(photo above, one my beautiful orchid friends)
Each week when I water my orchids, I talk to them. I'll say: "Aren't you beautiful?" Or "Oh, look at you, you're growing more buds." Or "I love your blooms."
And sometimes, I'll just say, "I love you."
I provide my seven orchids with regular watering, good indirect sunlight and lots of loving words.
I do not use any fertilizer at all, and yet my orchids bloom year after year for me as if my words encourage them to keep growing and blooming. (It sometimes seems to me that they even lean in to listen when I talk.)
A few weeks ago in Rev. Martina Schmidt's transforming Spiritual Mastery program I am participating in we watched Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life DVD, which is all about the power of affirmations and how we feel about ourselves. (Trailer is embedded below; or link directly here.)
It got me to re-noticing how I talk to myself. And I see that much of the time it's usually a pretty mean conversation going on inside my head, full of criticism, judgment and put-downs about myself.
I am committed to changing my self-talk to reflect how I talk to my orchids — with love, acceptance, gratitude and appreciation.
I went out and bought a You Can Heal Your Life affirmation kit at Three Sisters' Spirit in downtown Waukesha, too. (It's a wonderful store full of classes and gift items honoring the sacred feminine.) In the kit, there is a wonderful CD in there with Louise Hay talking more about affirmations and providing sample affirmations. I have been playing with the affirmation — I love and accept myself — and with Hay's suggestion to say something nice to myself every time I notice myself in a mirror.
Tell me, what's something loving and encouraging you can say to yourself?
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Flowering Fridays is a weekly look at flowers through the lens of what they might teach us about flowering fully in our life. Past editions are here.