Will you discover the power of the "who do I love" morning walking meditation because I do this in the morning and it helps me out a lot to remain centered, to think about how may I best help people today and to feel good first thing in the morning?
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Who Do I Love Morning Walking Meditation #191
The basics of the meditation work like this. I get out in the morning and walk first thing, as often as I can, with my dogs and we just walk a couple of blocks. So, maybe a five or ten-minute walk.
It helps me in the morning to get outside because I've been sleeping inside all night, which is a luxury, but at the same time it's good for my body to have some fresh air, to get the sunlight on me, to wake me up and to see nature, see the trees, see the grass, see the clouds in the sky.
That helps me to get a state of mind that's more similar to that. I often wake up in a fog first thing in the morning. I'm not sure what I want to do. I often just kind of rat race, jump into something that I think ought to be good, and what helps me is to take my dogs for a walk and do this meditation instead.
What I do, I leash up both of the dogs, we go out on a walk in the morning, and I think about, "who do I love?"
What I do is I try to picture each person that I love. I picture each of my family members like my wife.
I picture my daughter.
Now, that's often easy because I've seen them first thing in the morning, so it's kind of easy for me to do a walking meditation with me having just seen my wife and my daughter.
I then start picturing the rest of my family members. I picture my brother, his wife and daughter. I haven't seen them in a while. I picture all my other family members. I picture my mother. I actually forgot my mother this morning on the walk.
"Sorry, Mom."
I picture my wife's brother and sister, and their children.
I picture my friends and family members.
All right, I already said that.
I think of all the people upvoting and watching my videos. I think of the people on Steem with me and the people taking my courses.
I think about my neighbors and often at some point I actually get to myself. I think, "Thank God I love myself. I love this beautiful body that exists here today."
Often that takes a good five or ten minutes on the walk and what happens when I go through and think about "who do I love," then I get this elevated perspective. I get this perspective that is, I know what to do next from a lot clearer point of view.
I often wake up confused and I rush into something and lots of times the things I've rushed into, it had been better if I literally did nothing at all, like if I sat on the couch all day and just pet my dogs, that would have literally been better than whatever I decided would be a great idea instead.
Today, I was intending to film some more on my new video course I'm making "The Complete Live Streaming Course" and I don't commit to doing something until I do my walking meditation. I did my walking meditation with my dogs, and then doing my walking meditation with my dogs, I felt like the best thing for everyone to do would be for me to talk about this walking meditation.
I've been doing this for months now and my counselor, my coach, recommended it to me to just relax in the morning because I've been saying I get overwhelmed and I get all these thoughts and what do I do about all these thoughts?
I told him I have these racing thoughts and I'm feeling anxious, and he suggested a morning walk and meditation.
Now, for me, I've read a lot of books saying the power of meditation, but I sit in an AA meeting almost every day for an hour, I sit with my wife and daughter often at night. Basically, I have lots of time, enough time, where I can sit, and in the morning I want to be amped up, I want to be excited, I want to be ready to film a video.
For me, the idea of basically sitting down for 10 minutes before I do a video wasn't appealing, and then that's where this walking meditation came in. I thought, "Wow, this walking meditation gets me active, gets my blood flowing, gets me outside. It's perfect."
A walking meditation is nice also because it allows us to feel our bodies in motion and pay attention to them. A lot of us already have enough time sitting during the day and we can do a sitting meditation if we are at work, we can do a sitting meditation easily while we are driving.
It's nice to have a walking meditation, and then the idea with meditation is to make it a constant practice throughout the day. I think this is in the "Power of Now," if not several other books I've read. It's much more valuable to essentially do a little bit of meditation all day, every day, than it is to do 10 minutes or so in the morning, and then go throughout the rest of the day like a mindless zombie having forgotten about meditation.
Or, it's better to do 60 one-minute meditations throughout the day than to do one 60-minute meditation in the morning.
That's how I do it.
I try to just essentially practice meditation all day, every day, to pay attention to what I'm doing because that allows me to not get pulled into completely what's going on. It allows me to have some peace about me throughout the day, no matter what happens.
I'm very grateful I've been willing to try this because one of the biggest barriers to doing this is, I don't have enough time. I need to get started. I need to make my videos. I don't have enough time to go walking my dogs for 10 minutes in the morning and do a meditation.
That by itself is a real power move.
Today, for example, I woke up at 9:30, which is later than usual. I have my AA meeting to go to in a few minutes here. I spent the beginning of the morning with my wife and daughter helping a little bit. I'd slept a couple hours in my daughter's room so she'd be able to sleep in a little bit more. She called me in and I did so.
I was useful this morning and my wife had time to do some articles. We got up late this morning, and of course, the mind wants to rush in and say, "You've got important stuff to do, Jerry. You get these video courses filmed before you go to your meeting. This is all the time you have to work today."
The walking meditation helps a lot with that because it allows me to step back and say, "You know what, nothing I have to do is going to get done very well if I'm not in a good state of mind."
If I feel like I'm in such a hurry, that I don't have time to take my dogs for a walk, that I don't have time to think about who I love before I get to work, I've learned the hard way the quality of my work suffers. The quality of what I produce is bad when I do it like that, and one of the last days I did just rush into it.
What I did that day I would have been better off doing nothing, literally just not doing anything at all. A lot of us don't think of essentially negative work where we are essentially really costing ourselves money by working or we are lowering our reputation by working or aggravating someone with what we are doing.
This walking meditation helps to avoid doing stuff like that. It helps us to see, what's really important that I might do today? What's actually worth doing? Instead of what seems like a good idea.
I'm grateful today that after my walking meditation, this is what I felt like would be best to share, even though in the short term this isn't going to make me the most money. In the short term this doesn't contribute to my goals of, "I want to get this course filmed, and then be able to sell that and have all the tutorials up for people to watch."
In the short term doing this today does not meet my goals in the same mental fashion that filming some video lectures in my new course would have.
However, this might make a much bigger difference in your life today than me having filmed a couple of tutorials on how to light your studio at home, and that's what it's all about, making the biggest contribution to the world, and not contribution in terms of what gets rewarded, but contribution in terms of what truly helps another human being.
My walking meditation helps me focus on what truly helps another human being because my default in the morning is often self-centered, and sometimes it takes me half the walk to focus because I'm so amped up. I'm excited or I'm scared. I'm so amped up it takes me five minutes to just focus on "who do I love?" Other times I think about, I love my wife, I love my daughter and I love my wife's mother and father, and then I will get off, "Well, I'm going to do this video today."
When I do that, I come back in a loving way. I don't beat myself up saying, "There you go again. See, you can't even think about who you love." I don't do that crap anymore.
"Oh, whoops. We've deviated over into something else. Who do I love?" and I just bring myself back and ask the question again.
"Who do I love?"
I try to picture people in as much detail as possible. I try to picture say, my nephew. I picture him jumping around and having a good time with my daughter. I picture his father, my wife's brother. I picture him laughing with my daughter and with someone else's kid, my wife's friend’s child who was at our Easter party the other day.
I try to picture people in as much detail as possible, and then today I realized, "Wow. I don't even remember what my wife was wearing and she just walked out the door after I did my walk like 10 minutes before. What am I paying attention to?"
Now, I'm excited to see what she's wearing.
The idea is not to do the meditation perfectly or to prove that you are a great person. The idea is to just get the feeling that comes from it, and some days it just helps to see how my mind is all over the place, and to bring it on to something that's really worth looking at.
It's worth considering who I love every single day and it's nice every day new people get in there. I will think about my massage therapist one day. I will think about my neighbors one day. I will think about someone I saw in an AA meeting the day before who was just coming off the street and desperately needed help, and now it's a week later and I'm wondering if they are coming back. I get as many different people in, but many of the same people are featured on a regular basis.
It's amazing how long it takes to just remember to be grateful for this body that I'm in, that I spend all day in, that my immortal soul has spent a lot of days in recently. That helps me to detach a bit from the day-to-day things that happen, to remember my immortal soul, that's who I am.
I don't need to believe in it, I remember it. This is who I've been forever and this body is a temporary thing that I've made and I've been through a lot of other bodies. This walking meditation helps take that consciousness to a higher level and when my consciousness is in heaven, when I ask, "who am I?'' and I get an answer like, "divine immortal soul," what I contribute is on a whole different level.
I don't need to just think about, how do I make some income for my family and survive today? I am freed to let my angel wings out and do the full level of my service. I'm free to have an amazing life today and communicate that, and that's the power of this walking meditation for me.
Thank you very much for enjoying this with me.
I hope this is useful because I started doing this based on a suggestion I got from someone else. If you have found this helpful will you please let me know it's been helpful for you because I'm just recording this by myself?
The way I know things like this are helpful, and to do more of them, is because I see comments saying, "Jerry, thank you. This worked really well for me."
Or, "Jerry, this is stupid. I'm never doing that again. I took my dogs for a walk, and then he bit me."
This is miserable. Fine. I appreciate all kinds of feedback.
I love you.
You are awesome.
I hope you have a wonderful day today.
Final words
Thank you for reading this post, which was originally filmed as the video below.
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Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj
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