My Valentine Gift

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Day has a special energy for me this year. See, for the first time in many, many, many years, I love myself. I love who I am and what I stand for. I love what I do and I love knowing not only that I love me, but that life loves me.

I have a lovely life full of LOVE and joy.

That hasn’t always been the case. And to get to this point in my life has been a long time coming. For years I didn’t like the person I was or the things I said or the work I did or much at all about my life.  I had turned into a sarcastic, negative person who kept her true self hidden away and I didn’t like it.

Then I started to notice something. The people I knew who were grateful and who were authentic were the happiest, loveliest people I knew. And I knew I needed to get back to being me – the true, authentic me. The me that I was when I was younger. A woman who loved life and who let life LOVE her.

So I took a leap of faith. And started making positive changes in my life step by step. And I started to see that the more I let life love me, the more I loved life.

Life wants to love us. We are born as bundles of pure love. As we grow up, life gives us opportunity after opportunity to be open to LOVE, to grow in LOVE, to do lovely, fun, exciting things. But as we get older and we listen to more and more outside influences, we take on more and more fear in our life. Often it gets to the point where the FEAR outweighs the love.

Unfortunately, today’s world has conditioned us to live our lives in fear. Everywhere one turns, we are bombarded with messages of FEAR. Almost every ad on TV uses fear of something to sell products or services. From insurance to banking services for a rainy day, from insect spray to toilet cleaner, dog chews to the meat we put on our forks…every ad uses FEAR in some way to get us to buy whatever they are selling.

The news is just as bad. It’s filled with stories to fill us with fear. Whether it’s in a traditional newspaper, on TV or on the internet, again FEAR is used to get us to change our behaviour and to worry about things that will never affect the vast majority of people on this planet.

Every day, in every moment, we have a choice between LOVE and fear. I choose to LOVE me and to LOVE others. I try to be more like my dog, Reg. Like him, I assume everyone loves me until they prove differently. For the most part, this works really well and I end up meeting some amazing people and having some incredible opportunities come my way.

Have you ever thought ‘What if every ad or story that uses fear, used LOVE instead?’ What a different world we would live in. We would see others with love, the way we ourselves want to be seen. We wouldn’t react with suspicion or anger. We would just project and receive LOVE.

I’ve seen what choosing fear every day of a life does to someone and it isn’t pretty. I have a family member who has chosen fear every day. She’s now in her late 70s and not only is her heart bitter and twisted, so is her physical body. I cut her out of my life more than 20 years ago when she proved that she didn’t love me. I loved myself enough and those around me to decide that enough was enough. I chose LOVE over fear in that situation and have never regretted it.

I now choose LOVE every day of my life. I spend time each day doing something for myself that reminds me I love who I am these days. I surround myself with those who love me. I have a dog who loves me unconditionally and is my fur angel.

And if/when I forget, the Universe has a delightful way of reminding me to choose LOVE over fear. Just this past weekend I broke my little toe. I’ve spent three lovely days with my foot elevated and on ice. I read books, watched movies and over the weekend spent some wonderful time with my daughters. But today, I had to get up and do things. I started lamenting the fact that my toe hurt. Then I was reminded by a friend of Louise Hay’s book, You Can Heal Your Life. In the book, toes represent details in life and if I have hurt them, it means that I’m not letting the Universe manage the details and show me how much I am loved. I chuckled to myself and realised that over the weekend, although I had enjoyed having some down time, I had also been worrying in the back of my mind about the details of my life. I recently started a new life coaching business and I was worrying about where I was going to find clients. I was worrying about my website and finding images to portray the right look and feel. And worrying whether anyone would ever want to pay me for life coaching or any of the other services I plan to provide. No wonder I hurt my little toe. It served as a reminder to me to let go of the fear and let the Universe show me it loves me by taking care of the little details.

The history of Valentine’s Day is clouded by legend and myths. But the one thing that has survived throughout the centuries is that it is a day to remind us to include LOVE in our lives. It’s not about whether I get a dozen roses or a sappy Valentine card or a box of chocolates. It’s about LOVE in its purest form. For me, for those around me, for the world.

I think the world could use a whole lot more love these days. So I’m sending you LOVE and light, wherever you are and I’m asking you to embrace some love for yourself and then pass it on to everyone you love in your life today. Let’s make that our Valentine’s Day gift to ourselves and to each other.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Xx