February Newsletter: "Spreading the Love"

Hey Everyone! This is Susan Regan, and this month, I'm talking about "Spreading the Love."

First... there's still time to take advantage of my online course "Deciding: To Stay or Separate" {but enrollment closes Feb 17th!}. To help you determine whether this course is right for you, watch my free talk first! Click here to view the FREE talk.

So, this month, I wanted to capitalize on the idea of Valentine's Day and share some tips about how I spread love to the people I care about.

Let's explore a few related practices:

• Loving-Kindness Meditation
• Feeling Gratitude
• Random Acts of Kindness

Loving-Kindness Meditation

• Sit quietly.
• Feel your feet on the floor.
• Have soft eyes (look down or closed).
• Think about yourself and give loving-kindness to yourself.
• Find the rhythm of your breath. What's your rhythm?
• Remind yourself of the love you feel for yourself.
• What do you admire about yourself? 
• Bring that loving feeling into your heart.
• Think of your inner circle. 
• Bring some loving-kindness thoughts to them from the love you have for yourself.
• Expand the love to your friends, neighbors, mentors, community, organizations, etc. -- spreading your kindness meditation all around.
• Take another breath -- noticing how it feels to send out love to yourself and beyond.
• This is a good reset method -- an expansive meditation.

Concepts of Gratitude

I listen to a lot of podcasts on gratitude, read a lot of thoughts on it, and have a gratitude journal -- I have been working with it for a while. I find it helps me to switch my energy around pretty quickly.

Some days, I awake in a bad mood (feeling kind of like the Gargoyle in the picture) or I don't feel well... and it's really hard to figure out what I am grateful for. So, on those days, I have to work on it throughout the day.

I notice that, on those days, if I don't turn the negativity around, I actually ATTRACT negativity to me throughout the day and it starts a cycle of negativity that I'm living in on a day-to-day and minute-to-minute basis. So, I try to break it in the moment -- in those moments, by finding what I'm grateful for (while sitting in the car, through listening to music lyrics, by calling a friend, taking some quiet time alone, etc.). If I'm having a negative interaction with someone, I try to empathize with them or compliment them (instead of getting further frustrated and negative).

Pretty soon, if I keep countering interactions and negativity in that way -- I start getting back positivity. So, give that a try!

Random Acts of Kindness

I love this concept -- though it's difficult to do (with the world news, social media, etc.) and to not feel pessimistic about things or feel like we can make a difference at all.

So, what I try to do (when I'm doing RAK) is to get myself out of the negative, passive state, and into a positive state -- even if I know I'm not having a grand, measurable impact. Similar to the LKM, in that my energy -- being propelled forward, in a positive way -- does have an impact. It may not be measurable, but it definitely does have an impact.

For example, when I take my dog for a walk in my neighborhood, I'm not only noticing the beauty of the environment and of nature -- scanning to see something I don't usually notice -- but I'm also noticing the things that bug me.  So, instead of getting frustrated, I take along a bag and fill it up with trash. I may put the coat that was left on the ground up on a tree branch, organize something, or throw away the trash. I just try to leave the environment better than I found it.

When I ignore it, it only adds to the negative energy. When I do something that's active, I actually feel better about my contribution there. I'm not doing it for anyone else or to get noticed... but I'm giving, because it makes me feel good and from there, I receive something back. I broke out of passivity and went into action.

So, for February... try to think about how you show love to your world and give back to the people you care about.

Try the Loving-Kindness Mediation once in awhile.

Notice how gratitude might impact your life.

Try to break out of passivity and go into some form of action through Random Acts of Kindness.

Until next month (at least)... be kind to yourself and try to notice and appreciate the world around you.