People talk about opening your heart, but it’s not always clear what they mean. Obviously, you don’t want to rip open your chest leaving yourself exposed to the world, vulnerable, and bleeding. Conversely, you don’t want to close in on yourself and by doing so experience a life of constriction and limitation.
So what is the Goldilocks zone where your level of openness feels just right? The quick answer? It’s personal. What may be a sweet spot for you could be the height of terror and misery for someone else. This means that you have to take a look inward and determine where you’re currently operating from. From there, you can begin to work on methods for increasing your expansiveness.
Note, there are some common characteristics of an open heart and these traits can be worked on from wherever you stand at this present moment. These include open-mindedness, kindness, generosity, equanimity, compassion, perspective, and wishing others well (particularly those who have wronged you).
Let’s dive into each of these characteristics individually. This will generate tools for increasing their presence in your life. Furthermore, it will help to more fully illuminate what it means to open your heart.
Open-mindedness
Have you noticed that good things tend to gravitate to each other? Well, this is demonstrably true of open-mindedness and open-heartedness. This could be because the nature of being open in any capacity is to reinforce openness in general. This occurs organically because being open just feels good. It also turns out to be functional in a variety of ways.
In an article for the Scientific American, Luke D. Smillie, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Melbourne in Australia, discussed several studies on “openness to experience” demonstrating the widespread benefits of this trait.
They included being more intellectually curious, creative, and imaginative, able to see and process more in the visual field, less susceptible to psychological “blind spots,” able to simultaneously experience contrasting emotional states, and generally being more flexible and inclusive (Smillie).
With that array of benefits, it’s obvious why cultivating openness is worthwhile. Fortunately, it’s something that can be initiated with simple awareness. Observe the world around you and your reactions to it. Beginning to implement an extra beat or breath, and focus on making a conscious response, rather than having a rote reaction.
Attempting to refrain from flash judgments and foster a mindset that encourages questions. With time these behaviours will generate more of the same and your mind will continually expand.
Kindness
Next time you do something kind for someone, take stock of what it feels like in your mind, your body, and in terms of your energy. For most people, these acts generate a sense of warmth in the body, openness along with clarity in the mind, and an increase in energy.
This simple process is one of the most natural ways to open your heart because it connects you to others, increases your sense of belonging, and shows you the impacts you can make on the world around you.
Generosity
We are often taught that it’s better to give than to receive, but in my experience, to give is to receive. In the act of offering something to others, we experience surrender in a literal way. We let go of worries over personal welfare and place ourselves into the service of something beyond ourselves.
A study for Nature Communications, conducted by Park et al. demonstrated “behavioural and neural evidence that supports the link between generosity and happiness” (Park et al.). This work built upon previous studies which showed the same, but also fine-tuned the procedure to show the import of empathy and social commitments in supporting generous behaviour.
So, caring about the feelings of others and believing in the importance of the commitments we make to each other not only makes us more likely to be generous but also increases the degrees of happiness we feel when doing so. This is just the kind of process that opens the heart.
Equanimity
The calm within the storm is the vision that this term often brings to mind. This quality of retaining balance and composure despite what the world throws at you is a crucial factor in opening your heart. If you feel at peace with yourself, unrattled by life’s hiccups, you are much better poised to look after and include others.
Conversely, if you are thrown asunder by each difficulty you encounter, the effort you must exert to regain equilibrium will preclude you from the possibility of becoming more inclusive. Someone who perennially feels attacked will be on the defensive, protecting themselves from injury rather than opening themselves to the world at large.
Thus, if you want to open your heart and experience the many benefits this entails, you need to create an oasis within yourself, a place where you can find peace so that you can act consciously and deliberately even in the most trying of times.
Compassion
This emotion throws the doors of the heart wide open. When you feel loving concern for others it is natural to include and nurture them. To fail to do so would be painful to you. When you see each life as sovereign, recognizing its profound value, you want to preserve and protect it. The broader and more encompassing this feeling, the more open your heart will become.
Wishing Others Well
It’s not always possible to get along with other people. However, even in the absence of sharing physical space with others, the way we think about them and how that makes us feel and behave is very meaningful in our daily lives.
To wish others well, even when they have harmed us, is to release ourselves from the burden of anger and recrimination. Judgment contracts our hearts but letting go of foul feelings opens them up. In travel and life generally, it pays to pack light. So, don’t carry baggage you don’t need and travel freely with an unburdened heart. The way forgiveness is taught is often backwards holding on to the damaging emotions is like drinking the poison and hoping the other person will drop dead. We forgive others for ourselves, by letting go of our damaging and often toxic emotions by forgiving and setting ourselves free, we can get on with our lives unburdened. Taking our own power back to live fully!
References:
Smillie, Luke. “Openness to Experience: The Gates of the Mind.” Scientific American, 15 August 2017, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/openness-to-experience-the-gates-of-the-mind/
Park, S., Kahnt, T., Dogan, A. et al. A neural link between generosity and happiness. Nat Commun 8, 15964 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15964
