Embracing Life Deeply is simple when you know how! And it helps your animals SO MUCH…

Embracing life deeply is a muscle. An important muscle. Maybe the most important muscle of all, I reckon!

Life is always full of beauty. Life is always full of things to be grateful for. There is always love present to connect with, feel and enjoy (especially when you have animals, because they always have love to give!). It’s kind of easy to embrace life deeply when we have plenty fo the good things, the comfortable things.

But let’s be real. Life also provides us with challenges. All kinds of challenges, large, small, and sometimes literally life-shattering and huge. These can be emotional, physical, financial, spiritual, or lots of other things. Challenges are by their nature UNCOMFORTABLE, and therefore they can make embracing life deeply a lot more difficult to do.

This is because many of us will do just about anything we can think of to avoid discomfort, even if it’s healthy discomfort, and actually incredibly good for us if met in a healthy way. Humans are very good at dissociating, withdrawing, suppressing, avoiding, dissociating, etc etc etc etc in the face of all kinds of discomfort. I know I’m a past master at all of this!

You might use substances (food, alcohol, drugs), escape into books, movies, social media, get hyperfocused and consumed by work, exercising… or any of a million and one possibilities. This gives temporary relief of a kind, but it comes at a cost in terms of there being a whole lot less of you present and functional in the here and now, the only place we can live, love, and create LIFE.

Another incredibly important thing to consider is that the less of you is present, the more you avoid/escape/withdraw from yourself and your life because of the discomfort of challenges, the less of you is here for your beloved animals. This impacts your animals negatively.

In other words, the more you learn how to embrace life deeply, no matter what happens, the safer, happier, and healthier your pets will be. You are their universe, and if you check out, their universe crumbles.

Here’s how to make embracing life deeply possible and practical, no matter what’s happening!

This is my practice. Every day, I actively work hard at embracing life deeply. Some days it’s easy. Other days it can take everything I have, and even a little bit more. It’s a muscle that I flex, again and again.

Before I begin, I bring as much awareness as I can into and throughout my body.

Step 1: I make sure to remind myself that there are always things that I can feel grateful for – and my pets are right at the top of this list. I also remind myself that there are always things that I can enjoy, and there is always love I can receive (especially from my animals). Then I actively commit to embracing life deeply from this place.

Step 2: I give myself time and space to meet, and to feel the impact of any challenges that are active in my life. Sadness, anger, grief, shame, frustration, whatever less comfortable feelings are present. I really feel them, just for a few minutes. I honour them, and I refuse to bypass or avoid them in any way. I embrace the healthy discomfort of this whole heartedly. I might journal, or scribble with different colours, move, dance, or anything else that helps me be totally present with and express how I’m feeling.

Step 3: I step into active gratitude, joy, and love practice. I’ll often start with my pets – calling them in, touch, accepting and feeling their love, maybe playing a game to generate joy and make me smile. Then I’ll go through all the things I can think of, small and large that I have to be grateful for, that I enjoy, who I love, and who I am loved by. I keep doing this until the size of these feelings, this energy, is BIGGER than the challenging feelings.

And then I move on into my day from that place, embracing life fully, living life with all I’ve got. This benefits your animals very, very much, because now the dominant feelign/energy that you are living from and expressing is gratitude, joy, and love. They can feel this in their bones. It has a serious positive impact on them, and their wellbeing. Not only that, there’s so much more of you available to help them feel safe, loved, secure, and happy.

I encourage you to start building your ’embracing life deeply’ muscle, day by day. At first, you might not succeed completely, but every little bit you do makes a real difference for your pets, and for you, and if you keep at it, before long even when there are big challenges, you’ll be able to embrace them AND live a beautiful, joy-filled, effective, constructive life with your beloved animals!

If you loved this article, you can check out last week’s one at this link.

And here’s a live video I recorded on the same topic!

Photo of my veggie patch – one of the joys I embrace deeply every day!