30 days to consciously bring love into your life. Day Three

30 days to consciously bring love into your life.

www.livingfromtheheart.co.uk

Each day I will be giving you exercises, tools and tips to help you live from the heart to improve your relationships and attract more love into your life.

‘Our way to practice is one step at a time, one breath at a time’

Day three: Have a clear Vision

Get quiet and clear about what it is you wish to have more of. What will you allow in your life? Develop a clear vision. A simple way of doing this is to create a vision board, or a collage of images, words, phrases that serve as a visual representation of what you want in your life. By writing a few words about the images you have put on the board you set a clear intention for your vision. 

 Gather your images, magazines, postcards and photographs to represent your future.  Spend some quiet time reflecting on what you wish to be in your future. If you could see yourself in an ideal world, how would it look like, feel like, smell like, and sound like?  Feel joy deeply in each cell of your body as you search for images words. Allow your feelings to guide you. When you have enough images and words to create your dream board, get your board and arrange the pictures however you see and feel them fitting together. Go with the flow of your feelings. Then glue the pictures, postcards and photographs on your vision board. If you wish add affirmations on your dream board, making statements in the – ‘I am deeply Loved’ Write your name on the board, and add the date. Now display your dream board where you can see it often, feeling joy when you look at your desired future. Stay positive as you work on your goals.

When you discover the essence of or vision board beginning to manifest in your life, make a note of the date. Always remember to express appreciation and gratitude for the manifestation of your dreams.

 

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30 days to consciously bring love into your life. Day One

30 days to consciously bring love into your life.

www.livingfromtheheart.co.uk

Each day I will be giving you exercises, tools and tips to help you live from the heart to improve your relationships and attract more love into your life.

'When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.' Lao Tzu

Day one: Begin a daily Practice of Gratitude

Today spend time throughout the day giving thanks for all that is going right in your life. Too often we dwell on what is going wrong. When we complain we weaken our resolve and ability to find solutions. Dwell on what works in your life today.
Make a list of everything you are grateful for. Begin with I am grateful for...
This practice gains momentum when practiced with patience over time.

Notice your distractions.  Evoke feelings of gratitude as you write - do not worry if it does not come easily. Enjoy the feelings when they arrive, feel them deeply in each cell of your body.

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How many times have you been mistaken?

How many times have you been mistaken after believing that what you knew was the truth, the only truth? It creates obstacles to growth, there is no room for change within the self, relationships, or our environments.
Keep an open mind and be aware that what you know might not be the truth and what you know is only one perspective.

The Cookie Thief
“A woman was waiting at an airport one night,
With several long hours before her flight.
She hunted for a book in the airport shops.
Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.
She was engrossed in her book but happened to see,
That the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be.
Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between,
Which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.
So she munched the cookies and watched the clock,
As the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,
Thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I would blacken his eye.”
With each cookie she took, he took one too,
When only one was left, she wondered what he would do.
With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh,
He took the last cookie and broke it in half.
He offered her half, as he ate the other,
She snatched it from him and thought… oooh, brother.
This guy has some nerve and he’s also rude,
Why he didn’t even show any gratitude!
She had never known when she had been so galled,
And sighed with relief when her flight was called.
She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate,
Refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.
She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat,
Then she sought her book, which was almost complete.
As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise,
There was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.
If mine are here, she moaned in despair,
The others were his, and he tried to share.
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,
That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.”
Valerie Cox

Insight - A clients' perspective: on Transforming your shadow and unlocking your creative light

Whether we know it or not, social exchange is right at the heart of our human concerns. As social creatures, is there more to life than enriching give and take and fulfilling relationships? If we have a rapport with others and with ourselves that is loving and supportive, we feel nourished and alive. If our connections are ailing, we may suffer profoundly as a result. In this era, specific help is available for improving the way we interact with others. By working with skilled facilitators we can reap the rewards of shift made to our understanding and our behaviour, regarding ourselves and beyond. If you think of the many kinds of human relationship and, in relation to them, the many more types of personal difficulties experienced, you can sense the complexity of problems that therapists, worldwide, seek to address. Regardless of differences in symptoms, a critical part of healing relationship predicaments is coming to acknowledge that, as adults, we are now personally responsible for the quality of exchanges in our lives. This fact is both hard to swallow and empowering. A therapist is someone who helps us realise that we can effect change and how we can begin to promote healing. This weekend I attended a two-day workshop which was part of Living from the Heart created and facilitated by therapist Aisha Ali. Aisha offers a dynamic and comfortable space to engage with personal hitches we may experience in our relationships. Under her safe intervention we strategically cut to the chase of difficulties and take a driving seat in moving through obstacles. Aisha Ali runs a variety of weekend workshops to assist in making positive transformations in life. The one I attended focused on our own 'shadow' self and how that impacts our lives in an everyday way. In the group, there were seven people, plus Aisha. The weekend was held in a room that was enclosing, private and conducive to opening up to the nitty-gritty of honest therapeutic work. I didn't know anything about the shadow self before we began. I entered the weekend with little clue as to what the work would entail and what scale of effect the weekend might have on me. Aisha led us forward into group activities that rapidly brought us to connect truthfully with ourselves. Using a combination of physical movements we tapped into our physical and energetic body, which is a resource of wisdom, honesty and insight. Through group exercises we also connected with each other in a way that was unself-conscious and supportive to our individual processes. Though we were a group, the issues we brought forward were dealt with in a very personal manner. Without any judgement the obstacles that confronted us were accepted and treated with respect. This level of trust was testimony to the atmosphere of safety and openness generated for the occasion. Though we were delving into our innermost selves, nothing about the facilitation felt jarring, abrupt or superfluous. After the exercises it was remarkable how much more relaxed, alert and focused we all were in preparation for the explorations. There was a very carefully selected range of music that powerfully aided the aims of the weekend. I observed, with some amazement, extensive ground being covered in a short period of time. In fact, I hadn't anticipated how much unfolding could occur in one single weekend. I observed that under the right conditions, shift happens quite dramatically. The process looking at our shadow selves was a journey we each undertook and what is important is that the workshop was suitable for everyone. It was made clear that each person only delved as deep and as far as they were individually ready and comfortable to do. This is not to say that the process was unchallenging. Through attentive guidance, the right degree of enquiry and discovery was set before us, and the accompanying willing to face this was encouraged. I believe that the proof of a workshop is in the pudding. Having been stimulated in various ways to perceive and to begin to integrate my shadow self I felt an enthusiasm for this process that left me a convert to 'shadow work'. I noticed that I went out into the world with such a fortified confidence that I marvelled at my own social relaxedness. There is a power to group-work that reaches parts that one-on-one therapy seems not to do. The reflections and the difficulties that others shared were enormously helpful and accelerated my understanding of my own behaviours. There was something mechanical to the weekend that began to fix problems in a rudimentary way. I found the comments of the people who shared this time with me uncanny in their accuracy and pertinence. Though it was a group aimed at helping the individual, it felt clear that the insights discovered, and the shift observed, was a collective group-experience. I heartily recommend Living from the Heart workshops to anyone wishing to improve the quality of their relationships with themselves and others in a down to earth and honest way. You can now follow Living from The Heart on Facebook