It's all about the love!

It's all about the love ❤

Pink Bonding Blanket- 'DOTTIE' who is the color of the universal love of oneself and others; it also represents friendship, affection, harmony, inner peace, and approachability. Pink is the official color of feminine power and represents sugar and spice and everything nice. 

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle – Albert Einstein.

"What's LOVE got to do with it"

"What's LOVE got to do with it."

Day Twelve of the Self-love 31-day 5-minute challenge: LOVE

I invite you to take five minutes and think about a situation in your life where you can BE a loving presence, Give more love and Feel more love for Yourself. YES, this is about Self-Love.

Love is a universal word, but not a universal feeling, at least not to me. I have always thought of love as something indescribable, intangible and ambiguous in nature. The "L-word" is just blurted out, but it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone that is for sure.

Where to begin: Loving yourself first, in a healthy, NONnarrcistic way; that is having a reverence for humanity, wanting for others what you want for yourself.

Loving yourself is key to knowing what it feels like to have a quality connection to self and others. If you don't own it, or know what it feels like to honor yourself, you can't possibly know the depth of another, without knowing 'YOU' first.

The power in a 'love connection' begins with self-acceptance.

In our culture, we are too busy seeking someone to love us, take care of us to make us feel accepted, validated, whole and complete. Not for all of us, but for most of us.

On a subconscious level, we seek people to grow more, learn more, and work out our ancestor's generational downloads. These downloads have taken up residency in our body, minds, and spirit. We are not aware of it; hence ending up in crazy making relationships.

These collective generational dramas live in the cells of our bodies waiting to be fed. We all carry around all kinds of stories about ourselves, but until we address and gain an understanding of what our needs are, address the wounds, then we know that what we were seeking outside ourselves we had all along. Love is meant to be a compliment to each other, at least that is how I feel it. 

Receiving love from another always feels good, but the love I feel for myself allows me to have healthy relationships with others. I want for them, what I want for myself. 

The good news with this challenge, you get to spend five minutes opening to yourself and see where you can love yourself more.

Today get over to the mirror, gaze into the soul of your eyes and allow the floodgates of love to open. Spend those minutes looking for what is beautiful and loving about YOU. Receive it as you breathe in the life force of love that is your birthright. Open a little more, and take in all that is RIGHT with you, sip a little more love in. Love is never-ending and eternally flowing, all you have to do is practice this mirror work each morning. You will be glad you did, it sets the tone for a unordinary day of unexpected LOVE.

At the end of the day, it ALL boils down to LOVE. <3 Dolby Dharma

Today's Mantra: I AM a loving presence, love is my life force.

Love is more than what can be expressed in words, love is more than grammar and verbs. Love is compassionate and soothing, love can be painful and grueling, but only for growth. Love is not abusive, love is not vindictive, love is not selfish. Love will not leave you with a black eye and hating yourself. Love is the building blocks of creation, love is the substance from which we are made. From love, to love, by love. ~Muneera Rashida

We don't have to suffer from anger!

Thích Nhất Hạnh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist. He calls anger a “habit energy.” A quick reaction to a situation or an event can trigger a response of anger. Just drive in your car and see how fast anger shows up, and how you respond. Zero to bitch happens to me sometimes, and when I become aware of that moment, I see myself, my behavior, not so much the other guy.

We need all our emotions to guide us and inform us about what is going on within and around us. Without this compass, we would be void of expressions and emotions.

Often we beat ourselves up with our emotions, naming them, and shaming ourselves with negative self-talk and expressing them upon ourselves and others.

Our emotional habits offer us opportunity to see ourselves deeply if we are willing to take a look with a compassionate heart. To understand that all our emotions are a part of knowing ourselves more and others too.

Most often the emotional triggers are deeply rooted in some storyline that we believe to be true about ourselves and the outside world.

Next time you feel anger towards yourself, someone, something or a situation, 'pause' if possible; that can be possible when you are aware that anger controls you in a lot of situations.

Anger is always pointing towards something about ourselves. It is an opportunity to see where we get hung up. It is a chance to react differently, to give yourself compassion and understanding.

Anger won't go away; it is a necessary emotional component of our humanness, it sets our personal boundaries, it wakes us up, and it comes and goes. With awareness, we can become unstuck in our ingrained habit of reactions and learn to express ourselves in a much kinder way. Karla McLaren says, when we channel emotional energy mindfully, it restores our boundaries and sense of honor. When mismanaged it dishonors all you are in contact with including yourself.

If you want to get in touch with what your feelings are trying to tell you, Karla McLaren wrote a fantastic, insightful book, 'The Language of Emotions.'

Practice peace even in a moment of anger! Dolby Dharma

“When you say something unkind, when you do something in retaliation your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or to do something back to get relief from his suffering. That is how conflict escalates.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames