Principle 1: Dig It Up

Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be,

—W. H. AUDEN

WE ARE HERE TODAY IN AN EXTRAORDINARY BUILDING,” I said to the audience. “Look at the design, the way it all works. Look at those huge beams that hold it all to­gether, and how they magically stretch all the way across the expanse of the ceiling. Look at how high the walls are, and yet they just seem to stand there. Notice how warm it is in here though you know it is cold outside. The design of this place meets both our appreciation of beauty and our need for protection from the weather. And we all feel safe. Not one of us is worried that it is going to fall down in the middle of the seminar.”

We all took a moment to revel in the structure we had been somewhat ignoring all day. It truly was something to behold.

“Now, I have a question for you. Does anyone know where this arena came from?” I asked. “Anyone know where it originated?”

No one said anything. So, I tried again. ‘Anyone want to tell me where this building originated from?”

“A builder built it,” someone offered.

“True,” I said, “but from where did it originate? Let me tell you a great mystery. We are standing here in a physical world, the real world that we can see and feel, taste and touch. In the case of this building, we can use it, stand in it, reach out and touch it. It is the real thing, as we say. But, where did this building in the real, physi­cal, visible world come from?

“It came from the invisible world of a toddler’s soul,” I told my audience. “I guarantee you, that is where this awesome coliseum came from. This visible arena came from the invisible soul of prob­ably a twenty-month-old child.

“One day, years ago, a little girl, having just learned to walk, was exploring her world more and more. She was in the den one eve­ning right before bedtime, getting in the last few minutes of play. Then, something happened.

“She took a few blocks, and instead of her normal pounding them down and throwing them about, she stacked one on top of another. And . . . they stayed! Then, she took another block, placed it on top of the second one, and it stayed there too! As she stacked the fourth block, something leapt inside her. She felt excitement and glee; she laughed and exclaimed, ‘Yaaay!’ She was so excited to see that a tower of blocks could be built and stay there, one upon the other.

“Right at that moment, Mommy and Daddy noticed too. Their excitement matched hers as they clapped and said ‘Yaaay!’ along with her. ‘That’s so good, Susie!’ they exclaimed. Everyone was enjoying the moment, but what was really happening was much more than just a moment’s joy. It was a miracle. For Susie was dis­covering two of the most powerful forces in the universe: talent and desire. She found that when she worked with blocks, some­thing inside of her felt alive and filled her with joy, and she desired to do it more. She added another block, and when it fell, she did not quit. She built her tower over and over again, laughing and exclaiming with each iteration of her creation. Her parents shared in her delight. Her talent for interacting with spatial design had just had its first day in the outside world.

“Not too long after that, in her preschool and kindergarten, she loved the hours spent drawing and painting in art class. When she took the pencil or brush in her hand, something special happened. Not only did it provide a different level of enjoyment than soccer, but her teachers noticed it as well. They encouraged her with every drawing.

“Then she also found the same sort of attraction to her math classes—an attraction lacking in literature and English. Although she was good at most of her studies, math and art seemed really to give her that ‘alive’ feeling inside, as opposed to just doing the chore of her assignment or homework. In fact, sometimes in English class she would find herself hiding a paper beneath her textbook on which she would draw the medieval castle described in the story.

“At the same time, her parents encouraged her in her studies and praised her when she did well. When she struggled, they took the time to help her and held her feet to the fire when she wanted to blow off her work. They enforced their ‘homework first and play later’ rule. The discipline they provided was becoming a part of her, for when she went to college and was away from them, she studied while others partied. As a result she graduated with honors in her major, went to graduate school, and became what she had dreamed of becoming since high school: an architect.

“After being diligent and creative in her early jobs doing basic drafting and small buildings, she was given more and more responsibility. She remained faithful with her talent and had the character to bring it to fruition. One day she was promoted to partner at her firm, which meant a chance to do the big jobs. Her promotion came just as the city was planning a new event center, and they were asking for proposal drawings.

“Many more steps were involved, but in the end it was Susie’s design that won the bid, and it was her design that created the arena that we are in today. And here is the point: this reality, this physical reality of a real structure in the real visible world, came from the invisible reality of a little girl’s talent. It came from her soul.”

I continued.

“Everything that you can see around you, began in the invisible world of someone’s soul. It was first a talent, then a dream. It came into being because of talent, discipline, and desire, all invisible ingredients which live in the souls of men and women. A building, a business, a good marriage, a healthy family, a social movement of change, new technology, a medical breakthrough, a beautiful wed­ding celebration, a realization of a new hobby and skill, and all of the other things and activities that we see around us in this physi­cal world, all begin in the souls of human beings. That is the order of the original creation itself. The visible creation came from the invisible God. He dreamed it, saw it, spoke it, and it was. And he has passed on to us that same way of creating. He has put talents, desires, abilities, dreams, values, and zillions of wonderful things into the souls of humans so that we can bring about beautiful things in life. And they always start from the inside and work their way to the outside world.”

But...

Then I told my audience about another building that was just as beautiful as the one we were in that day. It was just as big, just as amazing in its design, the acoustics were just as awesome, and it held just as many people as the one we were using. The capacity of this other building would fully meet the urgent needs of the com­munity. There was just one problem: it didn’t exist in the real world, in the visible, physical world where an audience can actually sit in real chairs and listen to a real performance. We wouldn’t be able to find this building anywhere, not in this town or anywhere else. Why? The sad reality is that this auditorium was never built. It is still stuck in the invisible world of another child, one we will call Jenny.

Jenny’s initial experience was similar to Susie’s. When she was a toddler, she sat on the floor of the den one day and made a similar tower. She felt the same excitement, the same quickening of her spirit inside when she saw the blocks stand one upon the other. She was so excited! Like Susie, Jenny felt alive.

But, when Jenny’s father walked in, his reaction was quite differ­ent from that of Susie’s parents. He scolded her for making a mess in the middle of the floor. He destroyed her stack with a harsh sweep of his foot and told her to put the blocks away. She cried, and he told his wife to take her to bed. He said it was too late for her to be up anyway, and he was tired of listening to all the noise she made.

Later, when Jenny was drawn to art and following the path that Susie took, her father told her that she would never get a job with her silly drawings and to get to work on something practical. He rarely even asked about her schoolwork, and certainly didn’t build into her life the discipline that Susie was learning, the kind she would need to sustain her no matter what she studied. He was harsh in other ways as well, and slowly Jenny drifted away from studies altogether. She just hung out with her boyfriends who was not into school. At times she would still doodle on pads of paper, passing the time, but then she would toss them into the trash.

Jenny went to college but she didn’t really feel like studying, since she didn’t know what she wanted to do. Mostly she just wanted to be with her boyfriend and other friends, and she partied with them much of the time. She managed to pass her classes, but without any clear direction she just picked a major at random and plodded along until she finished. After graduation she went to work in the human resources department of a large company—a far cry from architectural design. Mostly, the only thing she looked forward to was the weekends, not designing a building. But as we know from Susie’s experience, there was a beautiful building still inside Jenny’s soul, waiting to come out. Would it ever see the light of day?

YOUR HEART’S DESIRE

Remember the déjà vu person in chapter one, the one I seemed to keep meeting over and over who put into practice the “ways” that successful people live? If he were an architect, you can bet that he was building buildings because he was living out the desires and dreams of his soul. Was he Susie or Jenny?

The truth is, he could be either, and is probably a combination of both. If you recall, we noticed that déjà vu people come from a lot of different backgrounds. They might come from healthy families, where the parents were like Susie’s, encouraging them to follow what was deep in their hearts and was true to them. They might also come from backgrounds like Jenny’s—with dysfunctional families where one learns very little about the principles that help a person find success or develop their talents.

One thing is for sure: if a déjà vu person was a Jenny, he made a change somewhere along the line. He did the first of the Nine Things. He learned that life comes from the inside.

What lies deep inside is where the real life is. And this déjà vu person spent some time listening to it, looking for it, digging it up, and putting it into practice. He found what lay deep in his heart, below the surface, and invested it in life.

To make a successful life, the déjà vu person:

• Becomes aware of his dreams, desires, talents, and other treasures of his soul

• Listens to them and values them as life itself

• Takes steps to develop them, beginning in very small ways

• Seeks coaching and help to make them grow

• Does not care as much about his results as his essence, but just continues to express them wherever he can

Principle One can be expanded this way: the reality of the life we see and live on the outside is one that emerges from the inside, from our hearts, minds, and souls. It is our internal life that creates our external one. So, to find our lives we must find what lies below the surface of our skin. We must look at, listen to, discover, and be mindful of our internal life—of such things as our talents, feelings, desires, and dreams.

BURIED TREASURE

So why don’t we all seek this internal life? Well, Jenny can tell us of one reason. We have all had experiences that make our internal life unavailable to us. Those experiences can come from family, teachers, friends, church, teachings, jobs, failure, some subculture you live in, traumatic incidents, lack of resources or opportunities, and hundreds of other sources. As a result, we find ourselves living lives that are out of touch with the very center of life itself: with our hearts, minds, and souls. As Jenny can tell us, it is possible just to float through school, or even through the beginning of one’s career, completely out of touch with who you are and what you want.

But it is not only in the arena of work or career that this discon­nection can happen. It happens in many other areas as well, such as in significant relationships. There are people who merely float along in their relationships as blindly as Jenny floated along her career path, out of touch with the feelings and drives of their heart. It is the passion that lies below the surface that makes relationships alive and keeps them growing. Being out of touch with that inner passion can cause a relationship to go stale or even to fail.

Robert and Melissa found this to be true. He was a “nice” guy, always trying to please her as best he could. Competent, successful, and loving, on the surface he looked like the model husband. But beneath the surface, things were not as good as they appeared.

When this couple came to me, he was suffering from a total loss of sex drive. And she no longer felt attracted to him; she did not find him exciting any more.

As I worked with Robert and Melissa, I found that a kind of set­tled routine had taken over their relationship. Mostly from his side, there had been a “loss of the soul.” In his dutiful pleasing of her, and also in his fear of upsetting her (she had a bit of a quick temper), he had slowly put to sleep any of his own desires that conflicted with hers. He ignored them, and he also ignored the resulting feelings of resentment that were the residual effects of some of his niceness. He had gone dead inside, but he continued to function in all areas that were visible on the surface. It was the invisible that had been ignored. But as we saw with Susie and Jenny, it is the invisible that gives rise to the visible. So as a result of ignoring the invisible, Robert and Melissa were starting to see their relationship suffer.

When we began to “dig it up,” we got to Robert’s heart again. First, it involved his being honest about some things that he did not like, although he had acted as if those things were not really problems. Slowly, as he became more honest, he actually expressed some of the things that troubled him within the relationship. Then he got to the big issue: he expressed the things that he actually wanted the two of them to do but was afraid to push her to do—his desires. These desires could be small or large, his preference for din­ner or how to spend their vacation. It did not matter, for all of it was his heart. Slowly he began to express these desires, and as a result the couple got into conflict.

Then, with sparks flying as we worked with their ability to resolve the conflict, something else happened. Robert found his libido, and Melissa found him much more enticing. Passion had returned. Why? Sexual technique training? Not at all. Romance coaching? No need for that either. Just the chemistry of two fully alive individuals in an honest relationship where they learned to express and respect each others’ desires, and then be active enough to put them into action, like when they first met. They were “building a building.” And the building was a thriving marriage that had seemed dead. Their marriage was becoming visible in the outside world for them to see and enjoy. They could thrive in it and be protected from the stormy weather of life, realizing the full benefits of its design. But these benefits came from digging up the inside and investing it back into life, facing the invisible and mak­ing it visible.

But to dig this deeply means that we must face some fears and obstacles. What about the list above? What can you identify in your own life that has caused you to bury your treasure? Was it a harsh parent like Jenny’s? A tough relationship? A lack of opportunity or resources that caused you to give up? A subculture that put you down? Other people who did not like what you brought forth from inside your heart and soul? The times you tried and failed?

One thing is sure:

There is no shortage of things in life that can cause you to bury your heart and soul.

The truth is, however, that those who succeed in any aspect of life have not allowed those influences to keep their dreams and desires hidden. They have dug them up, faced their fears, taken risks, failed, gotten up again, and found that they could indeed build a beautiful building.

Julia was such a person. When she was in her early twenties, she fell in love and married Devin, a “winner”—the type of person who knew who he was and where he was going. Devin pursued his career, built a big electronics business, and achieved considerable success. Although Julia had always enjoyed school and directing various service projects, after marriage she quit doing much with her or­ganizational talents. Overshadowed by his drive and aggressiveness, she became more a follower of his life and career.

At first the cause of her withdrawal from the things she enjoyed seemed to be the demands of her role as mother of young children. But there were other causes more subtle. Devin put her down. He had an ability to make her feel inferior and stupid when it came to things in the realm of work. He had many ways of dominating, but the most harmful were those in which he discounted her abilities. Slowly she retreated into the area where she did not have to com­pete with him: that of being a mother. She performed very well in that role and just put her other talents aside.

As many such stories go, years later Devin became bored with the woman he had subdued and fell in love with someone from work. He left Julia behind. After the divorce, she did not know what she was going to do. She felt lost.

Her friends would have none of that, however. Some of them knew her before she married Devin and knew of her outstanding talents and abilities. They pushed her to step out. She resisted, feel­ing that she was “stupid” and could not really make the kinds of decisions required to do the kinds of work they were telling her to go for. But her friends would not hear of it, so Julia relented and one of them hired her to work in her company.

Julia was not long in her new job before she began to put her hand to organizing things around her, even beyond her assigned duties. Then she discovered that to help the company as much as she wanted, she needed to acquire some computer skills that she did not possess. The thought both frightened and excited her. She wanted to do it, but she could hear You won’t be able to learn that! reverberating in her head. But on the sly without others knowing it, she took a class at a community college and learned the neces­sary programs. Gradually, she offered to help on some of the bigger projects at work. Soon employees from other departments turned to her for help. She was gaining a reputation. Not long after, she was moved to a new position in more complicated operations, and within a year she was running a division with big budgets.

As she related her story, she said one thing that was quite telling: “I had somehow lost touch with what I liked to do, and slowly I had come to believe that I couldn’t do it. It was like a part of me had died. Then, when I thought about doing it again, I was too afraid to try. If it weren’t for Molly making me step out and try that little job, I don’t know where I would be today.”

Notice the progression.

1. She lost touch with her “likes”—talents, desires, and so on.

2. She allowed them to become buried.

3. She considered doing them again, but was afraid.

4. She was tempted to back away and keep them buried.

5. She got a push to step out and ventured a little step forward.

6. The investment of the little step multiplied over time to a full visible reality.

7. Julia was alive again.

This choice, I believe, is always put before each of us, every day. We are given a heart full of treasure and talent, feelings and desires. In short, potential realities. God has granted to us a heart, mind, and soul full of potential realities for whatever our situation might be, perhaps one of the following:

• A relationship (like Robert’s)

• A career (like Julia’s)

• Being part of a neighborhood or community; or wherever we find ourselves

• A fulfilling hobby or skill (other than vocation)

• Service and volunteering for a good cause

• Church and spiritual pursuits

• Creative pursuits

It is our job to dig up whatever potential we have in whatever situation we are in, and then to invest it and see it grow. The choice is whether we are going to allow fear and experiences to keep our potential buried, or choose to step out in faith and see that poten­tial turn into reality.

One of the best examples of this is found in the parable of the talents, a favorite story of mine. In this parable in Matthew 25:14-30, the master entrusts three servants with various amounts of money to be invested while he is away. He returns at a later date and checks out what they have done. Two of the servants stepped out, took risks, were diligent, and earned a handsome profit for the master. The third was afraid arid buried his treasure in the ground. He returned only what he was originally given.

The first two are rewarded, and the last one is scolded and loses the little that he had. Is that a picture of reality or what? Those who take what they possess, invest it in life, and are diligent and faithful with it over time, grow and build something good. But those who allow fear to keep them from stepping out, not only fail to increase what they have, they actually lose it.

That is what seems to happen over and over when people bury their internal, invisible treasure—their dreams, talents, and pas­sions. When it is buried and protected, it does not remain vibrant and alive. Just as Robert, Melissa and Julia discovered, the good potential ceases to thrive and begins to die when it remains unused. It is in a very real sense, lost, just as the parable predicts it will be.

Not so with the déjà vu person who lives out this particular “way.” He does not allow the treasures of his heart, mind, and soul to remain below the surface. He digs them up, puts them into prac­tice, invests them, and gets a return. Even when it means, as Julia or Robert found, that risk, learning, pain, conflict, and other hard things are involved. It does not matter, and it does not stop him.

Déjà vu people listen to what is going on inside, good or bad. They bring it up and deal with it. If it is good, they find a proper place for its expression and growth. If it is not so good, they deal with that as well, as we shall see. But either way, the invisible things that lie within are recognized as the source of life, and they are not ignored.

As Solomon said about minding what is inside the heart: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

Above all else is pretty strong language, don’t you think? We can see why Solomon uses those words when we realize that without guarding what is inside the heart, no building would ever be built, no family ever restored, no career ever reborn, no volunteer move­ment ever realized.

His phrase, wellspring of life, says it all. It means the place from which it all comes. Success and failure alike arise from what is go­ing on inside, and the wise person is one who pays attention.

NOT ALL THAT IS BURIED IS TREASURE

In the examples of Susie and Julia, we see things buried in the heart that are good. Dig them up and you find an architect and a com­petent organizer. Those are great finds. But not all that lies below the surface is so wonderful.

In Robert’s case, while he dug up his passion and desire, he had to wade through a few pools of resentment, anger, and conflict as well. Julia also had some demons in her heart. She had to face the fear that was below the surface—the hurt that her husband had inflicted, the shame of allowing herself to be treated poorly and the loss of so many things related to her marriage.

If we dug into Jenny’s heart, we would find much that is not at all pretty. We would find hurt and anger at her father, feelings of being used by the boyfriends she gave herself to in her attempts to find male acceptance, fears of inadequacy at her lack of confidence and discipline, and shame for the lost years. Many of those things would not be her fault, so to speak, but all of them would reside in her soul and would be her responsibility.

But, if Jenny would dig these ugly things up, face them, and deal with them appropriately, she would find that by going through the “death” experience of facing the negative things inside, a resurrec­tion would occur. The good things that had died would come back to life. That was the experience of Robert and Julia, and it could be yours as well.

It is the path of my successful déjà vu friends, for sure. They don’t look inside just to find winning lottery tickets. They look inside to find whatever is there. They “guard their hearts with diligence,” as the proverb says in another translation. They oversee it, and deal not only with the good feelings and dreams but the problems as well.

The wisdom of their approach is this: they know that by dealing with the bad stuff inside, two things will happen.

First, they rid themselves of the pain or sickness they are carry­ing around and the effects it is having or could have in their life. They know that if they leave it untouched, it will only become a cancer that gets larger.

Grief that is ignored turns into depression or hopelessness. Hurt turns into cynicism, lack of trust, or worse. Anger turns into bitterness and hatred. The list goes on, but déjà vu people know that just as you do not want a tumor growing in your brain, you do not want one growing in your heart either. There are no benign tumors of the heart. They all spread their cancer into the visible world, where they destroy all that one is trying to build—relation­ships, reaching goals, happiness, and fulfillment. No matter what a person is trying to accomplish, if he is walking around with unre­solved matters of the heart, his goals will be negatively affected.

And secondly, the wise déjà vu person knows that every time he faces one of those sicknesses in the heart, something better and larger emerges. Either new solutions are found in facing and solving problems, or new aspects of the soul are discovered. When we face our demons and our pain, we “reclaim the land” of our hearts and souls. You come through that suffering being better than who you were when you went in. You get back what had been taken and find extra character to boot. These wise people understand all that, and they enter into the process willingly.

What you dig out of your heart will be a mixture of both good and bad. Dreams, talents, pains, and also ugly stuff like resentment or hatred will all reside there. Both the good stuff and the bad can be scary. The dreams can call you to get out of your slumber and take a risk. The ugly stuff can shatter your nice picture of yourself. But both are you, and that is okay. It means that you are human, and God loves all of you regardless of the good or the bad, the divine or the ugly.

Your job is to dig it all up and then do one of two things: sow it, or throw it away.

If it is good, like a talent, a dream, a desire, or something else that you want to see grow, sow it. Plant it. Water it. Fertilize it. That is what Julia did, and her outside life grew. That is what Susie did, and we found ourselves in a beautiful building. There is no telling what we will find in the future as a result of what you sow now. It what you dig up is painful or ugly, throw it away. That means to process it, mourn it, heal it, grieve it, repent of it, or whatever it takes to work it out of your system. You are growing a garden in your heart; some things you wish to increase, and others you need to weed out. Either way requires caretaking. That is your job as guardian of your heart.

TAKE APPROPRIATE RISKS

Julia and Robert did not just dig things up and let them lie there. They took the risks of investing their invisible treasures in the visi­ble world. Julia stepped out and tried her skills. She tried a job in spite of her fear of failing at it. She took a class even when the voice inside her head told her she could not learn. She spoke out in meet­ings with bosses when she had an idea. With each new victory, she gained more ground in the external world as the interior world of her heart and soul were expanding.

Robert did likewise. When he discovered what he felt and what he wanted, he took the risk of being honest with me and with his wife. He took the risk of not backing down in the conflict as he had done for years. He took the risk of making his desires known, and then he took the big risk of pursuing them in the relationship.

There is very little growth and reward in life without taking risks. As the parable says, the one who buried his treasure in the ground did so to avoid risk of loss, failure, and disapproval. In the end, though, he reaped all three of these disasters. Clearly...

Avoidance of risk is the greatest risk of all.

Taking risks, however, does not mean that when you discover a treasure in your heart you should just roll the dice. That is not what any of these people did. Julia was diligent and followed her path with wisdom and calculation. She took it one step at a time. She did not say, “Since I have this organizational talent, I think I will pull up and start a new business,” then invest her life savings and divorce settlement into some lame-brained idea. That is not what it means to take risks in a wise sense.

As Solomon tells us, “The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, but the folly of fools is deception” (Proverbs 14:8). Julia did not deceive herself into thinking that her nascent talent was an ability. She took one small step at a time, giving much thought and prudence to each. But each step built on the other, and each was risky in its own right. That is far different than bet­ting the farm in an impulsive way.

The same was true of Robert. He took risks with Melissa, but they were in the contexts of wisdom and “giving thought to his ways.” He did not just “find himself,” as the popular culture says, and realize that she was not making him happy, and then jettison the spouse that was holding him back from his fulfillment. That is not growth at all. In fact, that is a resistance to growth.

Growth is when you take the new things that you dig up and dis­cover, and then integrate them with the rest of who you already are—things such as your values, relationships, and loves. Robert took his newly discovered feelings and truths and integrated them with his values of commitment to a marriage, his love for Melissa, and all the things he believed in. That is true growth and integration.

A successful déjà vu person is not afraid of the downside of tak­ing risks. But he does not jump off cliffs and then expect good things to happen. That is what the devil tempted Jesus to do—to give up all reason and rational thinking, jump off the cliff, and hope that God will save you from yourself.

To the contrary, risk is calculated, integrated, and then executed with diligence and thoughtfulness. Most people who “left it all,” took a risk, and succeeded will tell you that their decision was not flighty or impulsive at all. They made their move only after much preparation and thoughtfulness.

Such a move seems to be a three-step dance.

1. Become aware of whatever is in your heart and “dig it up.”

2. Weigh it, deal with it, talk it through, process it, integrate it with your values, judge it, and chew on it until you know with wisdom exactly what you are doing.

3. Take action.

This will keep you from chasing fantasies—the opposite of what the wise déjà vu person does. As Solomon says about that: “He who works his land will have abundant food, but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty” (Proverbs 28:19).

Sometimes we have impulsive fantasies in our souls as well as treasures. But if we take step two above and talk everything through with those who know us and are there to help us, we can see reality and separate it from fantasy. Chasing fantasies in your heart may be a way of avoiding the real treasures that are there. If Robert had chased the fantasies of his heart as Julia’s husband did, he would have ruined his marriage and his life. Instead, he inte­grated his desires with his values and commitments and found ultimate treasure at home.

BURYING VERSUS SUSPENDING

I think it is important to point out the difference between burying your dreams and simply suspending them. To bury your dreams means to be unaware of them, or to be in some sort of conflict with them. When you bury them, they get stagnant, sick, and begin to die. That is not healthy.

On the other hand, knowing your soul does not mean that you have to realize or accomplish every dream at once.

I know a woman who is raising her three children and truly wants to go to law school. One day she will. She has not buried that dream in any way, shape, or form. In fact, she is looking forward to it. But not today.

She has suspended the dream, holding it in the palm of love and sacrifice. She is holding it in her heart along with her other heart’s desire: the health and welfare of her children. Step two mentioned earlier dictates that she take care of all of her heart, not just one desire. While she desires a law career, she also desires to raise her children well. She puts both desires in perspective with her values and what she knows her children need from her. That is not bury­ing anything. It is holding her desire for a law career on the altar of sacrificial love, which is the highest form of heart and soul that we know in this life. It is the ability to “lay down one’s life” for those he or she loves.

NO STAGNANT POOLS

The message from our déjà vu friends is that your heart is an organ designed to have life flowing through it. Your mind is like that as well, as is your soul. They are not meant to be stagnant, with things buried in them, stuck there and not moving into the light of the outside world.

But to get to the outside visible world, those desires have to be found, watered, fertilized, and planted. In short, you have to own them, work them, and use them. Here are some tips on how to do that:

• Listen to what bugs you. It might be a message.

• Don’t let negative feelings just sit there. Do something about them.

• Don’t let long-term wishes and dreams go ignored. Find out what they mean.

• Listen to your symptoms. They might be telling you that you have something to dig up.

• Pay attention to your fantasies. They may be telling you that something is missing that you need to resolve in appropriate ways.

• Face the fears and obstacles that have caused you to bury your treasures.

• Don’t confuse envy with desire. You may be envious of some­one else’s life because you have lost touch with your own.

• Do everything above in the context of your values and your community of people who are committed to guarding your heart. If you do not have such a community, find one and join it.

• Ask God to help you find your heart, mind, soul, and the treasures he has placed there for you.

The message here is that our successful friends do not ignore the little signals that things are not quite right inside. They pay attention to what bugs them, drives their fantasies, delivers stress, or whatever signals make their way up through the weeds to con­sciousness. Often, the biggest sign that tells us of things buried in the heart is numbness and a life that is not alive. Our déjà vu friends will always choose life, and that means their heart, mind, and soul are always getting attention. And when they see those signs, they take action.

Grasp your dreams. Reach for them. Take appropriate risks. One of the worst things you can die with is potential. Die with fail­ures before you die with potential. Potential is something to be realized, not guarded and protected. So, dig it up! Invest it! And you will find that it is true—life comes from the inside out.