“I believe three of the most important words anyone can say are not ‘I love you”, but I hear you’.” ~ Oprah
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If you want to be your absolute best and function at top performance levels, you need time to pause, reflect, meditate and restore. If you want to be present and give your absolute best to the ones you love and are depending on you, you can’t afford NOT to take a few minutes of mindful meditation to sharpen your saw and create a strong and healthy internal state that is able to handle any obstacles and stressful, difficult situations that may show up today.
Meditation, (in nature especially), helps build your emotional immune system, strengthening it as a shield against knee-jerk reactions to unexpected problems and situations that can cause harm in our relationships.
Regular, daily meditation helps us emotionally disconnect from the problem, rising high enough above the situation to be able to think clearly and react calmly.
How many times have you done or said something that you immediately regretted, all because you felt overwhelmed, over-stressed and under prepared? Think how much pain and regret could have been avoided if we had just taken 10 or 15 minutes in the morning to fortify ourselves through silence, prayer and meditation. Think of the relationships that could have been saved or protected from hurt and long-lasting damage if we had taken the time for ourselves to breathe, reflect, strengthen and nourish our spirits.
This is why we are here today, and every day. We set aside the time it takes to do the important things in our lives. Prayer and meditation should be at the top of the list. Especially if our desire is to cultivate Love in our personal “Garden of Well-being”.
As we prepare to do this, it helps to recognize the difference between like and love. Love is over-promised and under-delivered. It is an extremely overused word. But more importantly it is confusingly misused.
Way too often when we say we Love something, we actually mean we Like it a lot.
I can say I love pizza, I love watching movies, I love my dog and I love my wife. Really?! I love pizza like I love my wife? See what I mean?
Think of a garden of beautiful flowers. If you Like these flowers you will probably lean down and smell them, and pick them to take home, and put them in a vase to enjoy for a few days. But if you Love them, you will want to care for them, water them, weed around them and care for them. You will do everything you can to protect them and help them grow.
This is the way it is with Love.
As Jay Shetty points out, perhaps it would be better to equate love with service. True Love is a verb, a “doing” word. Service is the action. When we love someone, we live to serve them.
Here is a thought to keep in mind as we seek to cultivate Love in our meditation today –
People will most likely forget what you said, and maybe even forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.
Remember that our currency in relationships is that of emotion. So the best way to cultivate and share love in your life is to go about your day giving encouragement to all around you. Not just to the ones you love, but to everyone you meet.
One more thing: As you give encouragement, it is even more important to stop and LISTEN to them. Listen not only to their words, but listen to their heart. What is it that they are saying? What is it that they’re heart is crying out for? This is how you leave people feeling loved and cared for. This is how you show kindness and empathy. Love equals Listening.
As you make this your daily practice you will soon discover that you have a lovely, healthy, Garden of Well-being filled with Love and Kindness, Empathy and Understanding. And it will come back to you one hundredfold.
So let’s begin.
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Additional audio by reinsamba. Audio was extended with original source being found at:https://freesound.org/people/reinsamba/sounds/14854/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Photos by Brett Wilson
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