5 Ways Living From the Heart Will Transform Your Life (and the World)
Think about someone you know who lives “from the heart.” Perhaps they’re a person who is always making you laugh, or a person who drops everything to help a friend in need. Whatever their expression, they always seem to know what they want and how they feel, and their emotions aren’t a burden to others, but a gift. People who live from the heart aren’t usually afraid of their emotions, because they use them as a source of insight and guidance.
Learning to live from the heart isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Most of us are conditioned from childhood to “tough it out” and not show our feelings, which can inhibit us from expressing ourselves to others. Living from the heart may be unfamiliar territory at first. However, following some of these principles may help open a new, powerful connection to yourself and the world around you.
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1. It Will Help You Develop Compassion
Compassion is more than just kindness or sympathy. It is the ability to understand the suffering of others and the desire to help them with that suffering. It requires connecting deeply to the perspective and feelings of others. Some level of compassion is instinctive, but true compassion is a developed skill that deepens as we get in touch with our own feelings and recognize the common humanity we all share.
Compassion is one of the most rewarding and transformative states we can be in. It is the main ingredient in all loving relationships, and those who have developed it widely find they live happier, more enriching lives. Cultivating compassion is one of the primary goals of spirituality.
2. It Will Give You Access to Your Intuition
Living from the heart is a key component of developing our intuitive abilities, because the heart’s energy field is much larger and more complex than that of the brain. Research from the HeartMath Institute found that the heart generates the largest electromagnetic field in the body.
The more we can align our thoughts, intentions, and actions with the heart’s intelligence, the better access we have to our intuition. The heart often registers important information before the rational mind does; if you’re seeking to enhance your intuition and improve your decision-making, learning to live from the heart is a vital practice.
3. It Will Heal Old Wounds
Emotional pain is held in the body, especially in the area of the heart. When you close your heart to protect yourself from being hurt, your body remembers. This can negatively affect your relationships, holding you back from being truly intimate and vulnerable with others. You might be protecting yourself from hurt, but you might also be depriving yourself of love and connection.
By slowly learning to open your heart, to love fully, and to remain open to what you feel, you are giving yourself access to a natural form of healing that is available at all times. The famous psychologist Carl Jung once wrote, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” Living from the heart is the road to becoming the best possible version of ourselves.
4. It Will Strengthen Your Spiritual Connection
The heart is at the center of our spiritual experience. Many great spiritual traditions around the world have acknowledged the heart as the seat of the soul. In Sufism, the heart is considered the spiritual center, the place where God resides within. In Buddhism, the heart is the seat of consciousness and the source of compassion. In the Christian tradition, the heart is the locus of our deepest relationship with God.
Living from the heart connects us to our Higher Self in a profound way. As we continue to develop a heart-centered life, we experience a deeper sense of self and purpose, and spiritual insights become more readily available to us.
5. It Will Help You Feel More Alive
When we’re living from our heart, we’re emotionally alive and present. We feel our feelings, we care deeply, and we’re more vulnerable and open. Many people find that, over time, living from the heart actually makes them feel more joyful and alive.
The reverse is also true: when we’re disconnected from our hearts, we often feel numb and empty. In this state, life can feel flat and without meaning. Opening our hearts to feel the full spectrum of our emotions, even the challenging ones, keeps us engaged in our lives and in the world.
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