Create a loving day

I like the fact that we have a day when love is grandly celebrated, but after Valentine’s Day, it doesn’t mean that the love has gone. I’d also like each day to be a day when love is given the same importance.

I will share with you Stephanie Dowrick’s Daily Acts of Love. It will show you countless warm and practical ways to make each day a loving day. You may find one you can share with your loved one or simply one that will lift your spirits.

• To be loving you don’t need to have someone special in your life. The state of loving is special in itself. It needs no particular goal. No particular object. It is a state of mind and heart. A way of being.

• Look at the big picture. Love is always there.

• Unconditional love is a commitment to go on loving for love’s sake; to go on appreciating the gift of life for life’s sake; to go on believing there is good in humankind, despite the failures, disappointments, tragedies and mysteries that are part of every human existence.

• Discover how much more you hear when you listen without judgment.

• Look to love for comfort. Regard it as your refuge. Return to your awareness of love many times through each day. Create reminders in all your environments: remember Love.

• Read people’s faces. See how moving it is when love is expressed in someone’s features: when love dances in their eyes. You can be as beautiful as that.

• Sometimes love requires us to stay in a difficult relationship and work at relieving those difficulties. But leaving a relationship that is debasing or dead is no less loving. The crucial point may not be whether we leave or stay, but how lovingly and respectfully we carry out our decision.

• In the midst of even the worst crisis, it is possible to visualize a calm place within yourself. Give from that place. It will change what you are giving, and leave you far less depleted.

• Love soars when we don’t overload it with demands.

• Talk to yourself as a survivor — not a victim.

• Do not remind yourself of people or things that arouse negativity or anger. Remind yourself instead of what will heal your pain, bring you contentment and strengthen you for the many moments to come.

• Try saying: I have enough! Then say: I have everything I need! Experience the relief!

• Lie on clean white sheets. Do nothing.

• Look long and hard at people who live lovingly. Notice how beautifully they age. Notice how irrelevant their wealth or status is. Notice how much other people want to be in their presence. Notice how they smile.

• Kiss often. Hug often. Look into people’s eyes. Be glad.