Can't Change Your Mind? Move to Your Heart

The 18-Inch Trip That Can Change Your Life

Several years back, I suffered a rather debilitating head injury. I’m fine now, but don’t ask my children. Anyway, in the process of what felt like a never-ending cycle of pain, confusion and misery, I learned several rather important things.

My mother told me, and I was thought it was true, but now I know for sure that thinking is hard work. New thoughts and ideas take more work than anything else.

It turns out that changing your mind takes more energy than heavy lifting. 

But, I’ve also learned something else; once you are open to changing your mind, it is much easier to do so the next time.

 Moreover, once you learn the first thing, the next thing comes much more readily. In other words, learning is not only fundamental, it is exponential; it becomes more and more rapid.

One of the most helpful tools I had during that period of recovery was a book called HeartMath. Researchers at the HeartMath Institute point out that the heart also has a brain and it is often much more intelligent than the one in our head. During that time of confusion and pain, I made a deliberate decision to move my reasoning to my heart.

As I did, a new world opened to me. My thinking was more compassionate and caring, but it was much more. I was open to new ideas and found it almost natural to try things that had previously caused confusion.

In less than a year, I learned to design and make clothes. I take long road trips, and when I do I travel the back roads and talk to locals about local things. Each new encounter is responded with love and compassion.

I still get flustered when my sewing machine “shows off,” and I am known to flip out when I am lost. But when I do, I take a short 18-inch trip from my head to my heart and I can see so much more clearly.

Be you, be well, be traveling.

Bertice Berry, PhD.

www.NDNDdesigns.com