May 19
Make Room In Your Heart!
Make Room In Your Heart!
Your biggest challenge in a transformation is to gain mastery over your emotions and motives. You all know what emotions are. Motives are simply reasons why you did things based on the emotion of the moment. Yes, emotions are great things–they separate us from other forms of life on earth. They help us to celebrate victories, to grieve losses, and to appropriately respond to all kinds of situations.
However, and this is a BIG HOWEVER, our emotions and motives can also be real deal killers for us in a transformation–especially if they are negative ones. Examples are many. When a person is doing a transformation with a “revenge” motive, they are generally acting out of mixed emotions of anger, and self-pity. Even if the transformation candidate has a good result, he or she is completely unable to experience the joy of an inner transformation, because the anger and self-pity are not quelled by the result–though they thought that would happen. Someone who does a transformation for the bare motive of looking good this summer on the beach–they generally are battling selfishness and feelings of inadequacy. One who starts a challenge with an absolute vow that he or she “this time” will do everything perfectly, operates with emotions of fear of failure and low self-esteem. Little do they realize that perfectionism is the gift that never gives happiness, because perfectionism always leads to starting over, which leads to frustration, which leads to dropping out, which leads to anger, which leads to depression and withdrawal! What started out as something they thought was good ends in disaster.
How do we do this with the right emotions. Make room in your heart! The heart (here I am talking about the soul and spirit of a human) will hold only so much, and if it is filled with negative or self-destructive emotions, you’ll live disastrously. But if it’s filled with emotions of love, joy, selflessness, desire to succeed, and the like, you’ll live victoriously and happily.
How do you make room? First actively forgive anyone who has wronged you–who is living rent free in your head. Write down that you forgive them, and when and why. Then, resolve to remember that act, rather than what they did whenever you are tempted to dwell on your “injury.” Starve the negative emotions by refusing to act on them, refusing to dwell on them, and refusing to let others talk or deal with you in those ways. Then, create love, joy, selflessness and desire to succeed by acting in those ways. Nothing produces better feelings and emotions than acting in the way that those who already have them do. In other words, you act your way to a better way of thinking instead of waiting for the right desires to come along to spur your actions. It works! But only if you work it. Start by doing a good deed for someone anonymously, don’t tell a soul, and see how that makes you feel!
With a heart filled with good, your challenge can go nowhere but up. You’ll never regret this overhaul, and you’ll never forget the changes that will come by acting like the person you always wanted to be!