Guard Your Heart

What self-education did you commit to last week?  Are you listening to educational CD’s in your car? Have your purchased the book The Twelve Pillars or something else to begin reading?  What was your action plan?

A follow up to The Twelve Pillars is the book Above All Else by Chris Widener. After learning the twelve pillars and taking action, the main character, Michael, is now 72 years old as this book begins. Once again in an easy to read story format, Michael shares with his 18 year old grandson, who is working on his senior project, his life story.  In this story are life lessons for Josh, the grandson, and for ALL of us. Some of you are still learning and acting on the twelve pillars.  FANTASTIC! Some of you are now ready to take it to another level. That is where you’ll find, in my humble opinion, the book Above All Else to be the catalyst that you need.

“The single most important lesson for achieving, sustaining, and enjoying success comes from the richest man to ever live. His name is Solomon. The story goes that God gave him the choice of wealth or wisdom, and he chose wisdom.  Because of that choice, God gave him both.”  As the book goes on, Mathew shared that "when he read what Solomon said it was the most important aspect of success for him. He decided that he would live his life based on that principle.” 

What is that principle?  Solomon said, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” I want to focus on this life principle in today’s blog.

If you’re like me, my first thought is what does that really mean? “Philosophers and theologians have talked and written for millennium about what the heart is. Not only do they refer to the physical heart, but they also talk about the inner part of us that controls who we are.” Once again, I ask, “What does that really mean?” Here’s an analogy that helped me, “The brain is the physical part, but the mind is the nonphysical part that exists and drives us. The physical heart sits at the core of our body, but then you have your heart, which, though not physical, is at the core of who we are and what we do.” That helped this concept begin to make sense to me and easier to wrap my head around Solomon’s advice.

I enjoy reading the explanation the grandfather is giving his grandson because it’s in simple, layman’s terms that I can understand and also relate to on many levels. “The mind, the will, the emotions, the soul, the heart are all wrapped up into one.”  I can agree with that.  It’s the “me” that isn’t physical. Ah, finally I’m wrapping all my questions and thoughts into a little neater package. It is our morals and values, our ethics.  It is our courage, our fear, it’s the spiritual part of who we are. It’s the intangibles, the internal force that drives each of us.

Re-reading this book, for at least the third time, it has also comes at a good time as some of my internal dialogue has been examining my own values and what does actually drive my thinking and actions. And before we get too far into this, I must remind you as the reader and myself most of all, that this is a journey. What I’m learning and doing at 63 is very different than when I was 35.  Do I wish I had had this information earlier? Of course. But the good news is I have had people come into my life as mentors, I’ve read books that I hadn’t read earlier, and now I have an even better understanding and appreciation for the importance of self-education/personal development.  It’s critical to ALL learning and moving ahead in any area of our lives. 

When I was in my 20’s and 30’s, my reading choices were primarily focused on my teaching.  Books I read were how to fine tune my craft, or I was reading the books I had my fifth graders read.  All the reading was great learning for me as a teacher and also great literature with life lessons for my 10-11 year olds. What I didn’t do then, however, was apply things to my personal life. Yes, I wish I had been open to another level of learning earlier, but the good news is I was eventually open. That openness and learning on a personal level has changed my life in all areas.  For those of you reading this; no matter what age, my hope for you is that YOU will make a decision NOW to follow Solomon’s wisdom, “Above all else, guard your heart as it’s the wellspring of life.” Maybe you’ve come to the realization that you have already been following this concept most or all of your life, you just didn’t have a term for it. If that’s the case, I congratulate you and urge you to pass this along to your children, grandchildren, and others.

Two words of Solomon’s quote intrigue me.  The first is wellspring. “Your heart is the wellspring of life.”  According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, a wellspring is a source of continual supply. If we all have a wellspring then aren’t we the ones that determine if that well is dry or full? I would suggest then that our focus to be learning and growing each and every day in order to be the best we can be is what fills our wellspring. If we think we don’t have time, we already know how to do something, we’ve been doing something for all these years and it worked 10 years ago, we’re complacent with our life, we’re willing to accept we’re not in the kind of shape we should be for our age rather than change, we’re ignoring the health information about how sugar is harmful etc. etc. I believe those are the things that “dry up” our well. If the heart is the wellspring of life, how would you classify how full or how empty your wellspring is?

The second word that intrigues me is “guard” your heart. Guard my heart? That’s an interesting choice of words or is it? When I think about guarding something, I think about something that’s valuable and it could be stolen. Hmmm….Thinking along those lines, I realize there are all sorts of things that try to steal our hearts. As Chris Widener explains in the book, “The things that are at war against the proper care and feeding of our heart are the foes the enemies” then I believe there are lots of them.

In order to follow this line of thought, I’m looking at what my heart is focused on and are those things filling or emptying my wellspring? We’ve all heard/read about well-known news anchors, movie stars, and people of influence "falling apart." Why is that? I would venture to say that their success was bigger than their heart and it needed to be the other way around. What about the people around you?  Can you identify a boss, co-worker, friend, family member etc. whose success has been bigger than their heart? Their title, their status, their lack of honor and credibility has led them to be disrespectful, their words and actions don't match, and they seem to only be guided by what THEY want and what THEY think THEY can get out of a person, situation etc. Focusing only on personal power, control, and a lack of ethics are all "Foes to our heart."

If our heart, according to the words of Solomon, is at the core of who we are and what we do then it’s the foundation for our life.  It is our morals and values, our ethics.  It is our courage, our fear, it’s the spiritual part of who we are. Somewhere along the path our lives take us, we make choices. It’s not just the movie stars, politicians, CEO’s, business people, ministers who have fallen off because their foundation isn’t strong, it can happen to anyone. I would suggest that if you, me, or anyone is not paying attention to the “cultivation” of our hearts; we can fall off that path just like the others.  If, however, we’ve made mistakes along the way, we learn from them, and we realize that our foundation, the “wellspring of life,” has been compromised we can “go back” and rebuild.

So how do we foster our heart? One of the messages Mathew relays to his grandson is that we must “discipline our lives to make room for the heart to constantly grow.” What I have been writing about in most of my blogs, I now realize, comes down to taking the time to foster my heart. We all get caught up in our business, our job, and life in general which leads to a lack of attention to our heart, our soul. “Most of life just happens. But the good stuff doesn’t seem to just happen. You have to make it happen. You have to discipline yourself to make it happen.”

My challenge for you this week is to take time to be alone.  Yes, I said alone. That means no music, no social media, no cell phone, no distractions…totally alone. Be alone with your thoughts. We are surrounded by technology and many more distractions which tend to keep us outwardly focused rather than inwardly focused. ”When we take away all the chatter and distractions, we can finally actually connect with all that is inside of us.”

I wish you a week of reflection on Solomon’s words, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”  As always, I enjoy hearing your thoughts and comments.