The Longest (but most worthwhile) Journey You’ll Ever Take…

There is a Sioux Native American saying that says, “the longest journey you will ever take is the 18 inches from your head to your heart.”

I want to unpack this with you today, because, in my opinion, it’s the single biggest lesson we can comprehend as humans to truly create positive change, not just in our personal lives, but in the world at large.. and let’s be real, the world needs it more than ever before.

To me, that quote refers to the journey of mere knowledge to genuine understanding/embodiment. It’s the journey from thinking to feeling, from knowledge to wisdom that so many of us are on.. especially those of you reading this email.

Over the past few weeks it has become more and more clear to me that all of this inner work of self-development, healing our inner child, rewiring our subconscious beliefs, etc. is for the sake of coming back to the heart as our main guiding force in life.

All of us were born into this world with this intuitive understanding — using our heart & our instincts to respond to life within and around us. A baby doesn’t have to be taught how to love and see the good in people, if it’s felt, it is expressed. No matter the situation, the color of someone’s skin, what they have or haven’t done.. it’s just a deep recognition of our shared humanity that we are all naturally born with.

As we grow up though, most of us start to learn how to operate from the mind instead of the heart, how to value logic over intuition and intellect over feelings. Add to that our own painful human experiences, such as being bullied in middle school, getting our heart’s broken in relationships, making “mistakes”, or any other hurtful experience we inevitably go through as human beings.

The more hurt & societal conditioning we experience, the more we move to the mind. We begin to build walls around our hearts to protect ourselves from feeling the pain, the hurt, the guilt and the shame that we were never taught how to process in a healthy way.

There’s a spectrum here, but on the worst end of it, I think we have all seen people who are literally like the walking dead.. lifeless in their eyes, robotic in their movement. That, to me, is the extreme version of living from your head > your heart. It’s the sad reality of what happens when we shut off emotion, close ourselves off out of protection, and isolate ourselves from the world.

But that’s also often where most people have the biggest chance of awakening to a new way of being.. of starting the journey from the head to the heart.

Knowing my audience, I know most of you didn’t have to hit rock bottom to begin on this journey, but nevertheless, I think it’s important to gain perspective on what’s going on.

Despite your starting point, the inner voyage of coming back to the heart is one of choosing love > fear. It’s one of being courageous enough to follow our true desires, to answer the calling on our hearts, and to see the good in all people, including yourself and the parts you’ve deemed unloveable.

This doesn’t mean accepting disrespect or just being passive in life by bypassing your true feelings or boundaries.. not at all. This life is built on paradox’s, and the truth is that one can set boundaries and do what’s best for oneself while still keeping your heart open.

My friend recently remembered this powerful lesson as she was in conflict with another friend of ours and really hurt by what had unfolded between them. There was a disagreement, which both of them unconsciously viewed through their own patterns and past hurtful experiences to create stories about what went down. This is normal, it’s exactly how the subconscious creates meaning that impacts how we show up in the world.

I, being good friends with both of them, had the privilege of seeing both sides. Of hearing both stories and perspectives, which, as someone who understands how humans unconsciously operate, was such a powerful reminder of this journey from our heads to our hearts we have the opportunity to take in life.

Relationships are our biggest catalysts for growth and a direct mirror for our own evolution (through the triggers we experience that challenge us to develop). And, when we’re in conflict with another, what usually happens is that we disconnect from seeing the other person through love. Out of protection and the egoic tendency to want to be right about one’s own perception, we start to see and act through a lens of fear and hurt that comes out in various ways depending on our patterns (usually some form of attacking or withdrawing).

This disconnect from our hearts blocks us from seeing the other person as fully human. It has a way of shutting off our shared humanity and remembering that deep down we are all just doing our best with the cards we’ve been dealt. That underneath all of the undesirable or hurtful actions of another (or ourselves) is just an unmet need of a hurt or scared inner child.

Again, this doesn’t excuse anyone's behavior, which may need to be talked about and set boundaries around, but it does invite in compassion and empathy even when one feels hurt.. which IS the medicine. That is the whole point of coming back to the heart. It’s how we heal ourselves, our relationships and the world.

Because what happens in that moment of zooming out and choosing to remove the personalization of the other person’s behavior (aka not taking it personally), is that you start to SEE them as human again, and it opens the door for curiosity into their experience.

I've always said that the single most important piece to remember about relationships is that they are about RELATING. Trying to understand and deeply empathize with another person's experience. Doing so does NOT make yours wrong or invalid, it just allows us to put ourselves in their shoes and reconnect.

When you truly remember that hurt people hurt people, and that deep down everyone has the same shared humanity of love and wanting to belong, you dissolve the walls that disconnected you from love… from that which you truly are and desire to feel underneath all of it.

This is intimacy, this is healing, this is growth.

This journey requires more than just intellectual growth however; it requires emotional courage. Our hearts, often guarded by walls of self-preservation, must be willing to break free from the shackles of fear and vulnerability. It is in this vulnerability that true connection and compassion lie. By embracing our own emotions and allowing ourselves to be affected by the joys and sorrows of others, we unlock the transformative power of empathy.

That’s your access point of freedom. Because the hate, the anger, the resentment you feel towards another always resides inside of you. It hurts YOU, it holds you back from growth, disconnecting you from your Truth and disconnecting you from the very thing you most desire — connection. Not to mention what holding on to these hurtful stories do to your health..

It reminds me of the quote, “holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”. We forget how much we are actually doing this to ourselves..

So, it is through the process of journeying back to the heart, of choosing to see past the BS stories and recognize your shared humanity that everything begins to shift back into place — a place more beautiful and connected than you even knew before.

Seeing this truly land for my friend once again, amidst her hurt and pain, was so incredibly beautiful. I felt her whole body soften, her defense system shut down and her love come back online.

This is why I do the work that I do.

This is why I am such a believer of taking life’s struggles, our triggers and our pain, and transforming them into gold for our own evolution. Using them to catalyze us into our most authentic, embodied versions of Self to create our wildest dreams. Using them as fuel to continue journeying down to the heart.

It’s the stories of the mind that block our connection to our hearts. That's why we do the subconscious work, to uncover and heal from the painful experiences and the inaccurate meanings we drew from them that are continuing to cloud our perception and block our ability to act and respond from love, even when we’re hurt (and this also applies to self-love..).

The magic that I have witnessed in my life from committing to this path of traveling from the head to the heart is unexplainable. It doesn’t mean everything is always perfect or that I don’t also get triggered and hurt still (I'm still human), but it does mean that my struggles are much easier to navigate now and that my ability to quickly come back to love and do the right thing is miles from where it used to be.

And that changes everything.

This process, though again, not always easy, has allowed me to attract the most beautiful, deep and intimate relationships into my life. I’ve grown alongside my husband over the past 10 years to develop the healthiest, most beautiful partnership.. I’ve continued to follow my heart in doing the work I know I’m here to do despite the challenges along the way, and overall I just feel like I’ve experienced more love and joy in the past 5 years then I think most people do in their whole lives — bold statement but I truly believe it.

Because living from the heart is a completely different experience than living and making decisions from the mind alone.. it’s night and day and that directly reflects in your reality.

I’d love to show you what’s possible when you begin this journey back to love.

Your relationships, your career, your self-love, your experiences, your health.. all of it flourishes as a result.

And you deserve to experience that magic, that healing, that level of depth, joy and connection. It’s possible for all of us, no matter where we’re at or how much we’ve been hurt in the past.

I invite you into this transformative journey through my 1:1 mentorship program — a 3-month, personalized experience to help dissolve your limiting beliefs and reconnect you to the most powerful organ & energy center in your body.. the heart.

Click here to book a free connection call.

I love you, thank you for being here.