Emotions are like tiny little bubbles in a champaign glass, joyfully rising to the surface to be released. These bubbles are messengers and one of our greatest blessings. Why? Because they come bearing wisdom and information that, when we stop and allow them to gift us, they empower us. I’ll explain.

Now, is it fun, or comfortable? No, not at first. Is it worth it? One thousand percent. And it is very easy to do. When an emotion – of any mildly to moderately uncomfortable nature – comes up, whether provoked or seemingly not, just go and sit. Then, allow yourself to feel the emotion fully. Open your heart to it. It may be scary the first few times. And I have been asked if a person can have heart failure from this practice. No, not from feeling an emotion but yes, from the suppression of them. Feeling releases what is there.

The act of just sitting with emotions was how I began dealing with them. Just sitting, having no internal judgment of the right or wrongness of the emotion. My goal was just to lean into the emotion and allow it to be there. The really cool thing is that like waves in the ocean when the tide rolls in the first few “waves” of an emotion feel like they are just knocking you down. But there is a little repreve between each wave that gives relief. And each wave gets less powerful until they are just lapping gently at you.

As I mentioned earlier your ego will do its best to derail you from sitting with any uncomfortable emotion. This is its primary function. To move you from pain and towards pleasure. It is good this function of the ego. So please don’t beat yourself up when you realize that it is doing its level best to dissuade you from this or any other method. Your ego is just doing its job. But these little messengers that we have smothered, suppressed, shoved down, ignored, disowned, and pushed away are actually on your team. They keep coming back to try to serve you. Trying to help you. They contain vital information and  instruction for improving something in your life.

For example lets use overwhelmed. This is a common one for me with my busy schedule. Before I decided that I needed to get serious about loving myself I would feel overwhelmed often. Ok, that is actually a lie. I felt overwhelmed 99.99999% of the time. I pretty much just lived there. The minute I would feel overwhelming on its way up to be seen I would immediately go and complete a task to sooth the feeling. This is great if it is 8am. Not so great if it is 11pm and tomorrow starts again at 5am. That is sabotaging the body for the sake of soothing the mind. I think it could be labeled workaholic also. I lived with this “overwhelming” emotional bubble for an absurd amount of my life. 

Why? Why did I live with it for the better part of my life? Because I would not actually recognize its loving presence, or fully feel it, or accept its wisdom that it was offering. I would shove it back down, be upset that there were not more hours in the day, or that I was not more organized, or that I should have gotten up earlier, etc. So my overwhelming bubble would just hang around to come up again later when I relaxed for five minutes. Work did not soothe the uncomfortable emotion. There is never a lack of work to do when you live on a ranch and have animals. So my life was supporting the keeping of the bubble of overwhelming quite effectively. You very possibly have already recognized your your life’s biggest bubble just while you were reading mine. It is usually the one you are supporting the most with your life style.

My overwhelmed bubble and I, we danced this dance, again and again, until I finally gave in and decided I would deal with it. I learned to say, “little bubble what do you have for me? I recognize you as feeling “________” (overwhelmment). I see you, I feel you, I hear you, thank you, I love you.” And I sat still inside of that emotion to feel it fully.

Now my ego, when I began to want to sit with “bubbles” would use every method in its bag of tricks. From – “just finish this task first” “you don’t have time” “you need to focus” “don’t be distracted” and so on. If my ego won and I put off sitting I would suppress the feeling again as I had in the past. Once I realized how tricky my ego was it became much more manageable. I wouldn’t chastize (maybe at first I did-lol) myself. I would gently tell my ego “Shhh” and go and sit.

As you sit and the emotion begins dissipates, an inner sense of peace will slowly take its place. The emotion will build only to a point and with in a few minutes it will begin to relent. What follows this peace is insight, wisdom, and understanding about how to move forward. That may come immediately or trickle in over the next few moments, hours, days, weeks, months, etc. It is a beautiful experience. One that will even have your ego shortly on board with sitting with every single emotion that rises up. You may even find yourself becoming a bubble junkie who is chasing wisdom! And that is understandable. Feeling peaceful becomes a beautiful thing.

Double Bubbles! Yes….Double Bubbles. Occasionally there will be an underlying emotion beyond the first one. Often, this is the case with anger. What will happen if Anger is a cover for a deeper emotion is that as soon as the Anger has released and dissipated the next one, such as Grief will come up. If Grief isn’t all then as it dissipates it is possible for another such as Shame to come up. Sit with each gift bubble as it comes and when it dissipates usually the most vital information will be with the final one. And keep moving through the process until peacefulness comes. You will find that it is a very natural progression from one into the next.

The only goal is to sit with each. Feel each, surrender to each, thank each and release each. Your little bubbles can only leave you by unloading their offered information and rising fully out. If you keep avoiding them by distracting, stuffing, and pushing them away you will not achieve loving yourself. I promise that even though it might seem like they might take you over, they will not. There is not an emotion that is stronger than you are you. I promise. If you do nothing else I suggest do this – this – will change your ability to love yourself and that will change your life.  

I mentioned earlier that this is my favorite modality. For me I found that it really helped me to stay focused with the emotion. It didn’t allow my mind to begin taking me off on tangents in my mind. Such as who to blame, including me, etc. I was able to just stay with the emotion. So as an extention of bubbling just add a pen and paper and “scribble” out whatever was coming. I use no formal writing style, not even full sentences, words, no caps, no puctuation, just simply flow with the emotions onto the paper.

During the process, I was inspired to include towards the end of my scribbling this idea: “I release any resentment, karma, or contracts connected to this. I surrender it all to the care and keeping of the Divine.” I received more peace and insights and revisited many of the emotions less and less. There are layers of them that I went through and that you will, too. I promise you that it is worth it. We are like onions.

This one is straightforward and can be done actively and passively. To do it actively, get a glass/bottle of water. Hold it in front of you and think of the thing you love the most purely in your life, like your cat, dog, child, grandparent, lover, etc/….anything that you love in this moment in a pure and robust way. Let this love that you feel for it flow towards the water you are holding. Do this for as little as 1 minute or as many as 5. If you meditate, hold the water and imbue it with all the good you are mustering during the meditation. And why would you do this?

Because water is an incredible substance. It is able to take on any vibration that is offered to it and becomes equal to that vibration entirely. The water matches the frequency you have imbued it with through the power of your mind and heart. Now once you have imbued the water with your best love feelings – drink it. Doesn’t matter how much you drink at a time. Just get it in you. As the water enters your system, it will take with it those positive vibrations inside of you. By way of Osmosis (mixing in) it will raise the vibration of the other cells with which it comes into contact in your body. As it is taken into the system, it will be positively influencing more than 70% of your body. That is huge. You are more water in composition than anything else. 

Whether you do this once or several times a day doesn’t matter. The more you do it, the more the loving water will influence the cells in your body. If you “beat yourself up” mentally regularly, you should definitely do it often. That is the “active” version. 

The “passive” version is to write on a piece of paper “love,” “I love me,” “I love my dog,” (etc.) and tape it to the bottle/glass facing the water. Written words have power and frequency also. The water will take on the vibration of the words you write just with this simple exposure. Masaru Emoto wrote  “Secret Life of Water,” a fascinating book that beautifully explains this awe-inspiring phenomenon. He scientifically proved that water, when exposed to words, “written or spoken,” experiences a change in the rate of vibration (or frequency) solely by that exposure. And by consuming the water that has encountered love in either of the above ways it does have a wonderfully positive effect on the cells in the body. Do it enough and it actually can turn you into a more loving person! And since you have to drink fluids, you have no excuses. After all, water is only 2nd to air in its necessity to sustain life!

The next is what I call the Timer challenge. What you will do is set a timer on your phone or watch for every one or two hours – whatever is comfortable for you. When the timer goes off close your eyes and repeat this mantra. “I am so happy and grateful now that I am loving myself.” (Thank you, Bob Proctor, for the basis of this method.) Then feel for some love in your heart. Pretend if you have to. Sort of fake it ’til you make it. Just find one thing that you can truly feel love towards yourself about and do it for 10 seconds to 1 minute. Then go on with your day. The more times a day that you do the Timer challenge the faster it will become true.

If you listen to any of the mental health gurus like Mr Proctor, you will learn that the subconscious mind has no ability to reject a thought. It will take the thought, or mantra in this case that you have “decided is true” as a law. As a fact. The subconscious will begin to act on the command of the mantra immediately. By saying “now that I am” and not  “I wish” or “am trying” but that “I am”, the subconscious mind’s job is to bring into being what you state as true. And it needs to be a statement. Not a question. Even if it is not true, the subconscious mind’s job is to make it true.  Your job is to keep “feeding” it the job. And the job is loving yourself. Over and over and over to solidify the task you are handing to it. Then compound its power with feelings of love. It’s just how the universe works. It is how “faith” operates. Faith is only believing something you don’t actually see yet. So you may not see the evidence of your self-love yet, but reaching for it will get you there little by little.  

I understand that this can be a bit of a foreign concept. If you are pessimistic that is ok. What do you have to lose besides some negative mind space? And feelings about yourself that you probably are not enjoying. Take the chance and let us reprogram your subconscious mind.  I realize it is not easy to find the full feeling of love immediately after beginning these exercises. Don’t worry; it will come. I promise. Practice, practice, practice. All babies, including you, came into this world loving the self naturally. Your inner child still operates from this position. (We will get to them later on:)  Just as you “practiced” to get unloving you should expect to have to “practice” to become loving!

And regarding faith, you are in every action exercising faith. If you are convinced that you can not get up before the sun your “faith” in this outcome will keep you asleep until the sun is up. I have this uncanny ability to say, “Wake me up by 3 am, please.” I will go to sleep, and at 2:59, I will wake up. Because I did it a few times just for fun. I didn’t care if it happened or not – no real dog in the hunt, so to speak – but I was learning about the law of attraction and decided to try asking for something I didn’t give a hoot about. I wasn’t going to get up. I just wanted to wake up at what, in my mind, was a ridiculous time. Now I can ask for this “wake me up at ___”, anytime for any reason. 

So why did that work for me? Solely because I had no resistance to it happening or not happening. I simply allowed it to be something that I could grow “faith” in. Another way to say it would be that I exercised “faith” without resistance to what I was asking for. And that is why it worked. Faith also works in the reverse as well. When you say, “I can’t lose the fat on my tummy”, that is the experience you will have. The subconscious will take your command, make it true, and complete your “faith” in your words. So you are always exercising your faith. It is not necessarily toward what you want, so it appears overt. But it is still an exercise in faith. Your subconscious is always following your beliefs. Perfectly, unfortunately. Let us change our beliefs! Then, you will change your love, your body, and your life! Promise!

One of my favorite methods for loving myself that I did was Printed Quotes. I put sayings and quotes up on walls, windows, mirrors, steering wheels, quite literally every where. (When I say that I went all in I am not joking, lol!) My mother, who had beautiful writing, wrote things to remind us of “who we should be” when I was growing up. I read them every day throughout my childhood. I can still see the paper and the cursive words in my mind today. “Love your neighbor as yourself” – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – these two were on our frig. I was an active and hungry kid so I read them often! And to my Mommies credit they were very impactful as to who I become in this life. The things you read often become part of the mental wiring in your subconscious mind. From there, you begin to integrate them involuntarily. They become part of your internal programming and the faith that we just went over. When I decided to embark on this journey to love myself, I used two quotes from Teal Swan’s books. (And hung them everywhere.)

1) “What would someone who loves themself do right now?”

2) “Self Love is the highest state of being. Cultivate it and you will have happiness – everything you have ever wanted will flow into your experience when you love yourself fully.” And authentically – (I added that 🙂

Another that has been really transformational for me was something said in a podcast by Byrne Book, the author of “The Secret.” 

3) “Happiness is where everything that I want waits for me.” 

On the days that I struggled with loving myself, I used happiness as a substitute goal. There will be hard days. And this did really help me when I felt like I was failing. Happiness was my forward-failing go-to when I felt I couldn’t bridge my gap to the real goal. It changed my focus long enough to allow a reset of my mind. Happiness is a very good goal, too. I strongly suggest printing these quotes or picking your own and hanging them everywhere. Get glass markers and write them on mirrors and windows you pass by often. Read them often and out loud. My lock screen and Home Screen on my phone say “What would someone who loved themselves do right now?” 

This one ties into the quotes that I put up all over. However, this one, which I took inspiration from Marissa Peer’s teachings, is specifically placed. It hangs right next to the bed on the nightstand. I see and I read it before I go to sleep and as soon as I wake up. It says at the top, “Make what is Unfamiliar Familiar,” reminding me of my goals. Under that, it says “I LOVE…….” and below there, I write a variety of things in my life, some that are true – so that I authentically feel grateful – and some that I wish to be true so that I can program my subconscious. I try to mix them equally and I can focus on the feelings generated by the true things and drag the feeling over onto the things that I am working on making true. The feelings are what the point is here.

The science behind this is that the brain loves to go over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (you get the drift, right?) what it already knows. The things it is already familiar with. It is like a broken record sometimes! Once the mind deems something is “true,” whether you want it to be true or not, it can feel like a dog digging for a bone. In fact, sometimes I wish it would just pipe down on its obsessive “truths”! Especially the ones I know are not creating what I want! I heard a person once say, “It feels like my thoughts are thinking me!” A statement I can surely identify with. If you have an overactive mind like I do those obsessive thoughts feel like runaway trains!

Unfortunately, this obsessive thinking only serves you if the thought is something you want to be true. So if your brain keeps bringing the thought, ‘My butt is too big,’ that is, in fact, going to continue to be true until the brain is reprogrammed. In order to reprogram we have to change the chatter from what is unwanted to what is wanted.

My list for “Making the Unfamiliar, Familiar” when I first wrote it said things like: “I LOVE that… – I get up early and eagerly (true) that I have so much time every day (wish), that fresh food tastes so amazing (true), that I am so abundant in loving all of myself (wish), that I am surrounded by loving people (true), that I easily maintain 125lbs(wish), training horses brings joy(true), that writing books is easy (wish-lol)” and so on. I try to mix the true and the not true (yets) in evenly (ish). I amend this list often and I hope you have to too. As the “wishes” become “true” (and I promise that they do!) I leave them to show myself how powerful I am. That I can achieve anything. And I start adding things I am going to work on into the list as my next “wishes”. 

The reason this is so powerful is that, as I mentioned, the mind loves to go over and over what is familiar. So early every morning and last thing every night I read the list to my brain. While this list is not all true my brain only knows what I tell it and show it. Remember that your brain lives within the skull inside your head. It can not observe anything that you do not allow it to. Just like a hampster in a cage relies on you for all of its “input” needs; so does your brain. YOU have to decide what YOU WANT to put in your “hampster” 😉 ! So I focus and generate my feelings based on the ones I know are true. And while I say what I desire in word I am using the already generated feelings of abundance from the true statements. My subconscious mind then takes what it “thinks” is true and “makes” it true in my life based on these feelings and words.  I want to “program” my mind, both active and subconscious, to bring these things that I want into reality. 

This is a powerful way to do so, I promise you. Wayne Dyer talks in depth about the last five minutes and first five minutes of the day for brain and subconscious programming. That is why this list is next to the bed. I want to get the very most out of my brain. Science is showing us that these two five-minute periods are the most powerful time for reprogramming.

Another way that helped me tremendously when I started on the journey to loving myself was that I had a friend who began this journey as well. We promised each other that we would text one another daily “Are you loving yourself today?” Or “What would someone who loves themselves do right now?” as a way to remind each other. Even if we had no other interaction that day. We exchanged a question. This person is my green friend. And everyone needs one of these. If you do not have one put it on your Making the Unfamiliar, Familiar list. 

The definition of a green friend is as follows: “Green is the person who randomly became a part of your life one day and saved you; that you now cannot imagine life without. It’s someone who just knows you, sees you, and makes you feel understood. You know you can tell them anything without being judged because they’ll always support what’s best for you no matter what. They hold a special place in your life and heart and you can not replace them.” Ask the Universe for them if you don’t know who this person is. You can not get what you do not ask for.

Once we realized how important our support of each other was we formed a group text we named “The Circle of Love” and added many more of our joint friends to it. Now everyone in the group contributes loving things, positive quotes, mantras, shorts, reels, encouragement, and more for the good of the group. Some days I get several things. I gave this group text a special ringtone, and when I hear it, I tell myself, “I love you”. 

I strongly encourage you to find a friend or family member(s) who will share this journey with you. It’s simple and will benefit all involved. Again if you don’t have this green friend, I again encourage you to ask for one. Ask the Divine for them and just know that when you ask, it is given. This friend is a blessing and a source of constant support and love. Supporting each other through the tough parts of this will solidify your friendship in ways that I can not express. Do this. It is so worth it. Buy them the book or share it with them. 

There is little in this world better than the reflection of love from a young child or an animal. If you have one of these in your life, watch them when you interact with them. Youngsters and animals are nearly always in a place of loving you. In their adoring eyes, you can see the light of love shining. Make a point to notice and appreciate how easily and purely they offer love. Take inspiration from the ease with which they shower this pure love. You can use the inspiration to begin to try to see yourself as they do. Try to feel the response of your own inner child with the love that they so easily offer to you.

Also, watch how they interact with life. And the way they feel the feelings that they so authentically feel. Feelings like love, wonder, innocence, amazement, joy, glee, etc. I know that once life beats us down, we forget that these feelings are innate in us. That they are actually our natural way of being and interacting with our world. We have just smothered them with the pain of life’s many disappointments. If you don’t have a child or an animal of your own go to a petting zoo. Volunteer at a childcare operation for a couple of hours a week. If you have an animal where you live and you can take on that responsibility, then now might be the perfect time to find a cat or dog to care for. Or a hamster.

I once had a pet tree frog named “Ginger” who lived in my kitchen for several years. Mostly in the decorative tea cups hanging under the cupboard. When she wanted love and attention, she would get on the Kerig, where I would chat with her in the morning when I was making coffee. She was one of my favorite “volunteer” pets that I have enjoyed over the years. We never had any bugs in the kitchen while she chose to reside there with us. And in the winter I had to buy bugs for her. (I really did that. Lol) I loved her very much. She crossed the rainbow bridge some years ago but I still miss her today when I am making coffee. Often, I smile when I think of her, and I appreciate the opportunity to have enjoyed her presence in my life. 

So find something or someone who brings love and joy to your life. Make a point to have periods of interaction with them where you purposely “relearn” how to love purely and innocently again. Then, on purpose feed yourself some of that pure, innocent, unconditional love.

This one I found difficult at first, but when I finally made the effort, it was certainly transformational. Stand in front of a mirror. Look yourself in the eye – as much as you can. I chose not to go beyond just looking into my eyes for some time (days-lol). That was enough at first. My goal was just to tell me “I Love You” as many times in one minute as I could. Do this as many times a day as you feel inspired but at least once daily. I do it after brushing my teeth. That is easiest for me. 

The first few days I actually just stared. (With not the most flattering thoughts swimming around in my head.) Finally, one day, I thought, “Geez, don’t be such a ninny, Just do it.” So I did, and then I laughed at myself for the next 10 minutes (ok, maybe half the day). It was so absurd to me that I found it so foreign and difficult to do. After that, it was much easier. And the more I did it the more I could actually start to feel that it could be true. 

And somewhere in that mirror, again I lightened up. I found the innocent joy and mirth that thinking I needed to be perfect had robbed me of. It was transformational for me. From that point on, I could do it reflexively because, again, I gave myself the gift of laughter. As always, the laughter brought more compassion for me.  If you have also been striving to be everything for everyone else and find you put yourself last, then compassion will be a significant part of your healing. There is no chance of deep and abiding self-love and happiness if you don’t find ways to show yourself compassion. It will put you much closer to unconditionally loving yourself. 

Below you will find a couple of my favorite quotes.

What would someone who loves themselves do right now?

Happiness is where everything that I want waits for me!

Making the Unfamiliar, Familiar

I LOVE….

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