Finding your true Heart’s Desire in life is not always as simple as it seems. We often make decisions from our left, logical brain, putting practicality before passion. We can actually have both if we learn to listen to our hearts. We can do this through accessing our right brain by writing with our non-dominant hand.
I teach my clients and students what I call The Heart’s Desire Practice. This is a practice done every day for all the seemingly insignificant choices we make, like what to wear, what to eat, what route to take to any destination, and so on throughout the day. Before making these ordinary choices, I suggest they ask themselves: What is my true heart's desire about this? Not what others are doing, not what is expected of them, not what they think they should do. This means letting go of old automatic default settings and allowing themselves to behave differently. I think of this as Heart's Desire Aerobics.
What does your heart really say about the seemingly insignificant choices or decisions all day long? If you do a daily Heart's Desire Practice, you will be exercising another set of heart "muscles," the ones that have to do with an emotionally healthy heart. This is a heart that "talks" to us when we stop to listen. In this daily Heart’s Desire Practice we prepare ourselves for the big decisions in life: career, residence, relationships, and more. I also extend this practice into journaling. My heart writes to me with my non-dominant hand (accessing my right brain emotional and intuitive centers). I just let it talk to me about my life. I might even ask it to draw a picture of itself. Using the non-dominant hand (the one you don’t normally write with) for drawing and writing is a great way to get out of the default setting and try new ways of doing things. Yes, it’s slow and awkward, but it definitely shakes things up. More importantly it accesses the right brain creative and intuitive centers where breakthrough thinking happens.
Another way to listen to your Heart’s Desire is through vision boards and "bucket lists." I have written an entire book about integrating vision boards with journaling that features the non-dominant hand. It is entitled Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams. In the Visioning® method, we create magazine photo collages on large vision boards or in a journal. Picturing scenes, objects, and people expressing feelings and engaged in activities we enjoy is a way to allow the heart to speak to us.
These collages usually reveal parts of our personality wanting more expression. For instance, a photo of a "woman in red" spoke to me through my non-dominant hand. She told me that she is here to give me more vitality, courage and fun. She also wanted me to dress in brighter colors. If I've been working too hard, an image of a woman luxuriating in a bubble bath might speak to me through non-dominant hand journal writing, advising me to slow down, relax and restore my energy. Both of these women reflect parts of myself that have been dormant. If these parts have been ignored, discounted or given a back seat to other more responsible, “worker bee” parts, they will speak out sooner or later. They might cause low energy or illness in order to get my attention. Why not listen to them before such symptoms set in? They are all speaking from my heart. Creating collages of nocturnal dreams can also illuminate our true heart’s desires and reveal parts of us needing more expression. The same journal techniques described above can be applied to dream work. Picturing the images in the dream and allowing them to speak, especially the parts that seem foreign or strange can open us to renewal. Like tiny sprouts emerging out of the earth in early spring, these dream images from the unconscious are often telling us about something new that wants to be born in us.
How do we know that parts of ourselves have been left out? We usually see symptoms: low energy, boredom, feeling we are in a rut, crankiness, irritability, burnout, physical pain, headaches, and even depression. Any of these may be signaling a need to listen to our Heart’s Desire.
Lucia
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www.luciac.com
www.visioningcoach.org
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