“Feed the fire in your belly and your dreams will become clear to you.” Julia von Flotow
It’s in your belly that dreams are born…the desire for something awakens hope and with hope comes possibilities activating the imagination, the creative indwelling Spirit and the heart’s best friend. Creating the inner safe space for dreaming stokes the fires of passion to illumine the seeds of hope the imagination grows into full-fledged visions that compel you into action.
Tending the fire, then, becomes an active concern, a practice and a commitment without which the dream will never become a vision, strong and clear enough to inspire courageous action.
What is this fire in the belly we are talking about? What is it that stokes its flames and makes us come alive to ourselves, to what matters? To act?
Passion powers performance when passion is built on values – those deep inner impulses that run through our consciousness and electrify us awake from the comfort and half-slumbering existence of our everyday lives – when what we most value is jeopardized or threatened.
When we are on automatic pilot, consumed by our everyday routines, unaware of what makes us happy or brings us joy, our values sleep. The fire in our belly, dormant, is so much ember and may even feel like it’s gone out entirely, buried deep beneath the concerns that keep us spinning round 
and round on the treadmill of our day to day habits and routines, despite a dawning sense of restlessness and deep dissatisfaction. It is in noticing what we are noticing that we have moments of awareness and in this emerging awareness we create the possibility for something new.
The gut is the great processor. Our guts not only digest the food and drink we take in, maximizing absorption of nutrients and regulating elimination of waste, they also process our experience. The enteric nervous system, often referred to as a second brain, is embedded in the lining of the gastrointestinal system from esophagus to anus and consists of one hundred million neurons. More than 90% of the body’s serotonin and 50% of the body’s dopamine, the body’s feel-good hormones, are in the gut. The enteric nervous system communicates with the central nervous system through the parasympathetic nervous system via the vagus nerve and sympathetic nervous system – systems we can effect through our thoughts, feelings and breathing practices.
The gut and the brain are connected. Our intuitive right brain is continually scanning and feeling out the environment, while our left, rational, brain may be otherwise engaged, focused and unaware of our feelings and perceptions. Awareness of what is, is registered in the system as a whole and can be experienced and felt in the body, registered and identified as “gut feelings”, “gut instincts”, “intuitive nudges or flashes of insight” that come through to us in any number of ways. To access this information takes awareness. Mindfulness training and coaching help to develop practices that quiet the monkey mind and its non-stop mental chatter and white noise.
Is it any wonder then that tending to your gut both physically, through lifestyle choices and metaphorically, through how we think about it and relate to our bodies, helps you feed the fire in your belly? Doing so can help you intensify and regulate your achievement motivation; give you the energy, resolve and focus to realize your vision and live your dream.
The glory of it all comes from the alchemy of inner transformation. You are not the same person you were before you woke up, enlisted your passion and developed your capacity to achieve your goals.
The Athanor used in alchemical processes was a tall, slow-burning, self-feeding furnace that provided uniform and constant heat and was designed to give no trouble. The Athanor is a great metaphor for our gut. Fed by an open, non-judgmental awareness of what is happening around us, our gut processes this information and provides us with a continuous flow of feedback. When we learn to listen to our felt experience, we are guided, in our actions, by the inner guidance of our gut and glory follows.
The key to sustainable success lies in aligning our gut, heart and mind – a dynamic trinity that, when harmonized, helps us realize a life of peace, strength and joy.
In this context “No Guts, No Glory” makes total sense.
This article was first published in the March 2014 edition of Worldwide Coaching Magazine
About Julia von Flotow
