Awaken your heart to life today!
In the hustle and bustle of daily living, where life’s pressures and daily responsibilities weigh down on us, many of us have forgotten what it means to feel. All our attention is focused outwards on meeting the practical needs of daily living, that little time is spent on rejuvenating ourselves. The huge number of zombie movies in pop culture is perhaps an alarming reflection of how humanity has become dead to the inner whisperings of the heart.
Yet, it is the very basis of life itself. With its pulsing force, our hearts not just pump blood in our bodies, it is also what brings meaning into our lives. When we connect to our hearts, we embrace how we feel, developing empathy for others and the world around us. In other words, it’s how we unzombify ourselves. Just like doctors use a defibrillator to jumpstart the heart, there are some things we can do for ourselves too. What are some of the simple ways we can reconnect with ourselves?
Make time for activities that bring energy
Our heart needs fuel in the form of love, joy, connection and meaning to stay alive. Often, we become mechanical in our responses to life because living can sometimes be overwhelming. Simple, joyful activities can bring much needed energy back to one’s heart and awaken us to life. They can be exciting or easy going in nature. The simplest way to know if an activity recharges you is how you feel after. Did you gain a sense of peace? Is there a feeling of gentle satisfaction? Do you feel pleasantly satiated and at ease?
For some, daily stretching and yoga can help one start the day with groundedness. For others, a good workout can help let go of daily build-up of stress. Yet for many, a simple dinner with family and friends can help connect them to their hearts. Some creative people enjoy playing music or singing while those who are more hands one might prefer cooking or crafting?
Creative activities recharge and rejuvenate one’s soul because it requires one to drop the external world, to enter one’s internal space. It is the journey to feel, to imagine and to create. This journey of going within brings us back to ourselves, where we can hear our voice once again. It is a much needed grounding in an external world full of noise. When we come back into ourselves, we get to rest and reset ourselves, allowing us the space to reconnect with how we feel.
Since our connection with the world must first begin with ourselves, doing so is surely the start of building a meaningful society. If so, why have we neglected this important activity of going within?
Focus on the journey not the destination
Just as going within can connect us to ourselves, focusing on the journey rather than the destination, can bring deeper meaning to our day-to-day lives. Compared to material success, our life experiences are surely our best currency. When one is lying on their deathbed, money is the last thing on their minds since it cannot be taken to heaven. Most people in their last hours often reflect upon how they have lived their lives; the connections they made and the experiences they have had. They aren’t looking at their bank accounts. Instead they are looking out for the faces of their loved ones around their hospital bed, wanting to hold them close. Memories become a comforting presence during life’s last moments.
Our experiences, bonds and connections are what form the rich tapestry of our lives. The journey is where we discover ourselves, learn about our environment and see our reflection in the people around us. With every success and failure, love and heartbreak, excitement and disappointment, we begin to discover all the layers and nuances of life. Even as being materially successful is important to some extent, the complete focus on the goal means we stop living for ourselves. Therein lies the explanation to the phrase, it’s the journey not the destination that counts, because the richness is not found in the goal but in the process. And this process is the journey of life itself. Even though it is seldom perfect and hardly glamorous, it is the one life we’ve got given and the one we get to give our one best shot to.
Step off the hamster wheel of life
To become the person who can look back at life without regret, one has to step off the hamster wheel of life. Within this predictable life cycle of growing up, having a successful career, getting married with kids, we often live a limited existence as defined by society. Stepping off the wheel is the first step towards living life on our own terms. It doesn’t mean we don’t study, get a good job or have kids. Rather, it means we question what those decisions mean to us and how they fit into our lives. We redefine our choices on our own terms and learn to follow the whisperings of our heart. Do we choose to study finance because that makes money, or do we study theater because it calls to our hearts? Are we having kids because we truly want to nurture children, or are we having it because our families say we should?
Through our patient and methodical questioning, we begin to truly know what we want out of our lives. Rather than following a prescribed standard, we get to chart the course of our own lives as we wish to lead it.
Go on a brand new adventure!
Ultimately, living a life of freedom also means that each and every single choice comes down to us. We take responsibility for our choices and do the best we can with them. We don’t wait for people to tell us what to do. We take charge. From this space, we free ourselves to live the lives we truly want to live; the one that resonates deep within us. With this deep connection to ourselves, we become our own companions and begin to find deeper meaning in day-to-day living. The adventure of each day begins with us; each action we do is full of purpose and drive, every hug we share with our loved ones fills our heart with joy.
Adventures refer to a daring, unusual or bold experience but this can mean different things to different people. Adventures of life aren’t always necessarily swashbuckling and exciting like in the movies. Sometimes, they appear in the humblest of ways. A simple smile with a stranger is a new connection coming alive between two people. It takes courage and vulnerability to smile at a stranger. This can be a huge adventure for someone who seldom does it. If everyone smiled at two other people everyday, imagine the connections forming in society, spreading out to the world like networks? Surely loneliness would become a word of the past.
To awaken one’s heart is to breathe life into it, to let it pulse and feel the joy of daily living. Enjoying our daily activities, stepping off the hamster wheel and redefining life on our own terms, can give our zombie hearts a much needed jumpstart.
If the idea of going on a big adventure is too overwhelming, perhaps the easiest way to begin is simply to smile at a stranger? Can you think of a simple way to awaken yourself? How will you unzombify your heart today?