Hello and welcome to day 16.
This is the 16th day of my experiment of living for 30 days with an awareness of living from a place of love rather than fear.
For 30 days I record in a journal what I've learnt and then every day I share one aspect of that learning and the invitation is that you can join me.
If you want to catch up with this on Insight Timer just search for love not fear and you'll see the days listed numerically.
But this is day 16 and today has been a really clear learning for me.
The learning has been about slowing down.
What I've noticed in my life is that I get little messages to slow down either physically or mentally,
Psychologically.
And if I ignore those messages then well I'm ignoring them at my peril.
I learnt the hard way today when it came to not listening to my body.
So as you know I've been shifting around furniture and I've been doing some decorating and changing some rooms around in my house.
And today I noticed that I had a little bit of a niggle in my back.
Just a little bit nothing too major.
And I wanted to move some bookcases and furniture into the final position into my office.
And I just took the decision that I was going to move it on my own.
My husband wasn't around so I thought well I'm just going to move these on my own.
It can't be that hard.
I ignored the niggle in my back and yes you can probably imagine what happened.
Is my back complained and has complained and is complaining vigorously.
It's gone into spasm.
So from being quite mobile in the morning and from shifting around some furniture I am now pretty immobile.
I knew as soon as it happened that this was a lesson for me to learn.
I know that the universe ramps up the learning until I hear it and I hadn't listened to the twinge in my back and I had carried on.
And I also know that this is a lesson in slowing down and asking for help.
So as I brought my awareness back to love rather than fear and initially I felt real irritation and annoyance at myself for being so stupid at trying to move furniture on my own.
It was a really stupid thing to do.
So I noticed that wave of annoyance.
The unsettled feelings of annoyance to me come under the umbrella of fear.
Those unsettled feelings of fear.
I noticed them and rather than carry on berating myself inside for being so stupid and I should have waited and all of that stuff.
I realized that it was important for me to come from a place of love and I absolutely knew there was something for me to learn here.
What have I learned today?
Well I've learned the importance of my back when it comes to doing so many things.
Walking,
Bending over,
Putting on a pair of shoes or socks.
Things that I've just taken for granted are now impossible.
So that's one thing I've learned is I've really learned the importance of taking things for granted.
So that for me has been a good learning.
I have taken my physical fitness for granted and this is a lesson that I've learned that I don't want to do that.
I want to look after my body.
I want to take care of it.
So this has been a good lesson in making sure I look after my body.
I've also noticed that it's important to be loving and kind to myself even though I did something that was stupid.
I really get it was stupid trying to move furniture on my own.
I'm not going to tell myself off or get annoyed at myself or tell myself stories about how stupid I am.
I realise I made a mistake and now I bring this sense of loving kindness and compassion to myself.
So that's really important as well.
So there's something about firstly about recognising what I've taken for granted and I guess what comes with that as well is a recognition of the privilege that I've got in my life.
I'm very lucky with my health.
I'm very lucky at my stage in life what I'm up to.
I've got so much going for me on so many levels and I don't want to take it for granted.
So the back has reminded me not to take things for granted.
And secondly as I was just saying this is about being kind to myself.
Being kind to myself because I realise that it's so easy to take myself to task for being stupid and love,
A loving response is just to be kind to myself.
And this is physical pain but the same is true for emotional pain too.
It's be kind to myself when I feel emotionally upset or down with myself.
So for me today the lesson has been about slowing down,
Being kind to myself,
Not taking things for granted or at least feeling gratitude for that which I've got going on for me.
This is what I am learning today from a place of love.
I know that my back is going to take a little while to heal.
I probably think it will take a couple of weeks in total and I'm just going to be ultra kind to it.
I've already started sending it loving messages.
I'm already being super conscious about how I can protect this and make sure I don't exacerbate the pain any further.
I am absolutely going to take care of my back and really feel a sense of gratitude and love to my body as well.
So that's how love has been showing up for me today.
What about you?
How are you getting on today with living from love rather than fear?
What lesson have you learned today?
