follow your heart
At the beginning of this year, I set the intention to follow my heart and deep down inside I knew it would stretch me well beyond my comfort zone, but I did it anyway. I must secretly love discomfort or be in deep trust…I’m still trying to figure that one out.
Shortly thereafter, someone in my community approached me with a speaking opportunity for a high school leadership conference. It was a breakout session where I would have to speak for 30 minutes, 3 different times to roughly 360 students. As this person was telling me about the conference and the key note speaker, my immediate thoughts brought me to the idea of courage. Not the courage we know as bravery and valor, but the original meaning of courage, which comes from the latin word “cor” and means to speak one’s mind by telling one’s heart. So, courage is directly linked to the heart. Well, isn’t that interesting?!
I didn’t accept it right away, as I wanted to do it for the right reasons and to make sure that it felt aligned. So, I sat with it, I meditated, and I knew that this was all about the heart-nothing more and nothing less. So, I knew that I HAD to do it, there really wasn’t any way around it. If I intended to follow my heart, I had to speak on it…in front of 360 students and some staff members. Well, this was going to be fun…said no one ever.
I had 2 months to prepare, so, no big deal, right? Well, let me tell you…it was a pretty BIG deal. I had numerous conversations with friends (and myself), 2 coaching sessions, and weeks of frustration over this speech. I was even woken up at 5 in the morning with the session title, Wholehearted Leadership, Courage and Vulnerability after I had already submitted a different title. This was going to be the death of me.
I resisted writing the speech by using all my little patterns and tricks like procrastination, overthinking, non-action and so on. I let the mind win over and over again while the heart took a back seat. In each of my coaching sessions I was brought back to the heart, again and again. THE HEART, this was why I was doing this and I pushed myself to finish it.
The day of, my first speech tanked. I was more nervous than I had thought, I stayed in my head, and I had technical difficulties. For the 2nd session, I found my groove flowing with the energy of the room, dropping from the head to the heart, and I did far better than the first. The third one wasn’t as successful as the 2nd, but I felt proud of myself nonetheless.
But, here’s the thing, none of that really mattered, because I allowed myself to be a channel for my heart and for a message that felt important to communicate with these kids. I modeled what it means to live courageously, to do things that are a little out of the main stream, like asking teenagers to sit with their eyes closed and drop down to their hearts. I also modeled vulnerability, like when my video didn’t play and I had to pull things out of thin air or when some teenagers where pretend snoring during the mediation, it wasn’t comfortable, but I remained open and pressed on.
This speech was as much about the message for these kids as it was about my walking my own talk and allowing my heart lead the way. It was a reminder that living from and following the heart requires courage and vulnerability no matter how old you are. This doesn’t come with any guarantees, which makes it a lot scarier. It was about me getting out of the comfortable level of the mind and allowing myself to drop down to the uncomfortable level of my heart and lead from there. It wasn’t easy, seamless or graceful, but I did it, and I learned a lot.
While I didn’t have the mobs of adoring high school admirers, like the cute young guy who was the key note speaker from Canada, I did have 1 girl who had the courage to come up to me after my speech to thank me and tell me that she now knew she was being called to pursue law. My heart could have exploded in that moment and I knew that all the stress had been worth it. I didn’t hand her that truth, she dropped into the heart and found it for herself, and that it all I had ever intended to do. In following, sharing, and opening up my own heart someone found their way to theirs.
A few days after my speech I was walking out of my local coffee shop when a little box on the bottom of their trinket shelf caught my attention.
The box read, “Follow your heart to your wildest dreams. A new door is waiting to open. A new journey is ready to begin.”
Message received. Now to see where the heart leads me next.
Now, how is your intention for this year coming along? How is your word/intention leading you? Stretching you? I’d love to know…
