There’s nothing like unexpected love to warm you up in February, so try this experiment to find the love that is already around you.
This dreary February weather, along with the ongoing plague of colds and flu in my life, has rendered me into loveless grouch. Trudging through the snow, I asked myself “What is the one thing guaranteed to cheer me up this morning?” The answer that came to me was “My wonderful co-workers!”
Do these people always cheer me up? Yes. Do they add love and value to my life? Yes. Do I make a point of making sure they know I value them back? Probably not.
So, dedicated to my wonderful co-workers in the spirit of love for other human beings this Valentine’s day, I suggest a one-day Valentine’s Day exercise.
The purpose of this experiment is to let yourself feel the abundance of love that surrounds you every day. You might be unaware of it. But it’s there, my friend. You just have to remove the barriers to feeling it.
To perform this experiment, you will immerse yourself in the abundance of love available to you from the actual living, breathing people who surround you every day.
Often, these people might as well be invisible to us. We take them for granted. They are part of the scenery. We overlook them in our search for “something special”. However, I am here to tell you that sometimes “something special” is right under your nose. One of the richest sources of signs from the Universe are other people; often, the ones all around you.
You must, as much as humanly possible, open your heart and your consciousness to every single person you interact with. This means EVERY person you interact with, no matter how briefly. This includes the woman who serves you your morning coffee, your bus driver, your partner and family, even that annoying guy in your office.
We spend a lot of our time either half-engaged, or staying fully shuttered, because we are overloaded and bombarded with way too much sensory overload. There are valid reasons for protecting our energy fields and not fully engaging. Being overly emotionally open all the time is not good for us.
However, if our default mode is always being shut down, that is not good for us either. While we do keep out the bad and draining energies, we also keep out good soul-nourishing love. Rejecting all the love energy coming from others does not serve our highest good. That’s why we, every once in awhile, we need to practice opening our hearts more than usual, so that we don’t forget how.
Safety precaution: Before beginning your day, don’t forget to visualize wrapping yourself in a protective pink bubble (thanks to Slade at www.shiftyourspirits.com for this tip). The semi-permeable energetic membrane will allow your intentions out and the pink color will only let good energy from others in, and keep all the negative energy out.
1) Set your intention.
In the morning, upon rising, state this to yourself as to your intent for the day: Today, I open my heart to every person I interact with. I engage my heart and full consciousness with every person I interact with, for the highest good of us both.
2) Engage, with all of your focus, with each person FULLY — for the entire time of your interaction.
As you go about your day, make direct eye contact with everyone you interact with (but don’t exceed social norms as we don’t want you getting into other kinds of engagement!). The eye contact is more about genuine connection, not length of time. Focus ALL of your attention on this person for the entire time of your interaction.
3) Fully and completely LISTEN to every person who talks to you.
This is the part that I find really challenging. I have one co-worker whose phone messages are five minutes long at a minimum. So every meeting with this person is very, very long. Even though I have to fight with myself to do it, particularly at the beginning, I find that if I truly listen to him there is a pay off.
Actually LISTEN to what the person is saying. Listen with your open heart to fully hear to what they are saying with their body language, their emotions, their energy.
Results:
At the end of the day, take some quiet time with yourself and try to figure out what you learned today. How can you use what you learned to enrich your interactions with people every day?
How do you feel emotionally, now, at the end of the day? Better than an average day? Worse?
What did you notice from fully engaging and fully listening, that you never noticed before?
What did you learn about yourself?
What did you learn about those people you see everyday but don’t really listen to?
I would love to hear to hear about your results! Please add a comment to this post so that others can also see what you learned.
Photo Credit
“Hearts” kamerakamote @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
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