For today’s episode, I really wanted to create four actionable items you can add to your life to fall in love with your life again.

Since this month is all about the love – I have an easy to remember acronym for you.

L.O.V.E.

(L)ove the little things.

How do you love the little things?

For most of us, the obvious answer is gratitude.

Loving the little things means taking a moment to enjoy the sunset, flowers coming up through the dirt, the bugs and the birds or the smell of fresh baked bread.

In motherhood, I’ve noticed this REALLY helps on days where my kids are driving me nuts. I just grab my camera and truly focus in on the little things. Somehow capturing their tiny little faces with my camera helps me hone back in on the little things I adore about my kids. Their expressions frozen in time, their perfect noses, their concentration on things they love. 

For more ideas on how to slow down enough to feel the gratitude, listen to the full episode of Happiness in Progress. 

(O)WN YOUR NOW

This is probably the part I’ve had to do the most work on. OWN WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW. 

What I mean is – stop waiting to be happy.

Stop saying, “I will be happy when I move,” “I’ll be happy when I get a new boss, I’ll be happy when I have a new job. I’ll be happy when I make more money”

Your life is meant to be where it is right now.

Can it be better?

Probably.

Can you improve?

Absolutely.

But if feelings of wanting to improve and be better are holding you back from enjoying this moment… it’s time to reframe the way we look at our lives.

I talked about doing things with the perspective of lack a couple of episodes ago.

But we get ourselves into trouble when we are looking at what we DONT have, instead of what we DO have.

If you want to hear the powerful moment I gave up feeling sorry for myself while rocking my sick baby to sleep in the middle of the night – listen to the full podcast episode here. 

(V)ictories!

V is very very, extraordinary – and that’s because it’s YOUR VICTORIES.

Every single one of your little victories matter. When we take time to celebrate our wins – we are giving ourselves the confidence to continue to grow.

Grab a pen and paper and answer these questions:

What have I accomplished today?
What have I accomplished this week, this month, within the past year, throughout my life?
What have I done that made me proud?

Your answers can be minuscule achievements.

Sometimes getting out of bed doesn’t feel like an achievement. But sometimes, you’re grieving and dealing with a difficult time in your life – and getting out of bed is like getting a gold at the Olympics.

Allow yourself to — eh hem, own your life — be okay with the small successes. Be proud of the small successes.

Look at this list.

This is what you can do. 

YOU are capable.

I think one of the most important parts of this life is to see our limitless potential. To see our potential it helps when we can look at the ways we’ve already grown.

I talk about the research that backs this up in the podcast episode.

(E)GO

We need to check our ego at the door.

And I am not talking about the ego – like someone who is super arrogant.

I like to take the self-help explanation of the ego down to the most layman way of explaining it.

I say the ego is the part of us that says we need to BE someone, we need to DO something or we need to HAVE SOMETHING to be worthy.

That last part is very important. The ego tells you you are NOT ENOUGH unless you get that title or buy that product or take on the role.

Eckart Tolle describes the ego as the wanting part of us. In fact, one thing in his book “A New Earth” is, “The ego wants to WANT more than it wants to have.”

The ego gets all of its energy out of telling you your life is not enough. By telling you you don’t have enough. You don’t do enough. You don’t have enough accomplishments. 

It is a practice to start seperating your worth from all the THINGS we’ve been taught or really just inherently believe give us worth. 

A huge part of this is awareness. 

I love some of the questions Eckart Tolle shares in his book to help us disconnect from this “wanting” part of ourselves. I share several in the podcast episode, but here are a few to get started:

Do certain things induce a subtle feeling of importance or superiourity?

Does the lack of them make you feel inferior to others who have more than you?

What else you’ll hear on the podcast episode

• How I had to check my ego right after leaving my TV news job
• More questions to take a deep dive into the role the ego is playing in your life
• How to take stock of your gratitude without a gratitude journal

Remember, you can listen to the Happiness in Progress podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, online, the Mail Tribune’s website, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Youtube — and you can even ask Siri or Alexa to “Play the Happiness in Progress podcast.”