81: Liking and like and "what are we like?"

You are what you like. (sort of)

Make a list of what you like in life.

Go slowly, and write down what comes to you, one thing or place or person or activity at a time.

As you write each liked aspect of your life, do three things:

1) Remember as fully and completely that activity or thing or person. Say, you like flowers. Go out and look at some flowers, or have a memory of some flowers you really enjoyed looking at and being around.

2) Notice and savor what feels good inside you when you think about the liked aspects of your life. Notice and savor where it is in you that you have this feeling. In you can means where actually you feel good in your body when you remember and put attention on this liked aspect. In you can also mean coming to a sense of how this liking and enjoying brings you to a place of being present and something like “at one” with the liked aspect. Don’t think or analyze any of this, just get a sense of the inside and friendly affects of your liking.

3) Come to something like gratitude for this aspect of you life.

Now, the list can go on and on, and it doesn’t have to be divided up in any particular way. You could like looking at beautiful flowers. You could like pulling weeds. You could like digging in the earth. You could like figuring out irrigations systems. Instead of just putting down “gardening” to cover all these different delights, write the individual aspects down, and savor each and every one.

This list can be five things you like, or fifty. Or a hundred. Take your time. You don’t have to do this all in one sitting. Likely, you will be inspired to go out and look at flowers, or take photographs, or listen to this song or that, or write this song or sing that song, or talk to this person, or write that one.

That’s all fine.

And keep going throughout the day making a list of what you like.


And, as the list progresses, notice and savor how this list of what you like begins to paint a rather broad, and still amazingly accurate picture, of what you are like.

What you like.

What you are like.

Interesting areas to notice and savor and explore.

Have a good day paying attention to what you like and what you are like, and how one informs the other.