Anahata Leadership | The Heart of Fire

Have you planned for victory? By this, I’m not referring to overcoming one’s enemies. Rather, I am drawing your attention to the windfall or gain that is on the horizon. What will you do when the Universe actually delivers on its promises?

When I read about clashes around the world—political clashes, economic clashes, cultural clashes—I am reminded that it is within our power to build a bridge to be crossed.

Paulo Coelho. Foreword from “The Alchemist.”

You don’t even have to build the bridge. It is already there, waiting for you to cross it. And what bridge am I referring to? There is a bridge that exists within our heart. If the mind is the head and the consciousness, the heart is the centre and the pulse. It is this pulse that beats into the heart of commerce.

If the heart stops beating, the entire enterprise will die. Believe it or not, but good organisations can continue to function without a leader if the heart remains strong. If you’ve ever known anyone who has been in a coma, you know that they continue to live even though the mind has gone comatose.

Similarly, to have a strong organisation, we need a strong bridge or a strong heart. As business leaders, our focus should be on pumping the heart with oxygen and the nutrients it needs to keep the entire organism pumping with blood.

Leading from the heart is not just about following your passions or your dreams. Love and affection are as much a part running a business enterprise. If you feel no joy in doing what you do, then something is wrong.

For the true leader, there is no such thing as an impossible love. He is not intimidated by silence, indifference or rejection. He knows that within the pulse of the earth, there is a pulsating heart of fire.

We are all constantly seeking for our love to be expressed and to be expressed in return. We are all seeking to fulfil the highest expression of our hearts which beat wildly, slowly and sometimes tenderly. Oh, it is this heart, this rhythm, which keeps me going after so many have thrown in the towel.

Give up? Not possible. Not fathomable. Not even feasible.

Without love, we cease to be. We become headless skeletons who roam the earth. We wither and we die. But then again, we can die; but our love is forever eternal and can be reborn… or even resurrected.