[Download video or download audio]

This lesson is about working with love and gratitude, as corny as that might sound … it’s an incredibly useful technique not only for writing and creating, but for any kind of habit or difficult work task that you might face.

We’ve talked about resistance, which comes up when you’re facing anything difficult — the resistance gets in the way, and it comes up because of uncertainty, worried about how something will turn out, being overwhelmed or facing discomfort. We turn away from the difficulty and resistance and turn towards distraction.

We can, instead, turn towards the resistance with an attitude of unconditional friendliness. We can see the resistance as a fear, and turn towards it with compassion and say “You’re there,” in a friendly, gentle, loving way. You see it, are open towards it, smile at it. You see that it’s not such a big deal, you don’t need to run from it.

This compassion can help melt the resistance. Then we can turn towards the task (writing, for example) … and do the task with an intention of love. This goes back to the Deeper Why we talked about earlier in the course. We tap back into this intention, and then do our work out of love … for your readers, the world, your clients, your family, even yourself. Whatever the reason is, there’s love at the heart of it. That can move us, with an emotional connection to our intention, to take action.

Gratitude is when we’re now doing the task … and instead of rushing to get through the task, we can say, “I’m grateful for being here with this task, in this moment.” Notice the moment itself: your body, stress, light around you, sounds, smells, physical sensations, the tools you’re working with … and have gratitude for being here right now, in this moment. Think about what a gift this is, and say thank you for having the gift of being here with this task.

Gratitude can move you to love the task, and to keep coming back.

Do the task out of love, and be grateful in the moment of doing it. These help us to love doing the task.

Exercise

Practice working with love and gratitude this week!

Discuss it in the Slack channel.