It’s 2012 — the year the Mayan calendar ends. But instead of doom and gloom, I’m going to make 2012 the best year ever! That’s because I’m so excited about the theme I’ve chosen for the coming 12 months.

As you may remember, every New Year’s, I pick a theme. Last year’s theme was LOVE — a natural when I knew I’d be speaking about Love for No Reason throughout the year. (BTW, there’s a cool announcement about Love for No Reason coming up on Tuesday. Look out for it!)

This year, I spent a few days thinking about my 2012 theme, and I came up with a different possibilities, but none of really hit the spot. Then just yesterday, as I was leaving a Zumba class (all those endorphins seem to clear my brain), it suddenly came to me — my theme for 2012 is “thank you.” Simply that… thank you.

But those two seemingly simple little words can turn everything around. If I can say thank you to everything — no matter what — then I know my life will be joyous and more unconditional love will be automatic.

For me, saying thank you to everything means dropping my evaluation of whether something is good or bad, and judging every happening as to its “merit.” If instead, I can live with a continuous thank you, then everything that comes up can be viewed as a gift. This is a stretch for me, a chronic evaluator, but it’s one I’m up for. Because without a doubt, the happiest people I’ve ever met are those who always have a thank you in their hearts.

My selection of the thank you theme has already been reinforced many times since I made it:

–A friend passed away on New Year’s Day — a wonderful woman who lived with thank you on her lips despite a number of years with a debilitating illness. Her passing reminded me how fleeting and fragile life can be, but how infinitely precious. Thank you.

–Earlier today, I spoke with another friend and asked her how she was. Her reply was, “Grateful.” She said she’d woken up the past few mornings with a lightness and gratitude in her heart. None of her life circumstances had changed, but she was grateful to be alive. Thank you.

–Being single around the holidays has its challenges for many people, including me. But I got to be part of my nephew’s beautiful wedding celebration on New Year’s Eve and witness the great love between him and his new wife. Instead of feeling sad for being alone, I was inspired by their deep love and how they live in a constant thank you for each other. Thank you.

Here’s the process I recommend for you to select and use your theme for 2012:

1. Select a theme that sings to your soul. While you’ve been reading this, has a theme come to you? Are you having a strong pull to a particular word, phrase, or concept? Maybe there’s more than one. Jot them down. Sit with them for a while and see which one speaks the loudest to you. You’ll know you’ve found the right one for you when you’re uplifted just thinking about it.

2. Craft your theme into a short intention statement that becomes your “mantra” for the year. Mine is: I live this year in a continual thank you.

3. Create a vision board with your theme at the top. (I made mine last week, and I love looking at it.)

4. Make a habit of looking for the ways your theme shows up throughout your day.

I can’t wait to hear what your theme for 2012 is. Please share it with me on my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MarciShimoffFan.

In honor of my 2012 theme of Thank You, I’d love to share a little gift with you. It’s a beautiful, short video from one of my Love for No Reason heroes, Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk who has started a worldwide gratefulness movement.

As Brother David says, “We are never more than one grateful thought away from peace of heart.”

May your 2012 theme, whatever it is, open your heart to experience greater love this year than ever before.

Have you have ever felt so distraught over someone else’s circumstances that your own health (and your life) started to unwind? Maybe you’ve seen this in people who are helping care for a sick friend or an elderly parent. Or perhaps you’ve seen it in people doing charity work in impoverished countries? The phrase for this is called “overcare.”

When we feel guilt and distress over not being able to do enough for others, and we start ignoring our own needs, we lose touch with the true and healthy love we intend to give.

Does that mean it’s possible to love too much? No, the amount of love you give isn’t the issue. The better question is, is your love getting distorted?

In my book Love for No Reason, I tell the story of  Sheva Carr’s “recovery” from overcare. In the 1980′s, after living with and helping impoverished children in Nicaragua, Sheva had to leave the country for her own safety. Her feelings of guilt over abandoning those children and her worry about their continued plight manifested in extreme physical pain that she experienced for years. No amount of elaborate medical tests found a cause. It was only when Sheva learned some simple, but powerful techniques (from the Institute of Heartmath), that she was she able to let go of her guilt and live in appreciation and love — and when that happened, her physical symptoms reversed.

Many of us will never experience the type of circumstances that Sheva did in Nicaragua, but we may still be prone to give all of our emotional energy to taking care of others, and lose ourselves and our own health in the process. Here are three ways to keep you from falling into the trap of overcare:

1. Let go of being attached to a specific result: When you’re not attached to a particular outcome, you give freely and it’s more enjoyable and energizing. Whenever I give, I remind myself of a helpful formula I once learned: “High intention, low attachment.” Give with enthusiasm and trust the universe to take care of the results.

2. Don’t expect anything in return: When I interviewed Dr. Stephen Post, an expert in the field of altruism and compassion, he told me he learned a valuable lesson from the champions of compassion he’s interviewed over the years. “We can get hung up on keeping score of reciprocal responses, and that really limits us. It keeps us from being free to love in a way that is uncalculating. We just need to do what a mother I once interviewed tells her son to do, ‘Love, and forget about it.’”

3. Make sure that your giving doesn’t stress, drain, or weaken you: Healthy giving makes you feel good. Unhealthy giving, when you’re giving too much to others, will push you out of heart rhythm coherence and, over time, will take you from overcare to no care. The symptoms of no care, according to the Institute of HeartMath, are burnout, depression, resignation, or cynicism. Paying attention to the signals your body is sending will help you to recognize and reverse these symptoms before they take their toll on you.

Kindness, care and compassion are great expressions of love. Just make sure to take care of yourself in the process of giving to others, so that your good intentions keep you in the healthy giving zone.

With love for no reason and every reason,

Marci

P.S. Please join me on Facebook and let me know what you do to prevent overcare. Also, before you go, be sure to check out the announcements in the blue side bar.

photo from flickr

I’m hosting the an amazing teleseminar, the Love Your Life Summit: 10 Days of Healing & Transformation from June 2-11.

It all begins on June 2 {And as soon as you confirm your FREE spot, we’ll share some exciting ways
to get you started right this minute!} Accept our offer and join us! We’ve already reserved your
FREE ticket, so all you have to do is confirm.

Do you want less stress? We’ll show you exactly how to get there.

How about sassy and spontaneous ideas for turning your typical day into a magnificent adventure? We’ll show you how to transform your to-do lists into “YES PLEASE!” lists.

Yep, even though we’ll take you deep, you’ll have a ton of fun in the process. No getting bored here! No fluffy theory you can’t back up with hard science and proven results, either. Oh and we’ve already reserved you a spot and you’re our guest FREE. All you have to do is confirm!

Our goal is to connect you with the pure love within – that power no one and no thing can take from you. We’ll connect you with our vivacious community of women who, just like you, are challenging themselves toward something greater. Together we are our own support system.

Watch my video and sign up now.

“In spring time, love is carried on the breeze.”

- Emma Racine de Fleur

I went to a dinner party at a friend’s home the other night and was stopped in my tracks as I approached her front door. The blooming flowers were exquisite, vibrant color was everywhere, and a wonderful scent filled the air. I suddenly noticed that spring is here. I guess in my busy-ness, I’d barely paid attention to what season we’re in, but I’m happy that the sight and smell of the flowers woke me up to spring.

So this explains why I’ve been feeling that love is in the air. There is a such a strong connection between springtime and love. In spring, as the earth is being reborn, we feel a sense of renewal and hope. In this time of Easter and Passover, we’re reminded of rebirth, freedom and new beginnings. And with the sense of a fresh start, we open more to love.

Let’s take advantage of the energy of the season, and bring that feeling of renewal and love into our lives every day. How do we do that?

The best way I know is to begin each day with a sense of “fresh start” through meditation, prayer or silence.

Recently, Marianne Williamson and I were speaking at the same conference. In her talk, she emphasized the importance of spiritual practices, especially as a way to start our day.

She said “Every serious spiritual, philosophical and religious path that I know of stresses the importance of the morning, because that’s when our minds are most open to receive new impressions. Most people get up in the morning and pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV or radio. They get a full report of all the disasters happening, and then they add caffeine! They saunter out into the world and are mystified that they’re depressed by noon.

So what’s the alternative? When you wake up in the morning, don’t you take a bath or shower? Of course you do — because you don’t want to go out into the day with yesterday’s dirt on your body. But if you don’t meditate and pray every morning, you’re carrying yesterday’s stress into the day.”

While meditating and praying feels good, you don’t just meditate or pray for the experience you have while you’re doing it. Spiritual practice helps you experience a sense of oneness, of connectedness to all other things and beings, which connects you to the state of unconditional love.

Daily meditation has become universally accepted as a powerful way to release stress and anxiety and to improve your mental, emotional, and physical health. When you start the day connected to love, you can handle everything else in the day more effectively.

Try this at the beginning of every day for the next week or two (and notice how you feel through the day):

1. When you wake up, spend 2 minutes feeling gratitude for the day. Think of the upcoming day and what you’re grateful for.

2. After you’ve gotten up and showered, sit for 10 – 20 minutes in a quiet area and mediate or pray. If you have a meditation or prayer practice, great! But you don’t have to have a formal practice. You can simply put your attention on your heart area and breathe in love and ease. You don’t need to try to get rid of thoughts or effort to achieve anything. Just sitting in silence automatically allows your mind to settle down, which helps your body release stress and helps your heart connect to love.

This is a way you can make each morning a new springtime. I promise that you’ll feel more love in the air, and the roses will even smell better to you.

With love for no reason and every reason,

As I’ve watched the tragic events in Japan unfold, like all of us, I’ve felt deep compassion and a desire to help. So, I’ve donated to the Red Cross, I’ve sent my love and prayers daily, but I’ve been asking myself what more can I do — Japan is half a world away.

The answer came when my co-author of Love for No Reason, Carol Kline, related this anecdote to me. The other day, Carol was walking to lunch wrestling with this same dilemma when she passed a very old woman on the sidewalk who asked Carol to help her across the street. The woman, who had already taken two buses, was bringing her ailing cat to the vet.

After escorting the woman and her cat to the doctor’s office, Carol realized that this was what she could do — she could send money and prayers to Japan, and she could help those in her immediate environment in any way possible. We can all do the same. This gives new meaning to the saying: Think globally, act locally.

For the last few years, world events have shown us that we can no longer live as separate people, nations, and countries. Devastating earthquakes and tsunamis may be Mother Nature’s way of shifting our focus away from ourselves as individuals and asking us to come together as one. No one region can recover from these natural disasters by themselves and it is the outpouring of support and resources from the rest of the world that bring us together to rebuild our planet.

For a long time now, our culture has been based largely on the third chakra, which is associated with power and the emergence of ego-based consciousness. This has led to many of the financial and environmental woes we face. Now I believe we’re shifting to a culture based on the fourth chakra, with a focus on love, relatedness, and a more transcendent consciousness.

In his book A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle speaks about how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also a key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. When we see ourselves as connected to all others, this sense of oneness helps us strengthen our love-body which in turn allows us to bring even more love to all areas of our lives.

As we look at the current events in Japan and in Libya, we can’t help but feel our hearts go out to the people there. Here are some ways we can make a difference:

1. If possible, donate time, money, food or clothing to relief organizations. Even a little bit will help.

2. Connect with the love and compassion inside you and send it to the people of Japan and Libya.

3. Look for at least two ways each day you can help someone in your immediate environment.

When we each wake up our own hearts and learn to live with unconditional love, we’re helping to awaken the global heart — beating with love, compassion, and peace. Your dedication to experiencing more Love for No Reason and becoming a conduit of love is the main way you can help speed this shift on our planet.

With love for no reason and every reason,

Marci

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