Here’s a break for you during this week of Love. You’ve had a difficult couple of days so now I’ve given you an easy job – love your friends today.

This should be almost a no-brainer because I would think it’s hard for someone to be your friend (not an acquaintance) if you don’t have some love for them. Wouldn’t you agree?

So, start loving on your friends today and do it all day long. Think about a person and then talk to yourself about why you love them – what is it that they possess or embody that makes you love them.

Why are they your friend? What is it you see (or saw) in them that drew you guys together – don’t be surprised if, in doing this, you come up with some other reasons to love yourself. Remember everyone around us is a mirror of ourselves. So, what you see in others actually is a reflection of what’s inside of you.

Make this an experience and an experiment today. See how many friends you can list and then how many qualities of each overlap from friend to friend. I bet you’ll come up with a couple (maybe even 5) that are the same in each of your friends that you cherish more than anything. Write down those qualities, put them on an index card or a piece of paper in front of you and look at them every day. See if you can identify their existence in your own humble little being. I imagine you’ll be able to if you look hard enough.

Enjoy today’s loving exercise and let us know if you’re seeing anything in you that makes you happier.

Terrie

Now we’re following one tough cookie with another.

Today your job is to love yourself!

If you made it through yesterday’s work, this should be a bit easier than if you blew it off. Why? Because if you have body issues or self-esteem issues, then the work on your body should have penetrated that armor even a tiny little bit.

So, today start looking at your good qualities – do you have patience, perseverance, good intuition, intelligence, persistence, a sense of humor, a loving and caring personality, an ability to laugh at yourself, good problem solving abilities?

What do you think you’re good at? What do you love to do? What could you excel at or what are you excelling at now? What good have you done for others in the past – did you ever just donate a few pennies to some cause? That’s a great quality that you should list – you’re generous. Can you spot when others are in need of a listening ear or a hand to hold? Do you open doors for others?

Ask your family or friends if you have to but do it! You have to love yourself if you’re going to make a mark on others or on the world in general. If you don’t love yourself, then you don’t have the time or capabilities to give as much as you’d probably like! The Universe gave you this body and soul and it’s your job to uncover all this wonder and let it out – peel that onion, uncover the rose and let yourself blossom.

Let us know what you’re finding out about yourself during this week of love.

Terrie

I started with the easy one yesterday and then moved directly into a tougher one. I did that on purpose because I want you to see your power if only for one day. You spent all day yesterday concentrating on the love you feel for your family or at least one person in your family.

It should be an easy transition to go to yourself since you are a product of your family. Don’t you love being alive? If you do, then you should be able to love yourself just for feeling alive…even if you have to stretch a bit to say you feel alive. We should aim every day to feel a bit more alive than we did yesterday and the day before. We have to embrace life more fully – becoming a complete person. It is our job each and every day to find pleasure in something different. If we try to do that, we’ll be able to expand our enjoyable moments and not spend so much time focusing on one or a few areas. This is usually a problem with those who do NOT love their bodies.

Think about this, though – when you say you hate your body or don’t like your body, you’re actually saying that you don’t like yourself.  Why is that? Why don’t you love your body?

Think about all it does for you – it operates independently and allows you to breathe, move and enjoy life. You can think, you can feel, you can love, you can cry. You can run if you want or sit if you want. Love all your joints even the ones that don’t work as well as you’d like. They are a big part of you. Your heart beats, it pushes blood all throughout your body, it keeps you living. Your lungs bring fresh air (oxygen) to every cell in your body allowing all those cells to function.

Don’t focus on the external. Stop criticizing your weight – that’s just a number. If you have more curves than you’d like, love them. Stop stressing yourself out about them. When you worry and are in a stress response, you cannot take off the weight. That is not the way God made you – your body was made in Divine Mind – it was made to function in a certain way (protective mode) when under stress and it does that quite well.

We should all be like Helen Keller – if we didn’t have eyes to look at ourselves and others we would have nothing to compare our bodies to. We’d be happy with where we are.

Love your body. Love every single part of it. What color are your eyes? Do you have dimples? Do you like them? I had freckles and bright red hair as a child and looked like either Howdy Doody or Bozo the Clown. But I stood out. And I made sure that the rest of me stood out as well. I was proud of my freckles and my red hair. Then it turned white when I was pretty young. But that was ok too. I was not judgmental about that.

What can you focus on all day today to love about your body? It may take a bit but try it. Find something!

Let us know if you’re struggling. Let a friend help you with this. Or a loved one. I know you can do it for just one day.

Terrie

Today’s love is your family. That should be pretty easy since we all have family and there’s bound to be at least one someone you can love. I bet that after you start with one, you’ll be able to progress on to other members of your family as well.

Even if the family member you chose is no longer with you, you can certainly express your love.

Take your mom – no matter what else happened in your life, she gave you life and without her, you wouldn’t be here! What more could you ask for and why wouldn’t you love her for that.

Write down her other good qualities (other than raising a stellar human being such as yourself). What is it you feel when you think about her? How would you want to be like her? Take it a step further – are you like her? If so, in what ways? If not, would you like to be? What can you do to make yourself more like her?

Who else in your family do you love? Your father? your brother(s), your sister(s), aunts, uncles, grandparents, Godparents? Cousins, nephews, you own kids or grandkids?

Do you have an extended family?

What is it about all these people that give you joy and make you happy just thinking about them? How do they (and how have they) influence you – do they do that on a daily basis?

What belief systems did you get from your family? Are they things you wish to continue to believe or things you wish to let go of?

Once you’ve listed all these characteristics and qualities, sit back and feel the good feelings you have.

Work on loving your family all day today. Even when work or your life may seem to be going not so good, find one of these characteristics or even a story that brings you joy and “go there” for a minute or two. Does that change your feeling about the moment? Are you happier, calmer, better able to handle what comes your way?

Write us and let us know what you’re experiencing. Maybe it’s something you haven’t thought of in years that just came back to you and made you smile!

Love your family today (and every day)!

Terrie