Write Your Heart

Transcript

I want to talk about writing your heart.

So in the free course from Professor Laurie Santos on Coursera it’s called “The Science of Wellbeing”. She has looked at a lot of the scientific literature and reviewed a lot of studies and metanalysis and books and fantastic self exploration to find out what really makes a person happy.

She talks about these seemingly random things like random acts of kindness and getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise and one of the things she talks about is letters of gratitude.

Well expressions of gratitude more commonly but letters of appreciation a really powerful way that we can improve our lives and give a wonderful gift to someone important to us.

In each moment we have the power to affirm how wonderful peoples contributions are. To recognize them and give space to that loving powerful part of ourselves that really does appreciate what other people do it us. To give live and breath to that gratitude that can take root in our bellies in our heart and give fruit in our hearts.

I kind of procrastinated on this for awhile but I do try to send people messages every few months like “Hey this is how you’ve been a great friend to me”. This is a thing many friends will remember about me.

I wrote out this letter to a friend Chris Guida. If you go back to one of the earlier episodes of his podcast, I don’t remember which it is but I will link on the site to the episode where I interviewed Chris about his health journey.

Yes that’s exactly what I wanted to thank him for because he allowed me to use his private gym and showed me a lot of stuff relating to that, helped me with supplements and encouraged me to get into yoga to improve my flexibility. All of these kinds of things that he does because he is so passionate about it.

I like to say a true master of something will always be willing to give their knowledge. You see someone who is the novice and they discover one or two tricks or maybe created techniques of their own and often these people will be quite stingy with their knowledge.

The person who has struggled so hard and so long to learn the value to put their passion into action, they will be very open with their knowledge.

If you ask they will normally be elated. I’m so glad you asked because I just value this so much I want someone to pass it along to.

And that’s really what Chris embodies. I am so grateful for him taking those months to show me how to exercise correctly and still coach me in many aspects when he gets a chance.

So I wrote him a letter and procrastinated for months about giving it to him because it was like “Can I show this part of myself?”

Eventually thought, like I said in a previous episodes do it imperfectly. So if I’m not going to go to his house and read him out this letter, if I am not going to do that then I will take action anyway. Do it imperfectly do it anyway.

I sent him a message on Telegram and said “Hey Chris, I have something to tell you and it’s kind of important to me. I meant to send this letter but haven’t so I will read it out to you know…”

So I read it out in a voice message over telegram and he was moved and he really appreciated the fact that I appreciated him.

How often do people do things for others just to get taken for granted?

How nice is it that we can really take the time to appreciate those things?

The other thing like I’m talking about, writing your heart, so sometimes when I do write these or before I start to I think “Is this going to be enough? Am I really going to be able to express what I truly want to say?”

Once again this principle do it imperfectly comes out.

Because really if you write your heart that will be enough. People will know, they will understand the depth of appreciation that you are trying to express and they will be moved to tears if you just write your heart.