A Love List Update

I mentioned in my last post that I started reading The Power by Rhonda Byrnes, which places love at the center of all transformation and that I decided to start writing a love list twice a day so that I could begin to focus on the things I love rather than the losses I’d been experiencing lately. Byrne states that we only need to focus on love 51% of the time to reach the tipping point of change in our lives. I agree. Writing a daily love list has helped me to recognize and name the things I love and led to an unexpected benefit: the transformation I’ve seen in my son who has Asperger’s Syndrome. After witnessing me writing my love list, he decided he wanted to write one too. As we’ve begun focusing on the things we love throughout the day, our relationship has dramatically improved. He normal has violent outburst on a daily basis, but since we’ve begun writing our love lists, he’s had no violent outbursts for five days! He’s been happier and even more social. He actually acknowledged and played with two girls at the park the other day when his usual behavior is to run from other children and seek solitude. Yesterday, when he was beginning to get agitated and on the brink of an outburst, I told him that I loved it when he smiled and he stopped and began to smile and the outburst was averted. Now, instead of me telling him constantly what I don’t want him to do, we are constantly sharing what we love about each other. This is bringing about more feelings of love for both of us and more loving behavior. Even his therapist noticed a significant change in him at their session on Friday. I have found that searching for things to add to my love list throughout the day has helped me to realize just how much love is already surrounding me. My son has been so affected by our focus on love that today he cut out and colored a variety of hearts and created a Love Wall (see picture) in our living room so we won’t forget to keep love as our biggest priority each and every day.

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The Love List

I have experienced a lot of loss lately and it’s been difficult coming to terms with it all. I equate my current situation with that of an out of control merry-go-round. I am in the center, gripping for dear life, while it spins and spins and spins. All I can see are blurs of different paths I could take, but I’m so fearful of choosing the wrong one I’m paralyzed. This is way too much movement for going nowhere!

As is often the case when I feel like everything in my life is out of control, I picked up a book. Today it was The Power by Rhonda Byrne. I’ve only read to page 21, but I’m already inspired. Byrne talks about love being the key to transforming our lives and the obvious: positive thinking = positive outcome and negative thinking = negative outcome. I have to admit I’m not the most positive thinking person out there. In fact, I am downright pessimistic most of the time. I’ve had a difficult time changing my negative thinking. However, the idea of focusing on what I love rather than what I don’t love seems feasible. Gratitude lists haven’t worked well for me. I find it hard to come up with things I’m grateful for when so much has been lost. So, I came up with the idea of writing a love list instead. I bought a tiny, leather-bound gratitude journal and twice a day I’m going to write the things that I love. For example, my first entry is: I love that the little gratitude journal I bought today was marked down from $7.95 to $1.79 and was just what I needed right when I needed it. I’ve also started practicing saying what I love out loud throughout the day instead of constantly focusing on what is going wrong. My son has even noticed the change. What about you? What do you think about writing a daily love list? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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