Where is Your Heart?

“The heart is at the center of being.”

The heart is one of the most critical organs in our body.  Its main function is to pump blood throughout the body, essentially giving life.  Our heart in many ways also holds and controls our desires and feelings.  Our heart can drive us, motivate us, push us, guide us, and steer us in life.  This is important as many people fail or succeed in life because of what is in their heart.

One question I ask myself from time to time is “Where is my heart?”  What I mean by this is what is it focused on today, what feelings are in it, and what desires are there.  This simple question allows me to evaluate and reflect on what is in my heart, helping me determine if my heart is in the right place.  I have to admit that many times when I find myself asking this question it is often because my heart is not in the “right place” or at least it seems to be off course from where I want it to be.   Recognizing this allows me to change my course and “refill” my heart with the desires, passions, and feelings I truly hope for and that are most important to me.  This simple exercise is vital.

We control our heart.  Some people may choose not to believe this but we absolutely control the desires, feelings, and passions within our heart.  If we have the wrong desires, we can change—and should change.  If our heart is filled with anger, jealously, bitterness, regret, fear, lust, pain, sorrow, etc. we need to change that and we can.  It takes discipline, honest self-evaluation, and strength but changing what is in our heart is very possible.      

Many influences that surround us today try to steal or destroy our hearts.  They do this by trying to fill them with things contrary to our true desires.  We cannot allow this to happen.  We must protect our hearts and remember that ultimately we control what is in them.  It is important to remain focused on what truly matters to us and we must constantly work at keeping them soft and open to love.  We must ensure the right things are continually in our hearts.  Having our hearts in the right place leads to a better life.     

So, where is your heart?  Is it involved and engaged in those things that matter most to you or has it wandered off on to less fulfilling and less important matters?  Or has it become hardened and bitter?  We must take control of our hearts and do all we can to cultivate the desires, passions, and feelings we want most.  For the desires in our hearts will lead us to success and happiness in life.  Where is your heart?    

Next week I will share some thoughts on how we can keep our hearts filled with the right things.   

Achieving Much Greater Results in Life

How much of the time we spend during our day contributes to our success in life?  How much of what we do really helps us?  According to the Pareto Principle, 20% of what we do gives us 80% of our results.  What does this mean?  It means we could be doing so much more to maximize our time.  It means we could be achieving much greater results in life. 

In today’s world it is time for us to be efficient.  The economy is slow, the world is flat, and competition is fierce.  Therefore, for us to succeed in life, we must spend our time most often on those things that produce results.  For us to be successful, we don’t have the leeway we perhaps once enjoyed in times past to not take advantage of every moment of our day.  Much like businesses today, as individuals we must “cut the fat” out of how we spend our time and make sure we are focusing on those things that help us get results and matter most.

So how do we know what 20% of our time is helping us achieve 80% of our results in life?  This is a good question and I believe if we are truly honest with ourselves, we probably have a pretty good idea.  For the most part, time spent watching TV or movies, playing video games, surfing the internet, or perusing social media sights is probably time not very well spent.  As a society, I worry we spend too much time doing these things, and by so doing we rob ourselves of the opportunities that surround us.  It is time for us to invest in ourselves, to take control of our lives, to be disciplined, and spend our time in making us better.  It is time we give ourselves the chance to succeed by doing what we know will help us achieve results. 

So how are you spending your time?  If we are a Pareto Principle statistic meaning 80% of our results are coming from 20% of our time, then we are not doing good enough!   We can do better, we owe it to ourselves!!  Each day is a blessing and an opportunity to be better.  Break the Pareto Principle trend and find ways to invest more time in those activities that lead to success.  It won’t always be easy, but I believe it will be well worth it when all is said and done.   

"We Become What We Think About"

“If you think you are beaten, you are,
If you think you dare not, you don’t
If you like to win, but you think you can’t,
It is almost certain you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost

For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will—
It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are,

You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win the prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can!”
 
Earl Nightingale, Think and Grow Rich, Page 59

A Critical Secret to Success

This post was originally published on Burntham August ‘10

One of the most critical aspects of life that is often undervalued is the power of our simple daily decisions. Too often we believe simple choices are unimportant or irrelevant to our big dreams. For example, we fail to connect how eating an unhealthy snack today may contribute to our poor health tomorrow or how our wasted time today will impact our results in the future. It is important to know that small choices accumulate and overtime become our success or our grief.

Everyday small decisions are the road map to our success as they steer us indisputably toward our destiny. If we learn to make good simple decisions daily and consistently, overtime it will produce great results. This is an undeniable fact. Each day we are capable of making small yet exceptional choices that will shape our future in a positive way. As Robert K. Cooper explained in his book The Other 90%, “although we may dream about our future in splendid images, we must live our lives in practical everyday actions, one after another.” These actions are the bedrock for happiness and success.

Our life is not mostly shaped by an occasional large decision that may come our way from time to time, but rather by our daily small decisions. It’s in small decisions where success and failures are won. And as we make good small daily decisions, it will become easier and easier to make good large decisions when they do come.

Indeed it has been said that if we tell a man what we are doing today, he will be able to tell us the person we will be tomorrow. What we are doing right now matters! However small or insignificant right now seems, it matters!

So let’s start today, right now, to be conscious of our daily small decisions and believe they hold the key to our future. For what we do today, right now, will determine who we become tomorrow.