Self – Love is essential to feeling nourished, thriving, and being at ease in yourself. Your well being is at the root of all of what you'd like to create, do, and offer in the world. Imagine, if we each loved ourselves, what a difference it would make!
Each week, I share a Self – Love Note for you to experiment with and add onto your own ways of treating yourself with love. These include ways to love and care for yourself on all levels — your physical being, your energy body, your emotional and spiritual self, and your development of consciousness. Feel free to share with me your experience and your favorites.
Responding to Reactions With Amusement + Play
When I find myself feeling very serious or getting triggered, I’ve been practicing compassionately laughing at myself. Why not witness myself with amusement?
The other day I felt cranky and whiny – Why not enjoy this and allow myself to see the delight, silliness, and absurdity?
I’m not encouraging you to dismiss your feelings, but more-so to accept, play with, and be curious about them.
Playing with reactions supports an inner witnessing, an equanimity, and a distance between our reactions and ourselves. A little breathing space and lightness! It helps to see that our human reactions and beliefs may not be true – that we don’t have to believe everything we feel or think.
Get Curious
When you find yourself in reaction mode or struggling, ask yourself:
- Is this a true crisis, emergency, or problem at the moment? (If so, respond accordingly. If not, continue…)
- Isn’t it amusing that I’m reacting this way?
- What if I could play with this instead of suffering?
- Why not see and witness myself with amusement?
- What happens if I notice how human I am being?
- Are the thoughts or beliefs I’m experiencing true?
Experiment
Experiment with inviting Play and Amusement to join you, as if they were loving friends you’ve invited for tea.
When you’re activated by something:
- Go for it, radically accept it, and totally feel it inside and out!
- Breathe through the feeling and let it tickle you a little.
- Exaggerate the reaction and entertain yourself.
- Find a place of enjoyment in the emotion or reaction.
- State how you are reacting out loud and hear yourself. (I’m totally feeling angry! I notice I am very whiny!)
- Imagine a circle of different figures/entities (a lion, a witch, a baby, a talking hamburger, an angel, etc.) surrounding and imitating you, each in their own way.
Be Gentle With Yourself
Understand that this takes practice and you might even feel resistant to responding this way to yourself. Sometimes when our emotions feel so serious, we are very far in our struggle and it’s hard to find a way towards play.
Let me know how this works for you and what you experience! As always, if you’d like support, I am available to work with you. I find it is much easier to find compassionate playfulness and amusement when I have loving support and someone who is not reacting in the same way I am.
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