All you need is love?

This is a great song, I even have a shirt that has it plastered all over it in every direction,  ‘All you needis love’.  Is that all you need? From everything I’ve been contemplating this week, yes.

Everything goes back to love….love of others leads to helping others, serving others, compassion for others.  Love for yourself leads to opening up your whole word.  For if you love yourself, care for yourself, forgive yourself, have compassion for yourself, you have so much more to give to those around you, hence more love surrounding you.  Self love gets a bad wrap with some but self love isn’t about being self absorbed or egotistical.  The self love I’m speaking about is with no ego.  It’s an understanding that having a true life of inner peace means you have the understanding that we are all connected.  By having love for myself means I have love for those around me. By having turmoil with myself means having turmoil with those around me. And vice-versa.  My actions and feelings that I exude to those around me I am putting on myself too.  There isn’t a separation.  It’s a strange thing to really accept how interconnected we all are. But something I do believe to be true.

In thinking about this interconnectedness it also has me reflect on how I provide self care for myself, my self love.  I’m a people pleaser.  I hate to admit this but it’s true. I think more people are than they want to admit.  It’s good in the sense that I want those around me to feel good and I genuinely like helping others.  It’s not so good when I put myself on the back burner.  Not good when I continue to try to please others while ignoring Amy. I heard a quote this week that was a good reminder ‘If you spend your life trying to make other people happy, you’re spending your life.’  I don’t want to spend my life away.  I want to live a fulfilling life full of love, adventure, giving and gratitude.  That means I need to work on my self love so I have more to give.  In an effort to do this, I made a list of non-negotiables for what I need in my life on a daily basis.  To be honest I have a few non-negotiable lists in my life lately.  The things I won’t change, the things I need to thrive.  It feels good to have those to help remind me what I’ve learned to find value in as I’ve evolved.  My daily non-negotiable consists of : being outside in nature, physical movement, music, family time, nourishment, learning and giving.  I decided the giving can be to me or to others (help me with that people pleaser part of me :).  It doesn’t have to take the whole day to go through the list or the only thing I do during the day….but throughout the day these these will be incorporated somehow.

I also will admit that I am a personal development junkie.  I have been for years. Throw me the Alchemist, the Four Agreements,  something by Deepak Chopra or a Wayne Dyer and I’m curled up for the night engrossed.  I like the idea of being able to grow and improve, learn and evolve. And thinking about the deeper concept of love has been another part of this process.  Instead of  thinking of this learning as self improvement I’m going to start thinking of it as self acceptance. That means with no judging.  Instead of reading, learning and judging myself on what I need to change, I’m going to accept where I’m at and know I’m surrounded by what I need. If we judge ourselves, we need to forgive ourselves, love ourselves. It should be easier than I make it be.  For the love we all seek is always around us.  We are love at the core of our essence. So I think I’m just going to relax a bit more.  I’m just going to go with the nature of just being love. The nature of love within and without.  The reality of love as your true self at all times.  So when other things show up like fear,  people pleasing, anger, frustration, I can readjust and re-interupt the situation based on love.  That can only help me live a life more in my element.  Could you imagine a world where this type of inner peace and love for ourselves and others is the habit?  The new norm? I’m sure going to do my part to have that be my world.  The world where all we need is love.