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In this episode, I want to talk a little bit about the concept of being heart-centered.
Being totally heart-centered is a discipline.
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Hi, I’m Darla LeDoux, and welcome to this week’s episode of Retreat and Grow Rich, the podcast.
We are in the midst of a series, which I am calling the RICH Revolution, and I spoke in our lead episode in the series about what the RICH Revolution really is.
RICH is an acronym, it stands for Right-brained, Intuitive, Connected, and Heart-centered and we reviewed what that really means, and what that really means for businesses, and how to be a RICH business, a RICH entrepreneur, and bring that energy forward, and really value that energy- and charge for it. The episode is called “Money Makes the Woo Go Round” where we discuss this.
In this episode, I want to talk a little bit about the concept of being heart-centered. So all of these concepts- right-brained, intuitive, connected, and heart-centered- can be misconstrued, or thought of kind of at a surface level, or in a fluffy way. And heart-centered is the biggest culprit where we think, “oh, I am heart-centered as an entrepreneur because I love people and I want to help and I want to make a difference and therefore I’m heart-centered.” And I want to talk about how do we truly cultivate this energy in our business of leading from our heart, rather than our mind, or our head.
It is about so much more than just loving people and wanting to help, and in fact, wanting to help a lot of times can take us out of being a truly RICH entrepreneur and into a place that’s a little bit dysfunctional or a little bit codependent.
So I want to start first with how we use heart-centered.
We think of it as generous, giving, loving. I love people, I want to make a difference, and I know I used to really like when I would get centered in my mission. I would feel it so strongly here in my heart and it would feel like this pouring out of energy. That’s the physical feeling that went with the thought of being heart-centered. And it feels good, right, but it wasn’t necessarily healthy, and it wasn’t really in alignment, or honoring what it is to give value to and hold space for your RICH skills in the world- the right-brain, intuitive, connected, heart-centered skills- where we’re coming from truth, we’re coming from source, and allowing that to guide and inspire our work.
So a lot of times, this surface definition we have for heart-centered of being this giving, generous person who is always there, who loves everybody, can be the opposite of being RICH. It can actually be depleting, because a lot of times when we’re coming from that place and we feel like, “I have to give to get love, I have to give it to be valuable, I have to give of myself when I don’t have anything to give,” we’re coming from an unhealthy place.
And what’s really happening is we’re ignoring our own intuition, or our own inner guidance about what’s true for us in favor of being heart-centered- or even more sneakily- of looking like we’re heart-centered.
We want to look generous. We want to look loving, we want to be, you know, who people want us to be. We want people to love us. And so being, or looking, being perceived to be heart-centered for a lot of service based entrepreneurs can actually be a detriment. It can get in the way because we’re giving beyond what we have to give. But also giving beyond what’s healthy for the other person to actually receive.
Being totally heart-centered is a discipline.
It’s a discipline. It is not about just giving willy nilly all over the place. It’s a discipline.
There’s a great quote that comes from universal law, and I first learned about it in a book called “Working With the Law” by Raymond Holliwell, and he talks about give your substance where it can do most good. Give your substance where it can do most good. And he quotes the bible, that Jesus said, “don’t cast your pearls before swine lest they trample them and turn and rend you.” Which is saying- when you’re giving, giving, giving, because you want to be heart-centered and look like this kind, generous person, that people will actually take that because it’s not given from a solid, clear, clean, aligned energy. People will actually take that and use that against you, so we want to be really aware of what it is to be truly heart-centered.
Truly heart-centered, in the way that I think about it, is allowing your heart, allowing your body, your inner knowing, your truth that your physical being can give you access to, to lead, rather than your mind.
Kurt Wright in his book “Breaking the Rules” talks about the rational mind and the intuitive mind. The rational mind was never intended to be the guide or to make the decisions, because the rational mind is actually incapable of discerning truth.
I want you to get this- the rational mind, our logic, is incapable of discerning truth. In other words, we can rationalize- people call it “rationing lies” right. We can rationalize our way to all kinds of decisions that may not relate to what’s actually true for us in our heart, and our intuition, and our physical being. So sometimes when we let our mind make the decision we can really get off track.
So back to Kurt Wright. He said the rational mind is incapable of discerning truth. The intuitive mind can discern truth and the rational mind is actually designed to ask questions of our intuition to help us be on the right track. So the rational mind can frame up, like, what is the right question I actually have to ask my intuition in order to live in alignment with my truth and operate in a heart-centered way.
So when our rational mind tries to take over, rather than following what is true in our heart, we can talk ourselves into anything. And there’s a couple of examples that come to mind for this.
One is in working with a client recently who is very much guided by her heart. When we let go of all the stories and all the analysis of who she’s got to be, or didn’t get to be as a kid, and who she thinks she should be as a business owner, and all of those things really, when she tunes into her essence- to her truth, her heart- is where all of the energy is and her heart has the answers.
Her heart has found the most aligned decisions for her about so many things that once she makes them flow just happens. She filled a retreat like “that” because she made this heart-based decision. So she knows that her heart knows the answer.
Yet sometimes we have people in our life who don’t like us to know our truth because our truth may be inconvenient to them.
So she had an experience where someone said something to her that engaged her into thinking and analyzing whether her decision was right from a lot of different perspectives. The specific question that person asked to put her right in her head analyzing, you know, did I do this right? Did I not? Am I a good person? Am I not? Is this, you know, the right logical thing? Is it not? What are all the practical details, when her heart was clearly guiding her?
A lot of times the people in our life know just exactly how to hook us back into rationalizing- staying the same- because it’s inconvenient to them if we change. But her heart knew the truth.
I think of another example in this series. I interviewed Tina Forsyth and she talks about her “gut feeling.”
So we’re talking about being heart-centered. We’re talking about intuition, we’re talking about the way being heart-centered, or looking like a good, or generous, loving, kind person might get us off track. Right. And that truly being heart-centered is a discipline and a strength. To hear what your heart says, or hear what your intuition says, and know your yes and no.
So for Tina, she has a gut decision making process. She feels a gut-feel “yes or no” in her body. And that’s how she stays in tune and aligned and she talked about how she knew- and you’ll have to watch the episode and listen to the episode to hear her story, what I’m talking about- but how she knew about a decision immediately in her gut. Yet her mind then kicked in and said, “if I made this decision how would I explain it to people? How will I explain it to people so that they can understand it? Because even though my gut knows it’s not rational, it doesn’t make rational sense that I want to make this choice, that if I tried to explain it to people they wouldn’t get it and they’d try to talk me out of it.” And because of that, she ignored her gut for some time and a particular decision.
So our mind, when it kicks in, one of the questions it’s going to ask is: does this make sense? Will I be able to explain my decision to people in a way that they get it? And because our society has been so focused on the rational, logical, linear ways of being, we’ve rewarded that financially in our society for a long time. Our whole education system is based on it, right. Show your work. Explain your answer.
And so we’re trained in that. And because of that, we immediately start to think- even if our heart, or our gut, our truth, our intuition- knows what’s real for us, our mind immediately kicks in and starts to imagine “when I make this decision what are all the implications of that and how am I going to handle it?” And specifically, “how am I going to explain it to people so they get it.”
And then we try to make a rational argument for something that’s actually an intuitive knowing. So being truly heart-centered takes strength. It takes discipline. It takes trusting in and honoring yourself even when the outcome of that decision may look on the surface like it’s not heart-centered.
In other words, some of the most loving, heart-centered, intuitively aligned, truth-based decisions might inconvenience other people. They might actually annoy people or make them not like us. They might actually cause disruption, they might actually make us look selfish, or mean, or aloof, or all kinds of things, because we’re caring for ourselves and what’s true for us. So being heart-centered, it doesn’t necessarily look like what you think
So a lot of people have come to me over the years who want to host retreats, who want to be a leader in this transformational work, and yet they’ve got this definition messed up and it keeps them from retreating and growing rich. It actually prevents money because they think, “well, I love people, I want to help people and feel like that’s enough.” And in many ways that is enough.
This isn’t about being someone you’re not. But actually the process of being a leader who can hold space for truth and hold that firm container with these soft skills. That person needs to not let their heart lead in a willy nilly, dysfunctional way, like a bleeding heart “oh I feel sorry for you, I want to help you, I want to pull you up,” but instead feels this firm, clear love that starts with self-love and self-honoring and invites people into that conversation and is really okay that if someone’s not prepared for that conversation, if they’re not aligned with that conversation, that we can say “no, thank you, next, not for me.”
And ideally, we’re loving and kind and gracious about the way we set boundaries, right. And I have a whole teaching on what I call “healthy compassion,” which is having compassion for others while keeping this clean, healthy dynamic where we’re not letting in co-dependency into our world. Right. So ideally use that, the boundary with love, yet that’s not the most important thing.
The most important thing is that you’re actually nurturing your being to be able to access your RICH skills. And that means not letting people who aren’t there yet, who aren’t ready, who can’t value you, latch on and ask for help in a way that doesn’t really serve you. That’s being truly heart-centered.
So there are two main things. The first is we have to give up our definition of what heart-centered maybe used to mean, which is “looking good.” And instead embrace another definition, which is being firmly rooted and grounded in our connection to our intuition, and our connection to source, and trusting that and wrapping that up with love, which may look like setting boundaries, and it may not look like the old definition of heart-centered. And we’ve got to be someone who can make those decisions and set those clear boundaries.
The second thing in terms of being truly heart-centered is we have to give up our attachment to our rational, logical way of thinking about things, which often is we’re trying to rationalize how do we look good in this scenario. We’ve got to let that go. When the heart knows, when your intuition knows, we must follow it, regardless of what the mind says.
The mind may be able to help us navigate the transition, but we have to make the decision from our truth, from our heart, from how we authentically feel what our gut is saying, and we’ve got to make that decision first- before we let our head kick in. Once we’ve made the decision our head can kick in and help us navigate. Right. Our mind is brilliant at that, but our mind doesn’t make the decision- our heart does.
So those are the two key distinctions for being truly heart-centered as a business owner. And I invite you to just reconsider what you thought that meant and what it might mean to truly walk this path of the RICH leader and be at cause in the RICH Revolution.
It is a different journey than just being loving. Love is the foundation, but self-love and the discipline that comes with that.
This is Darla Ledoux for Retreat and Grow Rich and I’m excited to hear what this brings up for you. Please share in the comments, please share on social media. Spread the word about this conversation and we’ll be back with our next episode of The Rich Revolution series
Bye, everyone.
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