In my early forties, I was burnt out. I left my career (a global communications director working with some of the biggest names in sport) behind and followed my heart to Antigua and Barbuda. Immersion in nature restored my wellness and fed me with inspiration for True Business, a ground-breaking business model that leads with your heart.
Business conducted from the head can become distorted by misguided ego agendas, assumptions, limiting beliefs and what worked in the past. Our soul’s calling and creative expression can be ignored in pursuit of profit, and our relationships and health can deteriorate as we burn out.
Taking this radical leap of making the wisdom of your heart the creative engine of your business liberates your true nature and purpose: who you are and what you are here for. It is home to your natural talents and gifts, creative potential, and the contribution to the wider world that brings you joy and fulfilment. You are free to bring your whole and authentic self to business.
As your heart guides you to focus on what matters most, resources of time and money are directed efficiently and effectively with minimal waste and distraction.
Your relationship with yourself improves as you reconnect with your values and meets your need to flourish. Then relationships with others deepen as you bring your true self and the heart’s higher nature qualities of wisdom, understanding and compassion to business relationships.
Bex Shindler, plant-based chef and founder of The Mindful Kitchen, was stuck from a fear of failing. Nine months after committing to following her heart, she was hired as the chef for the Black Eyed Peas and had a fully booked diary of Ibiza retreats fulfilling her purpose of providing compassionate food for a compassionate world.
Simon Haas, yoga philosopher and author wanted to secure book reviews. By following his heart, he has become an international speaker at the United Nations in New York, yoga festivals in Mexico, Holland, France, Lithuania, and Costa Rica selling thousands of books sharing ancient wisdom for the modern day.
Maddy Cooper, founder of sustainability marketing agency, Brilliant Noise was burnt out. Listening to her heart, Maddy reconnected to her purpose of creating a sustainable world for her children. She fell back in love with her business, pitching and winning big global brands aligned with this purpose.
Listening to your heart can transform your business – here are five tips to help you:
1. Turn down the volume.
Cut out as much external noise causing irritation, overstimulation, and stress to your mind as you possibly can.
Turn off social media, news media, newsletters from experts telling you this is the way to do it. Turn off phone notifications that constantly beep, interrupting your focus and flow, distracting, and pulling on your attention. Cut out stimulants, such as caffeine that can amplify your thoughts, exacerbating unwanted, exhausting thoughts on repeat.
This doesn’t have to be forever. For now, turn down the volume so you can hear your own heart’s wisdom speak to you.
2. Practice Meditation
The ancient practice of meditation allows us to connect deeply with the calm, wise, sacred centre of our hearts – our true self.
If your instant thought is along the lines of, I can’t meditate, I don’t know how, I can’t sit still, take a moment to be the compassionate observer of your thoughts and feelings – no judgement, simply notice them. As the witness, you can step beyond your thoughts and feelings into innocence like the Rumi Poem: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
Here you are curious, open and deeply receptive. Ask to receive your heart’s wisdom and wait a while in the quiet stillness and to listen. You will hear the calm, wise, deep, direct voice of your heart. The more you practice, the more you can discern your heart from your mind.
3. Just breathe
Join a group breathwork session where a trained breathwork facilitator guides you through breathing exercises and techniques focusing on your inhales and exhales, to move beyond your mind and into your heart’s clarity and wisdom. Breathwork can also help you move through experiences of anxiety, stress, trauma, pain, grief and depression into deep connection, love, and joy; to release stuck and stagnant energy returning you to creative flow.
4 Get your pen and paper out
Journaling is a powerful practice for receiving your heart’s wisdom, intuition, and creative inspiration. It can help you become aware of any limitations, doubts, and fears, allow you to clear them, and connect you back to your heart’s wisdom and creative flow.
Julia Cameron’s book, The Artists Way, introduces the morning pages: on waking, three pages or 20 minutes of writing a stream of consciousness to restore and revive your creativity. Try this. Or put pen to paper and journal around what is working in your business, focusing on what you appreciate and what you are grateful for. Soon enough, your heart’s wisdom will share your next clear step forward.
5. Get into nature
Step away from the computer and into the forests, rivers, oceans, meadows and trees. Breathe in the fresh air, move your body, stomp up the hill, get your feet on the earth or sandy beaches, feel silky cool ocean water on your skin. Swim, surf, walk, climb, kayak, snorkel. Let go of your busy, overactive mind and come back into your physical body – natural rhythms rebooting your nervous system.
When working on a problem, you may find solutions come to you after a walk around a lake or through a wood or along a beach. In nature your heart’s wisdom and inspiration more easily reaches you.
ABOUT KAT BYLES
Kat Byles is the Founder of True Business School, for creatives, leaders and changemakers who want to do business aligned with their true nature and purpose. Kat helps people find their calling and create a business that provides them with wellness, and creative and financial flourishing while making a contribution to humanity.
Web: www.KatByles.com & www.True-Business-School.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katbyles/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/katbyles
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katbyles/
