“Nurturing, feeling, and softening your heart will help you bounce back from whatever life flings at you, and protect your heart, allowing you to fully experience the beauty of life and love once again.”~ Jennifer van Wyck

One of humanity’s deepest desire is to love and be loved, and yet our biggest fear is that we will be rejected. How can we take care of our very precious heart so that we can open ourselves up to love but not be destroyed if our love isn’t reciprocated?

5 Ways to Protect Your Heart and Allow Yourself to Love Again

Here are five ways to protect your heart, so that you learn to love and accept love deeply.

1. Protect Your Heart by Keeping it Soft.

I like to use the metaphor of a brick versus a stress ball: if you take a hammer and smash a solid brick it will break into tiny pieces. But if you do the same thing with a stress ball, what happens?

Nothing!

It’s squished momentarily and then bounces right back.

Armour and walls around your heart only make it more brittle and hollow. Laying siege to your heart this way starves it from your own love and other people’s love. 

You become a weak shell.

This is the single worst thing you can do to your heart.

Instead, to protect your heart, make it full and soft. The more open and soft you are the more forgiving your heart is and the less chance it has of breaking.

If you poke a balloon with a pin, it explodes because it’s empty inside. Poke an orange with a pin and no damage happens, because it’s and tender and full.

Keeping our heart tender allows us to connect to it, nourish it, and care for it. A tender heart allows us to be there for others, and makes it so much easier to heal and less likely to get hurt!

Keeping your heart soft will make it stronger than any walled castle or fortress.

2. Protect Your Heart by Nurturing It.

You know that empty feeling inside you?

That hole that seems like it’s been with you most of your life no matter how hard you try to fill it? How do you protect yourself from this?

Nurturing your heart is how you fill that void.

No, not by eating ice cream and chocolate 😉 but by truly connecting to and nourishing your heart with deep self-love.

While things other than self-love can make your heart feel better for a short while, that tidal wave of loneliness and emptiness always flows back. It’s like eating nothing but delicious birthday cake: if it’s the only thing you eat you’re going to suffer severe vitamin deficiencies. 

So often we think

If only someone really loved me then I would feel whole.

But it’s not true, because even if you find someone who loves you exactly for who you are unless you love yourself, you’ll never trust that they really, fully love you. 

The only way to protect yourself from this fear of abandonment or rejection is by getting in touch with your heart, listening to all of its concerns, thoughts, and musings, and then sending it love. 

Take time to try to understand your heart, to heal, nourish and comfort it when it’s scared and lonely.

Then watch your heart blossom into a gorgeous, powerful force for good.

Feeding your heart with deep self-love is one of the most incredible things you can do to heal and protect your heart. 

3. Feel the Emotions in Your Heart.

Our heart can be like a small child experiencing a confusing jumble of emotions; it doesn’t know which way is up and so it just has to have a good old-fashioned chaotic temper tantrum.

Feeling your heart is a way of untangling that chaos. It means we have to grow up and deal with this irrational child.

So how do we do that?

Start by labeling all the emotions your heart is feeling. This helps your heart understand what’s going on. Then, isolating one emotion at a time, breathe that emotion in through your heart and then out through your heart to release it. 

You will find that after a few seconds, that really intense emotion that you’ve been running away from simply fades away.

It’s quite hilarious really, because many of us spend our whole lives petrified of the emotions our heart experiences. But really it takes only a few moments and then poof –  it’s gone! 

Think of all the pain, suffering and anxiety you can protect yourself from by just facing and feeling your heart.

4. Surround Yourself with People that Treat Your Heart Well.

If you want to protect your heart put it in an environment that will make it flourish. Do things that it loves to do, and surround it with people that nourish it with the respect and care that it deserves.

We are not islands!

If we want to reach our greatest potential and be the best person we can be, then we need help and inspiration from those around us. 

Our friends can be our strength when we feel weak, and they can hold and support us in our times of need. Most of all, friends share in our joys and celebrate our successes as if they were their own. 

Good friends respect and cherish your heart for the magnificent love-nugget that it is.

5. Do the Blue Bubble Visualization.

The blue bubble visualization creates a safe place, a sanctuary for your heart. I’ve visualized it when I thought my life was in danger, and I’ve also used it on those days when I just couldn’t face the world.

Imagine a blue bubble that surrounds you completely, extending about one meter all around you. Blue is the color of protection: the blue bubble keeps out all negative emotions that others – consciously or unconsciously – maybe flinging at you. But miraculously, the blue bubble allows in love and kindness. 

You can make this bubble as thick or as thin as you want: the thicker it is the less information you are going to pick up, for those days when you just need peace and quiet.

Notice how this soft and bouncy blue bubble creates a sanctuary for you and your heart, healing and protecting it.

Nurturing, feeling, and softening your heart will help you bounce back from whatever life flings at you; surrounding it with friends and a blue bubble will nurture and protect your heart, allowing you to fully experience the beauty of life and love once again.

Comments