Hello and welcome to day 27 of this 30-day experiment where we're choosing to live from a place of love rather than fear.
My name is Liz Scott and over 30 days,
Each and every day,
I am bringing my awareness back to a place of love,
To that settled space.
When I fall into unsettled,
Fearful,
Anxious thinking,
I notice it and bring my awareness back to love and I've been doing that now for 27 days.
Every day I write a journal and then I share something specific that I've learned from the day and the invitation is that you share what you're learning too.
Today really makes me smile just thinking about what I'm about to share with you because I had a real tangible experience about love that was quite literally written in black and white.
Let me just give you the context first.
So the news has been quite unsettling.
There have been lots of people that have been unsettled with the way things are going politically and in the country and I've noticed a lot of graffiti going up.
There's a real sense of unrest.
What I absolutely know for sure about this unsettledness in the country is that people are coming from a place of fear.
People are coming from a place of anxiety and stress and worry and what I know for sure is that when we come from that kind of place,
When we are feeling that stress and anxiety and worry,
Then the way we behave is often in ways that are aggressive and that blame others.
So there's a real sense that when you believe your thinking or unsettled thinking,
It's absolutely understandable that the way you're going to respond is in an aggressive way.
I think a really good example of this is road rage.
Have you ever been driving and you've either been the person who's responsible for a little bit of road rage or you've been the recipient of it?
When you're driving and somebody cuts you up and you feel that flare of anxiety and stress and fear,
Maybe there was a sense of danger,
Real danger,
Then what happens is you find your thoughts revving up and with that your feelings rev up.
You feel scared,
You feel fearful and immediately,
If you don't understand what's going on,
You point the finger.
You are the victim,
Somebody is the perpetrator and you get angry instantly with the person that has caused this fear.
If on the other hand,
You know what's going on and you notice it,
What happens for me is that when I go into these situations on the road,
I get scared,
Something happens,
Someone's driving carelessly.
If I bring my awareness back to love,
I respond in a different way and this is all about bringing awareness back to love and not responding from a fearful,
Anxious place.
Because when you respond from a fearful,
Anxious place,
What tends to happen is your actions follow on with aggression,
With blame,
With frustration,
With anger.
So what's all this got to do with the experiment?
Well,
As I was driving today,
I noticed a road sign which had graffiti on it.
A lot of the graffiti in recent weeks has been quite unsettling,
But this piece of graffiti on the road sign,
It was on the back of the sign,
So it wasn't defacing the sign itself,
It was on the back of the road sign,
It said,
Choose love,
Choose love.
And I broke out into a smile.
The feelings that I had been having,
Those unsettling feelings I had had about this state of the world and people being unsettled and the level of anger and frustration and the blame that I was hearing and seeing in the media,
Well,
When I saw that sign,
I fell out of that thinking,
That anxious thinking,
And I was reminded of the experiment,
Which could quite simply be,
Choose love.
So rather than saying living from love rather than fear,
We could relabel it,
Choose love.
That sign made me smile and it continues to make me smile as I remember it.
It's so simple.
When we choose love,
It doesn't mean that we become a doormat and we allow bad behaviour.
That isn't what it means.
When we choose love,
It means that we respond from a place of settledness,
From a place of connection.
We stand our ground.
We naturally are assertive and we communicate whatever needs to be communicated,
But it comes from a place of love.
For me,
As I see and witness the news,
This isn't about who's right and who's wrong,
Who are the victims,
Who are the perpetrators.
This is about reminding everybody,
Myself,
First of all,
Though,
Is to come back to a place of love.
For me,
This is the only place to operate.
And this cuts through all the party politics,
All the issues in the world.
Choose love,
Come back to love and operate from that place.
So today I have been reminded quite physically in black and white on a graffiti sign to choose love.
And that has been such a wonderful reminder for me during the day.
How are you getting on with this experiment as you choose love rather than fear?
Remember,
There are no right answers.
It's not meant to go a particular way.
It might be that you feel that you're not doing very well.
All of it is learning.
Just see it as a learning experiment.
That's what an experiment is.
You try something out and let me know how it's going for you.
