Yes With Joy

Being in love and being neutral at the same time is a really strange feeling.  With one, it’s all consuming. With the other, it’s almost no feeling…or so it seems.

Let me explain.  I fell in love recently, and he’s a great guy, but unfortunately he lives 1,200 miles away.  We talk every day, multiple times a day, and recently he came to visit for two weeks.  The light-hearted, fluttery feeling of love was there.  But when he left, I realized that I was neutral…really neutral.  If we continued to date, it would be great.  If not, then he raised my expectations for what to hope for from a man.  (He’s that good.)

At first this threw me for a loop.  What if I didn’t really love him?  So, I focused on what I wanted…the feelings I have with him and all his good points.  Not only this, but my friends say they can see it on my face, and I have a new softness about me. And besides, I think of multiple things during the day that I’d like to share with him.

But wait, all my spiritual teachings have been guiding me toward neutrality – I’m okay if I do, and I’m okay if I don’t.  Wasn’t this a perfect example?  It’s just strange being so neutral and not feeling the society-accepted definition of love…the pining away, the longing, the other yearnings.  I can find the feelings, but they aren’t overwhelming me as they would have in the past.

With this wonderful man, I can speak my mind (mindful of how I communicate) without worrying about pleasing him.  I can be me.  What a concept…being me while in a relationship!  In fact, I feel like I’m a better me when I’m with him.

And one of the best things about neutrality is that if things between us dissolve, all I have to do is say, “Next.”  And I’m ready to move on.   It’s all about taking the energy out of things.  They are neither right nor wrong.  They just are.  I guess I have learned something with all this studying.

But for now, I’m going to smell the 18 roses he sent me yesterday.  Love sure can be sweet.

Valentine’s Day is a day of love. Usually, people think of loving their kids or that special someone. But what if that special someone was you? What if you took this day to truly love everything about yourself?

I challenge you to spend an hour today looking at yourself in the mirror and thinking about all the things you love about yourself. To make this even stronger, write down what you are saying so that you can remind yourself later what you love about yourself.

Too often we get caught up in judgment, which is usually negative. The more negative we think and feel, the worse we feel about ourselves. And the worse we feel about ourselves, the worse we do in life. The trick is to input more positive comments than negative ones, and since we have a lifetime of negative comments, we have some catching up to do. So, spend sometime today loving yourself.

And then follow it up with a positive action…something that will demonstrate to the universe that you really do love yourself.

Update:  I did this exercise myself today and do you know what?  It shifted my energy and I feel even better than I did when I woke up.  All I did was recognize what was already there.  Now to put it in action…I think a nice walk is in order.  Or maybe something silly like putting on lipstick and kissing the mirror so that whenever I look in the mirror and see all those kisses, I’m reminded that I love me.  Just thinking about this makes me giggle.

Ladies’ Night In was last night. Each month, I invite a few female friends to get together and chat at my home. In October, we had a bonfire. November was busy and I was out of town more than I was in (or so it seemed), so we skipped November. December’s Ladies’ Night In was a bust. Only two people could come. But as the date neared, we decided to go to downtown Chicago and ended up with five of us. Two friends from downtown could now join us. We had a great time, but at 11:45 I was yawning and had to call it quits. It was still an hour before I got home and slipped into bed. Read the rest of this entry »