_
“Take the next highway exit to the right,” indicated the copilot, looking at the GPS.
“This looks weird, more like a path than a road,” The three travelers exclaimed after a while.
“Have I taken the wrong turn?” asked the driver in a reflective tone.
“I think we have,” Answered the eldest passenger in the car.
“Hold on, I am enjoying the bends. Could we stay on this path for a while?” requested the driver to the other travelers.
_
What if, amid an exponentially accelerating world, the key to true growth, success, and excellence was connected to (re)learning to slow down?
Yeah! Resist the temptation of moving too fast.
I repeat this mantra to myself whenever I fall into the trap of impatience and information overwhelm.
_
This post came to life just 10’ minutes after choosing to drive slowly, at least for a while. By then, I had connected to a solution for the two main issues I was worrying about. I felt and thought, Ohh My God! I just needed to slow down.
Yes, I am the driver in this true story. My wife is the co-pilot and my mother is the eldest passenger. We are at the onset of an end-of-the-year road trip down to Spain. This time though we are not taking the usual route. We are heading west for a change.
_
Does it also happen to you that you need some extra time to TURN OFF and disconnect from the office to-dos and emotional concerns that stay attached to your head, heart, and gut?
A few days before setting out on this road trip I had made a social media post that stated “World Peace begins with Inner Peace”. Someone I respect asked for curious clarification on it.
How could it be this way?
Even, Is it possible at all?
I do not see the connection…
Neither how world peace could be attained…
This is what the comment I received on my post somehow conveyed to me.
Beyond faith and belief–grounded in research– I aimed for the simplest explanation for this bold small-to-big correlation.
And there it was, right in front of my eyes, just as I had experienced:
Moving slowly unlocks possibilities.
What do I mean by it?
This is precisely what inner peace is ultimately about: not being afraid, worried, or preoccupied. Not being in a hurry but present to what is –here and now.
Let’s try to practice it right now: breathing in and breathing out from the heart.
Grateful for what was –in the past.
Joyful, and trustful for what is ahead –in the future.
The thing is… When you are in this state of being your whole body is driven by high-quality emotions and thoughts. From a biological perspective, this activates the release of an endocrine cocktail made of more than 1.200 neurotransmitters and regenerative hormones like DHEA and oxytocin.
Can you notice it? Keep slowly breathing.
If you manage to persist, your physiology will lead you into a state of elevated biological presence.
Staying longer in that state of presence enables you to “naturally” experience an intensified sense of connection–with what is deeply inside you and what is beyond yourself. It is a kind of “high”.
When I am in there I experience a sense of universal faith. It is not a cognitive idea, nor a thought, but a “happening”.
It’s difficult to put it into words, it is both subtle and profoundly strong.
I am sure you have also been already there–at some point.
Let’s try to connect to it once more…
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
From the heart.
Present, grateful, joyful, trustful.
As you continue breathing –and reading– I am gonna carry on with my clarification talk.
In that “positive” and regenerative state, your heart beats in coherence. In doing so, it sends a message to your brain: it’s safe to open up.
In that state, you are at the other end of the survival mode, and its freeze, flight, and fight responses to the stress and hustle of every day life. It is then that something else is animated…
Yeah! Your neuronal pathways open up.
It is the perfect time to dream and imagine all that is possible.
Time to create beyond habitual thinking and feeling patterns.
As you slow down a different neural route is engaged –that is what happened when I unintentionally took on a different road.
As I drove slowly my senses relaxed, I became one with the wheel and the road. I engaged with the landscape and everything else around me differently. I activated my curiosity and a renewed sense of exploration and wonder.
The different road -neural route– helps you feel, see, sense, perceive, and understand things from a different perspective and even different levels of conscious awareness. Different possibilities are “naturally” unlocked.
The more you live in a state of inner slowness and inner peace, the more you can grow and become your true self. This is supported by scientific and academic research.
The Heartmath Institute refers to it as “adding heart”.
Positive Psychology expert Barbara Fredrickson explains it through her “broaden and build” theory.
Also, you are invited to explore and discover more about it by developing your emotional intelligence under the guidance of Daniel Goleman.
Each one of the links offers a course to help you develop self-awareness, positivity, and slowness. All of them (self-awareness, positivity, and slowness) are heart-based leadership muscles.
_
Tell me, have I now brought up that familiar feeling once again? The one that surfaces when you are bombarded with newsletters and infinite information about trends, reports, the latest insight, or must-do courses, practices, and exercises?
You are right –following EVERYONE ELSE’s RHYTHM and insights is exhausting. Indeed, our attention is being called out and hijacked ALL THE TIME.
Yeah! It takes strength to hold on and move slowly –in the direction of your heart.
We live in a world that moves exponentially faster. That is exactly what I am talking about.
That is why it is essential to develop the ability to slow down–intentionally.
Remember what we discussed in the previous journal post? Energy follows Attention. Attention increases focus. Focus facilitates Awareness. Awareness empowers Choice.
When you move slowly you have more CHOICE.
The thing is…
Inner peace comes from ethical, emotional, biological, and spiritual alignment. You experience it in the moments when what you think, feel, do, and become are in resonance.
When you ARE in this state, your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and your entire biology open up to higher creative states. New possibilities and untapped potential can be seen and realized.
For example, scientific research confirms that meditation, compassion, and loving-kindness change the structure of the neural networks in your brain.
It also shows that belief in your ability to change is fundamental to activating the biology of change itself. It is about trusting that–even without knowing exactly how–you will learn and find out what is necessary along the way.
Yes, science tells us that when you believe something is possible, you can make it possible. Because then, new possibilities emerge.
Belief allows you to see and perceive the world differently.
_
As I write this journal post I continue reading mBraining, a book by Grant Soosalu and Marvin Oka. In the book, they compile scientific research and understanding of the three brains in your body: the head-brain, the heart-brain, and the gut-brain.
They invite me to backtrack for a moment a couple of thousand years to hear what a saffron-robed monk has to say:
“To awaken, sit calmly, letting each breath clear your mind and open your heart. The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. Those who are pure in heart and single in purpose are able to understand this most supreme truth…
_
To understand everything is to forgive everything, and forgiveness begins with focusing your mind, focusing your breath, focusing your heart. To calmly abide is the key. To sit calmly as each breath clears your mind and transforms your world. This is the secret of peace. This is the secret of existence.”
_
Soosalu and Oka, 2012
As the Buddha said: “The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart”.
Today, we better understand what ancient traditions have been telling us for millennia. Yes, this is the time when contemporary science, the latest academic research, and ancient wisdom meet and celebrate. If you keep reading you will see what I mean by that.
_
After a while, we –the ones on the road trip– chose to find our way back to the highway. Don’t get me wrong, I also found a sense of release in doing so. Somehow it was the right moment to accelerate. We still had 700 kilometers to drive that day.
This is also to say, that it is not about fast versus slow, it’s about knowing when it is time to slow down and when it is time to speed up. It’s about discernment.
Have you thought about it?
How do you pace yourself?
Yeah. I am making my point that developing your ability to intentionally pace yourself is of utmost relevance.
Let me also put it another way:
True value is found not so much in WHAT you do, but in HOW you do it.
Sure the why–your purpose– is fundamental. Yet what I am talking about here is that what truly matters is not the quantity of things you do, but the quality of the ones you bring about.
It is not about the achievement itself, but the transformation that happens in the process of achieving.
It’s about the journey, not the destination.
_
By now, we had passed Brussels, where a glimpse of the European heart could be felt. Respect, Diversity, Culture, Peace, and Prosperity resonated in my heart. Oh, Europa! One day, we will better understand that what truly unites us resonates and flourishes from the heart. The flag of the city of Brussels –shown in the picture– seems to already know it ; )
We were about 1.300 kilometers from the first accidental highway exit, with Mont Saint Michel in front of us.
May I have your permission to stop for a while and share something personal?
In reflecting on pace and the power of slowness, I also realized that along the way, there are things one must learn to let go of.
In this regard, I often show signs of resistance.
Does the same thing happen to you?
_
Since a young age, I have been secretly collecting stones from all around the globe.
Silently I converse with them and their unique presence.
They guide me, sharing their wisdom and strength.
They teach me to be patient and attend to life’s subtleness.
These stones have been on Earth for ages–literally– witnessing and experiencing things I can only remotely imagine.
How fascinating!
Over the past three decades, I’ve gathered quite a few. Recently they began to tell me it was time to let them go.
At first, I held on. They made me feel protected, guided, and secure.
Yet, after a while, I realized they were also adding weight to –and taking space of– my life’s backpack.
Yeah! From time to time, daring to let go frees us.
_
It was the perfect moment. I was in the perfect place.
Letting go was an act of reaffirmation.
I’ve grown, I am growing, and I’m ready to move on, guided by my inner strength –the strength that holds the seeds of my inner peace.
Take a moment to slow down, breathe deeply, and ask yourself:
What do you need to let go, so you can affirm that today you are stronger than yesterday?
Yeah. Remember: strength is needed to find your unique pace in a world filled with distractions, fast versions of anything and everything, made to capture your attention.
_
Let’s keep moving forward.
Please be advised that we’re going to move slowly. There’s something else I’d like you to closely examine.
This is the brain in your heart:
© 2015 HeartMath Institute. Source: https://www.heartmath.org/our-heart-brain
The brain in your heart was discovered back in 1991 by Dr. J. Andrew Armour, a pioneering neurocardiologist.
The heart-brain functions independently from the head-brain. It can learn, remember, feel, and sense.
It is made of 40,000 to 120,000 neurons.
Oxytocin, dopamine, and norepinephrine –hormones once believed only to be secreted in the head’s brain, are also secreted by the heart.
_
“Your heart is an information processing center that sends important information throughout the body and can have a profound influence in your (head) brain” – HeartMart Institute (Childre et Al., 2016)
_
The brain in the heart and the one in the head are in constant communication. Contrary to common assumptions, the heart’s brain is the one that “talks” more. 80% of the time!
In fact, direct connections and constant communication between the two organs follow 4 complementary paths:
Neurological: over the nervous system.
Biochemical: over the endocrine system, hormones, and neurotransmitters.
Biophysical: pulse waves over the arterial system.
Energetic: electromagnetic fields, within and beyond your biological body.
The thing is…
When your heart beats coherently –this is when your heart is modulated by high-quality and regenerative emotions such as appreciation, care, love, kindness, patience, compassion, joy, gratitude, calm, and beauty– then, the head-brain listens attentively. It slows down and opens up.
The result?
Improved perception, cognition, judgment, emotional processing, memory, and a long etcetera. Scientific research says that your degree of heart coherence also affects the head-brain centers involved in cognitive performance.
What’s more, the heart’s brain processes emotional experiences and is involved in processing & regulating emotional affect. Direct connections between the heart’s brain and the hypothalamus, the thalamus, the amygdala, and the cerebral cortex – the emotional processing centers in your head’s brain– ensure that the heart modulates emotional processes and the perception of the world around you.
For example, when your heart beats coherently your ability to sustain positive emotional states is heightened. Also, your ability to learn and be creative is enhanced.
How can you intentionally achieve that?
_
Breathing in
Breathing out
Slowly
Rhythmically
From the heart
Go on, try it again.
6 seconds–inhale.
6 seconds–exhale.
Stay there–breathing for a while.
Do not push. Do not rush.
Let patience grow strong and unleash your ability to reconnect with life’s flow.
Well done! You just took some time to balance and build resilience.
_
Although it might sound new to you please consider that all this is backed with more than 20 years of scientific research and over 500 independent peer-reviewed studies. If you are interested in learning more I recommend “Heart Intelligence“, a book published in 2016.
_
Let’s now circle back and observe once more what triggered this post. My point is:
World peace begins with inner peace, one heart at a time.
World peace is a collective change journey that starts with cultivating peace in the garden of your own heart.
Remember change happens slowly –one step at a time.
Change is a process, not an event.
A process that is not linear but rather messy and complex.
You know it already: there is a need for self-respect, self-love, self-compassion, and joy along the way.
That is how you nurture your heart.
Developing inner peace is about building resonance at the ethical, emotional, biological, and spiritual dimensions of who you are. It requires you to slow down, develop embodied presence, and take time to nourish your relationship and sense of connection with the innate intelligence that is held at the cellular level, within yourself.
Developing inner peace requires you to remember to live in the here and now. With mindfulness (and heartfulness): curiously paying attention to what is happening in the present moment –at the level of your body, thoughts, and emotions– with an open non-judgmental attitude.
At this point, Richard Strozzi-Heckler would remind us: “By bringing our attention to (body) sensations we can bring ourselves into the present moment” .
Shall we? Once more:
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
From the heart.
Do it slow, do it with heart.
It is about how you are “being” in the world.
Let it unfold, dissolve, transform.
Yeah! It is a practice.
_
Sufi leadership expert, Moid Siddiqui, would insist: “Leading with/from the heart can be developed, cultivated, nurtured, nourished and enriched”.
Yet, it requires time.
Time to be, time to reflect, time to build awareness.
Time to sense, time to feel, and to perceive differently.
Scientific research also says that impatience overrides your intuitive heart whispers.
Take a moment to notice: What is in your heart?
_
Once more: slow is the new flow is about finding your own pace.
This–your life, your work, your existence– is not a sprint, but a marathon. Not a single game but a championship.
Keep noticing.
_
It took me a while until I was able to fully understand it: Peace is made with no fight.
A new world needs a new conscious awareness.
Heart-possibility unfolds when your ethics, emotions, biology, and spirit are in resonance.
Yet, watch out!
Your biological self is hardwired with a biased survival preset. Freeze, flight, and fight reactions will always be the default unless you train yourself, and you INTENTIONALLY CHOOSE to opt for growth.
_
Moment to Moment.
Almost without realizing it, we were already down to Spain. Not far from home.
Taking the route through the west had indeed opened a new set of possibilities.
I had better understood what I already knew.
In the process of growth, there is a spiral effect.
Going back every year also helps me realize how much I have changed and how much I am the same.
It is a life-long journey, an eternal practice. It never ends.
As Master Aristotle wisely said: “We are what we repeatedly do”.
Yeah, what you practice you become more of. We already saw that neuroplasticity, neurogenesis, and epigenetics confirm it. What you think, feel, and do shapes who you become. In every here and now.
And because we are interdependent beings, your individual change –inevitably– leads to collective change.
Your change influences your family, your friends, your team, your colleagues, your organization, your community, your business, our society.
_
Can you already sense how your change makes a difference?
Yeah, you are invited to feel it.
Your individual change transforms the world.
Sure, the overarching system also influences you. It is a–spiraling–loop. But the only real control you have is in WHAT YOU CHOOSE to –intentionally– act on and redress. This is how you start to affect everything else.
When I look toward the future I see a peaceful world on the horizon. That is what my heart is talking to me about.
Can you also see what is to come?
I see and feel how you are starting to better grasp it all, as I did once.
No, I also do not know all the details of how this will come to unfold. We may have to navigate endless unknowns, yet I do know that, as I continue walking along this path, I want to contribute with peace in my heart. I am committed to actualise more of my soul purpose, and for this I have certainty that he –my heart– is my best compass.
Rmember,
Leading from the heart has no list of to-does but moments of being.
There is no magic formula, it is a self-discovery quest.
It can not be prescribed, but only described.
It requires self-awareness, persistence, intention, and determination.
It has to be practiced.
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
From your heart.
In building your practice you develop your heart-based leadership muscles. That is why coaching helps you with it.
And this is precisely what you are doing here, one blog post –one step– at a time.
_
We –together– are regarding the seed that is already within, facilitating informed insight and structured reflection, thus allowing for your heart to be nurtured, for the seed to grow, and for you to flourish.
Yeah, there is still more you should know about it all, yet for now… It is coaching time ; )
_
Close your eyes and visualize:
You are living and leading from the heart, moving slowly –so you can speed up at the right time.
What do you notice?
How does it feel?
What does it bring?
_
Do not hesitate to share it with me, I would love to hear more and learn from your insight.
Ohhh! You would like to practice a bit more on your own?
Here it takes to a collection of Heart-based Leadership practices for you to workout and self-develop.
Power to you ⚡
_
