Living With an Open Heart

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.

Charles R. Swindoll

Have you ever had that feeling where it feels like your heart is light, loving and excited (practically to the point where it’s buzzing)? It feels like no matter what happens you’re open to the experience. This feeling can arise when you’re about to see family or loved ones, hang out with friends, or go participate in one of your favorite activities.

What if I told you that this light-hearted and loving feeling is a choice that we are making, that you can feel this way in any situation and bring a flicker of light in your darkest moments?

As I became sicker, I started to feel excruciating pain throughout my body as both my nerve endings and joints had become extremely swollen. My mindset at first was to distract myself from the pain, the fear, and the anger that I was feeling by watching Netflix or playing video games. As the pain worsened I realized that running from this experience was only hurting me in the long run, as I was too scared to live in the present moment and distractions could only help me so much. I had recently been introduced to Buddhism/mindfulness by my mentor/guru, Tom Voitas, so I began reading more about how to turn into my current experience rather than away from it. What I found has changed my life.

Right now I want you to try this exercise that I like to use:

1. Close your eyes and picture a moment where you felt pure love. It was as if you were floating on cloud nine and you were emanating pure bliss. For me, this is when I’m with someone I love. Sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table with my family has been a go-to moment. For you, it can be a time with a pet, loved one or friend. I want you to rest in that moment picturing everything you saw, heard, and most importantly FELT. You likely feel the muscles in your chest/body relax as you feel the pure love in and around you. Focus on the feeling of warmth in your chest. You’re breathing will become easier and you’ll likely have a subtle (or not so subtle) smile creep across your lips
2. Now think of a time where you felt immense pain. This can be an injury, a loss of a loved one, or bad news that you have received. I think of the helpless feeling of being in my bed too weak to move, pain everywhere, unable to even talk. You’ll feel your heart and chest contract, you’re breathing will become more difficult, it will feel tough to be in that moment.
3. This step is the most IMPORTANT: I want you to find that feeling of pure bliss and love from the first step. Now take that feeling and lay it over the image and experience of the painful moment. Instead of getting caught in the painful moment, you will feel your heart more open than before. The trick here is instead of focusing on what that experience did to you at the time, I want you to draw all of your attention to what it taught you. This could be to appreciate time with our loved ones more, that getting let go from your job opened you up to a new path in life, or how your weakest moment became the stepping stone to the strongest version of you. Feel the love and appreciation for what that pain taught you.

This exercise may be tough for you to practice at first. You may keep getting stuck in the pain of that moment, but I promise you the more you practice the easier this will get. Soon you’ll be able to catch yourself in the present moment when you start to close your heart off from your current experience allowing you to live more fully rather than living in the past or solely working toward the future.

Living with an open heart allows you to approach life with loving eyes. You become centered in the present moment which not only allows you to tackle whatever problem you may be facing with a more creative mind, but you’ll soon find you’re happier and the relationships and opportunities around you will flourish. Living in a state of love, appreciation and abundance will attract only more of that to you and things that used to take time to get over, are now helping you grow in real-time. This is how to love the process and live your life to the fullest.

If you’d like to learn more about this I would check out “The Untethered Soul” as well as “The Secret” and “The Wise Heart!”