Love is the Question! A Simple New Year’s Resolution That Can Change Your Life
by I. J. Weinstock
www.IJWeinstock.com
At the beginning of every year we get caught up in the promise of turning over a new leaf and make New Year’s resolutions. But by January 15th, despite our best intentions, 95% of us don’t keep our resolutions. I never did…until recently.
It wasn’t one of your typical resolutions: exercise more, drink less, diet or quit smoking. Some people would think it a bit strange. To my surprise, not only did my New Year’s resolution make me feel so good, I did it for the entire year. But it was so simple and do-able, you might want to try it yourself.
A few years ago, I rang in the New Year at a drum circle. With a dozen other people, I beat a hand-held Native American drum. Ba-bam! Ba-bam! The living room vibrated with the sound that mimicked our heartbeat and soon became hypnotic. That’s when I heard my late wife, Joy, ask me a question that changed my life.
This wasn’t the first time I’d received what some might call supernatural communications from Joy. When she succumbed to breast cancer on Good Friday 2007, I was devastated. But a remarkable thing happened — she led me on an incredible journey to heal my grief. I eventually wrote an award-winning memoir about it called JOYride: How My Late Wife Loved Me Back To Life. So naturally, I took communications from her very seriously.
The question Joy asked me during that fateful New Year’s Eve drum circle was simple yet profound: What do you love?
As if in reply, with each drumbeat I silently answered:
I love ceremony and celebration.
I love being among kindred spirits.
I love banging a drum!
By the end of the drum circle, I’d made a New Year’s resolution to beat the drum for love all year. Starting on January 1st and every day after, I declared a few new loves on Twitter.
I love candlelight, moonlight, the spotlight.
I love walking, stretching, dancing.
I love a good yawn, a loud sigh & a deep breath.
By February, I’d developed a habit — a Love Habit. Like brushing my teeth, I felt strange not declaring a new love every day.
I love wearing a red clown nose to make children happy.
I love the word “and” because it’s the most hopeful word in the English language.
I love LOSING myself in the dance & FINDING myself in the stillness of meditation.
I collected loves like beautiful shells on a beach. And the more loves I found, the more I saw. More importantly, the more I saw, the better I felt. Something was happening. So I began doing some research, hoping to understand what I was experiencing.
The Quantum Effect
Metaphysics and quantum physics both maintain that whatever you put your attention on expands. In the same way that a magnifying glass makes everything appear bigger or can focus the rays of the sun to ignite a fire, whatever you focus your awareness on grows. Neuroscience has confirmed that when you become consciously aware of any enjoyment, you amplify and magnify the experience.
The Amazing Benefits of Vitamin L(ove)
I found research that demonstrated Vitamin L’s amazing health and wellness benefits. According to Dr. Eva Selhub of Harvard Medical School, “Love sets off a set of physiological events in the body: peptides and hormones are released, including endorphins, oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin, and nitric oxide. These help turn off the fear response, evoke the relaxation response and create a positive physiology.” Incredibly, it seems that love can heal as powerfully as medicine.
Google Myself
In our Digital Age, we understand the power of search. Every day we search for answers and those searches are driven by questions. Asking myself What do I love? was like typing a search term into my consciousness. I’d googled myself. After a few months, I’d programmed myself to scan my life throughout the day for things that I loved. What do I love? became a background mantra to my thoughts. Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I’d ask myself — What do I love here? What do I love about this? And by simply asking the question, I’d receive an answer.
Love — Our Untapped Resource
I began to view all that we love as an untapped resource we can “mine” to become physically and emotionally enriched. After a year of keeping my New Year’s resolution, I realized that Joy’s question had given me a key to opening the treasure chest of my life.
The LoveSpell Secret
The message of religion, philosophy and countless pop songs boils down to a simple truth — Love is the Answer. For many, that’s a sentimental cliché. But like some fairy tale, the real secret is hidden within an Alice-in-Wonderland-like paradox. Take the cliché, Love is the Answer and turn it around so that Love is the Question, and you’ll possess a secret that can transform your life.
My daily declarations of love created a magical spell — a quantum LoveSpell — that expanded the love in my life. With Joy’s help I’d discovered a secret to happiness — the LoveSpell Secret.
The LoveSpell Experiment: My Year Exploring Love & Discovering a Secret to Happiness
By the end of the year, I’d fulfilled my New Year’s resolution and “mined” my life for the “gold” of more than 1001 loves. I’ve just published a memoir about my year-long LoveSpell Experiment.
Today, four years later, I continue to beat the drum for love on Twitter. And I don’t see myself stopping any time soon. Why would I when it feels so good and I receive so many benefits from my daily dose of Vitamin L? After declaring nearly 4,000 loves, I’ve developed the habit of looking at my life through “love-colored glasses” and the view is amazing!
So let me conclude by asking you Joy’s question — What do you love? Answering that question is a simple and do-able New Year’s resolution that can change your life.
If you’re inspired to give it a try, check out my memoir and the companion workbook I wrote, The LoveSpell Secret: A 30-Day Heaven-Sent Program to Create More Love in Your Life.
I wish you a Happy, Healthy & Love-filled 2017.
May your life be filled with love.
And may you fill the world with that love!
Postscript
My LoveSpells weren’t all as poetic as the few I included here. Many were quite simple: my morning shower, an afternoon nap, even chocolate-covered espresso beans.
The world is full of things to love and we each love different things. As friends and family became aware of my LoveSpell experiment, they wanted to play the game, too. Here’s a sampling of some of their loves:
I love making a perfect tuna fish salad.
I love to clean my house.
I love eating a hot dog with all the fixin’s at a baseball game.
I love to catch the lights when I drive down 2nd Avenue in Manhattan.
I love folding laundry.
I love to play in the garden and feel the earth with my fingers.
I love finding a new use for an old thing.
I love feeling the tug of a fish on the end of my line.
I love to rollerblade along the boardwalk.
I love fixing things.
I love singing in a choir.
I love playing golf on a beautiful course.
I love going to Vegas!
I love shopping, especially finding bargains!
I love hopping on my motorcycle and riding like the wind!
I love NASCAR…the faster & louder the better!
I love my glue gun!
I love playing poker! And winning!
I love money — making it, counting it, investing it, growing it!
I love basketball, baseball, football…any kind of ball!
