Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.

NBC Universal
NBC Universal

If you haven’t seen the 2006-2010 NBC sleeper hit series “Friday Night Lights,” really you should stop reading this and go Netflix it immediately.  The show is structured around a high school team in Southern Texas (stay with me), but truly it’s about head coach Eric Taylor and how his career and family life tango alongside his unbendingly high moral standards.  I avoided it for a long time due to the description above (see: football, Texas), yet two summers ago inhaled the entire series faster than a nine-year-old gripping a Fla-Vor-Ice in August.

Coach Taylor is basically, like, the best guy of all time.  He’s the guy that can have his wife get all feisty and upset, yet fully accepts and allows her passion; he knows how to get angry without taking it out on her.  He’s for the underdog.  You’re given the sense he would never, ever, not in a bajillion years lie, stretch the boundaries of integrity or wade into any grey area for any reason whatsoever.   He takes a beating for truth and he streams honor.

On the show, the football team’s motto was “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.”  This slogan became so wildly popular across America, that Mitt Romney even stole the phrase to use it in his 2012 presidential campaign, before being admonished by the show’s writer and director.

It resonated so much with Americans because we inherently felt the truth of the phrase.  We understood, at our core, this is who we are.

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose.

Clear eyes mean a mind and vision unconflicted by doubt or fear.  The ability to be in the present moment and deal with each second as it comes.  It’s what separates the men from the boys on any football field.  There are loads of big guys out there, thousands that play high school and college football, but not all of them sign to multi-million dollar contracts with the NFL.  What’s the game changer?  Clear Eyes.

Full hearts are engaged and full of passion.  Authentically streaming from hope and integrity.  What are heart stuffs but an indefinable Love—the magic special sauce of the Universe?  We cannot choose to care, we care or we don’t.  It’s inherent or its not.  We can’t choose to love any more than we can choose what color eyes we have.

But we can be willing to be love.  We can practice being available to love.  We can work to be clear. 

Clear eyes and full hearts means operating from a higher level of consciousness.  When you make a sale, ask a girl out, even sit in a co-op board meeting, it’s not what you say, it’s WHO YOU ARE that resonates.

When our eyes are clear and our hearts full, people know it.  There is nothing more to do.  They can sense it.  They draw to you.  And if they don’t?  You don’t care.  Not in a negative way, it just doesn’t matter.  Next play and the ball on the 38-yard line.  Hut one, hut two + GO.  No time to mourn, clock is ticking and forge forward with those clear eyes.

Having great parents helps in both these departments.  Where you were brought up, where you live can help.  However, each of us can cultivate these clear eyes and full hearts.  Yoga, exercise, eating well and choosing to be around positive people and uplifting environments, all help.  But truly, at the core of this ascension are two simple things:

Clear eyes =  Awareness.
Full hearts =  Letting life make Love to you; surrender.

Awareness is being where you are, SEEING where you are, what comes up and letting it be there, without ever changing it.  Shining a light on it.  I know you know:  that’s not as easy as it sounds.  It means not reaching for the chocolate, the vodka, the blame, the excuse, the Xanax.  Whatever comes up, be with it.

Every single time you do this, not run from the ickiness of a moment you don’t like: the clearer your eyes are from there on out.  The next time you want to run, consider that.  Staying with what is, is a deposit into the bank account of clearer eyes.

Full hearts:  what is that?  Full of emotion, of compassion, of desire, of connection.  Let’s continue to use the example of a football team:  knowing that you are a part of the whole.  There is a loyalty, responsibility and pride built-in to that sense of “team.”

You are a part of the Whole.
The Universe is your team.

Let it be, play from and for this space of knowingness, and that Love shows up.

The more we practice, the better we play.  And this is just another friendly urge to practice, ‘cause it’s your life, sweetness.  It’s always gametime.

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