“Wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it.”
Meister Eckhart.
I was reading through my email this evening and found a note from Mark Forster.. He was writing about having a method of only accepting new commitments to which you can say a whole-hearted ‘yes’ to.
He was talking about physically asking yourself the question; ‘Can I say a whole-hearted yes to this?’; is this something that I can with my whole heart say yes to.. its a simple rule really, probably something most people don’t even think about doing before we leap head long into something new..
There’s nothing wrong with actually saying ‘No’ to something, and its a good measure to see if its something you will be able to put your whole heart into..
How many things have we done where the initial excitement or commitment to it has fizzled out, or not been something that was as successful or completed as we’d wanted?
We often use the phrase ‘My heart wasn’t in it’ as a cover for really attempting to do something, or commit to something that we didn’t really want to do, even if we felt that we should do it, maybe because it was expected of us..
When we talk about our heart, not in the organ sense, we really are talking about a combination everything that really makes us up, our minds, our bodies, our intellect, feelings and emotions. Really our ‘heart’ is the core of who we really are, and if the core of who we are is not committed to doing the task in hand… We’re never going to be successful at it..
We have many many reasons why we end up in the situation where we really don’t have our heart in the task, or commitment we’re taking on. It could be something else is more important to us, and we’re really only sharing time between that situation or task, and this one. In these situations both suffer, and we end up in effect spoiling both.
Before we take on anything, be it a job, a task, and commitment or situation, we should always ask ourselves; ‘What is my heart saying?’
I will be the first to admit, sometimes my heart isn’t in a lot of things, even if I think it is, like many people I tend to be frightened of the answer to that question.. ‘What is my heart saying about this?’ I know that’s its always better to face up to things, rather than bury them. That frightening answer may be that you need to make a fresh commitment to the situation, or possibly that you need to remove yourself from the situation altogether and walk away from it..
‘What is my heart saying?’ is probably the most powerful question you can ask yourself, because our heart encapsulates everything about us, it really is the single mirror of truth on everything we encounter. If i ask myself ‘what is my heart saying..’ about anything in my life, it provides a small stop gap, a second of thought to really understand how the core of ‘me’ feels about what I’m committing to.
If you heart says no, then you can never fully commit to that task, situation or decision, and if you did, you would start a something you know full well you cannot commit you whole heart to.
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