Welcome to the 40 Day LoveFest, our Sunday night inspiration show, for you to begin your week on a positive note of loving yourself. It’s really a great way to start your week. I’m Tina Nies, your host, and I do want to warn that we cannot take callers tonight and I’m also not live online in the chatroom today, because I know some of you often send me little notes in the chatroom. I definitely appreciate that, but I’m not online tonight. If you’re a new listener, I’m a life coach and vision board coach, and just wrote our first book in the 40 Day LoveFest series – A 40 Day LoveFest for Christians: the Daily Practice of Self-Love and Reflection. The reason I wrote this book first is because the 40 Day LoveFest began last year at Lent for me. It’s Lent right now, so it was the perfect time to release this book. It is available on Amazon Kindle right now, and it will be available for a print book as well, and that should be up on Amazon in the next couple of days. If you are a friend on Facebook, you can watch for announcements there at www.facebook.com/40DayLoveFest, and we’ll be announcing when the print book will also be available, as well as some great bonuses when you buy your book on Amazon later this week when everything’s up.
So, what is the 40 Day LoveFest? If you’re a new listener, you may be wondering what in the world is a LoveFest? It sounds great, but what is a 40 Day LoveFest for Christians, in particular? The 40 Day LoveFest is simply a program I developed to help you love yourself more by practicing three simple steps, every day, for 40 days. Some people do it a day a month, but you can start anytime, anywhere. It’s so simple to do. You don’t need any tools, you don’t have to make any extra time for it, you just have to add it in to the time you already have. Before I talk about what those three simple steps are, I want to talk a little bit more about why we wrote the 40 Day LoveFest for Christians for the last book, and what it means for the daily self-practice of love, as well as reflection. In the 40 Day LoveFest for Christians book we have bible quotes, and a daily bible reflection as well. It’s really just to help deepen your spiritual life, as well as your self-love, so the first book has a kind of double beauty. It’s not just the LoveFest, it adds in a little bit of extra for people who choose to take the extra route of deepening their spiritual life as well. I really want to address this. If you’re not a Christian, it doesn’t mean the 40 Day LoveFest isn’t for you. Maybe this book isn’t for you, but be sure to check out our Facebook page, our website, our daily inspiration; all of those are just about self-love, without any relation to any particular religion.
The idea of loving yourself is pretty universal, regardless of whatever your spiritual beliefs might be. Most faiths, of any type, or even if you have no spiritual faith in particular and are just living life for yourself day to day, the idea of loving yourself more can benefit you because we want to be happier. Most of us, regardless of anything else, we want to feel good. We want to have a good day, and we don’t really like having the bad days. We don’t really like it when things don’t go well, we don’t really like it when other people upset us, so if you can incorporate a practice of loving yourself, then the other stuff is just kind of there. You can’t control things outside yourself, but you tolerate and accept it and you just love what is. By doing the three simple steps of the 40 Day LoveFest, you can really open yourself to accepting what is, accepting yourself as you are, and accepting other people as well.
The first thing in the 40 Day LoveFest is to say “I love you” to yourself. You can do that right now while you’re listening to this show, if you have a mirror, go look in a mirror. If not, just say it to yourself. Close your eyes and say “I love you”, and add in your name, so I would say “I love you, Tina”. That is the first thing we do in the 40 Day LoveFest, and we do it every single day. Now, you can do this more than once a day, that’s fabulous, but at least once a day. It doesn’t take any extra time because you’re already in front of a mirror multiple times a day. We wash our hands, we brush our teeth, we brush our hair, we pass by our reflection in a window…we see ourselves all day long. So while you’re already looking at yourself, just say “I love you”.
The second step in the 40 Day LoveFest is to identify three things you’re grateful for every single day. In the morning, ideally, you can jot down or think about three things you’re grateful for. Now, it sounds simple, but after three or four days it gets a little tougher to not repeat yourself and to think of new things you’re grateful for. It really starts to deepen your appreciation for what’s in your life, and helps you look for the good things in your life. Again, it can just take a minute or two each day. You can do it on your drive to work if you’re so rushed that you don’t even have time to sit and drink a cup of coffee in peace in the morning. Just think about it. Maybe while you’re brushing your teeth or in the shower, whatever it is that you might be doing in the morning, you can clear your mind and think about those three things.
The third step is at the end of the day, identify three things that went well every single day. Again, we’re already thinking about what didn’t go well, we’ve already seen what didn’t get done, so why not also think about three things that went well? You can do it as you’re getting ready for bed, you can do it as you’re sitting down eating your dinner, you can really do it whenever you’re sitting down to do something, or brush your teeth, when you first lie in bed…whenever you want to do it, just end your day on a positive note, and again, you start looking for what’s going well. What went well today? We start to not focus on the negative, because that other stuff is still going to be there. It’s not going anywhere necessarily, but you’re going to start to look at it differently. You don’t have to give it so much value, because your time and your life is extremely valuable. How you choose to look at things that are in your life is important. How you choose to spend your time is important. What you choose to think about is important. If for 40 days, you can try these three simple things, you’ll start to notice a change in your attitude. You’ll be able to start doing other things that you’re WANTING to do. Maybe you have a goal you’ve been trying to achieve that you’ve really struggled with, try the 40 Day LoveFest. It’s probably going to help you with your other goals as well because you’re thinking about the positive, and you’re focusing on what can go well, so your goals will become easier to achieve.
Of course, we have other ideas and practices for the 40 Day LoveFest as well, but those are three simple things that I encourage you to try out today. Just start today. Right now, say to yourself “I love you”. Think of three things you’re grateful for. Think of three things that went well today. And you can do this no matter what! Right now, the reason I have no internet access is because I’m at my Uncle’s house who just passed away. They had already packed up all the computers before I had arrived here last week. I am learning to love myself, even through grief, even through cleaning the house that two people I loved used to live in, even through having these garage sales where people are just buying up all their stuff. I can still love myself anyway, and I can still look for what went well today. I can still look at what I’m grateful for, because I can be grateful for these people who were in my life. I can be grateful for the value they brought to me while they WERE here. I can be grateful that I still had that opportunity to spend time with them. No matter what is happening in our lives, we can choose to express gratitude, look for our daily successes, and love ourselves anyway.
Again, I encourage you to try out the 40 Day LoveFest, go to Amazon and look for the 40 Day LoveFest for Christians book this week, watch our announcements on Facebook at www.facebook.com/40DayLoveFest, and just stay with us. Let us know how you’re doing. If you do read the book, write a review on Amazon and let me know what you think about it. Send me a note on Facebook. We just want you to be happier today, and to love yourself more. Have a beautiful week. Thank you very much for listening in tonight, and I will talk to you next Sunday night. We’re on every Sunday night at 8pm Pacific, 11pm Eastern. Join us again soon! Thank you.
Be Happier Today and LoveFest blog 