Love Is a Verb

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, we're going to talk about love. So author and speaker, Stephen Covey said, Love is a verb." And I think this quote points to something really fundamental about the essence of living with awareness. So when we talk about living with awareness, we don't often talk about its relationship to love. But in reality, love and awareness are not separate.

Awareness as the foundation of love. Love, you could say, is the expression of awareness. So today I want to share with you a little mindful living hack, if you will. A very simple way to live with more awareness in daily life is to simply focus on having your thoughts, words, and actions motivated by kindness and compassion. In other words, motivated by love.

So when we choose to see the best in others, when we speak and behave in ways that are kind and uplifting, when we're truly present with other people, when we include, forgive, encourage, respect, and listen deeply, we're being loving. When we refrain from gossip, practice honesty, let someone in in traffic, we can be practicing love. When we practice recycling, taking our reusable bags to the store, we can be practicing love and care for the planet. So practicing love can really come in so many different forms. Our actions that are motivated by love create feelings of love in our own hearts and minds as well as benefiting others.

Practice often love can take up residence within us and really actually become our default motivational force and mode of being. So if we can start with the smallest actions filled by your loving intentions, it can really start to infuse more awareness all throughout daily life. So today just remembering that one of the simplest kind of hacks to bring mindfulness into daily life is simply to remember that love is a verb - to intentionally keep choosing to take the high road, to act with compassion and kindness. In this way, all these very small actions become infused with presence, purpose, and wisdom. As always, thank you for your practice and your presence here in this community.

Let's begin to settle in for meditation now.