get in the way when creating any sort of change.

4. Stop living in scarcity.

The more I tune into this work the more I realise that we are not lacking anything - we have all the answers we need inside of us.  I remember hearing this years ago and thinking this was a load of absolute spiritual rubbish!  Now, having experienced the magic of self-growth, I realise that my life, my experiences, my traumas, my pain have all piled on layers of fear that are not truly who I am at my highest level of empowerment.  They have caused me to play small, to believe my limiting beliefs, to feel like things are scarce in life.  Once we become aware of this and tune into ourselves on a deeper level, we remove these layers and we realise that we are our own greatest teachers and most powerful healers.

5. Embrace change.

Change is part of the natural process of life.  There is one thing that is certain - change is inevitable.  Yet most of us are really opposed to change.  The reason being is change can be perceived as a threat and can feel scary.  It’s often a step outside of your comfort zone and pushes you to grow.  In order to embrace change we need to create space for what is to come next and this involves letting go of that which is no longer relevant to our lives.  

Growth needs to occur in our lives for us to feel satisfied and fulfilled.  Growth is a fundamental need.  If you feel stuck or overwhelmed it’s likely going to be related to the fact that you are “gripping” onto things which will stop you from letting things go.  Nature enforces change - the seasons, the weather, life, death…. We want to be on the front foot when it comes to change or, if we leave it too late, it will be enforced upon us and slap us in the face!

How do we know when to let go of something?  That thing / situation will become increasingly annoying, frustrating and it will keep bugging you.  It’s the thought that has been hanging around for a long time.  And as my meditation teach Jillian says: “nature will turn up the volume and it will become increasingly annoying.”

The opposite of letting go and creating space is holding on and controlling.  Control opposes nature.  Control opposes evolution.  We often give ourselves excuses that we need to hold on “just in case.”  But we have to create space for us to welcome in innovation in order to create and build.  Creation is part of living a heart let life.  Creativity is what is going to help uplift and inspire not only you, but others too.

6. Live a life full of more creativity.

A life full of creativity is living a heart led life.  Where are you creative in your life?  In you job?  In your hobbies?  In your relationships?  Find things you can do in your life for intrinsic value rather than extrinsic value.  Johan Hari researched how having something in your life that you do for pure joy, rather than for external praise and achievement, massively reduces anxiety and depression.

Creativity is at the core of feminine energy and it is feminine energy that allows us to be in the feeling heart led space.  We all have feminine and masculine energy within us and embracing this part of our femininity is incredibly powerful.

Some aspects of feminine energy that I would encourage those who are in their masculine a lot (controlling, fixing, goal setting, focused on outcome, productivity, striving) would be: allowing yourself to receive love (this could be in the form of allowing someone to compliment you or in the form of letting go of control and trusting that you will receive the outcome you need), reflecting, going inwards, embracing a softer / lighter approach to things, compassion, kindness, listening to intuition, being patient and embracing rest.