Listening to Your Heart
By Pamelagrace Beatty
Distractions: We are constantly distracted. Remember back in the time when you left the house and didn’t have a phone with you? It was at home, hooked to the wall, you couldn’t walk away with it or play games on it or receive emails and texts through it. We were on our own in those days. If someone called us, they would have to wait until we got back home for our response, even in emergencies. Then those times changed immensely, answering machine, pagers, Blackberries and then cell phones changed how we operate in the world. And they distract us beyond what is healthy. We are hooked, permanently attached, and addicted to the cell phone. We are rarely fully present to what is happening right in front of us as we constantly check for texts and emails.
A couple of years ago I went on a cruise to Alaska and took an excursion out into the sea on a small boat to look for whales. We found them jumping out of the water seeming to intentional entertain us. My fellow travelers were busy taking pictures of the whales with their phone cameras. I started to but then decided to relax and enjoy the thrill of seeing the whales cavort in the water with my bare eyes. I chose to enjoy the experience rather record the experience to show my friends back home what fun I was having. Good choice on my part.
Perhaps you are wondering, “Who cares if I’m distracted by my phone or whatever?” Being drawn away from the present stops us from fully enjoying the moment. There is the practical side, like we have been told not to watch T.V. nor read while eating dinner because that is when we overeat. We aren’t paying attention to our food nor fully appreciating it. Allowing ourselves to be distracted also stops us from being creative, solving problems and recognizing what’s in our hearts.
Listening to the heart- what heart? Are we happy? Are we upset? Are we longing for something? Are we struggling with something? These kinds of questions ask us to look beneath the surface and to find out what’s going on inside ourselves. Unfortunately, many of us are not only unaware of what is going on inside us, we are afraid to find out! So, we defend ourselves by walling up the heart so we can’t feel. We are afraid of those feelings. They may cripple us; we may cry and never stop. We may have to change something or face a fear we’ve been running from for a long time.
We may be protecting ourselves from something that scared or hurt us when we were young. Something someone said or did. The teacher who told us we weren’t very smart or we were too smart…yep it could go either way. My sister knew how to read before starting school. She was forced to read about Dick and Sally at the same tediously slow pace as her classmates. She was an active, talkative smart little girl with LOTS of energy. She still is. She got in lots of trouble in school as a result. I remember the day the family shut down her confidence in drawing. She brought home a picture she had drawn of a dog and we thought it was a horse. She was so upset by our inability to recognize and appreciate what she had drawn that her enthusiasm for drawing disappeared. As we grow older is those pivotal moments, disappointments or fearful experiences stay with us. Once we are grown, the lessons from these experiences stay with us. Like the baby elephant that has one foot tied to a stake in the ground and we it grows up, it doesn’t know that it is strong enough to rip out the stake, we forget that we are no longer the child who was dependent on approval or support from others. We forget that we can determine how our life can go regardless of what others say or do. We are grown, we can protect that little one inside of us ourselves. Our self-esteem need no longer be shaped by others’ opinions. If we try and end up failing, we don’t have to let that failure stop us. As someone said lately, it’s not that you fall, it is how you get up that counts. WE are not that sensitive tender child anymore. We are grown and we are “badasses”…should we choose to be so. We have a Creative Power, and an infinite field of possibilities to play in. The Universe is turning summersaults to help us create what we want in this world.
What do you want? The question is, what do we want? How do we know what we want? Well, how closely are we listening to our hearts? How willing are we to slow our roll, go inside and wait? Wait for the answers, wait to feel the feelings, wait to see the dreams deep in the recesses of our souls?
My mentor in California frequently spoke of “Diss-ul-do”.(this will do…) She said too often we say “diss-ul-do” and end up settling for less because we don’t have the courage or the guts to go after what we really want. We are not listening to the tiny voice within us saying., “Hey, I want…” Consequently, that voice has no power. So, what we are longing for, remains a longing until we give voice…to that voice. Then…WATCH OUT! Things can happen really fast once we acknowledge the voice of our heart and bring it out in the open. Simply longing is ineffective. Actively longing begins to open doors. Be straight forward with what we want energizes the process of getting it.
I have gotten many things I longed for sooner or later…usually later because simply longing has a rather negative vibration to it. It feels slightly needy and has an element of lack of faith…”I would really like this but I can’t have it for whatever reason.” Longing is a place to start. Shifting from passively longing to really wanting, changes the game! Les Brown, a public speaker, writer, and more would say in his talks, “You gotta be HUNGRY!!” You can’t just say, “Oh, I like to one day….” There has to be a thirst, a strong desire, a hunger for whatever it is you want. You have to acknowledge you want it with passion!
One friend of mine wanted her own dance studio. She taught dance classes someone else’s dance school. She wanted to be her own boss and teach the way she wanted to teach. The studio she was working for would only allow her to teach the beginning dance classes. It broke her heart to watch her students leave her classes for the next level ones she couldn’t teach. She could see herself in her own studio teaching classes and moving the level of her teaching up as her dance students’ skill grew. Finally, she found a rickety old room in an infrequently used building with a large space and a stage. She then opened up her own dance studio. as it is with a dream, she ignored the people who said she would not succeed and as her following grew and her finances as well, she bought what was needed to turn the old, dark, rickety room into an inviting dance studio.
What do THEY know? People may laugh at our dreams. They may criticize them. They may poke holes in them…and they may discourage us from dreaming if we let them. But we don’t have to let them. We are grown now. We can protect the small child inside who was discouraged from dreaming so long ago. We can shine light on the naysayers in the shadows of our minds and speak our word, set an intention to have what the heart is yearning for.
So, allow yourself to dream a little. Allow yourself to long for something and have the courage to open up to the possibilities of your dream showing up. Just being willing to trust in that intuitive inside you can change your world…in a good way!
Carpe Diem
