Heart:  What's in it for me?

Why should I live "with heart"?

Heart is a very common word these days. You see its representation everywhere:  in advertisements, on products, and in countless emojis. But what does “heart” actually mean? Heart is central to all sorts of idioms. “Having your heart in the right place.” “Having a song in your heart.” “Bless your heart.” “Break your heart.” These are just some from a pretty impressive list! Clearly, heart is a central concept in our society, and is most often connected with love. But even “love” can have multiple meanings. In ancient Greek culture, there were six distinct words to distinguish the different kinds of love. Yet English lumps all those meanings into one word. When word meanings are so elusive, it is no wonder we have trouble communicating clearly.

​Achieving Consistency

Why Is It So Difficult?

For most of us, consistency is the hardest virtue to master. We’ve all had bursts of inspiration or motivation, when we’ve been excited about something that will change our lives!  We get ourselves organized.  Next, we tell people around us how great this new initiative is going to be.  Then, we get started.  And then…sometime later, or maybe pretty soon…we abandon our efforts.  We get tired. Or we get distracted.  We don’t get results fast enough.  Or we just lose interest.  Whatever the reason, in the end, we find we lack consistency.  We don’t have the discipline to keep on going.

​Finding the Benefit in Challenging Situations

A Powerful Heart-Centered Life Practice

Finding the benefit when reflecting upon pleasant times is easy. However, a key trick to increasing our enjoyment of life lies in our ability to find the benefit in unpleasant experiences. In this article, I’m going to be sharing some strategies to accomplish this.

​It only makes sense that the quicker we are at finding the benefit in emotionally challenging situations, the happier and more engaged in life we will be. And the positive outcomes of consistently finding the benefit in challenging circumstances are highly significant. Have you ever noticed? –– it’s much easier and a lot more fun to be around people who are happy and engaged in life in meaningful ways: people who don’t major in minors, and keep a level head, even in very challenging situations. 

A Simple Daily Practice To Gain Self-Control

​Pivotal Moment Temperance

​Pivotal Moment Temperance is the HCR Life Skill of developing the alertness and character strength required to be capable of responding to challenging situations with heart-empowered temperance.

It is always the quality of our thoughts (whether heart-centered, or ego-based​), that will determine whether we respond with temperance when facing a challenging situation. This is true because what we say or do is almost always preceded by what we are thinking.