(Debasish Mridha)

What a beautiful concept, that ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ can be seen as an art, as a natural law of life. Perhaps comparable to the natural ebb and flow of the tides, it can be seen as the pure order of the universe.

I am a strong believer in the power of giving with abundance and expecting nothing in return, but perhaps maybe a ‘thank you’. Giving doesn’t have to be done with material objects or money. It can be done with some of the most precious commodities that we all have and that we can never get back – our ‘time’ and our ‘kindness’.

Everyone’s time is so precious in the hectic and fast paced era we now live in. Deciding to gift someone with your time to listen, help, heal, hug, love, forgive or to care for is truly one of the most precious gifts you can ever bless another with. But then comes the tricky part – learning to ‘receive’ and ‘accept’ with gratitude a similar act of kindness or gift of time, kindness or care from another. This is the bit that many of us may struggle with, as sometimes, we can find it hard to let our barriers down, to let others into the intimate parts of our souls and to ‘accept’ help, kindness, compassion and gratitude.

It is so important that we get the balance of what we give and we receive correct. If we continuously give of ourselves, our tanks soon get depleted and we find our energy levels low, our mood is low, our ability to let go and embrace the simple moments of joy and happiness become compromised. On the other hand, if we are continuously receiving in our lives, and offering nothing in return, this affects the natural law and flow of giving and receiving. We can become impaired to the kindness and time others are offering us and perhaps not fully experience their level of generosity and grace as our minds become cloudy and foggy in our trance of ‘taking’ and giving nothing back in return. A quote I love by Doreen Virtue is:

“ A balance of giving and receiving is essential to keeping your energy, mood and motivation at a consistently high level”

(Doreen Virtue)

So how do we give and receive? We simply use kindness and compassion to give to others and to ourselves and to receive from others and from ourselves with a gentle heart. Gifting kind words, kind acts and your time are some of the simplest and most beautiful ways to give to yourself and others. Learning in turn to “always give without remembering and always receive without forgetting” (Brian Tracy), is honouring your true soul and helping to ignite it with passion, with love and with appreciation.

It is incredible to reach a realisation that we don’t need all the riches in the world to be able to ‘give’ to ourselves or others. Some of the kindest, most caring and generous people on earth are those who have very few tangible possessions. They are those that are truly connected to their own hearts and souls and those that have learned how incredible the feeling of ‘receiving’ even a simple ‘thank you’ from another is. That’s all it takes for the natural cycle of ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ to continually flow and create an abundance of kindness and compassion in our lives.

Another quote I find so empowering is:

“Today I have realised that people who are kind are actually the richest because they are giving away kindness, something that can never be taken or stolen. Thanks for being kind”

(Boom Sumo)

When you learn and practise the art of ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ in your own life, you naturally start to raise your own vibrational level and so you feel empowered and deeply connected and rooted to your own happiness, love, strength, courage and health. You realise that you are a ‘good person’ and have an internal abundance to give to yourself and others. You learn to disconnect from all of the self-critical thoughts or feelings you may have about yourself and your life and in turn, you can really embrace the true meaning and quality of life.

A lovely thought to leave you with:

“Happiness is the new rich. Inner peace is the new success. Health is the new wealth. Kindness is the new cool”

(Syed Balkhi)

HOW to learn the art of ‘Giving’ and ‘Receiving’:

A step by step guide on how to learn the art of ‘Giving’ and ‘Receiving’:

1. Everyday, affirm to yourself that you have an abundance in your life and that there are always people that are not as fortunate as you.

2. Everyday, commit to love yourself and others in your life with kindness and compassion, from deep within your heart.

3. Everyday, give thanks for your health, happiness, peace, inner strength and self-connection and for that of others in your life.

4. Everyday, try to complete or give an act of kindness to yourself or others. Perhaps give someone a compliment, hold a door for someone, call someone who may love to hear your voice, listen intently to your heart or to someone who really needs a kind and caring ear.

5. Any day that someone gives or offers you kindness or compassion, accept and receive it graciously by saying a meaningful ‘thank you’ and tell the person just how much it means to you.

Thank you so much to Deirdre Rusk for her amazing Robin image! Check out more amazing images from Deirdre Rusk Photography at https://www.deirdrerusk.com/

Thank you as always to Brian O’Loughlin and his team at Celtic Media Group (https://www.anglocelt.ie/, https://www.con-telegraph.ie/, https://www.meathchronicle.ie/, https://www.offalyindependent.ie/, https://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/ and https://www.westmeathindependent.ie/ for all their wonderful help!

As published by The Celtic Media Group in The Anglo Celt, Connaught Telegraph, Meath Chronicle, Offaly Independent, Westmeath Examiner and Westmeath Independent newspapers w/c 21/12/2020)

The answer is very simple! You create a time and space in your day, each day and you learn to sit with yourself. You learn to breathe with yourself. You learn to listen to yourself, encourage, motivate and empower yourself. You learn to nurture and care for yourself and most importantly, you learn to love yourself, from the inside out.

Learning to love yourself is without doubt a very challenging task. So many of us cannot bring ourselves to give a compliment to ourselves or others and are even worse at accepting a compliment from someone else. It is an instinct for our egos to take over and intercept before we graciously let ourselves blush in confidence and pride. How many times has someone said to you “wow, you look great, have you lost weight?” How many of us have answered “oh well I could do with losing a lot more!”. This is the ego sabotaging our good work and rail roading our progress. Wouldn’t it be a completely different scenario to reply to the same question by saying “thank you so much, I feel really great at the moment?” A completely different concept really.

My ethos is based around ‘healing ourselves from the inside out’. This is how I transformed my own life. There was a point in my life where I could not stand or sit in my own presence for even a few minutes. I continuously distracted myself with housework that ‘needed’ to be done or calls that ‘needed’ to be made. Anything was easier than having to be present with just myself. So how could I possibly heal or transform myself? I needed to get to know ‘the real me’. I needed to give my mind, body and emotions time to disconnect from each other, repair individually and then reconnect with one another. They needed to reconnect with me, as a communicative and functioning being.

I found the analogy of a butterfly’s life cycle so empowering and healing during this stage of my life. When you think about it, does the caterpillar ever think it will transform after complete metamorphosis into a beautiful free flying, free spirited butterfly? We will never know. But I do know that during this difficult stage of my life, I could never see myself as anything past that caterpillar stage. I felt so uncomfortable in my own skin, so full up of past trauma’s, worries, anxieties and fears that I was about to burst. Just like a caterpillar shedding its skin five times before entering its Pupa stage, letting go of the excess plants it had eaten so that it could become more comfortable and lighter in its own skin, I needed to shed layers of my own demons before I could start my transformation.

To do this, I meditated daily, enjoyed yoga, filled numerous notebooks by gratitude journaling, spent a lot of time walking outside with Mother Earth and started to speak kinder to myself. I accepted with compassion the difficult thoughts, the fears, the days which did not seem to go as I wished. I grew to accept and gained comfort from knowing that I was never going to be perfect, I am only human after all. As humans, we will never be perfect, what is perfect anyway? We and life are continually changing and evolving and so we are always on a continuous learning path. We may never be perfect, but we can learn to enjoy the journey.

Upon shedding and letting go of excess baggage, the butterfly then enters its Cocooning stage, it’s protective stage. This is a period of self-growth, of transformation. I used this period of my life as a protective time of self-recovery, of retreat, of reflection and of personal connection. Once I had shed my baggage, I used this time to restructure my mind, to reinvent my thoughts in a positive, kind and compassionate manner. This was a very intimate phase in my healing journey. It was a stage where I wanted to be cocooned with only me, with only my new positive and nurturing mindset and with my new understanding and compassionate way of living.

Slowly over time, my protective cocoon started to break open. I was becoming free. Free of my previous thoughts, memories, anxieties and I was now ready to launch myself and to fly high in life. This is the last stage in a butterfly’s life cycle. Now ready to propel itself into nature as a newly mature butterfly. It breaks free of its cocoon and takes a leap of faith as it waits for its wings to start flapping and flying. This beautiful butterfly completely unrecognisable from the bulging caterpillar a short while before, now a life completely transformed, completely renewed, oozing with an abundance of clarity, of hope, of dreams, of influence, of happiness and of health.

Another interesting concept to think about; ‘can a butterfly fly with only one wing?’ I wouldn’t fancy its chances. We can apply this theory to ourselves in creating and or enhancing our own healing journey or life transformation. Think of one of the butterfly’s wings as comprising of Kindness and Compassion for ourselves and others. Think of the second of the butterfly’s wings as comprising of Mindfulness. Just like the butterfly needing both of its wings to fly, we need Kindness, Compassion and Mindfulness to aid, enhance and facilitate our own personal transformation, healing and life journey.

We can envisage ourselves needing both these wings of Kindness, Compassion and Mindfulness to work together, in sync with one another, in an agreeable and equally effective rhythm in order for us to fly high in our own lives. We are all equally capable of entering a cycle of transformation in our own personal journeys. I guess some of us will decide to do it sooner than others and others will do it later in their lives but maybe at a different pace. There are no rules. Just like every butterfly, we can decide when we are ready to enter our protective cocooning stage and ultimately when we are ready to emerge as a newly transformed being.

We all have this innate ability to develop this deeply intimate relationship with ourselves, to deeply connect with ourselves and to learn to love who we are and to love who we can transform into. The question is, ‘are you ready to spread your wings of Kindness, Compassion and Mindfulness and soar high above your expectations? Are you ready to heal and transform yourself from the inside out?’

Leona McDonnell

(As published in the Westmeath Examiner Newspaper on 16-6-2020 and in
The Anglo Celt and The Meath Chronicle Newspaper on 17-6-2020)