Love Yourself, Love your Life. (Part 2)

This is part two of a two part blog about Loving Yourself Unconditionally and loving your life. Hopefully you read Part 1 first, which included these first two steps that are so important:

1. Pay attention to your thoughts.

2. Feel and release your feelings.

So you are monitoring your thoughts without judgement and feeling and releasing your emotions. You are already healing yourself. Next in the process are these three steps. These steps are pretty interconnected and should be used, not only in conjunction with the first two steps, but also on a daily basis as your foundation of self-love. They are as follows:

3. Focus on gratitude and love.

4. Change the story you are telling yourself.

5. Find the beauty and love in life.

Focus on gratitude and love:

Gratitude and Love are two of the highest vibrations at which you can resonate. Feeling love and gratitude can neutralize denser emotions and situations. Start and end your day thinking about what you love about yourself and your life and what you are grateful for. I am so grateful for my house, even though it's a mess, it is cozy and keeps me warm and dry. I am so grateful for my husband, who loves me and listens to me, even when I'm being irrational or talking about weird things like portals, aliens or quantum reality. I am grateful for my children, who bring me joy and still want to hang out with me even though they are teenagers. I am so grateful for my job that not only provides enough money for me to buy food and pay the bills, but is very fulfilling. I am so grateful for my body, which is perfect, always healing and communicating with me what it needs, even if those messages show up as aches, pains, or depression sometimes. I am so grateful for connection to the earth and to universal energy.

If you start and end your day with gratitude, you will immediately feel better and start your day off from a centered place and you will sleep better! You will also begin to feel more love. When you feel gratitude, you automatically feel love for yourself and your life. To me, it feels like my heart expands and I feel a sense of well-being and happiness.

For some people, this may be easier than others. If your thoughts and beliefs are so dark that you struggle to find things to be grateful for, this will take a little more effort, but the more you do it, the easier it will become and it will also require you to change your thoughts and beliefs - which we'll get to in the next section.

You can also use love and gratitude in conjunction with the first two steps in this process. In observing your thoughts, if you find them to be overwhelmingly negative, you can choose to focus on love and gratitude instead. You can also use love and gratitude to help you release emotions and facilitate the movement of that energy through you. It's important to feel and acknowledge your feelings, not just repress them and force yourself to "be positive". That being said, sometimes intense energies, especially if they were triggered through interactions with other people, can be neutralized with love and compassion.

First, acknowledge the feeling and observe it objectively, then give yourself love and compassion, knowing it's okay to feel the way you are feeling. Next, feel love and compassion for the other person who "triggered you" and forgive them. You may not want to, maybe you wish horrible things upon their head, but try it. You will be amazed how much better you feel. After all, that anger or other heavy emotion doesn't hurt the other person at all, it only hurts you.

I'll give you an example. I was at a store with my kids. I had an interaction with an employee at the store that upset me. I was really upset and wanted to hate this woman and call her awful names, but I also didn't want it to ruin my outing with my kids. So I took a deep breath and sent her love and compassion. She was probably having a bad day, that had nothing to do with me, and I didn't need to take any of that on. Then, the heavy emotions surrounding that interaction were gone. Almost immediately. I felt better and could go on about my day without dwelling on it at all. I have also used this technique with other drivers that upset me by doing dangerous and stupid things. I will either send them compassion or throw a bubble of protective light around their car so they don't hurt themselves or others depending on how they were driving.

These are quick and easy examples. You can also heal wounds and traumas by sending yourself, and any other people in your life, love and compassion and forgiving them and yourself. This may take a while and you may need to repeat it several times, but it works. Searach Ho'oponopono on YouTube or the internet. It's amazing for this and I can help also you with this.

Sometimes in order to find the things to be grateful for and facilitate the ability to feel love for yourself and others, you have to change the stories you are telling yourself.

Change the story you are telling yourself:

Everything that happens to you, you have created and happens for a reason. I will go into more detail about this in another blog.

Without digging into the direst of situations, let's go with an example of losing your job, or getting into an accident. You may feel terrible about what happened, you may blame yourself and spiral into a pit of despair or get stuck in a victim mentality.

However, things happen for a reason so maybe you were meant to take another path. Maybe you lost your job, because you are meant to get another job that is more in alignment with your true self or will be better for you. Maybe you got into an accident because you need the insurance check for something or if you hadn't gotten into this accident that delayed you, something worse would have happened. There could be an infinite number of reasons.

Whatever happens that causes you to think the worst about yourself and your situation, you can change those thoughts and change your story. Instead of thinking the worst about yourself, give yourself some compassion. Know that these feelings and thoughts are only temporary and you have the power to change them. After you are calm, are sitting with your feelings or they have already moved through. Work on changing your story. Celebrate the little wins and all of the things you are grateful for.

Instead of telling yourself:

"I'm the worst person ever, I will never be good enough."

"I can't get ahead, I'm such a loser."

"No one will ever love me."

"I'm too scared, tired, sick..."

"I am depressed (or sick, or some other label or diagnoses.)" (I will talk about labels in another blog post.)

Tell yourself:

"It's okay that I'm feeling (name the emotion). "

"This will pass. I am doing the best I can."

"Is there a lesson here? How is this challenge or emotion serving me?"

"The Universe/God/Angels/Guides have my back and things are working out the way they are meant to even if I don't understand it right now."

"I am abundant and I will receive what I need."

"I am more powerful than I realize."

"I am healing."

"I am worthy of love."

Again, as I said, it's not about forcing yourself to "be positive". It's about allowing yourself to just "be" with no judgement, allow emotions to move through you as they are supposed to and just love yourself through the whole process. It is about being curious and asking questions about what you are creating in your life with your thoughts and beliefs. As you turn around the thoughts that aren't serving you into statements of love and gratitude, you connect with your true self and your power, you manifest things for your highest healing and growth and create a beautiful reality. It's important to feel the love, the gratitude and the power. Breathe it in. It is a calming feeling, a peaceful feeling. Breathe it in to your heart center. Hold it there. Then breathe it out. Repeat.

For a personal example...I have been struggling the last couple of weeks for a variety of reasons. Mostly stress and overwhelm. I had a setback with work (my day job) that made me feel terrible and bad at my job. I had also been practicing intuitive eating and was eating cheese now and then since I was doing okay with it. Then instead of listening to my body and acknowledging the warning signs that I'd had enough dairy, I realized I had been binging on it way too often and I ended up depressed, in the fetal position, and crying most of Saturday. Yes, foods can affect you this way. I knew I just had to hang in there and eat clean until I felt better. I knew the things I was telling myself weren't true. I wasn't in a place yet where I could change them though. I felt the feelings. I felt them and felt them. Finally, I just closed my eyes and imagined the Earth hugging me. I imagined the ground cradling me and roots coming up from the ground holding me securely. I imagined golden, pink light coming down from source energy surrounding me with a bubble of this light, energy, and love. I just lay there for while imagining this and feeling the love replenishing my own love for myself. It was all I could do for myself in that moment but it was beautiful and helped me enormously.

I miss cheese. (But I'm grateful for all the delicious foods I CAN eat!)

Find the beauty and love in life:

This is just a way to keep your bucket full, so speak. The more you can enjoy the little things in life, the easier it will be to deal with the heavier emotions when things don't feel great. Finding beauty and love is so easy and it gets easier with practice. It is also different for everyone but it's about really paying attention to the world around you and using all your senses. It is about connecting with yourself and making every moment of your life your "medicine."

Maybe it's seeing a flower peeking through a fence...

Seeing a bird or hearing birdsong on your evening walk...

Your evening walk in general...

A ladybug that happens to land on you...

The shape of a cloud...

Hearing your favorite song come on the radio (or your streaming device)

The taste of a ripe strawberry or peach...

The feel of the sun or a breeze on your skin...

Seeing someone being nice to someone like holding a door open for them...

Hearing the sound of a stream gurgling...

Watching the rain drops fall against a window or puddle...

Seeing the gorgeous colors of the sunset...

Cooking and eating a delicious, dinner...

Sinking into the comfort of your pillow and bed after a long day...

Try to notice as many things each day as you can. Go outside and get morning light as often as you can. Try to see as many sunsets as you can. Do something nice for yourself everyday. Meditate. Practice breathing love into your heart center every day. Practice gratitude when you wake up and before you go to sleep.

Love yourself when you are happy and doing great, and love yourself when you are feeling heavy and down. I realize reading through this that I make it sound like it's no big deal and it's easy to do. Believe me, I still have to practice these all the time. If you need help or guidance, feel free to contact me and I can help you love and heal yourself!

You are worth making the effort to love yourself, to heal yourself and live in alignment with your true self. You are WORTHY!