A Valentine's Month Idea

As Valentine's Day approaches, we are inundated with ads for jewelry and chocolate.  There are pretty cakes in the front of the grocery stores and cards in the front of bookstores, all assisting us in professing our love for others.  On this particular Valentine's Day, I'd like to explore love; where if it's missing, nothing else matters.

This Valentine's Day, let's practice the love for ourselves. Sometimes, this love is the most challenging of all. It's much easier to look at other people's stuff or other people and fix them. It's much easier to look at other people and appreciate what's wonderful and lovely and magnificent and powerful and supportive and successful and fulfilled and brave and whole about them. What if we look to ourselves for those things?

Remember, what you look for, you will find. What if we spend this Valentine's Day month exploring ourselves and our gifts?  If we look for the grace and the beauty and the generosity and the genius and the energy and the joy and the peace and the power that we bring to everyone around us, we will feel it....and so will they.

Here's an exercise I'd like to suggest. Begin each day before you get out of bed --, practice this for one month -- while lying in bed, pick five adjectives that describe who you are that day.  You can say to yourself any variation of, "I am love, I am peace, I am blessed, I am happy, I am joyful, I am lucky, I am smart, I am generous and I hold the space for others to show up and be as magnificent as they can be".

This Valentine's Day, I invite you to show love for others as much as possible, but double that when it comes to you.  I believe there can be no war, no stress, no fighting, and the possibility for peace, when people love themselves. Happy Valentine's Day. Namaste.