Open Your Heart and Let More Love In

Valentine’s Day stands as a beacon for grand gestures, and lovers have long used it to express their deepest feelings in the most extravagant ways. But, this Valentine’s, Bernadette Petrie asks us to open our hearts to let more love in and practise self-love and self-belief.

All too often, we may unknowingly have closed our hearts. Maybe we were once hurt badly, so our brain sends us a message – don’t do that again; it’s too scary, it hurts too much, we can’t handle it.But our heart can not actually be broken – it has the capacity to feel so much. It’s why we came here, to experience the good, the bad, the ugly. It has the capacity for much more love than our minds would have us believe.

Getting hurt and feeling rejected is part of life. Yes, it’s not great when it hurts, but it does not matter how bruised or broken your heart may feel; shutting it down is not the solution. That means fear is winning, and the most important lesson I have learned on my journey so far is that fear must not be allowed to influence any of our ongoing decisions. We must be willing to feel everything if we truly want to live our lives fully expressing who we are.

I remember a day when I was five-years-old, having a wonderful time playing with chalk and a duster at the class blackboard. Lost in a creative moment, I created a picture of a large chicken using the duster to carve out the shape and features. As I stepped back to look at my creation, my teacher became aware of what I was doing. She thought it was wonderful and gave me a lot of praise. She rushed next door and returned with another teacher moments later to show my work off. However, as they returned, another child started to rub out my picture. The teacher became very cross and told her off quite harshly. The child gave me the nastiest glare in return as if it were my fault – I felt terrible. The exact moment I experienced praise, I also felt real pain.

We need to use our hearts in everything – these early memories from as young as five-years-old reveal to me that I experienced praise and pain simultaneously. And because of a dark belief self-planted in my mind at the age of three that I wasn’t loveable, I was getting good at putting barriers up. The following quotes help us understand how important it is to forge new ways of living with an open heart in all areas.

“Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn here” – Marianne Williamson
“Love is our true power” – Robert Holden

I was prematurely self-critical and self-conscious, particularly concerning my early passions of art, dancing and singing. It felt too scary to allow myself open-hearted expression in these areas because in the moment of praise from teachers came sneers from others. At a very young age, I found myself believing praise would also cause people to resent me. So, I put barriers around my heart with regard to doing things I loved, as it hurt too much. I didn’t understand, then, is that the neural pathways in our brain are forged in pairs and, in my case, praise accompanied pain. This is why we associate one thing with another – chocolate and joy, for example. Early childhood experiences forge neural pathways that pop up together repeatedly and can either be inspiring or limiting.

Thankfully, I now recognise a limiting pathway. I’ve learned to side-step the auto-response, no longer letting fear of rejection or jealousy stop me from creating the things that cause myself and others joy.

In which area of your life do you need to open your heart more to let more love in? What is it you would really love to do? It’s time to take a leap of faith, as love really is your true power. So, if you feel drawn to investigate something or explore a new experience, trust me – that’s all the permission you need.