The Heart’s Desire Mandala is a one page worksheet with five simple steps that help you:
- gain clarity about your heart’s desire (purpose) and
- identify actions to get closer to your heart’s desire
Then you can choose whether now is the right time to take those actions. It’s really important to be kind to yourself and not make yourself take action if you’re not ready. Now that we’ve stated that, let’s see how to use the Heart’s Desire Mandala. You can download yours by clicking the button below.
How to Use the Heart’s Desire Mandala
1. Choose Your Subject
Decide whether you’re going to use it for your life in general or for a specific area of your life. I chose “climbing” and wrote that in the subject box.
2. Dwell On Your Heart’s Desire
Once you’ve chosen your subject, sit with your eyes closed and gently sink into wondering about your heart’s desire for this subject. As I sat quietly, I thought about climbing and images of long routes on lovely rock in North Wales bubbled up. In the Heart’s Desire box at the bottom of the worksheet I wrote, “enjoyable multi-pitch climbing trips with partners I feel safe with”. What’s your heart’s desire? Write it in the box at the bottom of the worksheet.
3. Label Your Eight Sections
Now you can label the sections of the mandala. I labelled mine: partners, trips, training, technique, mindfulness, time, money, and gear. What sections can your subject be broken down into? If you don’t have eight, just label the ones you do have. If you have more than eight you could split the sections into two or more.
4. How Close Are You to Your Heart’s Desire?
You can draw a line or make a dot or some other mark that shows how close that section is to your heart’s desire right now.
5. What Could You Change?
What is the easiest change you could make to one of your sections? That might be getting rid of a section altogether or it might be changing something about it. I noticed “trips” was furthest away from the heart so I contacted friends who climb to set some up. I now have climbing trips booked for April, May, June, July and August. I feel excited and happy about having these dates in the calendar. Not only is it something to look forward to but it makes me think about some of the other areas of my mandala, like training, gear, technique, and money, which helps me to plan for those too. Already my heart’s desire feels a bit closer. What easy, tiny change could you make?
Conclusion
The mandala is effective at externalising what’s in your head so you can clearly see which sections you need to change to feel better. If you make a change you could leave it at that or you could re-draw your lines in a different colour to document what’s changed. Or you could get a fresh worksheet to record the changes. You could pick out one, two or several key areas of your life and methodically make changes for each. It’s a simple and easy tool to use again and again. Click the button below to download the Heart’s Desire Mandala.
If you’d like support with any of this – it can be really hard to address change sometimes – and you’re new to coaching, why not try a free session? It might be the kind of support you need right now – who knows unless you give it a go, right? So feel free to contact me for your free session (with no obligation to buy).