Coach Your Heart
A few weeks ago a girl named Rosie approached me after church. She’d broken up with her boyfriend months before but was still struggling to be content with her life now that she was not in a relationship. Rosie told me that nothing in her life had gone right since the breakup and that everything was difficult. Her day-to-day felt like swimming against the current. She’d given up the relationship to honor God by choosing to practice celibacy, but she felt betrayed by God because she wasn’t happy and was feeling miserable.
As a friend, I asked Rosie a few questions to understand where she was coming from. When I asked her about work, she said she loved her job. When I questioned her about her social life, she said she had a good group of friends and ample opportunity to get out and socialize. When I inquired about her relationship with God, she admitted she could be more consistent in her time with Him but overall felt like she was in a good place.
I looked at her and said, “So basically not everything in your life is problematic. There are lots of things going right in your life. You’re just choosing to focus on the one thing that is not okay and let it cloud all that is okay.”
Rosie had fallen into a pit that many of us fall into. We hyperfocus on one thing we don’t like about our lives, and our dissatisfaction with that one area infects how we see other areas as well.
I understood Rosie’s plight because I’ve been in her shoes. I know what it’s like to be undone by the pain of a broken relationship. I remember being so encumbered by the shame of my teenage pregnancy that I let that shame color my thoughts about other experiences. That perpetuated other times I lost my footing, my sense of confidence, and my expectant and hopeful attitude in other areas of my life.
I know what it’s like to be an overwhelmed single parent, not sure how to take care of my business while also taking care of my soul. I know what it’s like to pour everything into my home and children, then wonder what was becoming of me as everything and everyone seemed to pass me by. I know what it’s like to feel alone, forgotten, disappointed, and exhausted and to let my thoughts and emotions color how I think and feel about everything else.
But because I’ve been there, I’ve learned something.
Head-to-Heart versus Heart-to-Head
Regardless of how we feel about what’s happening in our lives, we need to learn how to interpret our emotions. Sometimes emotion comes suddenly. We realize after the fact that we have fallen into a pit and are now way under the ground. But many times, feelings engulf us gradually. Drifts often begin with emotions that, like strong currents, gradually carry us away. Our choice to coach ourselves through our emotions can either perpetuate the pit we find ourselves in or prevent us from sinking further.
As I listened to Rosie express the ache in her heart, her disappointment in God, and her frustration with her life, I also heard her express a deep-seated belief that all was lost and nothing would ever get better.
I heard her express the loss of hope.
Rosie’s heartache had impacted her head. The way she saw her world was affected by the breakup. She used words like always, never, everything, and nothing—words of generalization that illustrated her overarching paradigm and view of her life. I heard in her voice and saw in her body language that she had lost her motivation to fight. She was overcome by waves of emotion and had sunk far enough beneath the surface that she was unable to breathe.
When our souls are impacted by pain, it affects the feelings we experience in our hearts. It also connects our experiences with our thoughts, and those thoughts feed the root system of our beliefs.
If you don’t believe you can win, you won’t feel like fighting. If you don’t feel like fighting, you won’t even bother showing up for the battle. And if you don’t show up for the battle, you’ve become your own worst enemy, because now you are the reason why winning is not even a possibility.
Our choice to coach ourselves through our emotions can either perpetuate the pit we find ourselves in or prevent us from sinking further.
My job is to convince you that winning is possible.
One of the biggest time-wasters in my life has been my lack of confidence that winning is possible. When I felt rejected, emotionally bankrupt, and heartbroken, I lost my will to fight.
I quit showing up.
I stopped trying.
I became my own worst enemy, using my words to tear myself down as if expecting less of my life would make getting less out of my life any easier. I let my heart infect my thoughts, which in turn reinforced emotions that influenced my incorrect choices.
It took me a long time to learn the lesson that I want to share with you now.
It is your job to coach your heart. You’ve got to keep tabs on your emotions. When you notice your feelings trying to take you farther than it would be wise to go, you must know how to care for your heart while coaching yourself back to emotional stability.
You are not the sum total of how you feel.
Some of your most difficult battles will be the tug-of-war between your head and your heart. Your heart cannot be the primary factor which determines how you live your life. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but your heart will lie to you and keep you from clearly seeing the truths you should act on. As Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (ESV).
You are not the sum total of how you feel.
Emotions are real, and while they should inform, they shouldn’t be in charge. If you choose to follow your heart and go with the flow of your feelings, your feelings just might pull you under.
To let your heart dictate your actions is to go dancing in a minefield. Your emotions are not equipped to lead you well.
I told you earlier in our journey together to pay attention to what you feel—to honor your emotions by recognizing the purpose of both joy and pain, and to honor your soul by making room for joy and making the effort to walk fully through pain to healing. There is a time for that.
But now I want to tell you to look deeply into what your emotions are doing to you. If your emotions are dragging you down, it is your job to fight back. It is your job to reverse direction if you’re feelings are dictating what you’re doing. Heart-to-head should become head-to-heart.
Emotions Guide, Not Govern
Let’s return to Rosie’s story. I realized that this young woman was buried underneath deep emotional pain, so I gave her words back to her in order for her to examine them.
“Rosie, you said that nothing in your life is going right, but you also told me you love your job and you have a good group of friends. Is nothing really going right in your life, or is your heart telling your head a lie?
“You said everything in your life is difficult, yet you have a family who loves you and a relationship with God that you’re working on. Is everything really hard and difficult, or are you giving disappointment in one area of your life too much credit?”
As I talked with this young woman, it occurred to me she didn’t realize she’d been acting as her own worst enemy. She didn’t see that she’d allowed her feelings to carry her away. She didn’t understand the importance of using her mouth to speak life to her soul the same way she would speak to a friend. She was gladly walking in step with her hurt, never stopping to wonder whether she actually desired to go to the place her emotions were leading her.
Part of coaching yourself through self-talk is asking yourself questions. Keep asking yourself the five W’s—who, what, when, why, and where—and throw in an occasional how for good measure. When your emotions are running away and taking your head and sensibilities with them, fight for the girl in you by being willing to do the hard work of heart examination.
Sometimes that work might be too much for you to do yourself.
It’s okay if you need help from a friend or a licensed counselor to work through issues and identify appropriate responses based on healthy thoughts and beliefs. And it’s okay if you can’t get to the root of things in one conversation. Swimming against the current is hard work. And the heart moves slowly sometimes.
There is nothing wrong with understanding your heart, experiencing the emotions of the heart, and caring for your heart. You just can’t live your life acting on the demands of the heart. If you allow your heart to lead your actions, you just might act in ways that hurt yourself or others.
The last time I felt like I’d received a punch in the gut was when one of my children hurt me deeply. I felt as if a dagger had been thrust through my heart. My first reaction was pain, but the close second was anger.
I’m sad to say I felt that anger for a long time. I coddled it. I nurtured it. I acted on it with passive-aggressive behavior of which I am not proud. I remember thinking it would take too much energy to do anything other than that. My heart ruled my head.
And I lost time.
But one day I heard myself say something out loud to my husband that revealed the toxicity of my heart, words that clearly exhibited how much my heart had infected my thoughts and, in turn, my actions.
I was shocked to realize how far my emotions had carried me.
At this point, I decided to work through that hurt, expressing some thoughts on paper and others verbally. I asked myself questions boring deeply into the root of my responses and the reasons for my reactions. When I struggled to find the answers, I asked my husband and a close friend to help me do the work.
Why was I angry? What had begun my emotional downward spiral? When did it start? What had made it worse? What expectation did I have that hadn’t been met? Why was I bothered when I discovered the depth of my anger? What did I need to do to address that conviction?
By using my words—verbal and written—to talk to myself and others about the source of my harmful emotions, I was able to isolate the root of my hurt and anger: a desire to be appreciated for all the sacrifices I’d made over the years.
But I didn’t stop there. I rehearsed the truth of the love I believed in my head. I recalled God’s love for me and His forgiveness. I remembered how unlovable and how hurtful I’d been to others in my life, people who continued to love me despite the pain I caused them. Slowly but surely, I talked myself down off the ledge and worked through my emotional response. Remembering God’s love for me helped me to decide—apart from my emotions—how best to show love and forgiveness toward my child who had hurt me.
I learned how to feel without letting my emotions rule.
Feel fully, but don’t let your heart lead you to hurt yourself or others. Process your emotions. Work through the hard stuff by yourself or with someone you trust. But never forget: emotions can guide you, but they shouldn’t govern you.
Show Up Like You Are Meant to Be There
People wouldn’t know it, but many times when I get in front of a group to speak, I’m a ball of nerves. I wonder if the people in the audience will benefit from anything I have to say, or if they’ll fall asleep while I’m talking because they think I’m boring as all get out.
My audience doesn’t see me backstage, pacing and trying to remember my main points. They don’t notice me when I’m sitting in the front row, squeezing my hands together in an effort to calm myself down before I speak. They aren’t aware of how deeply I breathe as I try to slow my racing heart.
They don’t know I’m a ball of nerves, because I’ve learned something. I’ve learned how important it is for me to rule my emotions instead of letting my emotions rule me. While I don’t always do it perfectly, I understand the importance of not wearing every emotion on my sleeve and talking to my heart based on what my head knows to be true.
I’ve also learned the art of showing up.
As a person who struggles with insecurity, I sometimes find myself feeling unworthy, ill-equipped, or undeserving. But I know that the way I feel isn’t always the barometer of what is true.
The way you feel isn’t always the barometer of what is true.
It is my job to show up in every single moment of my life as if I’m meant to be there. I can’t always wait until I feel powerful or confident. Coaching my heart means moving ahead in my weakness, doing my best in spite of my fears or feelings, acting as if what should be actually is. Sometimes that means I fake it till I make it, based on what I know to be true. I do the best I can with what I know until I know to do better. Showing up also means:
• Acting cheerfully when I don’t feel cheerful.
• Serving when I don’t think I have much of a servant’s heart.
• Smiling when my children come into the room, even though I want to scream, “Give me five minutes, please!”
• Maintaining a posture of support toward my husband when I’m wondering why in the world he made a certain decision.
• Walking into a room with my head held high even when I know nobody in the room knows my name.
• Applying for a job even though I’m not confident I’ll get it.
• Introducing myself when I realize someone else won’t do it for me.
• Being brave enough to do what pleases God when I’m used to doing what pleases others.
• Breathing deeply to slow my racing heart even as I walk to the front of a room.
If God has provided an opportunity for you, show up like you’re supposed to be there.
Coaching your heart means you don’t operate on your feelings alone. You don’t mindlessly go with the flow but instead choose to swim against the current when necessary. Understand your emotions. Deal with them appropriately. But don’t let your emotions have the last word. Look at your heart. Listen to your heart. Learn your heart, but don’t let it lead.