June 1st is my birthday and this year what I want more than anything is to give you a gift.
My dear friend, mentor, and coach, Debra Joy, is leading her annual 30 Day Love Explosion conveniently starting on my birthday. What could be a better birthday present than more love in the world?
Here’s how it works: you pick ONE person, and you’ll drop daily love bombs on them every day for 30 days. Yes, just ONE person (Deb’s a smart cookie and she’s got some good reasons for this restriction) and you’ll drop these love bombs. Every. Single. Day.
Sound simple? It is, and it isn’t. Let me share a little bit about my experience last year.
I loved the idea of a love explosion. Who can’t use more love in their life? And I also love that through the giving, you end up being the recipient of so much more than you give. I knew this intellectually, but I was totally unprepared for how this was going to show up in my life.
For last year’s 30 Day love Explosion I chose my husband. I thought that I’d light up our relationship a little with my daily love bombs and bring back some of our pre-baby sizzle. In other words: I had a serious set of expectations about what this month was going to look like and how he’d receive my extra attention.
Well, it didn’t work out exactly as planned. The first couple of days I was so over the top with my exclamations of love that he just looked at me like I was a freak. I was actually pushing him away. The next few days I got so subtle about it that when we had a little tense moment, he just looked at me and said “well, that 30 day thing didn’t last long, did it?” By day 10, we had an all-out fight about whether or not I had even been dropping these love bombs at all. (turns out he had expectations, too…)
And so I shifted my strategy and realized a couple of things in the process:
- Loving another person while anticipating their response to that love is a dangerous game of expectations, and sets everyone up for disappointment. Turns out love with expectations isn’t really love at all.
- Focusing on one person and all you love about them is actually all about YOU, not the other person. I stopped being either so overt or excessively subtle with my love bombs and instead just really focused on my dear husband and what I love about him. It felt so much more natural and really just tuned me in to the magical side of him I fell in love with originally.
- I need to be in a place of loving myself deeply before I can shower that love on anyone else. Ooo… isn’t that the kicker. You’re a sneaky one, Deb.
This year, I’ve decided to take on the 30 Day Love Explosion challenge again and I can hardly wait. This time, I’ve chosen my daughter, Sia, as the object of my adoration. It may seem an odd thing to choose the one person I love already so deeply, but I see this as a wonderful opportunity to see the world through her eyes – to really SEE her, not who I want her to be, not through my own lens as her mother, but who she really is. I have no idea how this will transform our relationship and I am trying very hard not to have expectations around this (some lessons are hard to learn), but I have a feeling that the experience will be profound.
Will you join me and Deb and hundreds of other Love Bombers in this 30 Day Love Explosion? It could transform your relationship… possibly even with yourself.
That pic of you two is a true love explosion!!!!!!
🙂 Thanks Juliana! 🙂