When most people sit down to start a project they typically begin with: planning, further defining the idea to create clarity of purpose, or maybe even visualizing the process of achieving the desire and/or the completed desire itself. I like to do something different when I start anything, whether it is a new project or a new day, I Root it in Love. I have multiple ways of doing this and enjoy using this concept in every area of my life and with anything that I see as crucial to the completion of a goal or to achieving and maintaining joy or success.
I use (modified) mantra, loving kindness, and visual meditation techniques to ensure that I set myself in the proper direction to achieve the best possible results. I do these and other things with an intention of love; I allow love to be the driving force and the foundation of every single endeavor. My goal being to tune myself in to the frequency and feeling of love, thus allowing all work that stems from this state of love to be Rooted in Love. I have found great peace and success with this method and I hope you will have a similar experience. I am going to go over the different ways I utilize this concept of ‘Rooting it in LOVE’, and it is also my hope that throughout the process of writing this I may come across new and better ways to Root it in LOVE. Please enjoy these techniques and always feel free to modify them in any way that suits your style or need. What’s really important with any practice is your comfort, joy, acceptance, and of course the experience you have with it. Make sure that the experience of Rooting it in Love is in fact Rooted in Love! Enjoy!
Starting your day by Rooting it in Love
When you wake up, for the first fifteen minutes or so your brain is really active. It is during this time that I set the pace for my day and one of the things that I make sure to do is to root my day in love. I accomplish this by finding a quiet comfortable place to sit, taking some deep breaths, closing my eyes and focusing on love. I like to use this time of increased brain activity to focus on two things: the thought, ‘love’; and an image of the word love in all capital letters. (You can picture the word LOVE in any font size or color you choose, just as long as you find it pleasing.) I begin to think the thought, ‘love’ and focus all my attention on the image of the word LOVE. As with most affirmations I visualize, I like to end with a period included in the image. So, I would imagine ‘LOVE.’ I believe that this symbolizes to your mind that this is all you wish to focus on at the moment and it stops the mind from wandering away from the intended focus. Once I have chanted ‘love’ twenty five to fifty times, or more depending on my mood, while focusing on the image described above I then begin to shift this state of mind that I have cultivated towards my day. I begin to mentally chant a new mantra, something like, “This day is rooted in love and will produce love”. I may also think ‘love’ over tasks I know I must complete that day, allowing my first thoughts of them to be covered in love. Sometimes, if I feel extra peppy I’ll rotate through these three methods a few times to really fill my day with love.
I finish my day by rooting the end of my day in love also, as with waking up, the time before you begin sleeping is critical because it will set the mood for the time you spend sleeping. Use the above method of thinking the thought, ‘love’ and focus on your image of the word love. Do this as you’re lying in bed and tune your mind to love so you will enjoy the most peaceful and rejuvenating rest possible at the end of each day.
Loving yourself; Rooting yourself in self-love
All things considered, I believe loving yourself is one of the most important things you can do. By loving yourself you are opening yourself up to love, allowing others to love you, and allowing yourself to love others. With this is mind I try to take time each week to show myself a little love to ensure that by rooting myself in love, I always have love in my life. In addition to this I try each day as often as possible to recite the affirmation “I love myself.” This allows me to build a firm foundation of self-love with which to stand steadfastly on each day and make my weekly sessions easier too; allowing me to gain deeper love for myself each week. Similar to working out physically, mental exercise gets easier as you do it, so next week those ten reps may seem to weigh less and go quicker because of the previous work allowing you to add additional reps. Each week my mind and feelings get to where I need them to be to be really focused and concentrated more and more quickly because of the previous weeks work and the daily affirmation pump up I do. This is important to continued progress and growth of your desired result; it allows you to add new affirmations or visualizations to the end of your session each week or just increase the time spent on each area.
Now, when it comes time for the weekly love fest I start the same way I start any meditative session: I find a comfortable and quite place to sit, close my eyes, take a few deep breaths and tune my mind to whatever I am going to be focusing on. In this case it is, loving myself, so I begin with the affirmation mentioned above, “I love myself.” After I have stated this meaningfully and slowly, with feeling and belief about ten to fifteen times I move on to other affirmations and repeat the process. Some good examples are: “I am worthy of my own love”, “I deserve my own love”, “I am worth loving”, “love yourself more each day”,” I speak lovingly about myself”, “I think loving thoughts about myself” and, “I feel love for myself”. While doing this and other practices I sometimes get a feeling or thought that pops into my mind in regards to what I am saying and attempting to make myself feel, that I must counter. I believe it’s natural for your mind to try to pull you back to where it’s used to for a moment but you must persist with confidence so that it can be overcome and you can achieve the intended result. You can do this by developing a counter affirmation, just think of how you are feeling or the thought that popped into your head and focus on this question, “What is the opposite of this thought or feeling?”, then add that opposite affirmation into your list of things to mentally chant during your self-love sessions. For example, when I first started to use the affirmation, “I love myself”, the thought “you don’t deserve love” popped into my mind so I developed the affirmation “I deserve love.” Sounds simple but it is a very important part of self-improvement and success to be able to flip the coin and engrave your mind with a proper and positive thought where a less favorable one is present. Please be sure to take the time to do this and remember to write them down and make it a point to return to them often, it will save you so much time and effort later on. These thoughts and feelings (also sometimes images) that pop up are important to notice and counter; they show us how our subconscious mind feels about what we are saying and if we want what we are saying we must make our subconscious mind align with what we want. This is one of the simpler methods I employ to accomplish this task, there are many other methods but we’ll save those for future posts. For now just focus on creating opposite affirmations and be aware of these thoughts and feelings that need correcting. This technique can be applied at any time so try to make it a habit throughout your day, every day!
Once I have made it through my list of self-love affirmations and I am feeling the love, I move on to my physical body and start to direct the love that I am feeling towards it while mentally affirming repeatedly “I love my body”. As mentioned above I may have a thought I need to counter and if I notice that I do not feel so loving towards a certain part or feature of my body I begin to focus my feelings of love on that area and affirm my love for it until I feel better about it. Then I return to the statement “I love my body”. After I gain momentum and I am able to fix my attention on the statement consistently I spend five to ten minutes repeating the statement to allow it to really set in and take hold. I then spend some time in mental silence; focusing the feeling of love and admiration I have just created on my body, allowing myself to focus all my attention on my body in a state of love. At this point I am usually feeling really good about myself and I use that high to get into a really powerful meditation session. I will either allow myself to be still, focus on my breath and work on achieving mental silence, or I will use the momentum I have gained to perform the loving kindness meditation. This meditation is very detailed and involved in most of the ways that I have seen it presented. I typically just borrow the phrase and say “In with loving kindness for… ”, as I breathe in and “Out with loving kindness towards…”, as I breath out. I start with myself and go through a list of loved ones eventually ending with the entire world, quite literally I state, “(inhale) In with loving kindness for the entire world, (exhale) Out with loving kindness towards the entire world.” After I finish I try to be sure that I do something productive that matters to make the best use of the state of mind I just cultivated.
Root a goal in love
Before I start applying any of these methods towards a goal I first like to ensure that I, as a whole, am tuned to love. I do this by sitting comfortably and quietly and closing my eyes; then taking a few deep breaths. I begin to think ‘love’ over and over again, using all of my power of will to focus on the thought, ‘love’. I do this for varying lengths of time depending on many factors; including most importantly how long it takes my mind to stop wandering off and to hold focus on the thought, ‘love’. I decide when to move on to my next task once I get to the point where I realize I have been entirely focused on the thought, ‘love’, for quite some time and then I push just a little further by holding steadfast focus on the thought, ‘love’ until I begin to feel it. A surge of joy rushes through my body as if I have just won and have pushed from one end of the pole to the other and straight to the highest point possible. This does take some practice to achieve and when starting out you may find yourself calmly edging to the other end of the pole as opposed to pushing energetically, this is completely normal and just takes further practice and patience to experience improved results.
Now once I have tuned myself to love in a very simple way as described above I begin to look at the actual goal that I desire to achieve the best possible results for and Root it in Love. Say for example, I desire to write something new for the site. I would first, already being Rooted in Love, turn to my notebook which contains many posts that I have already had ideas for or written a short section for. While focusing my attention on the intended topic I would begin to mentally chant ‘love’ as if directing the force of my thought to the topic, feeling love surrounding the concept and infusing itself with the concept. I do this for five to ten minutes or until I feel led to stop. Sometimes I also chant a few different mantras that I create, for example, “I love this article topic” or “I love writing articles.” This usually just depends on my gut and what I feel I need to direct some more love towards to accomplish the goal in the most effective manner possible. I would then begin the work and once I had accomplished what I deem a sufficient start, look back over it to access the attitude with which I just completed my work and the outcome. I then would re-tune my mind to love and also the entire project with which I am working, in this case the article. I repeat this process until I no longer think to do it, I know this is very abstract but at some point I just catch the wave I was seeking and continue forth in love knowing that I am creating something Rooted in Love.
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About the Author:
Christopher A. Aseltine has over 15 years of entrepreneurial experience across several different industries. For the past 9 years he has been delving into the world of self-help and success. He has always had a passion for helping others, counseling and helping friends and family from a young age. Christopher has decided to take the knowledge and experience he has gained over the last decade and a half and present it all in one place in order to reach and help the broadest audience possible.
Christopher is married to his wife, Nicole, with two children, Ariana and Ace. He enjoys music and plays several instruments. His life’s passion is business and marketing. He is enthusiastic, fun-loving, and can sometimes be a bit over the top, although those that know him well might say always over the top. His hope and goal with Mental Impressions is to use that passion and enthusiasm to serve others well.