What’s the difference between living and leading your life?
I believe that leading your life is essential for personal, spiritual, and professional growth. When you lead your life, you set a vision and intentionally resolve to advance from a lower state to a higher state of being. By choice. You don’t just sit around and let things be if you’re not happy – you commit to your potential and you are going for greatness.
So there is a huge difference between “just living” and leading your life. Leading your life means you’re not just resigning to your current circumstances and live life as it is. You consciously commit to take the driver’s seat and make a choice about what kind of life you want to live, what kind of person you want to be, and how you want to show up.
What does it mean to lead your life with love and your heart?
You are willing to show up for your Heart’s Voice, even when things get tough, scary and challenging. You know yourself and you’re not letting yourself be ruled by fears and you have a clear vision of where you want to go. To live and lead with your heart means to live listening to what makes you feel good from within holistically.
It means letting that feeling be what unapologetically guides you. You consciously surround yourself with people who nourish your soul, people who lift you up and make you want to be the best you that you possibly can be, and who honor, respect, and love you for who you truly are. Leading with heart means that you lead your life led by love.
It means you take ownership of your life, it means that you know and cares about what inspires and empowers not only you but others too. Heart-based leadership is about caring enough to know what is important to yourself, and others. To lead with your heart, you must love the people you are leading – which starts with loving yourself.
Here are 5 examples to lead with your heart:
- Quiet your mind so that your heart can speak
If you’re just rushing and stressing around you won’t be able to access any kind of clarity. Stop pushing yourself so hard, instead – allow yourself to be still so your heart can speak. You need to disconnect in order to fully reconnect. It means going from all the busyness (constant doing) to be present with your inner state.
- Redefine success your own way
Every life has value and purpose, you are unique. Living and leading with your heart requires measuring achievement by how well you live and love each day instead of how many things you get done. It involves re-writing the rules of how things “should be” and start to act from a place of alignment and your inner truth
- Take the risk of being vulnerable and seen as who you truly are
Don’t let fear guide your actions and choices. Instead of holding yourself back, allow yourself to be vulnerable. Allow yourself to be truly seen and heard. Being “sensitive” is not a weakness but a strength, it’s a superpower that enables your life’s most genuine experiences such as authentic interactions, and fulfilling and wholehearted relationships.
- Change your thoughts and you’ll change the world
Your mindset matter big time and the energy of the thoughts you have fuels your emotions which will create different outcomes. All this combined makes you a powerful creator of your own reality. You can choose to see and perceive the world with your heart and from the lens of love. When things change inside you, your whole life and world will change.
- Surrender and let the flow of life change you
Don’t obsessively over-plan things. Planning is all happening in the mind, and when you realize how little planning you actually need, there is space to recognize that you are alive right now. And in that aliveness, let your heart glow and it will always guide your way serving as a compass that you always can count on.
Lead and live your life with intention
Living and leading your life with the heart is incredibly rewarding because you start to relax. You stop constantly using your mind to analyze, plan, organize, and figure every single little thing and detail out. You start to put faith and trust into your higher self and a force that’s beyond your own strength. It’s a huge relief for your whole being, you get to relax.
When you lead your life with your heart, you’ll get to know the unconditioned, totally free you. You will know peace. When you relax away from all the stories that your mind has been telling you, that means your conditioned habits, patterns, and behaviors. You will discover a formless space of center and alignment that is clear, open, and inherently loving.
Here is my invitation to you
Begin to become familiar with your heart space, as it is the essence of your higher self. Quiet your mind and start to really pay attention and listen from within, let your Heart’s voice guide you in life. Be willing to choose love over fear – over and over and over again. Open your heart, make a choice to let love and your higher self in.
Life can be messy, especially if you say YES to living and leading your life fully, it will be. But if you know that the end result always will be right for you, you’ll see that the big magic is to be found in the mess. What I’ve learned is that a wise heart is a willing heart and that to live big, wide and love recklessly is — a life that’s really worth living.
If you haven’t already, I welcome you to download my free 10-step guide and workbook on how to live your best life, led from your heart.