During a recent podcast interview, I was asked to share how I love myself to happiness.
I love this question. And, the truth is, my response is ever-evolving, since I have a continually growing list of tools, practices, and inspired actions that I call upon depending on the day, the season, the context, or what’s needed in the moment. Today, I’m excited to share with you what my current top 5 are.
I give myself permission to not always feel happy.
In other words, I make nothing wrong
What we resist persists
We can’t shame or judge our way into more peace and happiness
If I feel off my game or out of my center, it’s a clear indication that my reserves are depleted and that a part of me that I have been neglecting is crying out for love and attention.
I come into deeper relationship with myself, turn towards any feelings I may have been avoiding, and listen for what is needed.
Happiness lives on the other side of unconditionally loving presence and infinitely patient allowing for whatever is to be exactly as it is without needing to be different.
I give myself permission to feel good more of the time.
Having grown up with a great deal of anxiety and pressure to excel, my default habit has been to be in the mode of striving on the go, make every moment count, and to always be on my way to the next.
So, my growing edge has been to allow myself to let go of the constant doing, to allow myself to BE, sink more deeply into my worthiness to receive the pleasure and beauty that is already here, and to open to the precious gift of life just as it is as I remember that….it’s ok to feel good…..and, for this moment, that is enough…I am enough…this life is enough…more than enough…
I allow for spaciousness in my schedule and my day
While I definitely have stretches of time and periods of my day that can be compressed and rushed, I make a point to slow down enough to pause frequently, to come back home to my body, my breath, and to that innermost oasis which is unchanging in the face of the ever-changing drama of this divine play we call life. A sacred pause to catch a glimpse of your infinite, indestructible nature is way more potent than any additional action you might add to your to-do list instead.
I remember that I am a woman with a feminine body and a deeply sensual creature with delicious desires and a passionate longing to love and be loved, to touch and be touched, to feel and be felt, to express and be witnessed, to want what she wants and be wanted in return. So, I make a point to get off the treadmill of being a walking head and re-inhabit the space of my body, open back up to my embodied wisdom, and feel to the juicy aliveness that is always pulsing just underneath my skin.
Lastly, I remember that the journey has to feel the way we want the destination to feel and that I am the only one responsible for my own happiness in any moment.
Rather than default to feeling at the mercy of my circumstances, I choose again and again to step into being the mistress of my thoughts and the lens through which I perceive myself and my life. This ongoing vigilance and unwavering commitment to making the unconscious conscious is where the rubber meets the road and the one and only place we have true unlimited freedom and the capacity to embody our limitless nature.
Ultimately, it comes down to simply being in the continuous expansion of my capacity to be the love of my life in the most deeply nourishing, satisfying, healing, and liberating ways.
It’s a breath-by-breath, moment-by-moment, day-by-day devotional practice to live as if you were spending it with your beloved….because you are. It’s you.