PRAYER FOR SELF-LOVE

"Let the love we have for ourselves be so strong that we never again reject ourselves or sabotage our happiness, freedom, and love...
"Let the power of our self-love be strong enough to break all the lies we were programmed to believe -- all the lies that tell us we are not good enough, or strong enough, or intelligent enough, that we cannot make it. Let the power of our self-love be so strong that we no longer need to live our life according to other people's opinions. Let us trust ourselves completely to make the choices we must make...
"With the power of our self-love, let us enjoy what we see every time we look in the mirror. Let there be a big smile on our face that enhances our inner and outer beauty. Help us to feel such intense self-love that we always enjoy our own presence...
"Today is a new beginning. Help us to start our life over beginning today with the power of self-love. Help us to enjoy our life, to enjoy our relationships, to explore life, to take risks, to be alive, and to no longer live in fear of love."

don Miguel Ruiz

Seasons of Beauty Aging Gracefully

As we cultivate our life, our beauty becomes as much about what we are creating and doing as it is about our appearance.

We tend to associate youth with beauty, but the truth is that beauty transcends every age. Just as a deciduous tree is stunning in all its stages—from its full leafy green in the summer to its naked skeleton during winter and everything in between—human beings are beautiful throughout their life spans.

The early years of our lives tend to be about learning and experiencing as much as we possibly can. We move through the world like sponges, absorbing the ideas of other people and the world. Like a tree in spring, we are waking up to the world. In this youthful phase of life, our physical strength, youth, and beauty help open doors and attract attention. Gradually, we begin to use the information we have gathered to form ideas and opinions of our own. As we cultivate our philosophy about life, our beauty becomes as much about what we are saying, doing, and creating as it is about our appearance. Like a tree in summer, we become full, expressive, beautiful, and productive.

When the time comes for us to let go of the creations of our middle lives, we are like a tree in autumn dropping leaves, as we release our past attachments and preparing for a new phase of growth. The children move on, and careers shift or end. The lines on our faces, the stretch marks, and the grey hairs are beautiful testaments to the fullness of our experience. In the winter of our lives, we become stripped down to our essence like a tree. We may become more radiant than ever at this stage, because our inner light shines brighter through our eyes as time passes. Beauty at this age comes from the very core of our being—our essence. This essence is a reminder that there is nothing to fear in growing older and that there is a kind of beauty that comes only after one has spent many years on earth.

Daily Om

Relate to yourself through your journal

"To write spiritually is to engage in a search for authentic language. You’ll find your truth by writing your way to it."
-- Patrice Vecchione

Who would allow you to totally ignore, abuse, laugh with, swear at, shed tears on, get angry at and be totally honest with him/her? Your journal does.
Your journal is an unconditional friend. It does not reject, manipulate, judge, laugh at or ridicule you. It’s always there for you. So be honest with your best friend and it will help you discover who you are.

"The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way, and that's heaven. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind."
-- Natalie Goldberg

Support others with your presence

"The purpose of therapy is not to remove suffering but TO MOVE THROUGH IT to an enlarged consciousness that can sustain the polarity of painful opposites."
-- James Hollis
How do we support others who are suffering?
When we understand how soul works through us, we begin to see how pain generates the impulse to change. We see that our aim in supporting someone is NOT to get rid of their pain and suffering. Instead, we want to assist them to understand what the pain is trying to teach them -- to find meaning in their distress.
Often, all we need do is be fully present to them. It also helps to be present to our own experience and genuine in our feelings. Living our own truth helps create the space for the other person to live theirs.
"The first duty of love is to listen."
-- Paul Tillich
"With the gift of listening comes the gift of healing."
-- Catherine de Hueck Doherty

A Dynamic Choice-Maker Accepting Yourself

There is no such thing as a good person or a bad person; simply choices and actions that lead us in different directions.


There is no such thing as a good person or a bad person. There are choices and actions that lead us in different directions, and it is through those choices and actions that we create our realities. Sometimes we choose or do something that takes us in the opposite direction of the reality we want to create for ourselves. When we do this, we feel bad—uneasy, unhappy, unsure. We might go so far as to label ourselves “bad” when a situation like this arises. Instead of labeling ourselves, though, we could simply acknowledge that we made a choice that lead us down a particular path, and then let it go, forgiving ourselves and preparing for our next opportunity to choose, and act, in ways that support our best intentions.

Many of us experienced childhoods in which the words good and bad were used as weapons to control us—you were good if you did what you were told and bad if you didn’t. This kind of discipline undermines a person’s ability to find their own moral center and to trust and be guided by their own inner self. If you were raised this way, you may find yourself feeling shockwaves of badness when you do something you were taught was wrong, even if now you don’t agree that it’s bad. Conversely, you may feel good when you do what you learned was right. Notice how this puts you in something of a straitjacket. An important part of our spiritual unfolding requires that we grow beyond what we learned and take responsibility for our own liberation in our own terms.

You are a human being with every right to be here, learning and exploring. To label yourself good or bad is to think too small. What you are is a decision-maker and every moment provides you the opportunity to move in the direction of your higher self or in the direction of stagnation or degradation. In the end, only you know the difference. If you find yourself going into self-judgment, try to stop yourself as soon as you can and come back to center. Know that you are not good or bad, you are simply you.

Daily Om

How would you describe your place in the universe?

"We become powerful in the face of our fears when we have a sense that we make a difference in this world. Affirmations of purpose communicate the truth that we are all meaningful participants in this Universe and that we are worthy of giving and receiving love. Some affirmations of purpose are:
- I know that I count and I act as though I do.
- I spread warmth and love everywhere I go.
- I am a healing force in the Universe."
-- Susan Jeffers
"The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."
-- Joseph Addison

Morning Musing: Cut Your Losses!

Dear Friends,

We all make mistakes! This is a fact of living. So why do we beat ourselves up when we have made a bad choice. I think it is because deep down inside we are doing what has been done to us all of our lives; punishing ourselves. This has got to stop.

Instead of admitting that we have made a bad choice we keep trying to make that decision work. Maybe we should take a lesson from business and cut our losses and move on. Instead we keep trying to fix things to make them better. Clutter is clutter no matter what form it takes.

You can't organize clutter; you can only get rid of it! I want your home to be filled with things that make you smile. Our lives are too short to continually deal with that pink elephant in the living room. One time a dear friend was moving from a home where she had lived twenty-seven years. It was hard for her to let go of things. Eventually she came up with a plan. If she had any doubt about whether something should be packed; she would set it in the main path to the truck. On the first day she would gingerly walk around the item. The next day she pushed it aside and if on the third day she kicked it; it when to the curb. This showed her that she really didn't love it as much as she had originally thought she had.

We can decorate that pink elephant but it is still a pink elephant. It is sucking the life right out of you. You spend your whole day doing your best to make it fit. God knows we don't want to admit that we made the mistake of bringing that pink elephant home in the first place; that we wasted money and worst of all our time. We just keep plodding along; hoping that the pink elephant will not get mad and become the bull in the china shop. The sad part is that it already has. Just being in your living room it is destroying the most important thing in your home and that is you!

Many years ago I had a diseased gallbladder. I was sick all the time. This gallbladder was toxic to me. Once it was removed I was able to get on with my life. Relationships can be like this too. We have all had people in our lives who suck the life right out of us. You may be with someone right now that is toxic to you. You may have a friend that uses you to make themselves feel superior. You may be struggling with an abuse situation that you hope and pray will get better. They don't get better. They get worse. This abuse can mean a lot of things: physical, emotional, sexual, drug, alcohol and financial.

It is time to cut your losses and strap on your wings to FLY; Finally Loving Yourself. For when you are FLYing, you realize when something is clutter in your life. As nurturers we really do want to help everyone but in the end, we can only help ourselves. This is not a selfish attitude. It is all about self preservation. This type of clutter is going to destroy your spirit.

Accept that you made a mistake! Forgive yourself and cut your losses by decluttering. In business if you lose a nickel on everything you sell and you sell a million of them; you are losing a million nickels. Stop the blood-letting!

It is time to FLY by Decluttering!

FlyLady