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Lead with Heart, Manage with Mind

This phrase for me has been one of my greatest insight this year. Learning to listen to my Heart, employing tools to let it speak louder, and making Heart-based decisions has given my life a calm, lucid, clarity, while simultaneously existing in a state of unknowing. This state of unknowing used to be a source of stress, until I realized that I would never conquer that state of unknowing, I discovered that the stress was caused by my Minds's desire to know in order to decide. There are too many decisions to be made in our lives; often times choices have seemingly countless alternatives. I have spent hours/days/weeks/years logically mulling over decisions and still finding myself without a sure answer. When I employ my Mind to logically try to deduce a decision, I can never obtain 100% clarity; it's always a ratio (think, 'ratio'nal decisions) of certainty. Due to this, I never fully got behind any of my rational decisions; I could never fully commit to choices because I spent so much time thinking of all the alternatives. When becoming exhausted, I believed the answer was to make a Mind-less decision and rely on simply guessing, which also turned out to be unsuccessful. As such, what I found was that I was employing my Mind to the wrong task: Mind is not a leader, Mind is a manager! Imagine, the stress I was feeling before, it was simply the Mind stressing out about being in the wrong job! I am now learning to make decisions through Heart! Heart has a higher source connection it pulls its' wisdom from: one which is incomprehensible to the Mind, beyond ration and reason, and beyond the realm of the Mind. I believe this is also why we have so much trouble explaining love.

Physiologically speaking, we have a massive amount of neurons in the heart and there is a two-way communication stream from the heart to the brain. The heart can scientifically (reductionistly) speaking, communicate with the brain. The Heart is not merely some organ designed to just pump blood (though it actually doesn't) it is the source of our desires, our passions, and our true purpose. As I'm learning to follow Heart-based directions, I no longer feel that uneasiness (buyers remorse, second guessing, etc) that I felt with Mind-directed decisions. Now, when the decision is made I employ the power of the Mind to bring that decision into the realm of reality. The Heart is unequipped to deductively break down decisions into obtainable pieces, but the Mind is magnificent at this! Heart speaks Holistically, Mind speaks reductionistly. The Heart may say, I want to go to the moon, but it will be the Mind that will get us there. However, I have found our Minds' have obtained far too much power over our lives, which is why I believe we see our culture making such short-sighted (reductionist) decisions. Our culture gives our Minds' way too much credit as the seat of our being. If you're finding yourself uncommitted in life, constantly uncertain of decisions, and a bit lost on where you're headed, try demoting the Mind and giving your Heart a promotion!

Heart Tools

Some ways I have found to listen to the Heart more, have been through meditation (my choice is the art of consciously defocussing on the Mind's chatter), eating/drinking copious amounts of pure cacao, natural medicines, and fasting. Fasting, I have found to be the most effective method of quieting the Mind and letting the Heart speak. It is no coincidence that many extraordinary people had their greatest revelations while fasting, why in many cultures you find fasting to be an integral part of a coming-to-age ceremony (the point in one's life where you decide your next major decisions). I'm presently in the middle of a fast, have done several 3-4 day fasts and one 14 day fast this last year; and they have been the most transformational short periods of my life. If you are feeling that you want to transform your life and struggling with your Mind on where you want to be, or who you want to become; I highly recommend a fast, intentionally designed to bring out your Heart's voice! If this resignates with you, there are a few nuances involved to get the most out of a fast (you can find many books on the subject) or if you're interested, just ask and I would be willing to share some articles/books and information that has helped me, or some personal insights I have experienced.

*I intentionally wrote Mind and Heart as nouns, when they represent more than organs.

With love,

Rieki