Today is the day of love celebrated by billions of people in the world (wouldn’t it be nice if we all celebrated love every day). Though this day is generally focused on romantic love, you can have an exquisite, extraordinary love-filled day whatever your relationship status is.

I’m in the “single” crowd and I’m not letting that stop me from total all-out love today.

So here’s the plan to celebrate this Valentine’s Day in the most fantastic way — whether you’re single, in a not-so-happy relationship or in the relationship of your dreams.

Since all love starts with self-love, focus today on ways to love, care for, and appreciate yourself and watch how you feel. While it’s a great day for giving love and appreciation to all those around you, it’s also a great day to practice receiving love from yourself and others.

Here are Ten Tips for Your Best Valentine’s Day and Beyond (adapted from Love for No Reason):

1. Practice Self-Love. Try a simple self-love technique that will open your heart. A few times today, ask yourself, What’s the most loving thing I can do for myself right now? Then pay attention to the answer and actually do it. When you love and take care of yourself, it inevitably serves everyone.

2. Anchor Yourself in Safety. Feeling stressed, unsupported, or afraid takes love off-line. Whenever you feel a bit stressed, take a few deep breaths and consciously relax your pelvic floor, located at the base of your body. This will kick-start what Dr. Eva Selhub calls your body’s “love response.”

3. Give Freely. Whether you are giving a gift to a loved one or doing acts of kindness for a stranger, giving opens the heart. Even if you don’t have a romantic partner this Valentine’s Day, you have the opportunity to offer gifts, words, or acts of kindness to many people around you

As a gift to you this Valentine’s Day, I’m giving away 5 free copies of Love for No Reason. Go to my Facebook page and see how you can get your copy.

4. Let Love In. Receiving from others is an act of love and connection that opens your heart. When you receive, your levels of serotonin — the neurotransmitter of well-being and happiness — rise just as much as when you give. The next time someone offers you a gift, a compliment, or some support, graciously receive it. Smile and say thank you, while consciously feeling appreciation in your heart.

5. Live with a Grateful Heart. Pay attention to and savor all that you’re receiving in life right now. Gratitude is the fast track to love. List five things you are grateful for today and everyday.

6. Speak the Language of Love. Tell others that you appreciate them — that amps up the vibration of love. When you speak directly from the place of unconditional love inside, you touch that same love in the people you’re speaking to.

7. Unleash the Power of Forgiveness. If you’re holding on to any resentments or grudges — past or present — they’re blocking your ability to love. Use the ancient Hawaiian Kahuna technique of Ho’oponopono to release and forgive. Repeat silently over and over in your heart, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.” Based on the principle of taking total responsibility for everything that happens to you, Ho’oponopono allows you to bring the vibration of pure forgiveness into any situation.

8. Sense Your Support. Einstein once said that the most important decision you can make is whether to believe you live in a friendly universe — one that is always supporting you. Assume that the universe is on your side. If things aren’t going the way you’d like, ask this question:If this were happening for a Higher Purpose, what could that be?

9. Feel Your Feelings. Stuffing your emotions or overly expressing them crimp your capacity to experience love. Instead practice opening completely to the feelings you tend to resist (sadness, anger, etc.) as they move through you-when you feel them fully, the discomfort will dissolve.

10. Plug in to a Larger Heart. Recharge your spiritual batteries by taking some time today in silence, meditation, or prayer. Tapping into this inner wellspring of spirit will boost your capacity to experience love by a factor of infinity.

Following these ten tips will help you live in a state of unconditional love all the time — not just on Valentine’s Day. Imagine feeling love, no matter what’s going on in your relationships or in your life, because you’re connected to a state of pure love within yourself — that’s Love for No Reason.

Please share with me your Valentine’s tips on my Facebook page (and see how you can get your free copy of Love for No Reason).

Thank you for being my Valentine — I’m so grateful that you’re in my life. I wish you the most love-filled Valentine’s Day ever!

With love for every reason,

Marci

P.S. Enjoy this one-minute heart-opening video here.

Aaah.  A New Year!  Woo-hoooo.

What I love about the new year is that we get a fresh start.  Right now, you have a fantastic opportunity– you get to leave behind what didn’t work in 2011 and envision what you’d like to create in 2012.  As this quote says:

“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”  – Oprah Winfrey

For the past ten years, I’ve had a simple New Year’s ritual that’s been a great way to ring in the new.  I’ve shared it with a few friends who’ve loved doing it, so I want to share it with you. As the saying goes, Well begun is half done, so I suggest you do this either on New Year’s eve or New Year’s day to get 2012 off to a wonderful start.:

1. Start with a 10 – 15 minute meditation in which you set your attention on releasing the old and opening to the new.
2. On a piece of paper, hand write a list of all the things in 2011 that you’d like to let go of.  This can include old patterns that don’t serve you, grudges or resentments you’re hanging on to, fears that hold you back, or circumstances that you’d like to change.It can also include not-useful habits such as eating too much sugar or not exercising.  Make sure your list is as complete as possible with everything that didn’t work for you in 2011.  My list is usually a few pages.
3. If it’s easy for you to burn the list, then you can do that.  If not, you can tear the list up in many pieces.  As you release this list, imagine letting go of the energies that are represented on your list.
4. Now, on to creation.  Make a list of all that you wish to create for yourself in 2012.Include the habits you’d like to embrace, the external circumstances you’d like to create, and the internal experiences you’d like to have (joy, freedom, ease, love, peace, acceptance of all that is, etc).  Be as specific as possible.
5. Read the list aloud (whether you’re alone or with others).  Speaking it out adds more energy to it.  Feel each item as though it’s actually happened.
6. Put the list in a special place, as a symbolic offering for your coming year.

Notice how you feel after doing this ritual.  I always feel cleansed, lighter, renewed, and excited about what’s ahead.

Please let me know your experience with this and/or share with me any New Year ritual you love on my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MarciShimoffFan

This is a special New Year’s for me.  I get to spend New Year’s eve in an extraordinary way.  I have the huge honor of officiating at my nephew’s wedding on December 31!    He and his fiancée are two fabulous people and they’re a great match — their relationship is an inspiration.  I can’t think of a better way to start the new year in this celebration of love.

May 2012 be a year for you full of wonder, grace, miracles, love and the deepest fulfillment of your soul.

With love for every reason,

Marci

P.S.  Something exciting is happening on January 10 — stay tuned for the news.

At last, we’re in the final countdown of the holidays! I’ve been waiting excitedly to share with you one of my favorite holiday stories (at the end of this article) and my favorite advice for fully enjoying the holiday spirit.

If you think about it, all the gifts, parties, and holiday fuss boil down to one thing — love. Love is the #1 ingredient we need to experience holiday cheer and the absence of it is what brings holiday woe.

So how can you experience more love this season?

Practice being a good receiver!

What you say? Isn’t this season about giving? Yes, giving is a wonderful thing that helps us feel good, but if we can’t fully receive people’s gifts and kindness, open up to support, and let love in then we can’t actually FEEL the love.

Unfortunately, many people have a hard time receiving. Here are three ways you can strengthen your receiving muscle this holiday:

1. Pay attention to the gifts all around you each day — not just the BIG gifts, but the small ones, as well. Notice the kindness of the salesclerk, the smile on your neighbor’s face, the beauty of the winter landscape. Be on the look-out for the many gifts of the day.

2. Look for the blessings — even in the hard stuff, which often shows up during this season. Just as an experiment, assume that everything that happens is a gift for you. The universe is on your side. How would you look at and experience your challenges differently, if you imagined it was all for your good? Give it a try.

3. Savor the good. My neuropsychologist friend Rick Hanson says that it takes about 20 seconds to deeply register the good. So, acknowledge a compliment rather than dismiss it, express appreciation for the gifts you receive. Deeply take things in and bathe in them.

I’d love to hear what tips you use to open up and receive. Please share them with me at http://www.facebook.com/MarciShimoffFan.

Now, for a fabulous holiday story (receive it and enjoy)…

A Happy for No Reason Holiday Story

I was deeply touched by the following story that was told to me by a young father, one of my “Happy 100″ who I interviewed for Happy for No Reason:

When my oldest daughter, Victoria, was almost three, we read Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas every night to her before the holiday.

She’d curl up beside me as I’d read: “Every Who down in Who-ville liked Christmas a lot. But the Grinch, who lived just north of Who-ville, Did NOT!”

Victoria followed along as the Grinch unveils his plans to ruin the Christmas of the Whos. Disguising himself as Santa and his dog as a reindeer, the Grinch steals into the Whos’ homes and takes everything, leaving only the hooks and wires on the bare walls. But to his surprise, the Whos remain happy despite the loss of the presents and trees and trimmings and trappings.

He hadn’t stopped Christmas from coming; “it came just the same.”

On that Christmas morning, we woke just ahead of Victoria so that we could watch her three-year-old enthusiasm as she saw the presents under the tree. She first ran to the kitchen table where she had left a snack for Santa and his reindeer. She looked at the evidence of Santa’s visit: the cookie crumbs on the plate and the empty milk glass and the missing carrots. My wife, pregnant with our second child, and I beamed seeing our daughter so wide-eyed and excited at the thought that Santa himself had been in our home. Next, she ran into the living room and saw the presents under the tree.

We expected her to dive into them — but she didn’t. She held up her little hand and she said, “Stop. Let’s pretend. Let’s pretend the Grinch has been here and took everything and left just hooks and wires and we’d still be happy.”

So we stopped, and were happy. And like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes that day.

I wish you great love this holiday season and every day — may you let the love in fully and allow it to grow your heart three sizes.

With love for no reason and every reason, Marci

Do you ever have what I refer to as “hot pants” moments — moments when you are overcome with self-judgment?

I call them this because one of my most vivid memories of self-criticism came when I was 13 years old and hot pants — three-inch-long shorts that barely cover the butt — were all the rage. I was chubby, but that didn’t stop me from squeezing into my very own pair of bright pink hot pants.

On the day of my hot pants debut, I overhead one of my friends saying to another, “Can you believe Marci wore hot pants today — with those thighs?” I was crushed. When I got home, I took off those tiny shorts and stuffed them in the back of my closet where I’d never have to see them again. But I couldn’t get rid of the self-judgment that easily.

For a while, every time I looked into the mirror, I heard “Can you believe how fat you are?” Later, when I was 19 and didn’t have a boyfriend, that voice asked, “Can you believe what a loser you are?” And years after that, when I gave a talk and thought someone in the audience looked bored, the voice was still there: “Can you believe what a lousy speaker you are?”

If you’re like everyone else I’ve ever met, you have the equivalent of a “hot pants” story in your life and your own version of self-judgments that have put a lid on your experience of love and happiness.

Decades after this hot pants incident, I started studying self-esteem and later taught courses on how to raise self-esteem. Certainly having high self-esteem is great, but while writing Love for No Reason, I realized there’s a big difference between self-esteem and self-love.

Self-esteem is conditional — it’s based on “loving myself, because…” I’ll love myself if I’m good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, do a good enough job, and so on. The limitations of this are clear. What happens when I don’t live up to the exacting standards that I hold? Then I plunge into self-judgment, close my heart, and feel unworthy of love.

On the other hand, self-love is unconditional — it means being able to love yourself no matter what — whether or not you look good in hot pants or do a fabulous job at work.

Here are two practices that can help you develop greater self-love. They’re especially useful when you’re having a rough time or being particularly judgmental with yourself:

1. Practice self-care: Most people aren’t in the habit of taking good care of themselves and honoring their own needs, which is fundamental to self-love. To reverse this, three times a day, stop what you’re doing and ask yourself, What’s the most loving thing I can do for myself right now? And then follow through on the answer.

2. Practice self-compassion: Developing self-love requires that you treat yourself kindly — as kindly as you would your neighbor or your friend. If you’re stuck in self-criticism, try thinking of yourself as a completely separate person. Ask yourself, what would you say or do if you saw a friend hurting the way that you’re hurting? Give yourself all the benefits of having a good friend — from the inside out.

So, the next time you have a “hot pants” moment, give yourself an internal hug and remember that you’re worthy of love — no matter what.

With love for no reason and every reason, Marci

What a wild week! I’m sending my thoughts and love to everyone who was affected by Hurricane Irene.

Last Friday afternoon, I got a first-hand experience of being part of a mass exodus. Like so many others, I was trying to leave New York City as it was preparing for the storm. After my final appointment there, I rushed to hail a cab to take me to JFK airport so I could catch one of the last planes out before the airport was to shut down.

I had a big suitcase with me (I’m still learning how to travel light), and when the driver stopped to pick me up, I fully expected him to get out of the taxi and help me hoist my heavy suitcase into the trunk. No such help! To my shock, he continued on his phone call and motioned to me to put my suitcase in the trunk myself. Ugh.

On any other day, I would have waited for another taxi, as I didn’t appreciate his attitude, but on this day, I was just eager to catch my plane before the airlines stopped operating.

 So, hoist I did and off we sped. He continued to talk on the phone in a language I didn’t understand, while ignoring me completely (at least he did have his earpiece on and was hands free). I got more and more impatient and judgmental as we made our way through the city, lurching forward at every green light, and screeching to a halt at every red light. This continued for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, I was busy formulating a scathing monologue to deliver to him when he got off the phone about how rude he’d been. I had all kinds of stories in my mind about what a “bad person” he was.

At last, he hung up the phone and I got ready to let loose. But before I could begin my finely crafted monologue, he turned slightly (but safely) around and in the sweetest manner, he apologized profusely. He said how sorry he was that he hadn’t helped me with my suitcase and that he never talks on the phone with a passenger in the car. This had been an emergency.

He went on to explain that just before I’d gotten in the car, he’d received a frantic call from his brother in India whose 13-year old daughter had been in a bad car accident and was in intensive care at their local hospital.

Wow. That certainly reframed the situation for me. My irritation melted into compassion. We continued to talk about his niece, his brother, his children, and his life for the rest of the drive. He was a sweet, delightful, caring man with a big heart — nothing at all like the monster that I’d made him up to be in my mind.

How much energy had I just wasted in all of my judgments? How much had my heart shut down before I’d heard “the rest of the story”?

How often has this kind of scenario happened to you?

So many of the judgments we make are based on wrong or incomplete information. And they end up robbing us of our energy and happiness.

This week, if you find yourself caught up in judgments of someone, try reframing the story you’re telling yourself. This will save your own heart and happiness. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Give the person the benefit of the doubt. There’s probably more to the story that, if you knew, would help you feel more compassion.

2. Make up a new context for the situation. Create a story that would soften your heart towards them.

3. For extra credit and extra benefit to yourself, beam them love as if the story you’d created were true.  

Yes, Hurricane Irene did her fair share of damage. But how much damage are we doing to ourselves by our inner hurricanes of judgment? We’ll feel so much freer and lighter when we transform those hurricanes into winds of compassion.

With love for every reason,

Marci Shimoff

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