What Would Love Do? About Ourselves – and Regarding Others
This text is from my February 2023 Newsletter Message. Sign Up to Receive Future Ones or Read Past Ones.
🔶How we perceive and internalize what happens to us – dictates how we will feel afterwards
🔶How we respond to disappointments, misunderstandings, and others’ unwanted or aggressive attitudes or behaviors – dictates the atmosphere afterwards
🔶How we deal with unexpected or unwanted situations – dictates how satisfactorily they will be resolved
And it Is How Much Love We Have for Ourselves that dictates how we perceive and internalize, how we respond, how we deal with situations – and how much we can express love to others – and out into the world.
Self-Love
Self-love means that we are accepting, understanding, compassionate, and forgiving to ourselves – we are basically kind to ourselves.
When we come from a place of love, we think, speak, act, and react from a place of love – and empowerment.
Focusing on the positive aspects of ourselves and others
is uplifting and empowering.
Focusing on the negative aspects of ourselves and others
is deflating and disempowering.
And it is from this place of empowerment that we can be accepting, understanding, compassionate, and forgiving to others – we can basically be kind to those around us.
Ensure Your Thoughts, Words, and Reactions Align with Self-Love
Self-love requires being conscious and aware of what you are letting into your mind and life – and what you are putting out into the world.
When we think, speak, react, and act unconsciously, we are at the beck call of Unconscious Influences. Based on unresolved past hurts and pains that we project into the present, these influences cause us to feel, react, and behave in habitual and protective ways that have no bearing on what is currently happening.
This unconscious way of dealing with life and others causes unwarranted anger, hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and conflicts.
To get to a place of loving yourself, your thoughts, words, reactions, and behaviors must align with,
🔶The way you want to feel,
🔶 How you want life to show up, and
🔶The kind of relationships you want to have.
If you want to feel love in your life and have peace around
you, you must come from a place
of love – and extend Love’s Qualities to those around you.
If your thoughts, words, reactions, and behaviors do not align with what you want, you have to exchange them with loving, compassionate, and forgiving ones – rather than berating yourself, complaining about a situation, or criticizing or blaming others.
This is vital because how we think about ourselves and how we deal with others and situations dictates what shows up in our life and affects the quality of our relationships.
Replacing negative thinking requires consciously training our minds to shift to positive thoughts about ourselves and others, and hopeful thoughts about the future. And replacing is really re-programming our habitual ways of approaching life.
This article is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Relationship Intelligence, Choose Your Ideal Partner, Improve Your Couple Relationship, Heal Your Family Relationships (due out Spring 2023). About Book
If you’re default is negative self-talk, replacing it with a more-positive spin will help you develop compassion for yourself, and set up your day with a positive mind-frame.
I once heard Louise L. Hay, the now deceased prolific American self-help author and publisher, say in one of her talks that even after years of working on reprogramming herself, every morning she still looks at herself in the mirror, smiles at herself and says “I love you” to her image – many times and with much gusto.
Lightening Up and Infusing Your Life with Joy
Being lighthearted and joyful makes room for self-love to grow. When you embrace activities that bring you joy – whether working with your hands, bodies, or minds your heart will fill up with love.
And the more we embrace our passions with lightness, joy, and abandonment, the more this will strengthen the connection to our heart-space, and the easier it will be to feel joy.
Embracing joy is a powerful thing. In her promotion for her 2013 workshop, “Open Your Heart, and Allow Joy to Be Your Guide,” Carol Fitzpatrick said, “The feeling (of love, joy, peace) has all the structure of the universe. It’s the rocket fuel that gets us to where we want to be”
If you cannot easily connect to joy,
you can re-ignite it by bringing to mind and reveling in things,
places, or times when you did feel joy.
Love and joy are our essential natures and although these may have been dulled by past events, they can be reignited.
Our True Reality Is that We Are Love at Our Core
We were all once connected to love. However, at some point we became disconnected from that love. Although there are many myths as to how we originally became disconnected from love (I won’t delve into the esoteric here), we do know that our current ways of being and reacting to life are inhered from Humanity’s past.
Our ancestors fell into survival mode because of how those in power treated them causing them to develop a fear-based way of navigating life.
Their thoughts, words, attitudes, reactions, and behaviors we based in protective mechanisms to survive. Love, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and acceptance and the belief that all are equal and deserving of love and fairness were not prominent in their minds.
Today, we are starting to unravel from those past ways of being, but most of us still have scars that were unknowingly perpetrated upon us by our familial, generational, and cultural backgrounds – as they inherited those fears and survival ways of being from their ancestors.
Therefore, most of us are somewhat misaligned from love and hold some of those protective mechanisms that show themselves in our interactions with others.
This is why it is so important to be loving towards ourselves – and others. So, whenever a tricky feeling or situation arises and we are unsure of what to feel, say, or do, we can ask ourselves,
What Would Love Do? And when we take
a few deep beaths and go into our heart-space – the answer will arise.
Once we get into our heart-space, the answer will always be one of compassion and understanding appropriate to the situation.
Understanding Our Misalignments from Love Allows Forgiveness to Flow
When we get angry or have hurt feelings because of what another says or does – or does not say or do, understanding that we are coming from a place of misalignment from love – as they are too, is what allows us to respond in love.
The main purpose of our life is to evolve closer to love – to be able to experience love – and to express love. And to be able to feel and express from that place of love more fully, love must be the dominant energy we live by. We must be anchored in love.
We become anchored in love by
practicing being loving – by coming from a place of love.
Still, most of us have times when we get angry or upset, get hurt feelings or become frustrated, or are disappointed in have misunderstanding with or feel wounded by unmet expectations with others. And we are often triggered by others’ attitudes or by what they say or do – or didn’t say or do, and it is hard to put forgiveness into action.
Dealing With Upsets – and Others Bad Attitudes or Behaviors
Whenever we feel hurt of upset, we must acknowledge the feelings that arise, as burying our feelings only delays dealing with them (their repercussions will show up in some way eventually). However, leaning in too closely to the feelings and reacting from our feelings – rather than responding calmly is counterproductive.
Taking those few deeps beaths and asking What Would Love Do? and waiting for the answer to guide you on how to respond appropriately to the situation now will give you a better outcome.
You can unravel your feelings when alone by journaling or with your preferred way of self-reflection. This way, you keep the peace – as much as possible with the situation, and also work on your part by attempting to make sense of your feelings and the whys and wherefore of situation.
If we want to feel our best, have harmonious relationships, and generally better ourselves we must approach life from a place of love, compassion, and understanding – rather than from frustration, anger, and blame.
Issues inevitably crop up with others, and
🔶Conversations must be had
🔶Things sometimes have to be pointed out
🔶Explanations may be necessary to clarify a situation
🔶Misunderstandings must be dealt with.
It is how we approach these that not only influences the outcome, but also how we will feel afterwards.
Anything can be said or pointed out without repercussions
– if it is done lovingly and without judgment, criticism, or blame.
What Would Love Do – is a good mantra to have in your arsenal of phrases to help you navigate life.
Wishing a wonderful rest of your week, and talk to you soon,
Rosemary🙋🏼♀️🦋🙏🏼
©Rosemary McCarthy, February 16, 2023.
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About My Books “Why We Are the Way We Are” and “Your Journey to Peace …”- both are available in print and e-book from Amazon (links to buy in the about books). My Upcoming books: “Overcome Your Unconscious Influences …” due out Summer 2022. “Relationship Intelligence” due out Fall 2022. COVER IMAGES BELOW
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Copyright © February 16, 2023. by Rosemary McCarthy. All rights Reserved. To copy, share, or distribute this article simply ensure the content is copied in its entirety, is unaltered, and is distributed freely and for no monetary or personal gain, and that this copyright notice and the link for the article and the website www.spiritedfawnpublications.com are included. You can contact me at: rosemary@yourjourneytopeace.com. Blessings, and thank you kindly, Rosemary🦋🧡
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