2012 Resolution #10 - Fill Your Heart
Posted on January 10, 2012 by Maria McInnis, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
#10 in a month long series on resolutions. Today's is about the importance of filling your heart with faith, hope, gratitude and caring.
Resolve to fill your heart with faith, hope, gratitude and caring.
That which you send out into the world is what you will receive in return. Thus it is that The Golden Rule of treating others the way you wish to be treated is paramount to living a happier life. Unfortunately people not only tend to treat others in ways they would never wish to be treated, but they treat themselves terribly.
Filling your heart with faith, hope, gratitude and caring means to show these things to the world and to yourself. It means allowing yourself to live the life that you were meant to live, while being there for others. Let us explore each of these four important rules to live by.
Faith
The dictionary definition of faith states that faith is a confidence or trust in a person or thing. It also means a belief in something more then ourselves. It is the cornerstone of most religions, and so is often confused with dogma. Filling your heart with faith means allowing yourself to trust in yourself and in the world.
“Without trust, there is no love.” – Moulin Rouge
You must be willing to put trust into the future, trust being one of the hardest parts of faith to accept. The world can be a scary place…but it can also be wonderful. The world, and the people in it, are filled with beauty, uniqueness and wonder. Only by trusting in the best of the world and in people can you truly experience the wonder and come to love.
Many people find trust a difficult thing, especially if they have been betrayed in some manner. Abuse victims, divorced couples and those who have been betrayed especially find this difficult, and so they close themselves off, and sometimes push people away before trust and faith can be established, preemptively attempting to keep people away so that they cannot be betrayed. They see it as saving themselves of some hurt rather then potentially losing what could be the best thing in their life.
One must be willing to allow people in, and trust in something more then just themselves. Only then can one have faith in the world and in oneself.
Hope
Hope is defined as the feeling that what is wanted can be had, or that events will turn out for the best. This, to me, comes down to optimism and pessimism: is the glass half empty or half full?
In order to have hope, you must have optimism. This comes back to our article about finding something good, except in this case it doesn’t simply apply to people: it applies to situations and things as well. When it rains on your parade, don’t see it as a day ruined by the weather, see it as an opportunity to dance in the rain, or to organize a new event.
Hope applies to your goals in that you have to feel as though what you have set yourself out to do is possible. You must be willing to attract that hope to you: by believing it so, you allow yourself to more easily see the things around you that can help aide you along the way.
The optimist will look for anything that will line up with their ideas and ideals: a sign on the road might allow them to deviate their path in order to achieve because they have the hope and belief that this sign will lead them in the right direction. The pessimist will look for only the things they know, avoid changing their set road thinking that no one could possibly help them. That all they will find, if they veer off, is more disappointment which will waste their time.
The optimist, because he took the time to be flexible, will have success, and enrich his life in some way. The pessimist will have a longer, harder road that will end because they missed the detour signs along the way.
Having Hope means being able to believe that there truly something down that new road, and going for it.
Gratitude
Gratitude is a feeling of thankfulness or appreciation. This can be for the things you have, the things you are given and the things you haven’t yet received. In this part of the world, where so much is taken for granted, we have much to be thankful for: clean water to drink, good food to eat and those who surround us ready to help, if only we are willing to seek them out.
When we stop to give thanks, or to be gracious for the things we have, we stop taking it for granted and begin to realize the things we truly have. When we have gratitude, for health, for life and for things, we have the chance to open our hearts up to those around us. Happiness and gratitude go hand in hand, and when we are grateful, we find more to be happy about.
Gratitude is the anti-thesis of greed, and it defeats it at every turn. When we are grateful we see the spaces we have filled rather than the spaces we have left, and we allow ourselves to fill those spaces with love. According to the Law of Attraction in Quantum theory, when we focus upon the things we have, and the things that make us happy, more of those things and events will occur. It will bring more happiness in so that we have more to be grateful for.
Caring
Which brings us to our last point: Caring. Caring means to have thought or regard for things that are in your life.
“A smile is the light in your window that tells others that there is a caring, sharing person inside.” – Denis Waitley
Caring and sharing, like gratitude and happiness, go hand in hand. We need to share our thoughts and feelings with those who matter in our lives to show our caring, but what is caring? How do we show someone that we care?
It begins with respect. Considering how the things you are doing, and the things you are saying, will affect the people you truly care about is how we show respect. In respecting their values, their lives and their personal ways is how we go about this. If you care about a person, you will offer them this respect, while also sharing honesty, happiness and all the love you have to offer to them.
By filling your heart with these four things, you invite yourself into a life that is worth living. By living the life you were meant to live, you can begin to realize your dreams, and make them a reality.
