This pillar matches up with your Throat Chakra. Your throat chakra is also known as your Vishuddha chakra and governs communication, self-expression, and the ability to speak your personal truth. In this Chapter we will go over “Satya” this describes the ethical standard of truth and how we should conduct ourselves while interacting with ourself and others. In Yoga, SATYA is one of the five Yamas and represents an ethical rule of “right living”. It is part of the Yoga philosophy of moral imperatives, commandments, and rules. Satya is the virtuous restraint from falsehood.
Of all the chapters in this book. Self-love in my opinion is one of the most important pillars of health. Self-love is different than self-care. Being comfortable and safe in our own skin, I believe is the key to happiness. I don’t care how many times you workout a in a day, or how many beautiful yoga poses you can do, if you are feeling depressed or have low self-esteem, each day is going to feel like the weight of the world is pressing down on you. The sad thing about this is, we do it to ourselves. When life happens, how we react is a marker for where we are in our spiritual growth as a human. Do we laugh, cry or curse over spilt milk? It comes down to one simple truth. Are you overjoyed and grateful to be you? Each one of us is a gift to this world and special in our own unique way. What gets in our way of recognizing this is self judgement and our self-worth? Our internal self-talk is what inevitably defines who we are and how we react to life and interact with others. Our environment as a child has everything to do with how we perceive ourselves as an adult. The minute we are born, we are given rules and regulations on how to behave by our parents and our environment. We are schooled in everything from how to dress, what to watch, what to eat and what to learn. We are taught simple pleasantries, like please and thank you, good morning and have a nice day. We are told to be seen and not heard, to do as I say and not as I do. We are taught to do unto others as you would have them do on to you, as if others are more important, then you!
Some would feel that putting yourself above all else, is being a bit selfish, but what you are really doing is being self-full. To truly love and to be loved, you first must love yourself. In a western society there is very little, if any education on how to treat and to respect ourselves and more importantly how to manage our self-talk. Eventually we end up putting our own imaginary walls of confinement around what we believe we can achieve in life based on what others have told us. We settle in life because that is what we believe we are meant to do.
Self-love and self-respect start with communication. Usually when we read about communication there are the same subjects that are covered. We hear the same old adages that we have 2 ears, 2 eyes and 1 mouth, should listen first, and look for nonverbal communication signals second. When we are first learning about communicating, we are taught to be clear and choose the right words to deliver our message. We are told not to be too wordy or go into tangents. To be respectful, kind, confident, patient and listen. Ironically, what we all struggle with the most, is understanding how to apply these same skills when we communicate with ourselves. We talk to ourselves in ways we would never even think about when it comes to others. In fact, in many ways, it would be considered just flat out rude! In this chapter you will learn just how critically important our self-talk is. When we say things internally, they have a profound impact on our lives. For good or bad, how you communicate to yourself, overtime, will start to define who you believe you are, and then eventually…who you become.
Have you ever been late to work and found yourself rushing around the house trying to choke down a quick breakfast, get dressed, drink your coffee, all while simultaneously trying to get the kids ready for school only to smash your toe on the foot of a table? You grimace and tell yourself, “Stupid, stupid, it’s going to be one of those days?” If your mother hit her foot on the leg of a table and grimaced, would you tell her “Stupid, stupid it’s going to be one of those days for you mother!” OMG of course not. You would run to support her and give her a big hug. So, what gives us the permission, or the right, to treat ourselves with disrespect and a lack of compassion?
Having a good center of balance in life, will make all the difference in the world on how you react when life throws you a curve ball. Remember life happens! — I cannot stress enough how yoga and meditation has helped millions of people like me to not sweat the little things in life. Be kind to yourself during stressful times. True character is judged on how you act during times of strive, especially when no one is looking. Hold yourself to a higher standard in the game of life. Just like anything that is worth having, this is a skill that is developed overtime and mastered with a just a little practice. A mediation practice to be more precise.
To respect yourself, is to talk to yourself with respect like you would talk to a parent, best friend, or partner. We are all guilty of bashing ourselves in ways we would never do to a person that is important us. Talk to yourself like you are your own best friend. You can start this new relationship with yourself by having good honest conversations, a good moral compass, and to be true to your word by never ever breaking a promise you made with yourself. Be impeccable with your word. It is insane how much suffering we cause ourselves with our own words, thoughts, and broken promises. Once you tell yourself that you are not worthy or don’t deserve happiness, your mind will then own that and begin to fulfill your self-proclaimed prophecy. The opposite is true as well. As soon as you tell yourself I am worthy and deserve happiness, and follow through with your commitments, the universe will start to conspire for you.
Being an Authentic Human
Being an authentic human means, to show who you truly are to yourself and others. To be completely honest with what your true wants, needs and desires are.
Here we are going to give you some basic skills of self-discovery so you can find out what those wants, and desires actually are. You will learn how to develop these skills so overtime you can attain peace and a center of balance with yourself and others.
When we are off course in life and feeling stressed, it is usually because we are going against the grain of our true north. Until we have the hard conversations with ourselves on where we are in life and where we want to eventually be, life will be bumpy and stressful. It’s just like when we are on a road trip, driving our car on the highway. We have our destination in mind and GPS to guide us. When we are staying in our lane and traveling the speed limit, things go smoothly. As soon as we lose our way, slide out of our lane, or take a corner to fast, we hit the rumble strips. You know those annoying speed bumps they use for traffic management. When we hit those bumps in the road our car shakes and shimmy’s. These bumps in the road are necessary to keep us from getting into a car crash. They are telling us to move over, slowdown and to stay in our lane. Life is like that as well. When we are not traveling in our own personal lane of truth and trying to be someone we are not, our own internal rumble strips begin to shake and shimmy to prevent us from having an internal crash.
Finding your own true north and to stay in that lane, starts with being honest with yourself and others. This is called living in Satya-Truthfulness. This is easier said than done. Ironically, one way to be honest with yourself, is to be open and honest with others. This means that you must act in a way that shows your true nature and feeling to others. This can be very uncomfortable and leave us feeling a bit vulnerable at first because it goes against a lot of the things we have been taught since childhood. Try to show people how you truly feel rather than showing them only a particular side of yourself just to make them happy, AKA people pleasing. We only do this so we can be liked or to fit in. We all do it and we see this mostly in relationships. One partner trying to please the other because they are afraid to speak what they are truly feeling. They don’t want to rock the boat out of fear of retaliation in the form of guilt or getting the cold shoulder for an extended period of time. When you hold back your feelings to others and especially your partner, the knots you feel in your gut is life’s speedbumps shaking you up, trying to wake you up!
Showing up each day authentically to others may take time and more importantly courage. It won’t happen overnight, but if you follow the guidelines, we are about to give you and do The Work, it will happen. Once you begin to treat yourself with the respect that you so richly deserve, you will find that the people that disrespect you for showing up as your authentic self, are probably not the humans you want to be surround with anyway. Cut them loose!
Where Do I Begin?
#1-Start by asking the hard questions
Most work in this area is done through mediation and journaling. To be authentic with yourself, you first have to be honest with yourself. Again, this is harder than it seems. You must ask yourself the hard questions. Start your question like this; “Am I happy with (fill in the blank)? Let’s say you said “Job”. If the answer is no, then we are getting somewhere. Your next question should be “What do I really want to be doing for a living”? Answer this question as if money was not an issue. Whatever your answer is… then that is your answer. As these are hard questions to ask, getting the answers is easy once the question is asked. But you need to be 100% honest with yourself!
This method can be applied to just about anything. Am I happy with life? Am I happy with my partner? Am I happy with my body? Am I happy where I live? Write down whatever comes to mind no matter how wild and outrageous they sound at first. Soon you will have your first roadmap to living the life you truly want and desire. Again, if you are completely honest with yourself when you ask the hard questions, you will find the answers will come easily, but to make it all happen for you, you will have to consistently work at it. You only have one life to live, so why not live it on your terms and more importantly love each and every minute of it!
#2 -Start a gratitude journal.
Here is the definition of the Universal Law of Attraction. Positive or negative thoughts bring positive or negative experiences. But key for all this to work, the universe will never give you what you want. It will give you what you feel you deserve. In order to shift your mindset to believe you deserve the best in life, start by doing an internal self-checkup through self-discovery. Having a gratitude journal will help you with this. Giving gratitude is the key. You will be literally counting your blessings and creating a new reality by changing the way you see things. Journaling is a very personal journey that allows you to be present each day, to sit in your own lane and recognize what direction you are going in life. By writing down the blessings that you are surrounded with and what makes you happy, you will gain clarity on what you truly seek in life. Once you 100 % know what you want in life and where you want to go, you will find your true north to your happiness and have a real direction on where you are headed the first time in your life. Tell yourself that you deserve this, because why not you?!
You will be amazed what doors will open once you have crystal clear thought on what you truly want and desire in life. Make a choice to pursue it, if even if it’s just in your mind, it will start to manifest for you! Don’t worry how you will get there, just be clear on where you want to be. Somehow, someway the universe will deliver it on to you. It may not manifest exactly as you expect, but sometimes the universe gives us what we need, more often than what we want. Your thoughts are more powerful than you know. Believing in yourself, and believing that you deserve happiness, is where the magic happens. Because if you do not believe in yourself and know exactly what you specifically want, or more importantly what you feel you specifically deserve, then how can the universe possibly deliver it to you?
Picture this, you walk into a restaurant because you are hungry. You sit down, the waiter greats you and asks, “What can I get you?” You say, “I’m starving, I would like to order some food please”. He looks at you with a puzzled expression. “Okay, do you need a bit more time to decide?” you say, “No, I’ll order food now please I’m starving” The waiter is now looking at you with a blank face, gives you a courtesy smile and walks away.
Trust me, this is the exact same thing that happens in life when we do not know what we truly want. We don’t get specific enough with our requests. If you aim low or at nothing, you will hit it every time! Most of us ask for money, love, happiness, and good health. What the universe hears is, food, food, food, food. Instead of asking for LOVE to come in your life, get specific and add detail, details, details! Ask for love like this. I want to meet a brunette that is athletic, loves yoga, the outdoors, laughs easily, meditates, is an empty nester, has a career in the health industry, is a family oriented, has no crazy X’s, is my best friend and can sing karaoke with me. I did, and that is exactly what the universe gave to me!
Be specific with what you want in life, 100 out 100 times you will get what you feel you deserve. Yes, that is the catch! Sure, you have to be specific in your wishes, but if you don’t feel you deserve them, they will never manifest for you because you will somehow sabotage them even if you don’t realize you are doing it.
#3- Use daily affirmations
How can I start to feel I deserve the best things in life? First you need to start to believe in yourself. The best way to begin this process is to create your own personal belief system by talking to yourself like you would a best friend. This will be a bit uncomfortable at first but trust me this stuff works. Tell yourself every day at least 3 things you love about you. Let’s start this process with affirmations, verbally telling ourselves how wonderful we are. Sounds narcissistic right? It’s actually apples and oranges. A narcissist has an inflated sense of self-importance. Affirmations are a form of self-love. Think of this as basically giving yourself a pep talk.
With the daily practice of affirmations, you are telling yourself that you are loved and that you are enough. You are telling yourself that you are a gift to this world and believing it, because you truly are! We all are! You are exactly where you need to be in life at this present moment. You are even reading this book for a reason.
Here are my top 25 affirmations
- I am enough and very loved
- I choose my beautiful life
- I am healthy and deserve happiness
- My life is a gift, and I am here for a reason
- I am exactly where I am supposed to be for now
- I choose peace
- I am smart
- I will succeed today
- It is going to be the best day of my life
- I am so lucky
- I am here to help others
- I can do anything I choose to do
- I command respect and deserve acceptance
- I want for nothing and money flows easily into my life
- I am bold and beautiful
- I trust myself
- I am special
- I am looked up to
- I am needed
- I am wanted
- I am respected
- I am special
- I am living my Dharma
- I am a treasure to my friends and family
- Everything I desire is coming my way
Using affirmations each day works very quickly. Have you heard the term fake it until you make it? The simple act of telling yourselves it’s going to be a great day, will make all the difference in the world on how the day unfolds for you. Deprograming decades of trauma may take some time and work on your part. Facing our past traumas, acknowledging we have made mistakes and forgiving ourselves verbally takes courage. Just know that without those big and little life challenges we have encountered throughout time, we would have not been given a chance to grow. The past is the past and you have today to create any reality you want.
#4- Forgive yourself
Self-love goes hand in hand with self-forgiveness. We can be our own worst enemy when we make a mistake. We all make mistakes, and no one is perfect. Making a mistake is how we grow. There are no mistakes only lessons in life. We need to be able to reflect and learn from those lessons. When we make a mistake, we can feel guilt and sometimes worse, we feel shame. Do you know the difference between feeling guilt and shame? Guilt says I did something bad. Shame says I am bad.
Guilt focuses on an action or behavior. Shame is by definition the deep painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and not worthy of a human connection, love or belonging. Everyone experiences this at some point in their life. It is a universal human trait.
An example of this would be -You apply for a job and get an interview. You get there late because you went out the night before. You don’t get the job. Guilt looks like this: Man, that was a stupid thing to do. I should not have gone out last night. Shame looks like this: I’m so stupid I’m an idiot, I always screw things up. I’m a fool. When you focus on yourself being the action or behavior and not the action by itself, it becomes a self-fulling prophecy. What does this exactly mean? We all make mistakes. We are human. When we do make a mistake, we have to be careful about our self-talk. Don’t listen to the Itty-Bitty Shitty Committee, which is our negative self-talk. Instead talk to yourself just as if you are talking to a best friend, when a mistake is made, choose your words carefully.
Example: “I should not have lied to my dad”. Opposed to “I’m such a liar”. Our minds are like computers or giant sponges and like a computer or sponge, it will download, store, and soak up any data you feed it. It does not know the difference. I am good, I am bad. Whatever you tell yourself will become your destiny. Forgive yourself. We all make mistakes. That is how we learn and become better humans.
#5- Do “The Work”
Lastly you have to do The Work. Changing how you look at yourself and more importantly how you feel about yourself takes work. Using affirmations, journaling, asking yourself the hard questions and forgiving yourself for past choices is a job and takes time. By spending just, a couple minutes each day you will see results, but you need to be consistent. Remember you are unwinding decades of programing. There are some of us that have unfortunately grown up in wounding and often traumatic environments and it may take a bit of further action to release those old wounds. As we grow and learn at a young age, we take on that of our surrounding environment. For example, if you witnessed your parents fighting all the time you may actually feel comfortable with said chaos. This chaos could be loud voices, arguments, silent treatments, breaking items, or physical and/or verbal abuse. You even may find yourself creating chaos in your current relationship(s) in an effort to bring into your life the familiar.
This may sound crazy, but if you look back into your childhood as far back as you can remember and take inventory, you will probably see a pattern in how you see yourself and how you relate to others. Obviously, this is a big problem and without doing The Work, most will find themselves re-living their dysfunctional childhood over and over again in their adult relationships and not having the skills to navigate through one’s own feelings of anger, insecurity or sadness. There are different types of therapy and ways to apply The Work to heal past traumas. In this context it is in reference to the Inner Child. Much has been written on this subject and I could write an entire book about this as it can be complex and filled with many emotions. Suffice it to say, it is NECESSARY to do this work to truly achieve self-love and inner peace. It is essential to heal the child within, to be in an intimate partnership and to have healthy relationships with friends, and coworkers but more importantly, to be in a healthy relationship with oneself. Inner child work, or inner child healing is a way to address our needs that have not been met as children and heal those wounds. It is an act that requires going inside of ourselves, to explore our true feelings and parts of us that may have been rejected and labeled as inappropriate by others. By allowing ourselves time to go within, we begin peeling back our everyday coping mechanisms we use to avoid the pain of past trauma. We stop being avoidant of our pain and start to work through it to processed it and eventually let it go.
Typically working through the Inner Child requires time and effort. It is recommended that you seek out a therapist who is familiar with, or specializes in, this type of therapy as it can be highly emotional. Revisiting past trauma takes courage and will be a bit scary. But it is critical for all of us to face our fears and past traumas if we ever want closure and begin to heal old wounds.
“Owning our past and loving ourselves through
that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do”
–Brené Brown
Here is your fourth LifeSpanners challenge!
Self-Love
The Self-Love Challenge:
This will be the easiest, the most uncomfortable and the most rewarding challenge of this book.
Here is your Self-love challenge.
- Find a mirror in your house. Any mirror that gives you privacy. It could be in your bedroom or bathroom, choose one that you won’t be disturbed.
- Go back a couple pages in this book to the “Here are my top 25 affirmations “and mark that page.
- When you are ready, look at yourself in the mirror and gaze into your own eyes. Put a smile on your face and look at yourself like you would look at your most favorite human in the world. Picture that person in your mind. Do you feel your energy shift and your heart beat a bit stronger? Now shift that image back to yourself and look at yourself with that same passion.
- Begin by greeting yourself like you are talking to a friend. Hi how are you doing today?
- Now complement yourself on your outfit, your hair or anything you might think of, as if you are talking to a friend. “Wow love that outfit you are wearing”!
- Next read this paragraph out loud to yourself. Look yourself in the eye as much as possible as you say what is truly in your heart. Below is an example of what you can say. You can use this or make up your own. The point is to develop the internal dialog of self-love
‘Hi how are you doing today? You look great! Is that a new outfit? I love it! Hey, listen, I want to tell you something, I want you to know that I am so very proud of you. You have been through so much lately and I love how you are taking back control of your life right now. You have made mistakes sure, but I want you to know that I truly forgive you and love you unconditionally. I am so lucky to go to bed every night and to wake up every day and get be you. I love who you are becoming, and I am so excited for the wonderful life that is ahead of you. You are my best friend, and I will do anything for you. You are the most important person in the world, and you matter to me” I love you.
- Now Read the TOP 25 AFFIRMATIONS from this chapter to yourself then finish with whatever is left in your heart. Say it with love and compassion as if you are talking to your favorite human.
At first this challenge will be uncomfortable as we have become so used to listening to the “Itty Bitty Shitty Committee”, self-blame and self-hate. Through our self-talk we become attached to our own insecurities. Rather than finding the good in ourselves we are the quickest to point out our own flaws and find every little thing we don’t like about ourselves. The goal of this exercise is to replace this negative self-talk (often done subconsciously), to bring awareness to it and then to CHANGE it proactively. Two very important things will start to happen when you incorporate this exercise into your daily or weekly routine. One, is that you will become aware of your thoughts towards yourself. By verbally bringing thoughts up and out, you can control and change them! The second is that by speaking positive and loving affirmations to self, you will begin to make this a habit. Then in no time at all you will find that so much of that negative energy that you used to focus on, will be transformed into positive love. You cannot truly be loved until you can love yourself. Falling in love with the miracle of being you, is falling in love with life itself.
Congratulations you just completed your fourth LifeSpanners challenge! How did that make you feel? Did you feel tears swell up in your eyes? Were you uncomfortable, sad, angry embarrassed, happy? Pretty powerful stuff right! This is a skill that takes time. It is so important to stick with it and make it part of your morning routine as you start to progress towards being ultimately happy and healthy.
Be proud of yourself. That was not an easy thing to do. You’re doing incredible work!
My Personal Life Lessons
Something beautiful happened to me a couple years ago at a Wanderlust Festival in Whistler BC Canada. There was a workshop called The Magic of Human Connection. Jessica Encell Coleman is the founder of this movement and workshop. She has an international reputation as the go-to person for creating large scale group experiences that are high energy, fun and highly impactful. It was one of the most magical, uncomfortable, lifechanging workshops of my life. 50 of us showed up for this workshop with our yoga mats in an auditorium waiting for a beautiful yoga experience. This was a yoga festival after all. As the excitement and anticipation of a yummy morning yoga practice built up, in walks this amazing human with a gigantic smile on her face. The kind of smile that comes from the heart and lights up a room. “Everyone put away your mats we won’t be needing them today” she spoke. My first thought was, okay what is happening? I noticed right away that a few people snuck out to go grab one of the other yoga classes that were offered around the corner. It was my first class of the day and I really, really wanted to get my yoga on, so the thought may have popped in my head “Maybe I can slip out too and no one will notice”? But alas, I did not want to be rude, so I stayed. What the hell I’d make the best of it right?
Jessica started the workshop off by having us team up in threes. This was smart because you were either a single, or a couple, so all the groups that formed were strangers to each other. She continued by having us introduce ourselves and then rotate until we had met almost everyone. Next, she had us formed a large circle all holding hands and again introducing ourselves to the person to our right and to our left. She asked that we look each other in the eye when doing this and tell that person something about yourself. This is harder than you think when you are talking to a total stranger, and this is when things really started to get interesting! What did I get myself into I thought? But next, she had us all simply start to randomly walk around the room high fiving each other. What a relief, this is easy, you could feel the room relax and now it was going to get fun, or so I thought. No sooner did that thought pop into my head, Jessica had us stop dead in our tracks. She then directed us to find the person that was closest to us. “Reach out and take each other’s hands into yours”. She said “Now, look each other in the eye and begin to tell each other just how beautiful they are”. Now here is the kicker. You had to do this without using words. Imagine holding a stranger hand in hand, looking directly into their eyes (you can’t break eye contact) and begin to tell them just how beautiful they are using just your eyes and facial expressions. Talk about being uncomfortable. I felt my face getting warm with an embarrassing blush. I saw the stranger whose hands I was now holding, cheeks flush as well. So here we both were, beat red in the face, uncomfortably staring deep into each other’s eyes with an awkward smile.
This was my first life lesson of the day– Expect the unexpected in life. Life happens. Trust in the universe. It will give us what we need more often than what we want. I am so glad I did not sneak out of the class like some of the others did. If I had, I would have missed one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Don’t be afraid of stepping out of your box and trying new things, even if they make you feel a bit uncomfortable. For to set sale and find your island paradise, you first must push off from the safety of the shore.
Rewind 30-minutes– Before this class had started, I was the first one there, or so I thought. (On a side note-I am usually 10 to 15 minutes early for everything. It was how my dad raised me. “15 minutes early is on time, on time is late and late is unacceptable son” he would tell me with a raised finger, a squinted eye, and an authoritative voice.) It took me no time at all to find the class. If you have ever had the pleasure to attend a Wanderlust yoga festival, you will be amazed at how organized they are. The maps and karma yogi helpers are great. I always feel like an excited first day of school high school student looking for his math classroom when I am trying to find one of these wanderlust workshops that I signed up for, but I had no problem navigating around this Wanderlust campus. When I did find the correct room, where “The Magic of Human Connection” class was being held, there to greet me was Jessica Coleman herself. She gave me the biggest, warmest smile and 20 second hug of the day! She pulled away while still embracing my shoulders with her extended arms and then said, “We are just not quite ready yet, can you come back in 10 minutes”? “Yes of course”. I said with a hugh smile. I had my mat and backpack on me and looked around for a place to sit and wait. I noticed that there was an elderly lady sitting on a bench, legs crossed and on her phone. Yes, you guessed it, as the universe would have it, she was the same lady that I ended up holding hands with when the musical chairs stopped. As we both sat in the lobby directly across from each other, I saw her on her phone patiently waiting for class to start, so I took a seat and did the same thing. I pulled out my iPhone and started my epic IG post for the day! Little did I know, I would be looking deeply into the eyes of this human sitting across from me, telling her how beautiful she was using non-verbal communication only.
This was my second life lesson of the day- Get to know the people around you. We are more connected than we can possibly imagine. I have a friend that is a master of this. Her motto is to always pay a compliment to any stranger that catches her eye. I too have incorporated this into my life. Make at least one person smile each day. You never know just how or when your lives just might cross…
Fast forward back to the workshop-As class started to wind down, we had hugged, high-fived, laughed with, cried with, and all had just told our life stories to complete strangers. As a group we were now beyond comfortable with each other. It was somehow as if we had known each other for years. One thing is for sure, we now had a deep connection with each other. After this, for the entire 4-day festival, when I saw someone from that workshop, hugs and high-fives came naturally to us. I had made new friends!
The last exercise of the workshop was the biggest lesson I learned all festival. “What I am about to share with you changed my life forever”. Jessica had us team up in 3’s again. She had us sit on the floor lined up right next to each other. Hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. She had the person on the right and the person on the left whisper into the ear of the person in the middle. She had us bring our lips as close to the ear as possible without touching it. What she had us do next is an experience everyone should have at least once in their lives. She had us whisper for 60 seconds into the ear of the person sitting in the middle, a flash flood of positive affirmations. Jessica said “don’t over think it. Just let whatever comes to you flow from your lips to their ear”. Imagine a person whispering in one ear and a different person whispering in your other, positively beautiful, yummy, endearing affirmations like; you are so loved, you are beautiful, you are rich beyond measure, you are right where you are supposed to be in life, you are so lucky, everyone looks up to you, you are admired, you are so very special, you are the chosen one, you are so smart, everyone around you looks up to you, you are a child of god, your parents are so proud of you etc. etc. This goes on for 60 seconds which is a long time! When the 60 seconds were up and we stopped whispering, the girl in the middle was crying so hard, she was shaking. She covered her eyes with her trembling hands and simply bawled her eyes out. We all had a big group hug and held her as she wept. I swear tears are forming in my eyes as I reminisce on this. I will never forget what she said after she gained her composure. She looked at the both of us dead in the eye and said, “Oh you both are in so much trouble!” I was next. I sat in the middle, took a big deep breath, relaxed, and opened myself to receive as they both begun whispering in my ears their beautiful and enchanting words. Intoxicating whispers of love begun to flood both my ears with different affirmations simultaneously and the room begun to spin on me. I felt dizzy, like I was intoxicated. When two people are whispering into both your right and left ear simultaneously, it is difficult to make out the exact words and what they are saying. What you will experience is a colossal electrical energy start to flow through you as you are immersed in pure perfect love! This went on for seemingly an eternity and I began to feel hot tears start to pool up in my eyes, then…Niagara Falls.
This is the third life lesson I learned that day: We must turn off to turn on. Put your phone away when you are in a social environment or at dinner with friends. Give compliments and introduce yourself to others. We think we are bothering, but you would be surprised just how welcomed conversation can be to someone. I believe we as a race are starving for real human connections other than Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. We are a species that is designed for human connections. We are more connected with each other than we can ever possibly imagine. I also learned that we are drowning in negative thoughts from ourselves and or others. Our own self-talk can be lacking positive affirmations. We are constantly comparing ourselves to others and telling ourselves; I’m not pretty enough, I’m not smart enough I’m not worthy of love. Make self-love a priority in your life. Make it part of your morning routine to start your day off on the right foot.
~WE NEED POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS IN OUR LIVES LIKE
WE NEED AIR TO BREATHE AND WATER TO DRINK~
~Sensei Chaz
The 4 agreements
The four agreements are a practical guide to personal freedom and a self-help book. It should be one of your musts reads and has helped millions of people deal with how we react to situations and people. We are all products of our environment. Remember that sometimes shit just happens. There is one true freedom in life and that is the space or moment of time we have between what happens to us and how we react to it. It truly is one of the last freedoms we have. We get to choose how we react to people and must take full responsibility for our actions.
Here is a list of the four agreements. The 4 agreements are based on an ancient Toltec Indian wisdom that advocates freedom from self-limiting beliefs that may cause suffering and limitations in a person’s life. It is a short read and well worth it, but here is a summary for you.
Be Impeccable with your word
- Speak with integrity
- Say only what you mean
- Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others
- Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love
Don’t take anything personally
- Nothing others do is because of you or your fault
- What others say and do is a projection of their own reality
- When you are immune to the opinions and actions of other, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering
Don’t make assumptions
- Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want
- Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstanding, sadness, and drama
- With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life
Always Do your Best
- Your best is going to change from moment to moment, it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick
- Under any circumstance, do your best and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret
“TO TRULY UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS TO BE IN THE LIGHT, YOU HAVE
TO ALSO UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS TO BE IN THE SHADOW”
~Seane Corn
LifeSpanners Aging forward – “SELF-LOVE” Quick Tips
There are two powerful driving forces in life. Those are survival and reproduction. But there is also a stronger force that binds us all together and it as real as gravity. That force is love. In order to have it in abundance we have to dedicate time each day for self-love. I am not talking about Spa Day! I am talking about daily affirmations that remind us how special we are. Assurances that no matter what life throws your way, you are in a safe place with yourself.
Quick Tip #1 -Start a Gratitude journal. Start writing down all your blessings big and small. This one addition to your daily routine could be the most profound thing you ever do. Through this simple practice of journaling, you will reach a blissful state of piece and contentment. You just may find that everything you ever wanted or ever need, has been right in front of you the entire time. The blessings that you already have and were taking for granted all your life, may now take on a whole new sacred meaning to you. Your desire to want more and more material things to make you happy will start to fade because you will begin to realize that happiness comes from within and not from without.
Quick Tip #2 -Use daily affirmations. Start paying attention to your self-talk. Begin the process of starting to truly believe in yourself. The best way to begin to create your personal belief system, is to talk to yourself like you would a best friend. You may seem a bit uncomfortable at first, but this stuff works. Tell yourself every day at least 3 things you love about you.
Quick Tip #3– Forgive yourself when you fall. Self-love goes hand in hand with self-forgiveness. We all make mistakes, and no one is perfect. Making a mistake is how we grow. When we make a mistake, we can feel guilt and sometimes worse, shame. By forgiving ourselves we can turn a mistake into a life lesson. We need to be able to reflect and learn from those lessons and understand it’s okay to slip and fall. It is how we grow. In fact, it is the only way we grow. Through self-forgiveness and self-love, you will reach an unwavering respect for yourself, giving you the permission to truly love and be loved.
Quick Tip #4- Do the work! Changing decades of how your look at yourself and more importantly how you feel about yourself takes patience, time, and practice. Using affirmations, journaling, asking yourself the hard questions and forgiving yourself for past choices is a job and takes work.
Through self-love, you may one day have a revelation that you are okay with where you are at right now in life, you will come to peace with your past and rejoice in your future! You could come to realize that everything is actually perfect just the way it is and give yourself permission to be happy. Because guess what, it’s okay to be okay! This alone makes self-love your LifeSpanners #6 health hack.
Reads and Sees:
REVOLUTION of the SOUL– Seane Corn
DARING GREATLY– Brené Brown Ph.D., MSW
