Welcome to Love Notes from Rhonda.

Today, let's accept the gifts, the gifts that are bestowed upon us, the gifts that are given, the gift of life.

Today, let's practice accepting.

Yes, I know you're a giver.

I know that.

But accepting is not quote, unquote, taking.

Yet, as the course in Miracles says, the cost of giving is receiving.

So as the giver that you are, you must, my friend, for the yin and yang, for the flow to go back and forth, to receive.

So today, I invite you to receive the gifts that are bestowed upon you.

The gift of friendship, the gift of smile, the gift of hello.

The gift of somebody purchasing you lunch or buying you a cup of coffee.

The gift as well as your own gifts.

Your gift of the spark within, the gift of your shining smile, shining eyes.

The gift of your laughter, the gift of your desire to have everything just right.

You have beautiful gifts that were given to you at birth and that you've cultivated over your lifetime.

You have gifts, and I would love you to do an inventory today as you go through your day.

And if you're willing to write down and stop and actually write down some inventory of who you are, the gifts that you possess, not just the ones you approve of, but all of them.

For many years, I didn't like the way I laughed because I laughed loud and, you know, and I thought it was so unladylike and so, you know, not beautiful.

And I had a friend who just was like, you know, had this sweet little laugh, and I was like, oh.

And I'm like, oh, my laugh is so robust.

And I felt uncomfortable with my laugh for much of my life.

I didn't know my laugh was a gift given to me and that I could use it anytime.

One of the things I'm most proud of is now my ability to be easy with laughter, laugh with ease.

Laugh at things that in the past might have hurt my feelings.

I can laugh at them now.

Things that used to make me feel uncomfortable or bad or, you know, self.

I'm just going to say self aware.

What's that word?

I want.

I want that word.

You know, self.

I don't say deaf.

Self deprecating, but, you know, hypersensitive.

Right?

I used to not be able to laugh at them.

I would cry, I'd be hurt.

But now I can laugh.

I had to accept the gift of my laughter, and then I could accept the gift of laughing with ease.

So what are your gifts that have been given to you at birth and that you now have cultivated over your lifetime?

Or maybe you don't even see them, but people have told you about them.

I'll tell you about a lovely exercise I did for myself when I turned 35 years old, and I did it again when I was 40.

I've done it at a few big birthdays.

And what I did is I asked all my friends to come to my birthday.

But please don't bring a gift.

Instead, bring a letter written to me about why I'm your friend.

What is it about me that makes me your friend?

Now, the first time I did that, it was very.

Oh, very difficult to do because I'm like, oh, my God, what if nobody writes a letter?

Oh, my God, what if they say, like, oh, it's because you have blonde hair?

You know, Like, I was like, oh, no.

And at the party, I had a box, and as people came in, they put the letter in the box.

And sometime during the party, somebody says, oh, you're gonna read the letters?

Like, oh, no.

I think these are for my eyes and my eyes alone.

I still have that box filled with those letters.

And sometimes I pull them out and read them, because sometimes we're not good at seeing what other people see in us.

We don't see our gifts the way they do.

They don't.

They see something that we refuse to see or can't believe they see.

But when I got those friend notes, those love notes from my friends, I decided to read every one and say, I choose to believe this is so.

I choose to believe this.

I choose to believe this is so.

I choose to believe this is so.

After every line when I was like, no, they can't think I'm like that, that I'm funny.

I mean, it just blows my mind that for the first 30 years of my life, I would tell you that I am not creative and not funny.

I really believed that wholeheartedly, 100%.

Somebody told me that I should, you know, go up and I worked at a club that had comedy once a week, and they were like, you should go up there and try, you know, open mic night.

And I'm like, are you crazy?

I'm not funny.

I mean, I literally believed I wasn't funny, and I literally believed I wasn't creative.

I did not know that I was funny, and I did not know that I was creative.

I did not know that at all.

And people told me, and I dismissed it, and I thought they were crazy.

My boss, when I was 24 years old, oh, you're so creative.

I'm like, no, I'm not.

I would fight and argue.

No, I'm not funny.

No, I'm not creative.

No, I'm not.

I was not accepting my gifts.

I was not accepting and receiving their gift of naming my gifts.

So today, my friend, I invite you to, if you choose to sit down and write a list of your gifts, the gift of you.

And you can write all the gifts that you've received from others.

And I'm not talking about packages.

Talking about smiles and friendship and kindness and courage and hard words and tough love.

And I invite you to practice receiving gifts today.

I want you to think of it this way.

If you can't receive, your life will never change.

It's in the asking for help.

It's receiving the gifts.

It's claiming our gifts that gives us the door.

It gives us the opening to believe that things can be different, things can change.

Things can become what we know they.

And we secretly hope they can be.

Until next time, be fearless.

I love you.