Photo-Heart Connection: Still Following My Heart

Quote of the day: “If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing ‘real’ was at risk, what would you do? You’d live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That’s what the ghosts want us to do – all the exciting things they no longer can.” — Chuck Palahniuk

Following my heart

September was a month of

• daily walks with camera
• playing with and learning about my new iPhone and taking LOTS of photos with it (like the one above)
• a wonderful birthday celebration
• traveling to see family and reconnect with my dear cousin and best friend from childhood
• surprising myself by committing to my dream of spending 4-6 months living in Hawaii this winter.

Mostly it was a time of focusing on following my heart and overcoming fears and lack of trust.

I did it! I booked plane tickets to Hawaii before I knew for sure how I was going to make it all work. Instead of making a lot of excuses about why I couldn’t do it, I took a leap and decided to trust that it will all come together in a way that is perfect.

And, it has come together in surprisingly wonderful ways.

Funny thing about learning to follow my heart—I get to have lots of close encounters with my fear, lack of trust, and all the other prevailing attitudes of our culture.

The good news is that the longer I am away from the corporate world, the more I see how I closed down my heart to survive there. I am getting better and better at keeping an open heart.

I was reminded of this in church last Sunday when the minister spoke about living with an open heart. He said that we live in a world that disorders our heart and shuts it down. This is unfortunate, because our heart is the center of our Selves.

I believe that living fully means living with an open heart. It’s not easy to live with an open heart and be in the world. Some of the ways that I am flipping the script and opening my heart are:

1. Asking for help instead of believing I need to go it alone.
2. Living in awe and gratitude and believing that everything is a gift, instead of believing that I am entitled to everything I have or want.
3. Acknowledging that everyone is a living, breathing miracle of uniqueness instead of labeling people and believing in a one-dimensional view of them.
4. Choosing to feel love and gratitude instead of fear and scarcity.

In the end the questions that matter are, “How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?”

Follow Your Heart