Your Year of Miracles

Category: Personal Growth

  • Be Willing to Fail

    Be Willing to Fail

    Today’s Miracle Moment Is About How Being Willing to Fail Can Get You in the Miracle Zone…

    Often we think of failure as the last thing we want to experience. The word failure can bring up feelings of shame, missed opportunities, and loss. 

    We’re here to tell you embracing failure is exactly what can get you in the Miracle Zone!

    One thing that some of the most successful people have in common is that they’ve been willing to fail along the way. 

    For example, we’re all familiar with the Harry Potter series. These bestselling books have sold 500 million copies and they’ve been made into Hollywood blockbusters. The author of these books, JK Rowling, had to go through a lot of failure without knowing that any of this success would ever happen. 

    Back in 1994, J.K. Rowling was a single, struggling mom who’d just gotten a divorce and was on government aid in order to make ends meet and feed her baby. When she was trying to get a publisher for her book, Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone, she had to manually type out each version on an old-school typewriter to send to publishers because she couldn’t afford the cost of a computer or of photocopying it. 

    Once she started putting her book out to publishers, it was rejected dozens of times. 

    Finally, a small publishing company gave it a second chance after the CEO’s young daughter read it and loved it. Today, J.K. Rowling characters and stories are embedded in our pop culture and beloved around the world. She has a net worth of $1 billion dollars and she has made many charitable donations and used her success for the greater good.

    Two other examples of successful people who have been willing to fail along the way are the creators of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books and Marci’s co-authors, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. As they were trying to get their first Chicken Soup for the Soul book published, Jack and Mark were turned down by 143 publishers. But they kept going because they knew this book had to be out there. 

    Because they persisted and didn’t give up, they made it to the 144th publisher, and that’s who took a chance to publish the book. 

    The rest is history.

    JK Rowling, Jack Canfield, and Mark Victor Hansen each experienced failure along the way without knowing what could possibly ever happen. They were successful because they viewed failure not as an end-point, but just one stop on the path towards their success. 

    Here’s a physical practice you can do to support you to keep going — even when you hit roadblocks or failures along the way: 

    Imagine the feeling you experience in your body when you’re inspired. This is usually an uplifting feeling. 

    Now, imagine the feeling you get when you feel shut down or hit a roadblock. In this case, you might feel a pit in your stomach and a heaviness. Pay attention to how that feels. 

    The next time you experience this pit-in-your-stomach heavy feeling, allow yourself to feel the feeling instead of pushing it away or running from it. By sitting and breathing with it, you will allow it to disperse and dissipate.

    As it releases, you will feel more spaciousness and more of the inspired, uplifting feeling that supports you to keep moving towards your goals. 

    We encourage you to follow your inspiration and stay committed to the success you’re working towards. See any roadblocks or “failures” simply as checkpoints along the way.

    “Never wait in expectation of perfection or you’ll wait forever. Do the best you can with what you’ve got, and be one of those who dared rather than those who merely dream.” — J.K. Rowling

    How will you embrace failure on your road to success? Leave a comment below to let us know!

  • How to Fast Track Your Miracles Through Forgiveness

    How to Fast Track Your Miracles Through Forgiveness

    We’ve all encountered painful situations in life. They could be events that happened in our personal lives, close relationships, work, family, or within a larger collective culture. 

    The situation could be something as extreme as atrocious acts committed against you or people you love. Or it could be words someone said that left a lasting painful impact on you. 

    The process of forgiving someone for hurting you can feel downright impossible, especially if the experience impacted your life for years to come.

    However, lack of forgiveness doesn’t make the situation go away–in fact, it only keeps it with you longer. There’s a saying that “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” 

    Forgiveness isn’t something we do for the other person–it’s something we do for ourselves. 

    Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning a person’s behavior. It means freeing yourself so that you’re no longer controlled or limited by what happened in your past. By letting events be what they are, and opening to forgiveness when we need to, we’re creating more space within ourselves for miracles. 

    Perhaps you’ve heard about Nelson Mandela’s story of forgiveness. He was in jail for 27 years and part-way through that time, he made a conscious decision to forgive his jailers and to love them in spite of the fact that they were beating and abusing him. He knew that otherwise, a life in jail was going to kill his spirit. So he ended up forgiving and loving these jailers. 

    Over time, they could no longer beat him up. They had so much care and regard for him. In fact, when he was president of South Africa, some of his jailers ended up becoming his bodyguards and sitting in the front row during his inauguration. Forgiveness can create miracles. 

    As you see from Nelson Mandela’s story, a wonderful byproduct of forgiveness can also be freeing the other person. Now that’s living in the Miracle Zone. 

    A powerful forgiveness technique is the Ho’oponopono prayer, an ancient Hawaiian Kahuna practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. 

    When heavy feelings like anger or resentment come up about a person or a situation, you can sit quietly with your hand on your heart and say the prayer silently (“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”). 

    By practicing the Ho’oponopono prayer, you’re healing your part of the wrong that was done. This creates a shift in your energy, which ultimately shifts the energy of the relationship.

    We invite you to try out this Ho’oponopono prayer–you may need to practice for weeks or months until you feel a shift–and discover what miracles can come through the practice of forgiveness.

    “Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.” ~ Bishop Desmond Tutu

    We’d love to hear your experience of practicing forgiveness and how it opened up your heart for more miracles to occur.

  • Opening Up to Signs from the Universe

    Opening Up to Signs from the Universe

    Today’s Miracle Moment is About Opening Up to Signs from the Universe…

    Have you ever seen certain numbers appearing over and over again? Maybe when you look at the clock, it always happens to be 1:11 or 3:33 or 12:34. Or when you’re driving, you notice a license plate in front of you with the same numbers that keep showing up.

    There’s a pattern and tapestry in the universe that we’re each a part of. When we’re living in alignment with the laws of nature, signs start showing up in our lives in ways that can seem miraculous. 

    Noticing signs helps us affirm that we’re in the flow of synchronicity in our lives and this is part of living in the Miracle Zone. 

    Here’s an example from Marci about seeing signs: 

    “Having co-authored the Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul books, I’ve read thousands of stories about signs that people receive from loved ones who have passed on, so I knew it was possible. So about a week after my beloved father passed away at age 91, I said to my husband, ‘I’d really love to get a sign from my dad that all is well.’ 

    As we were sleeping that night, an alarm went off in the house. We looked at the clock and it was 3:33 am. Now, the number 333 has always been my husband’s and my special number (we often look at the clock and it’s 3:33), so already, we knew something was up.

    We searched throughout the house to shut off the alarm. We went into every room to check the clocks and it wasn’t the clocks. We checked and it wasn’t a fire alarm either, and we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from!

    Finally, we ended up at the table near the front door where we’d put my Dad’s picture and a vase full of beautiful flowers. I looked at my Dad’s picture and I said, ‘Dad, is that a sign?’ At that moment, the alarm stopped. It was bizarre. 

    The next morning, the contractors who were working on my house came. We asked them how this alarm went off, and they said that there was no possible way for it to go off — it wasn’t hooked up to anything.

    Incredible, right? We believe it was my Dad answering my request to send us a sign.”

    The more we open our hearts to receiving signs, the more that signs will regularly happen in our lives.

    Opening our hearts creates a gateway into the realm of life where signs show up. This open-heartedness can come through heartbreak, as Marci experienced when her Dad passed away. It can also happen through conscious choice. You can simply ask the Universe to send you a sign. 

    As we live with an open heart, signs can constantly flow into our lives and we can recognize that we’re in the flow and a part of the oneness of the Universe.

    Whenever you experience signs and synchronicities, open your heart and recognize that “I’m in the flow.”

    In those moments, pay attention to the sensations happening in your body. As you affirm your experience of being in the flow and recognize the sensations you feel that come with it, you reinforce the ability to be in alignment with signs on a regular basis.

    You’re affirming that you’re tapped into the natural and cosmic law. You’re recognizing your oneness with the universe rather than separation. And this allows even more synchronicities and miracles to occur.

    “When you ask for signs from the Universe, the Universe speaks back.” ― Laura Lynne Jackson

    We’d love to hear about your experiences with noticing signs. Leave a comment below to share with us!

  • The True Meaning of Abundance

    The True Meaning of Abundance

    There’s a lot of confusion about how to manifest abundance. You’ve probably heard tips like think positively, visualize abundance, or recite daily affirmations. Maybe you’ve tried some of these techniques for a while, but you didn’t see any big changes.  

    You might start to wonder, “What am I doing wrong? Is it really possible to attract abundance into my life?”

    The Universe wants to shower its infinite abundance on us. If that’s not what we’re experiencing, it’s because there is a conscious or unconscious block within. 

    And one block might be that we’re misunderstanding what abundance truly is. 

    People often look at abundance as something outside of them that they have to go out and get.  With this thinking, you’re inherently coming from a place of lack. All of your energy is focused on attracting what’s “out there,” like getting a new job or coming into a windfall. 

    The truth is that abundance is just energy and you are made of all the energy of the universe. 

    Abundance doesn’t come from outside of you–it comes from inside of you!

    Thousands of years ago, masters of consciousness said that one of man’s biggest downfalls was getting involved in the material world. This idea has been confused over the ages, leading people to believe that money was sinful. What they really meant was that humanity gets too involved in focusing on the outer already manifested world. 

    We’re on this planet to master our innate abilities as creators. 

    So how can you shift from seeking abundance in the outside world to creating abundance from within? 

    The vibrational frequency of abundance is a very high frequency. If we’ve been operating from a place of struggle and lack, we aren’t vibrating at the same frequency of abundant money flowing through our lives. Because our bodies are built to maintain homeostasis and to resist change, our bodies stay safe by staying in old familiar feelings. 

    By familiarizing your system with the vibrational frequency of abundance, love, joy, and satisfaction, you build new vibrational familiarity in your cells. Then, those patterns can become sustainable.

    Here’s a practice to familiarize your system to the vibrational frequency of abundance: 

    Notice any time that you have a feeling of joyfulness, love, and gratitude. Pay attention to what those moments feel like in your body and practice feeling them for no reason at all.

    Take a deep breath and breathe in the feeling of “That’s for me.” 

    The more and more that you practice feelings of abundance and breathe into those feelings, the more that you are building the circuits to maintain that frequency. 

    Remember, you have the power of the universe within you, waiting to shower its abundance on you.

    “As long as we remain vigilant at building our internal abundance—an abundance of integrity, an abundance of forgiveness, an abundance of service, an abundance of love—then external lack is bound to be temporary.”  — Marianne Williamson

    Please leave a comment and share your experience practicing experiencing the feelings of joyfulness, gratitude and abundance! 

  • How to Help the World Through Getting in the Miracle Zone

    How to Help the World Through Getting in the Miracle Zone

    Today’s Miracle Moment is about how getting in the Miracle Zone is the best thing you can do for the world…

    During these incredibly unpredictable times, we’ve all experienced the effects of what’s going on in the world. As someone who cares deeply about humanity and wants to make a positive impact on the planet, you might be asking yourself, “What can I do to help the world?” 

    Here at Your Year of Miracles, we believe that the best thing you can do for the world is to first get into the Miracle Zone yourself.  

    Ultimately, we can only take care of others through helping ourselves first. Here’s a Buddhist teaching story that illustrates that. 

    There once were two acrobats. One acrobat was the teacher, a poor widower named Akil, and the other was the student, a young girl by the name of Meda. They performed every day on the streets in order to earn enough to eat.

    Their act consisted of Akil balancing a tall bamboo pole on his head while Meda climbed slowly to the top. Once at the top, she balanced there while Akil walked down the street. They both had to maintain complete focus and balance in order to prevent any injury from occurring and to complete the performance. 

    One day, Akil said to the young girl: “Listen, Meda, I will watch you and you watch me, so that we can help each other maintain concentration and balance and prevent an accident. Then, we’ll surely earn enough to eat.”

    But the wise little girl answered, “Dear master, I think it would be better for each of us to watch ourselves. To look after oneself means to look after both of us. That way, I’m sure we’ll avoid any accidents and earn enough to eat.” Sure enough, the little girl was correct, and that’s how they successfully did their act together.

    In this example, the young girl puts her focus on herself first, because she knew that it was up to her to maintain the concentration needed to successfully do their act. It was up to the teacher to maintain his own concentration as well. 

    This is true in our lives. Sometimes we get overly focused on how we can help everyone else around us, and our energy ends up being dispersed, distracted and diluted outside of ourselves. 

    By taking care of ourselves first, we can get grounded, centered, and available to contribute to the greater good.

    Scientific experiments are showing us that we can have an effect on our own DNA. Even more amazingly, experiments are also showing that our own DNA can affect the people around us, too. 

    The people and the environment around us respond to the vibrational frequency that we are emitting energetically–and that means our positive vibration positively impacts the world around us.  

    By dropping into ourselves and taking great care of our body, minds, and souls, we actually set up the vibrational environment that supports other people to do the same thing for themselves. And so, the more we get into the Miracle Zone, the more we support the whole world to do the same!

    We can support one another by responsibly being stewards of our own vibrational power to impact the world through the way we care for ourselves. 

    As you live your life more and more in the Miracle Zone, you’re creating an incredible impact on the people around you and around the world. 

    This week, we ask you to explore what you can do to take care of yourself so you can also be of best service to the world.

    “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” –Howard Thurman

    In the comments below, please share your experiences of positively impacting the environment around you by getting more and more in the Miracle Zone. 

  • Your Hidden Superpower for Manifesting Miracles

    Your Hidden Superpower for Manifesting Miracles

    Did you know that you have a hidden superpower for manifesting miracles?

    This is a superpower you use every single day, and in fact… every single moment.

    Your superpower is your attention!

    What we put our attention on is what grows stronger in our life. 

    Energy goes where our attention flows. 

    The challenge is, we might habitually put our attention and focus on what’s going wrong in our lives. This is due to how our brains are wired–to look for the problem!

    When our ancestors had to be on the constant lookout for threat, this part of our brains saved our lives. In our modern world, that part of our brains continues to be on the constant search for potential threats and problems. This instinct can still save our lives in times of danger, so it’s still an important part of our biology. However…  

    As we go for our goals in our everyday lives, we must consciously retrain our minds to focus on expecting positive outcomes rather than negative outcomes. 

    Otherwise, we’ll continue to attract stressful situations, as we’re a match for that vibration.

    One great way to retrain your mind is to put your attention on the miracles that are already showing up in your life. For example, in our Your Year of Miracles program, we give our participants a Miracles Journal at the start of the year so they can track their miracles all year long. This powerful practice retrains the mind to look for the positive and attract even more miracles their way.

    You can also give your loving attention to the miracles you want to manifest. Here are four ways to do that:

    1. Thoughts: Put your thoughts on what you want to manifest, not on what you don’t want to manifest. Worry is actively imagining what you don’t want to manifest. Be careful of what you feed your mind and be aware of how much negativity you are letting in. Be an optimist—someone who understands that there can be issues, but knows they’ll find solutions.
    2. Words: Words are powerful—choose them carefully! “I am” is one of the most powerful phrases in the English language. Speak of what you want to create rather than what you don’t want.
    3. Feelings: The success that we want lives in an energetic vibration, and our job is to align ourselves with that energetic vibration. We connect to that vibration through our feelings. A few ways to put ourselves into the feeling state of what we’re wanting to manifest are:

      Acting as if: Act as though your intention has already manifested–this helps you to become an energetic match to what you want to attract.

      Gratitude: As you feel grateful for each step along the way, you move into the energy of greater and greater success. Be grateful in advance for what you are intending, as though it’s already happened.

      Visualization: Imagining, seeing, and feeling your outcome anchors the energy of it within you. You can use visualizations or vision boards to help you with this process. 

    4. Action: We need to take persistent action to see our goals come into fruition. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, are the creators of The Chicken Soup for the Soul series and Marci’s co-authors. Jack and Mark were turned down by 143 publishers, but kept going because they knew this book had to be out there. Because of they persisted and didn’t give up, they made it to the 144th publisher, and that’s who took a chance to publish the book. The rest is history.

    Remember, just like any great superhero movie, your superpower can be used for good–or for evil. By using your hidden superpower for good, and focusing your thoughts, words, feelings, and actions on the miracles you want to manifest, you’ll be well on your way to seeing them (or something even better) manifest in your life .

    “Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.” — Mahatma Gandhi

    Let us know in the comments below which of the four ways you’ll practice using your superpower for manifesting miracles today! 

  • How Empaths Can Thrive In the Miracle Zone

    How Empaths Can Thrive In the Miracle Zone

    Today’s Miracle Moment Is About How Empaths Can Thrive Inside the Miracle Zone…

    Did you know that being empathic is a superpower? “Empath” is derived from the Greek word “em,” meaning “in” and “patheos” meaning “feeling.” Being an empath means that you’re able to “feel into” so much of life–even into what other people are experiencing. 

    However, it sometimes doesn’t feel like a superpower. When you can easily pick up on the energies of other people and the external environment around you, it can be overwhelming and draining. Being so tuned into the outside world can often take us away from our internal sense of peace and wellbeing. This can make all of the events happening in our world today even more intense, because you’re feeling the effects of them so deeply. 

    If you can relate to being an empath or highly sensitive person, we want you to know that you’re not alone. We’re right there with you, and we have so many empaths in Your Year of Miracles community.

    To thrive in the Miracle Zone as an empath or highly sensitive person, first embrace your gifts.

    Your gifts include creativity, feeling connected to nature, and the capacity to love very deeply. You have the ability to sense and feel what’s going on in your life and be guided by your intuition. Empaths are often working on the frontlines of helping professions and want to make the world a better place–and this is an amazing gift for the world! 

    There are truly beautiful possibilities that are available to you through your empathic gifts. So how can you support yourself so that you aren’t consumed by the challenges of feeling everything? 

    It’s important to understand that our bodies are built for sensing and perceiving. In fact, our nervous systems are 100 to 10,000 times more sensory than they are motor. The problem is, if we live in our heads and we don’t come down into our bodies, that sensory input is too overwhelming. 

    To come into our bodies, we can go back to the breath.

    Here’s an exercise to support you as an empath to thrive inside the Miracle Zone: 

    1. The moment that you start to feel oversensitive, overwhelmed, or overstimulated, take a deep breath into your belly and exhale into the earth. Drop your breath through the tip of your spine and let it land two feet below you.
    2. Then, take another deep breath into your belly and exhale into the earth.
    3. Practice dropping and anchoring into the earth and doing “mula bandha,” which is contracting the muscles in your pelvic bowl and squeezing them as if you were going to the bathroom and you had to stop that stream. Keep them squeezed, breathe into your belly, and exhale down into the earth.
    4. Then inhale up from the earth into your belly and exhale right back down into the earth again.
    5. As you do this, bring your focus of attention onto yourself, rather than on the external environment. This is called “coming off of object and onto subject.”
    6. Next, you can experiment a little. Put your attention on something somewhere else in the room and see how your energy rushes over there to it. You can then call your energy back to you. Imagine breathing in all of those energies and exhaling them into the earth. 

    By grounding your energy through this breathing practice, you can overcome your overwhelm.

    As you practice this, you will feel like an entirely different person in the face of whatever is going on. 

    The beauty of this practice is that as you stabilize yourself, you can then have a stabilizing presence for those around you too. This will help you to stay in your own energetic space while still being open to what’s going on in the world from a place of groundedness and centeredness. 

    Most importantly, rather than being hindered by your empathic sensitive tendencies, your life experience will be enhanced by them. 

    “Everything that human beings feel, we feel. We can become extremely wise and sensitive to all of humanity and the whole universe simply by knowing ourselves, just as we are.” ~Pema Chodron

    Please leave a comment and let us know about your gifts as an empath or highly sensitive person. What are you grateful for? We look forward to hearing from you!

  • Being At Home Wherever You Are

    Being At Home Wherever You Are

    Today’s Miracle Moment Is About Being At Home Wherever You Are…

    Have you ever been around someone who seems to feel so comfortable in their skin and relaxed wherever they are? Would you like to also have that experience of feeling like wherever you go in the world, you’re at home, no matter what? 

    I (Marci) have had the honor of knowing some amazing people in this world, and one of them is a woman named Jody Williams. Jody is a Nobel Peace Prize winner who won the award for her work in helping ban landmines around the world.

    Jody is friends with extraordinary visionaries on the planet, including His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. One day, when I was having lunch with Jody, I asked her, “Do you ever feel intimidated when you’re with any of the world-renowned leaders and visionaries that you meet?” 

    Jody answered, “No, I’m just myself, wherever I am. And if people like me, they like me. And if they don’t like me, they don’t like me.” Jody is at home within herself and wherever she is, she is comfortable.

    The experience of being so comfortable in your own skin is available for all of us.

    Dr. Sue is a great example of someone who feels this way too. Here’s what Dr. Sue shares about this: 

    About 20 years ago, I had an amazing opening in my consciousness that started me on a totally different path in my life. I awakened to this really high state of consciousness and I was me, but I wasn’t in a body and I was also completely at home. 

    Through this experience, I was no longer able to reference life the way that I used to, because clearly things were very different than I had ever thought they were. And yet, there was a deep sense of wellbeing and a complete sense of fulfillment. There was nowhere to go, nothing to accomplish, and nothing to become. There was nothing broken, nothing wrong, and nothing to be fixed.

    The true state of all of us is the vibrational frequency of peace. 

    Since that experience, I’ve recognized that I am this eternal presence–and so are you and everyone on the planet. The more we identify as that presence, the more comfortable we become in life, no matter where we are and no matter what’s happening, 

    Underneath the limited personality that struggles to make things unfold in a certain way, there’s another version of ourselves that’s deep in our heart. The more we breathe low in our bellies, the more we can access that deeper sense of self. 

    By slowing our breath down, it slows the mind down too. And then the mind stops writing all those stories that make us so uncomfortable. 

    Home is literally where we are. The universe is within our bodies. It’s important to remember that all the time so we can share our deepest self with each other and live the life that we came here to live. 

    Here’s a practice for being at home wherever you are: 

    1. First, think of a situation that you may not be particularly comfortable in. Maybe it’s a situation that intimidates you or that you feel afraid of in some way. Imagine what it would feel like to feel at home in that situation.
    2. Then, breathe deeply in your belly and anchor yourself in your own body. Know that you get to be home right here in your body.

    Feeling at home is really part of living in the Miracles Zone. 

    “Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.” ~ Siddhārtha Gautama

    We’d love to hear your experiences of feeling at home wherever you are. Leave a comment below and share your experience of inviting in the feeling of “The world is my family and I am home wherever I am.”

  • How to Soften Anxiety and Reduce Stress

    How to Soften Anxiety and Reduce Stress

    Today’s Miracle Moment Is About How to Soften Anxiety and Reduce Stress…

    Many people are experiencing fear and anxiety about all the events happening in our world these days. So we’re going to share a method to soften anxiety and reduce stress so that you can live more fully and constantly in the Miracle Zone–the place of synchronicities and flow, where you’re creating the conditions of your life for the miraculous to occur. 

    In the midst of whatever is happening in the world, it’s important to stay grounded in the Miracle Zone and keep your energy strong and clear. Living in the Miracle Zone doesn’t mean that you’re not going to worry, or that there are never any worries in the world. It means that instead, you’re going to choose wellbeing, and choose to thrive and grow even in the midst of uncertainty. 

    We do this by staying in the present moment. Worry transports us into the future. Fear and worry are ways of consciously imagining something in the future that you don’t want to happen. So that’s not where we want to spend our time!

    The current reality is this present moment. If you can embrace appreciation and gratitude in the present moment, this will always help you to let go and release fears about the future. 

    Staying in the present moment doesn’t mean that you’re denying or ignoring any kind of feelings about the future, including anxiousness. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It means that you’re coming present to what it is that you’re feeling. When you’re present to what’s real for you, you develop a sense of clarity, certainty, and groundedness that wasn’t there just a moment before. 

    And in that presence, you’ll find that there’s a sense of wellbeing that exists underneath what your mind is saying. It exists underneath all of the stories it’s writing and all of the bombardment that we’re getting from the outer world, especially during these times. All of it can fade away and you can recognize a version of who you are that is actually okay. 

    Once we acknowledge any feeling that we’re feeling, it starts to dissolve inside of this present moment. So we’re trading worrying about the future for this wonderful peace of mind that is found in this present moment now. 

    Here’s a practice for softening anxiety, reducing stress, and living more in the present moment: 

    Gently close your eyes, and take a breath into your belly and exhale. Take a deep breath in again and exhale. Bring all of your attention into your deep core, where your belly button is and just behind it and below it–right in there. And let go of the outer layers of your skin. The outer surface of your energy field–just let it soften–let it drop into the center of your brain, into your heart, and into this place deep in your core in your belly area and just be right there.

    There’s nothing else to think about or to do, but to just focus there. Notice that there’s a calmness that comes upon you. And if it does not feel calm yet, drop in a little deeper with your focused attention. Breathe a little bit so that you can feel where you’re living from, down in the belly. Drop all of your attention to your belly and relax in the belly. Then breathe, inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling, and notice that there’s a stillness in here.

    You can open your eyes slowly, but stay focused in this deep belly space. Stay present while keeping your eyes open. There’s the same sensation on the inside, but now you’re able to be present on the outside, keeping one part of your attention in this inner still presence. With another part of your attention, look around the room with the stillness and presence of being. You can engage in the outer world and be aware of what’s happening in this now moment while not leaving your awareness on the inside.  

    There’s a miraculous power in being present right here in this very moment. Because we’ve been habituated, it’s so easy to get anxious about the future and the things we can’t control. And it’s so vital to stay present for our own health and wellbeing. 

    We invite you to do this practice a few times over the next few weeks and see how different you feel in your life.

    “I am present and aware of this moment. It is full and it is great.” – Sega Belkis

    We’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below and tell us about your experience of anchoring in this present moment.

  • What Valentine’s Day Teaches Us About Self-Love

    What Valentine’s Day Teaches Us About Self-Love

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    Today’s Miracle Moment Is About What Valentine’s Day Teaches Us About Self-Love…

    You know Valentine’s Day is coming up because if you go into a drugstore, you see entire aisles filled with boxes of chocolate, pink and red fluffy pillows, teddy bears, and all sorts of advertisements that give ideas of what this day should be like. 

    It’s wonderful to have a day dedicated to celebrating love. The challenge can come if it creates certain expectations in our minds about what love should look like.  

    Should our lovability be measured by whether we have a partner or by how many boxes of chocolate we receive or how many Valentine’s cards we got? Definitely not. 

    If we aren’t showered with the affection that we’re hoping for or expecting on Valentine’s Day, we can end up feeling disappointed, believing that we aren’t as loved as we want to be. 

    Or, if we’re not in a primary relationship, it can be easy to create a story about our lovability, especially if we compare ourselves to the images we see everywhere in the media and social media. 

    So our first invitation for you on Valentine’s Day is to drop the expectations on others to shower you with the love that you are.

    Because your core essence IS love!

    Our next invitation is that you treat yourself the way you’d like someone else to treat you on Valentine’s Day. 

    What if we gave ourselves the same level of love, attention, and affection that we hope or expect to receive from someone else? Well, the same thing that happens when someone treats you wonderfully — your heart opens, you feel relaxed, you feel happy. This is a gift we can give ourselves. 

    We can do this in simple ways… Be your own Valentine.

    Do for yourself what you’d want to have for Valentine’s day. That could be having a nice meal or getting yourself some flowers. Write yourself a love letter or Valentine’s card. Tell yourself everything that you love and appreciate about yourself. I know this might seem a bit uncomfortable — we’re not used to this — but just try it out and see how you feel. You’re worthy of receiving that kind of loving care and attention.

    This is a powerful way of showing ourselves how worthy we are. When we act in these loving ways towards ourselves, we naturally build up love for ourselves. And when we spend time nourishing ourselves, we start to believe how worthy and valuable we are — unconditionally. 

    And then, make sure that you do it! 

    We want to leave you with this quote from Oscar Wilde:

     “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.”

    Happy Valentine’s Day!

    We’d love to hear your comments about how you’re going to shower yourself with love this Valentine’s Day, so please leave them below…

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