Living Life With Your Whole Heart

Living Life with Your Whole Heart

The point and purpose of my blog is to enable you, my beloved readers, to Love Life– to LOVE YOUR LIFE. So, what is living life with your whole heart and why does it matter? When I say living life with your whole heart that encompasses a multitude of things. Is your heart open to people? Is your heart open to life? Is your heart open to love? Can you trust others? Are you engaged in life? Can you be vulnerable with other people? Have you dealt with past hurts and betrayal or other trauma? Are you jaded? How authentic can you be with people? Are you really happy? Do you feel a lot of joy in your life? Do you have good or great health? Are you doing what you want to be doing or biding your time until X, Y, or Z happens? Are you living a life that you love? Another way to look at living life with your whole heart would be getting your act together because to LOVE LIFE requires some level of that.

I want to engage with you on the process of getting from where you are right now to a point where you are happy and engaged and loving life! Even if you feel like your life sucks big time, you will be able to change your life regardless of your circumstances. I know this first hand. Over the course of the coming year I will be blogging about a wide variety of topics that are critical to loving life. I will be giving homework assignments to you and the most courageous of you, the readers who are most committed to having a better life, will actually do the work I am suggesting and reap significant benefits. My promise to you is that if you stay with me (meaning read my blog posts) and do the work required, the homework, that in a year your life will look and feel very different. I have coached enough people at this stage of my life and have done enough significant training and development on myself to know for sure that anyone can do what is necessary to love life and have a life that they love.

While it might seem scary to some of you especially if you have had difficulties, the benefits to taking on your life are enormous! They are so huge! Let me list for you what I feel are the top benefits of living life with your whole heart!

Benefits of Living Life with Your Whole Heart:

You will feel, have or be…

1. Happy
2. Peaceful
3. Powerful
4. Energetic or energized
5. LOVE -feeling it, giving it, receiving it
6. Joy
7. FUN
8. Contentment
9. Freedom
10. Compassion
11. Empathy
12. Forgiveness
13. Passion/Passionate
14. Assertive
15. Focused
16. Clear headed
17. Courageous
18. Improved health
19. Contributing to others/Making a difference in the world
20. Generosity
21. Relationships flourish
22. Doing things you always wanted to do

What this means if you get the benefits from living life with your whole heart, you will then be experiencing LESS anxiety, fear, resentment, anger, frustration, jealousy, envy, regret, loneliness, boredom, restlessness, and tiredness. While I have been deeply betrayed, lied to, exploited and used, I can still trust people. I can still be vulnerable and open with others. I am fully engaged in life. I am living my life with an open heart. I am doing what I love and I am extremely happy.

I am choosing to live my life in this deliberate fashion because I am fully aware that I can handle it if someone lies to me, if someone tries to use or exploit me, or otherwise engages in behaviors that are unacceptable to me. That I choose to be and can be trusting, vulnerable and authentic allows me to connect with others on a very deep and intimate level. Yes, being trusting, vulnerable and authentic also exposes me to possibly being used, disappointed, or betrayed or even getting my heart broken, but you don’t get the joys of life, the joys of love, the joys of deep connection without being able to trust, be vulnerable, share yourself and be real. For me, the delicious moments in life that I treasure are being with people- really being with people in our state of brokenness and humanity. Not having to be perfect. Being able to laugh at myself and laugh with others. To me this is the meaning and point to life other than using your life to make a difference for others – to contribute to others in a meaningful way.

To reach this state in life, to be blessed enough to have arrived at this point means that I have done an extraordinary amount of work on myself to grow and develop. Growth and development, in my humble opinion, are the keys to a rich and fulfilling life and much of the focus of my Love.Life. blog. The old saying in psychotherapy goes that “we are all works in progress” and the caveat should be “except that some people are closed off or asleep at the wheel”. Where are YOU in your growth and development? For some of you reading this, you might be thinking what the heck is she talking about? I am talking about your self-awareness. How aware of yourself are you? What is your emotional quotient or emotional intelligence? This process of being self-aware or knowing what areas you have to work is something that we will begin with and cover in the ensuing weeks and months.

Emotional quotient (EQ) or emotional intelligence (EI), two interchangeable terms, will be the focus of an entire blog post soon enough because understanding that will be immensely helpful to you in creating a powerful life that you love! It will be helpful to you in your self-assessment. It will be helpful to you in relating to other people. It’s just one of my favorite subjects. Okay. I do have a lot of favorite subjects. Understanding yourself and how you are put together is exceptionally powerful in life because it is a path to feeling freed up, feeling powerful, and not taking things that happen to you so personally – or not personally at all even when it IS personal!

There is a dichotomy to life or the contrast of life that I feel is very powerful and helpful. I have put together in the two columns below some of the major points to the contrast of life to provide a visual to what I am saying. To be able to live life with your whole heart you have to be able to deal with all of the aspects of life – not just the good stuff. I have included emotional states as well as character traits and skills and abilities in this contrast.

The Contrast of Life:

Excited	Bored, restless
Purposeful	Aimless
Clear	Confused
Fun	Stoic, serious
Empathy	Lack of empathy
Humility	Arrogance
Open	Guarded, closed
Compassion	Judgement
Powerful	Powerless
Generous	Selfish
Direct	Indirect, passive-aggressive
Love	Hate, Loss
Peaceful	Discontented, angry, resentful
Organized	Unorganized
Nurturing	Controlling, cold
Forgiveness	Resentment, holding grudges
Honest	Dishonest
Joy	Sadness
Self-care	Self-sabotage
Healthy	Unhealthy
Plays fair	Cheats
Supports others	Undermines others
Happy for others	Jealous, envious
Full of energy	Lethargic, tired
Managing life	Overwhelmed
Vulnerable	Closed off, guarded
Inspires others	Critical, brings others down
Authentic, real	Inauthentic, fake
Naïve, Innocent, child-like	Jaded, hardened to life
Happy	Unhappy, grief, loss
High Emotional Quotient or intelligence	Low emotional quotient or intelligence
Physically healthy	Physically unhealthy or struggling with health
In control of life	The victim of life or the circumstances
Courage	Cowardly
Confidence	Low-self-esteem, lacking confidence

You could use the contrast of life as a tool for your own self-assessment. Where are you in these areas of life? Where can you go to work on yourself to improve? To be able to live life fully and live life with your whole heart, I assert that you have to have more qualities, emotions and skills on the left-hand side of the chart.

Over the course of the next year, the next 365 days, if you would engage with me for just 15 minutes a day in improving your life, in growing and developing, in working on the areas of life that are there to be dealt with, on getting physically healthy, on cleaning out our house or apartment, on doing what there is to do, you will have spent a total of 91 hours moving your life in a positive direction! That’s the equivalent of more than two-40-hour work weeks by just spending 15 minutes a day. Look at the above list of benefits to living life with your whole heart. Does that call to you? Are you ready for a change? It is a total act of courage to take on making changes to your life. It is a heroic act of strength to look at your life and how you have been living it.

Homework assignment:

Your 1^sthomework assignment is to start to think about AND write down what makes you happy and what you love. In this assignment you may notice that the first things that come to mind are all the things that make you unhappy or annoyed. That is perfect because it’s just as helpful to know what you don’t like in the process of creating a vision for your life. Building a life that you LOVE requires that you know and understand what makes you happy and what you love. You will refer to the notes you make on what you love and what makes you happy down the road.

Please post any questions you have for me on this blog because it is absolutely the best way to get a response at this point in time. I personally believe that there is no such thing as a dumb question, so please let me know how I can help you. It is my honor and a privilege to support you on this journey!! Love, Lisa