Valentines to you, day 102: Write yourself a Love Letter

Loving life, loving you

Send yourself a love letter. Think of things and aspects you love and enjoy and admire about other people.

Find them all in yourself.

In the letter today, write about how much you like these parts of yourself.

In your day today look around and enjoy seeing in others wonderful characteristics, and see that these are part of you, too.

Write paragraphs alternating: one paragraph written with your right hand, one with your left. This way, no matter what your favorite: both sides of your brain will get to write sweet words of you to you.



Praise yourself for little things, and for big things. Praise and love yourself for wonderful things you do and the not so wonderful.


Remember the Jesus, love your enemies, stuff: Love your not so great parts, and send, in words, paragraphs of love to yourself for your mistakes, or your bad days, as well as your learning and your good days.


Try to be the perfect lover, all accepting parent, total good friend, happy buddy in this letter. Treat this letter like the most wonderful possible Valentine’s card / letter you can send yourself.

P.S. If you want to, make a loving collage for yourself, too.

Think loving thoughts to yourself all day as well, and let them spill over to others, if you are so inclined. But keep plenty for you. Plenty, amusement, affection, love and appreciation, of you, all for you.

Good.

Beautiful Day

the sun
warm and sweet

i gave a brilliant
Feldenkrais lesson

and then finished a short story

started the day with yoga
outside

now some lunch

excited by the idea of
National November Writing Month

thousands of people
set out to write
a 50,000 word
novel in the month
of
you guess it
November

ciao
enoy the day

chris

3 pages a day

One of the great glories
of the Work of Byron Katie
is that you don't have to fuss around,
don't have to go digging
around in your "shadow,"

don't have to figure out
what to
"work on"
in yourself

either
life is peaceful
and you are happy
and you just cruise

or you are unhappy
and you have the work
and the work
tells you what to work on

so
if someone bugging me
is in a daze
that's my work:
find the daze i'm in

if someone around me
leads me to want to advise:
do more Feldenkrais or more
walking or yoga,
that's my work

anyway,
Marlie's daughter came
to visit
and in a troubled phase of her
life

young twenties
college fun
and then jobs:
they don't care how
smart you were in college

and the old aching question:
what do you really want to
do
with your life?

so i suggested
The Artist's Way,
with its grand
and useful idea
of writing three
free form pages a
day

the step daughter not
so thrilled with idea
and i decided
why not,
i'll take the advice:
so far,
just the second day

and

I
love
it

so nice
to take
my own
advice

Happy and Amazing New Year to us all. Yes.

NEW YEAR
Hurray. The New Year is here. Marlie and I went to bed early. She has a free yoga class on New Years Day morning, that is widely appreciated, and wanted her healing and happy sleep, and anyway, we both like to get to sleep early.

Now it’s 1:48 AM, and the New Year. Big deal? No. But another fun way to remember the possibilities of life.

My New Years Resolutions:

1) To go to sleep and to wake up in a state of gratitude and love and awareness.

2) To put something up each day on one of my blogsites, every day that I have access to a computer and the Internet.

3) To play a little each day with either the guitar or the piano.

4) To continue my habit of walking or riding a bicycle to all events and activities and shopping less than four or five miles away.

5) To be happy and do the Work of Byron Katie any time I’m not.

Wow. That is a lot. Dare I put that into writing. Yes. Can I do this?
Yes.

Can I do this with joy?

Yes.

Happy New Year, one and all.


(Note. The essays are rotating through the three blogs, more or less one per day.
So you might want to check:
WakeUp Feldenkrais®
and
Tai Chi Yoga Health Weight Loss Joy

for the last two essays.)

Making Resolutions, One Year Later

Christmas Day hike in Jack London State Park.
Near Sonoma, in Glen Ellen, California.
Photo: (finally) Me. With help from my son,
and a new digital camera,
we finally got one of our own pictures on.

MAKING RESOLUTIONS:
This is fun.

Last year, on this date, I decided to write once a day in my blogsite. And I was interested in being
present
while doing an essay a day: An Invitation to Adventure, Dec. 27, 2005.

I didn’t succeed, every day, and I wasn't always present with every essay,
but I did succeed many.

And then another blog was spawned.

And then another.

So between the three, I’ve pretty much written 365 essays or poems or simple ( like this) postings.


So , what is this all about?


Well, it’s deciding to do something, rather than to restrain from something.

And it’s deciding to do something that can be done in small chunks, and these small chunks can be enjoyable.

And it’s about not rushing, which is the weird thing, this feeling as if we have to cram everything, way too much, so much stuff, busy, busy, into our lives that we don’t have time for what is important.

A resolution to take a walk every morning before breakfast: that’s the kind of thing that can make life really wonderful.

A resolution to sit down with your guitar for ten to twenty minutes a day, or more: that again, is a commitment to spending your life in ways that you really want to be.

Human being, not human doing, that’s the key. Resolutions are almost always things we do, but how can we make them things we do that have that sweet and wonderful quality of being, of being present, of being present to the glorious miracle of being alive in this moment.

That’s the good way to use resolutions.

Not: “I’m going to exercise more.” Nah. I’m going to do 15 minutes of yoga and take a walk every day, and if I want to do more, I will.

Make your resolution something you don’t have to drive to, something you don’t have to spend money on, something that can be as simple as thinking of five things every morning that make you smile, or sending out wishes to five people you love every day at sundown.

Make it simple.

Or let it be a little complicated, if that is building from last year’s resolution. Make the steps small and fun and do-able. Do able in the be able mode.

To do in a way that helps us be, be alive to the moment. This seems the right way to frame resolutions. What do you think?



(Note. The essays are rotating through the three blogs, more or less one per day.
So you might want to check:
WakeUp Feldenkrais®
and
Tai Chi Yoga Health Weight Loss Joy

for the last two essays.)