PROTECT YO’ HEART (Day 7 – Remembering Your Fierce Heart Series)

Day 7 – PROTECT YOUR MOST VALUABLE ASSET

Question to get you thinking?

Where in your life have you been insanely loyal, fiercely compassionate, and excessively tolerant?

In all my efforts to be a good person, it never actually occurred to me to protect my most powerful asset: my own desires and heart.

I thought that giving it away would get me what I wanted: to feel loved, to have other people feel love, to feel connected, and ultimately to feel good about myself.

I thought of “having boundaries” with “being closed down”. I thought that what I gave was what I would get back in return. I thought that if I was a good person who thought of others first that my life would be better.

The problem is that then we’ve OVER FLEXED the muscle of knowing what others want from us and UNDER FLEXED the muscle of knowing what we truly desire. Always looking outward causes us to disconnect with our inward (our own desires).

As Danielle LaPorte says in her book White Hot Truth,

“I was too much flow and not enough restraint. I was a river in need of some riverbanks. I overpaid people, because Love is generous. I let shoddy behaviour slide, because love is forgiving. I put off getting a lawyer, because Love is reasonable.

We fight for causes, for relationships, for our children, for our co-workers, but it can be terrifying to fight for ourselves.”

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Last night, Jeremy and I were talking to our new full time employee for our wood-fired pizza business. He asked Jeremy and I how to quite the “noise in his head” so that he can find out what he really desires.

He said all of his life he’s been insanely loyal to others and in-turn he really does not know what he wants. We spent a couple hours having a profound conversation about trust, trusting life, and that then led to me giving him a practical way to start.

Here’s what we told him to consider doing today;

1. Get out a notebook. Take 10 minutes to sit quietly in meditation (as quiet as he can get).

2. Choose 2-3 words on how you desire to FEEL in 2020? (connected, home, strong, love, radiant, abundant, etc.)

3. Write down 20 things that you really want to upgrade about your day-to-day life. (working out, playing, more guitar, creating new relationships, drink more water, save $10 a week in a savings jar) You have to flex the muscle of asking what you want. Over and over, little by little, until you get bigger and bigger answers.

4. Create a draft structure of where those things can fit in (meaning what he needs to protect with fierceness). I gave him the example. If we ask you to come at 9am 3 days in a row and you’ve missed your push ups — you can let us know, “Can I come at 9:30 so that I can be sure to get my workout in? I’m happy to stay 30 min later if needed.”

5. Have some way to remind yourself of these things. He’s not a techy phone guy so I recommended a paper calendar (simple – sitting right be where he brushes his teeth so he can see it daily.)

While you are thinking about the small ways you want your day-to-day to shift – remember you can dream up ALL kind of things BUT if you can’t protect your desires and heart then they won’t happen.

I love the photo below taken by a friend and colleague, Jadah Sellner, Protect Yo HeART. Our life’s creation (ART) comes from our heart.

Later in the series I’ll address the FLOW vs FORCE and how to ensure you don’t create barriers in your life simply to protect your heart . It’s not about DOING every single thing that you put on your to-do list, or neglecting those you love, it’s about remember that what you want and need is ALSO IMPORTANT.

I’ll also begin to share about how to communicate your desires which I find for my clients is one of the hardest parts and good solid communication is not taught in schools.

📸 by Jadah Sellner