Tag Archives: love

Four Questions About Love

Valentine’s Day can bring up a lot of emotions, especially for women. Did your significant other show you the affection you hoped for? Did the day go the way you wished? Or, maybe this year you do not have a significant other to celebrate a relationship with.

Whatever the underlying cause, your sense of love and being loved can be triggered around this holiday regardless of how you intellectually claim otherwise.

While the emotions are still in sight and have not become a distant memory tucked neatly away, take 30 minutes today to go somewhere private—a walk in the woods or the bathtub will work. Ask yourself these 4 questions.

  1. Do I feel loved?
  2. What would have made me feel more loved, if anything, this past Valentine’s Day?
  3. How much of my self-worth comes from the love I receive from other people or one other person?
  4. What situations make me feel the most loved?

You might want to journal your answers and really own how you feel. Once you take stock of your current situation, I challenge you to spend the next 30 days loving yourself.

What would that look like?

How could you take better care of you, be kinder to yourself, love yourself—right now, as you are?

Are there things in your answers to the four questions above that you might be able to do for yourself, rather than wait for someone else to do?

Years ago a mentor of mine told me to go home and tell myself “I love you,” while looking myself in the mirror over and over again—until I felt it. Really felt it. I thought it a silly exercise, until I tried to do it. As I repeated the phrase over and over, I began to cry because I realized how little I really did love myself—without someone else validating I was worthy of love.

Make a commitment to find out what will help you feel worthy of love and to do those things for yourself.

  • Are there things you have always wanted to do, but have held back from doing in order to support others that you could now do—a class, a trip, a commitment to a new routine?
  • Do you love flowers, but never buy them for yourself?
  • Do you enjoy alone time but never carve time out of your other commitments?
  • Are there friends you want to spend time who you could set a monthly or weekly date with?

Find the keys that will tell yourself—through action—that you are loved and lovable. By growing your self-love you will not only be happier, you will also be helping those around you love you more because you will be radiating that you are worthy of love and attracting love because your heart will be full of love to give.

Amy

Do you love yourself?

“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”

~Marilyn Monroe

One of the hardest and best books I ever read was Brene Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection. I had spent my whole life trying to be perfect for other people so they:

  • Wouldn’t leave me.
  • Would accept me into their circle.
  • Would admire me.
  • But most importantly would love me!

Brene’s book rocked my very soul.  It then took years for me to embrace it’s wisdom–and really I am still learning.

Do you love yourself just the way you are?  Are you ready to be as bold as Marilyn and tell someone if they cannot handle you at your worst they don’t deserve you at your best?

I am!

Are You Grateful for YOU?

You probably have been seeing things about gratitude in emails, Facebook posts, and every other venue possible.  It’s that time of year.  And while being reminded to give thanks is useful, when it is so commercialized it can sometimes stay at the surface – “Oh yeah, I am grateful for my job, my spouse, my house, my family….”

My challenge to you is not just to take it deeper, but also to point your gratitude in the direction you rarely remember to do—YOU!  Every day for this next month invest five minutes listing or journalling all the things you are grateful for about yourself.  Oh I know, we have been conditioned to be grateful for everyone and everything else, but not ourselves. Find something about you to praise, today. You might risk being considered egotistic or worse narcissistic! Yet, you will find you have infinitely more gratitude for others when you are grateful for yourself.

Let me know what surprises you find in this exercise (you will), what gems you uncover about yourself (they are many) AND what starts to shift in your outer world as you start to recognize your worth and value in it (it will).

Please share your surprise finds on my Facebook Page. We are building a community of empowered women, share your wins for  us all to be boosted by them!

Making Joy a Headline

When things happen, like a commercial plane being shot down over the Ukraine killing hundreds of innocent people, it is easy to tell ourselves the world is a mess.  It is somehow comforting to talk to others about how horrible the world is.  Our media reminds us daily about how frightened we should be–even when things as shocking as what happened this week over the Ukraine, on the ground in Israel/Palestine, and elsewhere are not in the headlines.

We feel compassion, perhaps disheartened, or fearful when we learn of such things because when one of us suffers, at some level we all suffer. We all feel helpless at easing the obvious suffering of those experiencing these events first hand.

Yet, these headlines are the exceptions despite the fact they are the rule in the media. Ruthlessness, calculated harm and revenge are not the norm. The natural state of human beings is joy and kindness. We learn hatred and revenge. Look into the eyes of a young child or baby. You will never find revenge, hatred, or scorn. You might see fright, or sadness, or brief anger. But even these pass quickly and the inner experience returns to joy, kindness, and curiosity.

Over time we learn to cover up those pieces of ourselves — to protect us from being hurt, or shamed, or in any way vulnerable to an uncertain and often unfair world. Yet, at your core you are full of joy, kindness and curiosity. And the odd thing is — so are the people who do these heinous acts that hurt so many others, whether in war ridden patches around the world–or in our own homes.

We cannot protect ourselves from everything “bad.” Yet, we can create our life from the inner part of ourselves that radiates joy, kindness and curiosity — even if only dimly at the moment. We can feed our minds and our hearts the things that encourage and grow our joy, kindness, and curiosity. What we read and watch and listen to really is food for our emotions.  We can insist that the people, places , events and circumstances we choose for our lives encourage and grow our joy, kindness, and curiosity.  And when they do not — we can remember although we cannot control everything in our world to be perfect, we can move away from situations that repeatedly do not bring out our joy, kindness and curiosity.

Sometimes moving away is not a physical move, but an internal shift.  Many Holocaust quotes speak of brave hearts recognizing that the Nazi’s could not determine how they felt and thought.  Their inner world was still in their control.  This amazing inner control is what saved some from succumbing to the insanity of that moment.

As we grow joy, kindness and curiosity in ourselves, we begin to turn on the light in our world. And when a light goes on — the darkness is no more.  Every moment of joy in each of us is another candle of light, adding light to our world.

Let’s use these sad and painful events as a wake up call.  Let’s re-member our inner light.  Tonight before you go to bed, or tomorrow when you wake, I invite you to turn off the news, change your focus from the dark or fearful images in your mind or world, and create more light.   Ask yourself these three questions:

1. What can I do today (tomorrow) to grow joy, kindness, or curiosity in myself?

2. What can I NOT do that diminishes my joy, kindness or curiosity?

3. What five small acts can I do that add joy, kindness or curiosity to my world and those in it?

And then, set out to do them.  Join me on a 40 day journey, to see what changes we can inspire in ourselves and our world. Let me know what you learn.