All you need is love

Last summer when Johanna and I began this journey together with the beads we simply began. We took our first few steps and had no idea what might happen as a result of popping a bead in a jar every day. We simply had the intention to ensure that we valued everyday that we have to live thereby-hopefully-avoiding a death bed regret.

After spending the first 6 months of the bead movement watching simply how things unfolded we have now decided to give ourselves monthly challenges as a way of focusing our thoughts and intentions. As we are beginning here in February this month our challenge is love. Not simply LOVE in the general sense, but broken up into sub-themes. Beginning with self love and moving out to include others in our circle (family and friends) and then onto strangers; the world at large.

So here we are in our first week, with self love. We just decided this on Tuesday so its been a few days of contemplating this and quite incredible things have happened as a result. This week I was faced with a dilemma at work which was taking up a lot of my energy as I mulled it over. Self love for me starts with self trust,  as I believe we can’t have love without trust and ultimately I spent the last few days learning to trust myself in a deeper way. Mentally I could spin through a few more cycles of pros and cons about this particular situation, I could seek advice from a few more trusted people but at the end of the day my heart was clear on this matter the whole week. I trusted my gut instinct, my heart and made the decision. I instantly felt peace and calm about it all.

One thing I have wanted to do since beginning the bead movement was to make decisions not based on fear. This is a recurring challenge  as fear tends to creep into things with a lot of stealth. Fear, in the form of doubt, can shroud ones heart and cause anxiety and ensure that the simple act of making a decision becomes a tricky, lengthy process. Enough is enough this week though, as I fought to hold onto the focus of self love, which led to self trust and led to a clearer, simpler way to address the work dilemma.

I saw how often I have a judgmental inner voice playing softly in my ear. Having the focus of self love was like having a blanket I could toss over the negativity and give myself permission to feel what I feel as opposed to mentally trying to force myself into another direction.

Due to the nature of my work, it can happen that work consumes my days/evenings and weekends. But this week I allowed myself to loosen my grip on the reigns. Yesterday for example, which turned into coffee with a friend, lunch with another and afternoon tea with another, was a pleasurable experience, as opposed to a guilt inducing one. I could easily slip into feeling guilty for starting work at 4pm instead of my usual 8am. But as I contemplated the day later on in the bath I thought I did what I needed to do.

Trusting, much like your body knows what kind of food it needs to eat, that you also know somewhere inside what you need to do with your time. Obviously this isn’t permission to sit watching Netflix all day everyday just because one feels like it, discipline has to come into play at some point, but meandering through the occasional day can’t be a bad thing. After all, if Ferris Bueller can have a day off then surely I can too?

smile

Tags: , , , , ,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *