Welcome Back and Happy New Year!

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Hello Readers and Listeners,

Welcome back to the Listening with Love series brought to you by From A Loving Place with Author Rachael Wolff. I don’t know how anybody else is feeling. I definitely need to be putting my focus back on listening with love. I’ve been watching footage of wars and natural disasters. I’ve also seen America go through a change. This change makes it very clear that we aren’t listening with love to each other. There is a lot of blaming, shaming, and name-calling, and us against them being brought to the surface.

I’ve also been facing my own trials and tribulations. They include my kid’s father dying on New Year’s Eve after years of estrangement brought on by his addictions. There are also all the other changes happening in my and my children’s lives as they transition into adulthood. It’s moments like these when listening with love becomes crucial. This practice helps us stay aligned with the energy of love, abundance, and peace.

How Important is the Energy We Carry?

We are carrying around whatever energy lives inside of us. We can lie to ourselves and others with our words, but our energy never lies. When our energy comes from fear, lack, and separation, it creates more of that energy in the world. If it’s coming from the energy of love, abundance, and peace, it creates more of that in the world. There is no judgment in this, it’s just the way energy works.

What’s important is that we are aware of where our energy is and what we are doing with it. Change, grief, and chaos travel together. It is crucial to stay self-aware during these times if we want the change to be for the highest good. We need to take responsibility for our own energy and how we use it if we want positive change. When I say positive change, I don’t want this to be confused with toxic positivity.

With change comes grief and chaos, and it’s important to honor all of it. It’s all a part of the journey for a reason. Personal growth is the reward. Suppressing and numbing the hard stuff traps us in fear, lack, and separation. This happens even when we speak positive words. Once again the energy doesn’t lie, our words do. Shoving it down keeps us locked in stories that make us feel there is a giant void. That’s when we become vulnerable prey for the narcissists and sociopaths of the world. They need us to feel like victims so that we hand our power over to them. Then they can use us to do their dirty work. It’s a vicious cycle that all comes from aligning our own energy with fear, lack, and separation.

I’ve been trapped in the cycle before. I spent decades as a shadow of myself thinking someone else held my worth. When I feel myself slipping into that energy field, I know I need to do something different. I want to feel capable of listening with love. That’s why it’s time to get really honest with myself . That’s where it needs to start.

That’s why this episode is about getting re-aligned through grounding. If I want to listen, I need to identify what’s keeping me from being in the here and now. For me, I know it has to do with all the changes, grief, and chaos.

Has Anyone Else Been Going through Lots of Changes?

The last few years have been full of changes for me. Yet…In some areas of my life, things didn’t feel like they were moving at all. In the last few months, I’ve gone through more changes than I know what to do with. Everything seemed to start moving at once and FAST.

So, not only am I seeing the chaos in the outside world, I’m navigating it within my inner network. The changes involve career, living situations, both kids graduating, relationships, new books coming out, loss of my children’s father…just to name a few.

For someone with OCD, ADHD, and PTSD, I’m not going to lie and say this has been easy to navigate. Did I mention I’m also going through perimenopause too? I only tell you this because you might have to navigate fun things that affect your reasoning. You are not alone.

There is a lot going on in the world. Still, we should not dismiss how we each are challenged. Just because we feel like it could be worse, doesn’t mean our challenges aren’t significant. It doesn’t mean our feelings aren’t valid. I watch too many people dismiss themselves in comparison to other people’s problems. This just keeps us in energy in fear, lack, and separation because of the guilt and/or shame. We must recognize our current state if we don’t want that energy to grow within us. Then, allow it to move through us in the healthiest way possible.

Changes Don’t Make it Easy to Listen with Love

Changes and the grief take up a lot of energy. Listening with love can often fall by the wayside. It’s really challenging to listen when we have story after story playing in our minds. When our minds are in other places and on other things, just listening can feel impossible. I notice with me, I get into fix it mode. I often interrupt or derail conversations. I cut off others and insist on my own way. I also give advice even when I’m not being asked for it. Let’s not forget to mention losing the conversation because my mind isn’t there. Am I alone here? Does anyone else experience these things? I often end up having to go back and apologize for not being fully present and available—It sucks!

I can’t pretend listening with love is coming natural to me right now. It’s NOT! If I could afford to, I would have “Listen with Love” tattooed on my forearm. I think I have mentioned that before. Instead, I’m diving into this series again. It’s just as much for me as anyone else who finds their way to it. So, where do we begin?

Grounding Away the Chaos

Like I mentioned, I can’t listen with love if I’m not present. First, I need the self-awareness that I’m not fully there. If I’m not ready to admit that, nothing will work. Then, I need to ground myself. I’ve used and tried many different ways, but these are probably my favorites. There is really no order to them. It just depends on what comes to me when I’m ready to get myself grounded. Maybe something on this list will work for you. Maybe it will spark an idea of something that’s worked for you before. Maybe it will inspire something new. Trust whatever comes to you. When we ask for guidance, our intuition starts leading us exactly where we need to go. Listening to our bodies, minds, and souls is essential to this process.

Mindfulness Exercises

What’s right in front of me?

If I’m caught off-guard, I need to get present fast. I will look around and focus on my immediate surroundings. I focus on colors, shapes, textures, sounds, and feels. I will use my body in any way I need to do this.

Do I have any candy?

If I do, I use my eyes to focus on what it looks like. I pop it in my mouth to focus on my sense of taste. I notice the physical feeling of how the candy moves in my mouth. I use my sense of smell and listen to the noises the candy makes in the process of eating it. My preference for this exercise is dark chocolate. I love knowing it’s good for the brain.

Ready for a good hand washing?

I use this every time I wash my hands throughout the day. During hand washing, I take deep breaths, all the way in and then exhale completely. I focus on the feel of the water, the smell of the soap, and notice any colors, bubbles, etc. The goal is to notice everything possible in the experience. I leave the experience feeling grounded every time…but it doesn’t always last long. I take what I can get.

Walking Meditation

If I’m using walking for grounding, I listen to either binaural beats, nature, or meditation music. I don’t listen to anything that has voices. I’m not trying to have anything that’s guiding me to thoughts. I’m looking for my thoughts to slow down enough to experience them with clarity.

EFT/Tapping

I use the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). It is also known as Tapping. I turn to it when I’m really struggling to get out of my own head. EFT allows me to explore what is keeping me stuck the stories playing in my mind. EFT uses tapping different points as a way of releasing a specific story. This process helps me calm my nervous system so I can also be present for myself or someone else. You can find examples of EFT on my Facebook page or YouTube channel. I will be offering more in the near future. The tapping process is simple. It helps me get truly present in what is keeping me from listening with love. In order for EFT to be effective, I have to be really honest about what is keeping my mind spinning.

Conscious Breathing and/or Meditating

I spent years feeling overwhelmed by just the word meditating, until someone told me to just take three conscious breaths. Three deep breaths where I’m fully focused in on how the air is filling my lungs and leaving my body. Then from there, if I need it, I continue conscious breathing and staying present with my breath. This process slows everything down body, mind, and soul. I use this a lot while I write blogs and books. I’m using it right now. This helps me listening within myself and to others. It’s pretty amazing that way.

Tending my Inner Garden

If you’re familiar with my work, you’ve heard me talk about the garden of my soul and/or my inner garden. I honestly don’t care how someone else needs to see it as long as it works for them. Tending my inner garden is me acknowledging what I need to weed out or nurture more to listen. It helps me see things in a visual way. I can make this process physical by weeding, planting a seed, or nurturing my garden outside. I can also do something simple like organizing a drawer in my house. The simple act of getting rid of unnecessary things helps me clear my mind. By making space for what I need, I create mental clarity.

There are many different tools to ground ourselves. We have to find ones that work for us. I can’t tell you how many times people tell me, “I have to do…” Sometimes people’s suggestions work, and other times they not only don’t work, but they don’t feel right to me. This just makes listening even harder. I don’t hold resentment toward the people giving me advice. Most likely, it worked for them or someone they know at one point or another.

Feel free to try the suggestions or not. That’s up to you because it’s your journey. Even if I sometimes talk in ways of have-to’s, that’s just me trying to work through my own stuff. In order for me to listen with love, I have to acknowledge that. Yes, I meant to do that.

The key to it all is listening to ourselves with love. That’s how we show up best for others. If something we try doesn’t work, and we aren’t able to listen with love…apologize and try again. Apologizing is important because it shows the person we truly want to show up for them. We are going to get triggered by are own stuff sometimes. The best we can do is try better next time.

Just take accountability and responsibility and move on. Every step we take matters. It can be a learning or growth experience. It can also help launch us forward in ways we never imagined. It’s all a journey, and we can only ever take one step at a time.

Join IN

What grounding exercises work for you?

How do you feel you are doing listening with love?

Has this episode been helpful to you?

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Until next time, I wish you love, abundance, and peace.