Here's How to Get to the Heart of the Matter
The word today is efficiency. It’s not the first time I’ve chosen this word from the grab bag of words I use sometimes to prompt my writing. In fact last time it sparked this: 5 Ways to Be Efficiently Creative.
But, this time I wanted to put it back and draw another card. I wanted to pull something different, a bigger, sexier, juicier word, a word that would really get my engine going, a word I could really get behind and be jazzed about.
Instead, efficiency. Okay, there must be a reason this word jumped out at me. The first things that popped into my head were “corporate” and “color within the lines” and “beige.” All three concepts I have a tendency to run from energetically. Yet, I know there’s something important here to discover, another way of looking at efficiency, a thought changing notion begging to be brought forth. In that moment it was as if efficiency, the word itself, was perhaps aspiring to be more, to define a deeper truth.
So, digging a little further, how is "being efficient" personified? Well, to me it describes someone who uses her time well. Someone who uses economy in getting things accomplished, in other words, one who trims the fat off in order to really focus on the heart of the matter.
Ah, the heart of the matter. That’s it. Now we’re getting somewhere. Now we’re talking about efficiency on a grander, more macro scale. Life efficiency: meaning a life that’s focused cleanly and clearly on what matters, what’s important to the heart.
So, consider this:
Then once you're clear on that, trim the fat, only keeping what matters to and will serve the highest good of the heart, you, your life and the way you're meant to live it.
What are heart matters? Here are four questions to probe:
- What are the projects in your world that feel right, for all the right reasons, for you? Career choices that excite you, that propel towards a feeling of purpose?
- What causes speak to your heart in a way that feels transformative, for others and for yourself?
- Where do you love to spend your time and with whom?
- Who are the people in your life who fill you up and in whose presence you feel empowered, who bring out the best in you and who support you? And, conversely, who are those who don’t (you know who they are)?
Once you have some answers to these simple, yet deep inquiries, getting to the heart of the matter means clearing all away the superfluous, ineffective, disconnected, judgmental and incongruent distractions, in order to clear the pathway for what matters most to your heart.
Living efficiently in this way, what will happen, at least to my way of thinking, is that more of us will lead, live, work, love and communicate from and through the heart.
Nothing beige about that!
What are your matters of the heart?
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