What?!? Are you talking to me?
I'm not sharing this to toot my own horn, I have so much work still to do, but it did make me stop and think. You see just the other day I was thinking about how many years I've been doing crossfit and feeling just a bit pathetic that I'm still often at the bottom of the leader board. Today as I was letting the feeling of accomplishment soak in a bit it hit me that the reason I'm finally seeing significant gains is because I've been practicing more regularly. The past few months I have been the most consistent in making it into the box than I have ever been and this is paying off.
It may seem obvious, but today I had a light bulb moment about practicing: When we practice regularly we get better. We talk about this a lot when it come to sports or playing an instrument but what about other things that are harder to measure?
The happenings in the world around me have had me pretty down lately. I've been feeling overwhelmed with a desire to avoid conflict but speak truth, to hide from the political drama but still be light in a dark time. I keep asking, "How can we love best right now?" and coming up short. This morning driving home from my workout it hit me: We practice.
You guys we weren't born knowing how to show love to others, it is something we have had to learn. When we were young maybe our parents helped us practice showing love before we even knew what the word meant and then as we grew different influences around us helped shape our view of what it means to love. We probably tried throughout the course of our lives many different ways to show love with varying degrees of success. Each success or failure helping us learn what love looks like. The question is do you still practice? Its easy to become complacent in our abilities when we stop exerting the effort to improve.
Today as I thought about my own half-assed effort to practice love regularly I decided to do something different. As we enter the month that we remember to celebrate love tomorrow I propose we start practicing what we preach.
Practice Love.
In this time of turmoil in our world, when we don't know how to respond, let's practice love. The challenge I'm putting out to you is that for every day this month you choose to practice loving someone. This could be a family member, a stranger at the grocery store, the homeless man on the corner, the Facebook friend who keeps attacking you on Facebook, the disadvantaged around the world... the possibilities are endless. The goal is to be able to reset our way of thinking about those around us, instead of thinking about how they are impacting us we will begin to think in terms of how we can show them they are valuable and loved.
Will you join me in this challenge? Will you spend some conscious time each day practicing pouring out love on the world around us? I was reminded a few days ago that a few people can alter the course of history. Can we be the people to start a movement of love? I think we can.
If you are joining my in this practice I'd love to know about it! Comment below or tag me @ineveryinch in your instagram/ facebook posts showing how you are practicing each day with #practicelove
Together we can pour love into the world around us.
