Who needs some love?

Take a moment to reflect...

Love is something we all need. It is the most basic need we all share. It is the essence of our existence.

Who came to mind? Is it another, is it you? Either answer is ok.

What expression of love is needed?

Expressions of love come in many shapes. A smile, a kind word, a simple card, a kiss, be it a real one or Hershey’s.

Was the answer you? What do you need to show you, how much you love you? Take a break? Get busy on a project? Work out? Ask to spend some time with a friend?

Showing love makes us feel good too. It pays back quickly and often sets off a chain reaction of love moving.

Be it an expression of self love or love for another, it is worth the investment! Take the action and feel the love!

What needs a jumpstart?

What is needing an influx of energy? Of focus?

What idea or relationship has been just waiting to be brought to life?

As a creative person, you know how many ideas you have that are just waiting for you to take action on. Those bright ideas that you just keep fantasizing. The ideas that you find yourself daydreaming about, and making a smile come to your face…

They are the same bright ideas that make ya feel sort of like a looser cause you are not doing anything to bring them to life.

That’s ok! We all have them! We all are spreading ourselves thin sometimes. We all forget sometimes what our priorities are when the day to day nonsense takes hold of us!!
It’s ok!

So in this moment, let’s pause…breathe…breathe again…

So what needs a jumpstart?

Yesterday, I had the most amazing energy infusion into my book. I have been working on my book for the past several months and have found myself on a journey that has taught me so much about my creative process. It has shown n me how much my personal process depends on energy infusions that include other people.

My process is about allowing myself to simmer and stew and then it wants to bring it to a boil with the energy of other people. Then back to the simmer…I have been able to explore, understand and accept my creative process, with a surrender that feels like such a blessing.

So, what is your creative process like?

What allows for you to move?

Is it alone time?

Is it people time?

What action will you take today to bring energy and focus to your ideas?

Who?

Who are you missing?

Who do you need to call?

Who needs a letter or card from you?

Who is your heart asking you to reach out to?

Each day passes filled with tasks, errands, and the routine of everyday life. Days become weeks, weeks become months, months become years. Recently a friend shared a regret with me with tears in her eyes. She had been thinking about an old friend for several months. Each day passed and she would say to her, “I’ll call him tomorrow.” Each day passed and she overlooked what her heart was calling her to do. Finally after months of putting off a call, for no other reason than busyness, she picked up the phone. After a brief conversation with the wife of her friend, she learned that he had died several weeks prior.

She sat weeping, vowing she would never ignore the call of her heart again.

Last week, a friend who I had not seen or heard from in over 5 years, sent me an email. He followed the call of his heart. He said he had been searching for me for months. He and I had been overweight together and had always talked about trying to do something about it. Several years ago he had lost a huge amount of weight, almost the exact same amount as I had…in almost the same time frame. He had run the NYC marathon and wanted to share the accomplishment. At some level deep in my heart, I know it was his way of reaching out to inspire me.

He received a bounce back from an old email address of mine, and used several online search services to search me. He came up blank…after several weeks and spending many dollars searching the web for me he came up blank. Still his mind was on me…he ran into a friend who did have my contact info. He jumped onto my website and saw that I too had lost my weight. He saw I was looking for help producing my book and immediately responded with an offer to help!

WOW! The call of his heart produced such an abundance of goodness. We both had a chance to see we had both finally tackled a life struggle, and we were both busy out there helping others overcome it too!

Do not pause! Call or email that person who has been on your mind.

Do not let days turn into years!!

What needs noticing?

What does noticing give you?

When was the last time you noticed what is blooming in your yard?

When was the last time you noticed the beauty of your lover?

When was the last time you noticed the crunch of your salad or the creaminess of the cheese

This morning as I walked with a new business partner, we took time to notice the beauty of where we were walking, we noticed the shape of trees and spoke of how they related to the business we are creating.

We spoke of the stability of an oak tree and it’s majestic stance, while we paused at clover patches looking for a four-leaf bit of luck. As we slowed and allowed ourselves to be in the moment, my friend found not one, but two four leaf clovers. right there waiting to be noticed and claimed.

When we allow ourselves time to slow down and notice, we are given a chance to claim things that are waiting for us. We can claim beauty, joy, a sense of the divine, gratitude balance, and peace, the list goes on and on. It is in the quiet moments, that we allow ourselves the opportunity to absorb what is and appreciate it for what its gifts are.

When can you spend time noticing?

What can you claim for yourself?

Where do you need to be courageous?

Is it in a relationship?

Is it about your job?

Is it starting a new routine?

Is it something you need to leave behind?


Whatever the details, I know you have the courage to do what it takes. I know that within each of is the courage to do what it takes.

Think back to a time when you did something that you never thought you would. The courage that allowed you to do that is there for you right now. It is within you waiting to be tapped into.

Each day we step out into the world, taking for granted the courage that takes. How much easier it would be to just stay in bed.

We face cold dark mornings on the way to work, we face endless meetings and unruly bosses. Each of these things we face are testament to the courage within us. Allowing ourselves the wisdom to know that have the courage it takes to face a new journey is what is called for right now.

We take for granted how much courage we really have within us. Somewhere we came to believe that all this stuff we do is no big deal. Well I am here to tell you it is. Each day we show up and do what is needed, is courageous. We step in front of our fears, our doubts and do what we need to do.

Today courage is speaking to a friend about a tough situation in our lives. Another day courage finds its face in putting your last dollar in the basket at church. While other days it is showing up for a work out when all you want to do is go to bed.

Each of us is faced with looking within us and to find courage. To find courage within ourselves or within the relationship we have with God and others, firstly requires knowing it is there to begin with.

Know you have courage and you will find it. Know that you have used it before and it lies waiting for you. It is waiting to help you move forward, to fly and to soar!

What needs questioning?

Big question!

Where are you afraid of being questioned?

What part of your life cannot be questioned?

Questioning...always hard, most often fruitful. Recently I was questioned on an approach I was taking. I responded with defensiveness, fear, and anger. My response really surprised me, made me ashamed and filled me with a sense of self-doubt. In this moment, it is not so much the exact issue I was question on it is more the sense of needing to defend, who I am and what I believe. It is the response to being questioned that needs looking at.

I had become emotional and slightly aggressive. I placed myself in the victim role and found myself in a place I had not been in a long time. It was everything I had worked so hard to step away from.

Being questioned was uncomfortable and even painful, yet I know the result of that for me has allowed e to dive deeper into my emotions and sense of self-love and acceptance.

It has allowed me to look at a part of myself I though had healed, moved on, and grown. As I look at it, I know there is more to heal, more to explore, and more to accept.

For most of my life, when I expressed my views it come from a defensiveness, from a place of self-loathing, and a place of fear. I was obese, full of shame and working to prove I was worth something. It was a scary place to be.

When I responded the other day in that same way of defensiveness, it brought up so many issues for me to look at. What a blessing, someone questioning me. Such a simple catalyst, for what in this moment feels defining.

I know my willingness to face this right now feels brave, feels right, feels blessed. My willingness to share the lessons and the journey, I know, is what I am called to do.

In this place of self-examination I am forced to face my humanness, my frailty, my deep desire to make myself a better person, all combined with my desire to love myself more deeply exactly where I am. Strange dichotomy of thought. A desire to improve, yet love myself exactly as I am. How do those two thought live together? How do I come to terms with that?

Loving and accepting self is what we are all looking to do. Yet what I have come to learn is that I need to be able to love all of myself, the good, the bad, and the ugly. As a result of the love, I am able to look at what needs to change through the eyes of compassion and acceptance.
So as I continue to ponder and reflect on this huge topic, I leave you with the idea of self-love.

I leave you with a few questions.

What can your love help you question?

What loving questions need to be asked?

What do you need to face?

Is there something that you have been avoiding?


What are you afraid to take a look at?


What is the growing cost of running?


Is facing it alone scary?


Each of has something in our lives we put off, avoid, and often wish would just go away. What I have learned the hard way, is the longer you put it off, the harder it gets to face. I know in my life, my food addiction was what I avaoided talking about like the plague. I went for years just running from it, I spent years allowing myself to make believe it just was not that bad, until one day I found myself 320 pounds. Crazy, I must have been pretty out of it as I look back. I know that each day I ran from it the harder it got to deal with and the fatter I got.

What I have been learning recently in working on research for my upcoming book, Who's Helping Who?, is that most of us are unable to face our problems and ask help until the situation becomes unbearable, or worse, desperate. What a sad thing. We find ourselves alone with our pain, shame, and the longer we try to face it alone the harder it is to ask for help.

I know with my eating disorder that the idea of asking for help was so hard. I kept thinking I could do it by myself. When I finally realized that if I could do it alone I surly would, I began to realize that my own efforts had gotten me to 320 pounds. That asking for help was the only way out.

As I speak with more and more people about this topic of help, I am amazed and saddened by the notions we have embedded in our society about the stigma of asking for help. We look at ourselves as weak, stupid, lazy, and worse yet unworthy, when the realization we need to ask for help dawns upon us.

What I have learned these past few years is that asking for help is so much easier when I just begin to get that pit of anxiousness in my stomach. When that little queezy feeling comes and the worry begins…ya know the feeling… When that first night of tossing and turning makes ya think, “Man, I need to take care of this!”

These days, I run less and less, and I find myself turning to ask for help so much easier.
I turn to my coach, my spiritual advisor, my sponsor…my people…

Though I admit there are still one or two areas that are so much harder…money is my Archilles heal that I am working on these days. As I continue to build my business and continue to invest in my dream, I am faced with tough decisions and tough realities to face. I know each time I am asked to face things head on it is tough, yet, I always feel so much better when I have spent some time discussing it and assessing it with my financial advisor.

So each day, I ask myself, what do I need to face today? Some days, I have the bravery to get right to it and other days, I say, maybe tomorrow. What I have vowed, is that I do not need to get myself to a place of pain or shame or anguish any more about asking for and reaching out for help. I know that I can get the help I need, whenever I decide the discomfort is taking away from my happiness and wellbeing.

Today, I am pretty unwilling to let anything get in the way of my happiness, so asking for help is a skill I have honed. Thank you God, that I have found the willingness and the courage to know my limits and to know I want to be happy and contented. So today, I find myself saying, fairly often, “ I need help. Do you think you might be able to help me?”

I know that the people who are able to help will say yes, and the people who cannot will say no. My part is the asking and God’s part is bringing the right person to my side to help me and allow me the pleasure of being helped.

Face what needs to be faced!

Know that there are people who can help you and want to help you!

Know you are worthy!

Know you can!