The 5-Step Plan to Set Your Heart Free
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Step 3: Defy your inner jailer
At this point you'll begin to realize that your heart is telling you where to steer your life. You'll know the next step because you will begin to long for anything that connects you to it.
When desire really comes from your heart, deciding to act on it will bring another strong sensation. You'll feel an extraordinary clarity, the sense that something inside you has clicked into place. Of course, your Inner Jailer might not agree. You may be flooded with reminders that your heart's instructions are stupid or boring or rude. Don't listen. Run.
Step 4: Run for the jungle
I'll never forget the moment Sonya stopped daydreaming about sending her songs to a music producer and decided to Just Do It. It doesn't sound like much—until you try it yourself. Acting on your heart's instructions means abandoning all those careful strategies for avoiding rejection and bolting toward the fertile, gorgeous jungle of human imagination and possibility.
I've watched in awe and admiration as many clients took the enormous risk of freeing and following their hearts. I've seen high-income executives joyfully switch to low-paying careers as artists or forest rangers, and people who grew up in poverty dare to believe they deserve decent money. I've seen folks adopt children with AIDS or lose 50 pounds. As a 13th-century Zen master said, "The place is here: The way leads everywhere." Once you are present in your own heart, you'll find your life going places your mind has never even dreamed of.
Step 5: Spread the word
Toni Morrison said that "the function of freedom is to free someone else." This is the final step necessary for keeping your heart at liberty, and you do it in just one way: by telling your story. However you do it—a journal, an artistic creation, the pictures you hang on your walls, or the way you raise your children—telling your story demolishes the barriers between your heart and the outside world. I won't lie: This means that your heart will be exposed and, yes, broken. But it's important to remember that a heart is imprisoned not by being broken but by being silenced. There will be people (often the people you most want to please) who won't like what you say. It's going to hurt—and it's going to heal.
When Sonya started sending out her demo tapes, she became what she called an overnight failure. For months no one so much as acknowledged her creations. Sonya's heart broke, but she refused to send it back to prison. Instead she began to think like Khet facing execution: Since things could not be worse, she decided to drop her inhibitions. Her music became less derivative. She began writing raw, gut-deep songs that horrified her family—and impressed some producers. Sonya began to find her "tribe," the people who understood her true self. She's still far from famous, but her heart is free, "and that," she told me, "is what it's really about."
As you learn to live by heart, every choice you make will become another way of telling your story, calling your tribe, and liberating not only your heart but the hearts of others. This is the very definition of love, the process that makes all-too-human people and societies capable of true humanity. It will chart you a life's journey as unique and authentic as your fingerprint; send you out, full of hope and breathtaking exhilaration, onto paths you never thought you could travel. It is the way you were meant to exist. If you stop to listen, you'll realize that your heart has been telling you so all along.
Get more advice from Martha Beck:
At this point you'll begin to realize that your heart is telling you where to steer your life. You'll know the next step because you will begin to long for anything that connects you to it.
When desire really comes from your heart, deciding to act on it will bring another strong sensation. You'll feel an extraordinary clarity, the sense that something inside you has clicked into place. Of course, your Inner Jailer might not agree. You may be flooded with reminders that your heart's instructions are stupid or boring or rude. Don't listen. Run.
Step 4: Run for the jungle
I'll never forget the moment Sonya stopped daydreaming about sending her songs to a music producer and decided to Just Do It. It doesn't sound like much—until you try it yourself. Acting on your heart's instructions means abandoning all those careful strategies for avoiding rejection and bolting toward the fertile, gorgeous jungle of human imagination and possibility.
I've watched in awe and admiration as many clients took the enormous risk of freeing and following their hearts. I've seen high-income executives joyfully switch to low-paying careers as artists or forest rangers, and people who grew up in poverty dare to believe they deserve decent money. I've seen folks adopt children with AIDS or lose 50 pounds. As a 13th-century Zen master said, "The place is here: The way leads everywhere." Once you are present in your own heart, you'll find your life going places your mind has never even dreamed of.
Step 5: Spread the word
Toni Morrison said that "the function of freedom is to free someone else." This is the final step necessary for keeping your heart at liberty, and you do it in just one way: by telling your story. However you do it—a journal, an artistic creation, the pictures you hang on your walls, or the way you raise your children—telling your story demolishes the barriers between your heart and the outside world. I won't lie: This means that your heart will be exposed and, yes, broken. But it's important to remember that a heart is imprisoned not by being broken but by being silenced. There will be people (often the people you most want to please) who won't like what you say. It's going to hurt—and it's going to heal.
When Sonya started sending out her demo tapes, she became what she called an overnight failure. For months no one so much as acknowledged her creations. Sonya's heart broke, but she refused to send it back to prison. Instead she began to think like Khet facing execution: Since things could not be worse, she decided to drop her inhibitions. Her music became less derivative. She began writing raw, gut-deep songs that horrified her family—and impressed some producers. Sonya began to find her "tribe," the people who understood her true self. She's still far from famous, but her heart is free, "and that," she told me, "is what it's really about."
As you learn to live by heart, every choice you make will become another way of telling your story, calling your tribe, and liberating not only your heart but the hearts of others. This is the very definition of love, the process that makes all-too-human people and societies capable of true humanity. It will chart you a life's journey as unique and authentic as your fingerprint; send you out, full of hope and breathtaking exhilaration, onto paths you never thought you could travel. It is the way you were meant to exist. If you stop to listen, you'll realize that your heart has been telling you so all along.
Get more advice from Martha Beck:
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