Do You Have Room For Love In The New Year?

Unless we make room for love in our lives, which means making love a priority, it will stay a distant stranger.

I know this because I recently went through a period where I forgot about love and ended up with fear taking over my thinking.

When I realized how unhappy I was, and recognized I felt hopelessness when I should be feeling empowered, I knew something was wrong. Something was out of balance in my life but I didn’t know what.

We all have “down times.” And when we do we need to pay attention to what our feelings are telling us. For me, I became aware that something was invading my thoughts and making me doubt my life.

Where had my confidence and sense of myself gone? Why had my faith in the rightness of my life disappeared? What happened to my belief that everything was unfolding in the best way possible?

It turns out my faith in myself and the rightness of my life had been hijacked! I was invaded by an outside force, something that wasn’t an organic part of me or my thinking.

It had taken over and filled my space for love with self-recrimination and blame. What the hell was going on?

Then it hit me while walking the dog.

The Internet had invaded my life and infected my brain! I had let my filters down and allowed myself to be swayed. My mind was filled with all the facts and fiction that seductively danced before my eyes every time I went on line.

I was being inundated with the world’s problems and celebrity dramas. All this information even invaded my sleep. I dreamed about people I never met and woke up full of dread from nightmares that had nothing to do with my life.

I had to stop the insanity. I took two days off from the Internet. I stayed away from my usual news sources and the dreaded facebook. I only checked my email and watched several episodes of an addictive drama on Netflix.

I know it doesn’t sound like a lot but it was harder than I thought. Two days felt like a much longer time but I can report that the difference was really huge!

In that short time I had my mind back to myself and I could feel a sense of love again. I had a clean slate, so to speak, from which to view the world and my place in it.

If you feel off center for no reason or you know you’re too dependent on the Internet, you should take a break.

Don’t let pretty photo-shopped pictures and sound bites of people’s lives determine how you feel about your life. Don’t let it fill you with false comparisons and fears.

Put your attention on nature and the natural world around you. Focus on the flesh and blood people in your life and get involved with their stories and concerns. Become re-aquainted with your environment and your place in the world.

In this New Year focus on yourself and what’s real in your life.

My New Year’s wish for all of us is that we focus on what’s real in our lives so we can make room for love.