Leading With Our Hearts

​Dr. Laura featured my book, Who Am I?, on her radio show and talked about the attributes of the heart, which included: “being tenacious, hard working in spite of having challenges, having grit, commitment, loyalty, and striving, and being brave.”
 
The heart is almost forgotten in our society until we become aware of health issues surrounding the heart.  We exercise our bodies and our minds, but do we exercise our hearts?   What if we as a society began to lead more from our hearts?  Would our priorities or what we need or want change in any way?   As an illustration, I offer the following story:
 
I worked in a school district and once was asked to work with a group of children after an incident had occurred.   Eight third grade, honor roll students, (seven of which had never before been in trouble), surrounded a kindergarten student with special needs, who could not communicate.  They took his glasses, broke them, and began taunting him as their classmates stood by and cheered.
 
A teacher quickly came over to stop these actions and the eight students were brought to the principal for discipline, which included suspension.  Their classroom teacher was shocked and dismayed as were all of their parents.
 
Upon their return to school, I was asked to find out why they chose to behave in that manner.  I gave them a brief lesson on the different aspects of the human being; that is their physical, their emotional, their mental and their hearts (spiritual) aspects and asked each student to describe the incident.  They were then asked to explain why they had participated in the behavior.  As they each took a turn to respond, these were some of their answers:
 
“They made me do it!”   “I don’t know but my parents said that I now have a record.”  “I just stood there!”  “My body was out of control!” Until, finally one young girl answered, “I didn’t listen to my heart!”
 
There are too many incidences of bullying behavior in our schools today with many programs trying to prevent these actions.  If each one of us could take a moment to listen to our hearts and teach this skill to the children in our lives, then maybe they would have the courage to stand up in the face of these behaviors and demonstrate the actions of their hearts.  One by one each of us could lead the way to become more of a society with heart.