Cultivating the Heart: The 4 Practices
Life is so much better when our emotional state and our relationships with people are appropriate and flourishing.
As I wrote in a previous blog post (see here), I personally find it challenging to cultivate the heart—growing my emotional wellbeing and relationships. As part of the greatest commandment, Christ encourages us to love God with all our hearts (see Mark 12:30). Our emotions and our relationships with people form vital parts of who we are as human beings. They are gifts from God. We shouldn't neglect them.
We should desire to display appropriate emotions and engage with other people well for the glory of God. Life is so much better when our emotional state and our relationships with people are appropriate and flourishing. If our emotions and relationships are a mess, it's going to significantly impact the quality of our lives, the kind of perspective and posture we will have, and the kind of work we will produce. We all know what it's like to be in a state of frustration or anger for even just one single day. Things usually don't go well in this state of being. It becomes hard to think. It becomes hard to produce good work. It becomes hard to be with other people. We can and should find ways to grow our hearts so that we can fully live with appropriate emotional responses and healthy relationships. This will enable us to live better for Christ every day.
Over the past couple of years, I've been developing certain practices that help promote better emotional wellbeing and relationship building in my life. In particular, I've identified 4 Practices to Cultivate the Heart that I will cover in the next several blog posts:
The Practice of Slowing Down – learning to have a slower pace in life
The Practice of Stopping – learning to pause and let go of things
The Practice of Savoring – learning to be present and enjoy the moment
The Practice of Serving – learning to be with people and love them
As a starting point, these four practices provide me with a simple strategy to manage my emotional health and support my desire to grow my relationships with other people. In the next several blog posts, we'll dive deeper into each of these 4 Practices to Cultivate the Heart. I hope you'll find them useful in developing your own emotional wellbeing and relationships.
Barnabas the Monastic
Servant of Christ. Husband. Dad. Modern Monastic. I have a wild ambition in life: get as close to the Lord Jesus Christ as I can while on earth. I explore and integrate ancient Christian monk wisdom in modern everyday life. Lives in Canada.
