Welcome to Love Notes, Rhonda.

And it's the first day.

It's the first day.

It's the first day of the month, and it's Love Month.

It's Love Month.

Oh, I love Love Month.

And it's not Love Month towards other people that I'm interested in, even though that's lovely and kind.

And I want you to be proactive and put boundaries up and, you know, be gentle and kind to others and see they're innocent, too.

But when I'm talking about Love Month, I'm talking about loving Yourself month.

I'm talking about seeing every ounce of yourself through the eyes of love.

I'm saying looking at that body of yours with love.

Looking at those.

Those thoughts of yours with love.

Look at those feelings.

Feelings of yours through love.

I'm talking about feeling the spiritual connection to the world, to the universe, with love.

I'm talking about giving love your full attention and your full commitment.

Because this month, the whole world, well, maybe not the entire world, but a whole bunch of people are committed to becoming more loving.

Even if it's just for Valentine's Day, right?

Even if it's just for a day, people's mind turn towards love.

Now, we have talked about using the energy of the planet for our good.

This is an example of that.

February in many places has something called a Valentine's Day.

Not every country, but many places have a thing called Love Day, right?

Some sort of love day.

Ours in the United States in particular is February 14th.

And so when it hits February 1st, we're kind of starting to think about it, right?

We're like, oh, Valentine's Day's coming up.

And we're either dreading it, like, I'm alone again, or it's like, I hate Valentine's Day, right?

Or we go, oh, it's Valentine's Day.

I wonder what my sweetie's getting me.

Or what should I get my sweetie, right?

So usually for most of us, Valentine's Day brings up certain feelings.

And I want us to use this month to make Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Month.

Love Month.

A time to dedicate to your own acts of self love.

Your own willingness to say yes to yourself.

Your own seeing yourself through the eyes of innocence.

Being willing to see every act, every thought, every feeling, every movement, every body sensation through the eyes of love.

Now, is this easy?

No, it's not.

Is this saint stuff?

Yeah, like saints.

And yet we can continue to practice and can continue to open our hearts and can continue to see ourselves in the world through the eyes of innocence.

So imagine if you actually looked at every thought you had through love and let's say it was a derogatory thought, you know, a disempowering thought, as we say in Fearless.

Living a negative self talk, as they say out in the world, right?

Oh, I'm so stupid.

Well, if you looked at it through the eyes of love, what would you think about that thought?

I know for me, if I heard myself say to myself, you're so stupid, and I was looking through the eyes of love, I would stop and comfort myself because clearly calling myself stupid is debilitating, disrespectful, hurtful, name calling.

Not something that I want to say to someone I love.

I don't want to say it to anybody.

So if you looked through at your feelings, your thoughts, your actions, et cetera, through the eyes of love for this month, imagine what would be possible for you as each day goes by.

Now, I want to preface this by saying when we start focusing on something like, oh, I'm gonna look through the eyes of love, what usually happens is we see everything but love.

We go, oh, my God, I wasn't loving there.

Oh my God, I wasn't loving there.

Oh my God, I wasn't loving there.

Oh God, I wasn't loving.

Oh God, I'm a horrible person.

I'm a devil's unloving there.

No.

Okay, so that normally happens, right?

When we're focused on something.

I wanna be more loving.

I wanna practice seeing myself through loving eyes.

We notice when we're not being loving.

We wanna change our attention to when we are being loving and when we're not being loving.

When that kind of pulls us, we wanna look at that through the eyes of love.

Yes, that's right.

I'm not always loving to myself or others.

Yes, that's right.

Am I purposely that way?

No.

Have I been taught to be that way?

Maybe, maybe not.

Is it in my DNA?

Is it the way my body and brain works automatically if I don't take charge?

Yeah.

Okay, so I'm gonna slow it down, right?

One of the quotes that we use here in Fearless Living that I've been saying for 26 years came up with, I don't remember for who, but slow is the new fast, right?

Slow is the new fast.

Slow is the new fast.

So we wanna slow down this month and ask ourselves, if I was being loving in this moment, what would I do?

Who would I be?

What would I say?

How would I show up?

And yes, you're gonna notice all the ways you're not loving, and that's okay.

That's all right.

Be gentle, be gentle, be gentle.

And you know one of my favorite exercise, right?

Grab that baby picture of yours, and if you don't have a baby picture, just the youngest picture you have of yourself, put it in your wallet, take a photo of it, put it on your phone as your screensaver.

And every time that you're not loving to yourself, I want you to look at that baby picture, that young lady, young man picture, that young person picture and say that derogatory, disrespectful thing to them, and I guarantee you, you won't be able to do it.

Sometimes it's hard to see ourselves as innocents as we age, right?

As we hit 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 and 70, because we think we should know better.

We can't use logic here.

We must use love.

So find that baby picture, put it on your home screen, on your phone, put it in your wallet, put it somewhere that you can see it.

And every time you find yourself being less than loving to yourself, pull that picture out and say those same words, those same thoughts to that baby.

It will cure you fast.

Let's practice love to ourselves first and then to each other.

Until next time, be fearless.

Oh, how I love you.