Welcome back to Picture Love, friends. Are you like me and you just need to take a deep breath? Okay, I just need to pause a second and catch my breath. Would you breathe with me? Take a nice deep one. Shoulders down, jaw relaxed, and let it out slower than you took it in. Whew, I needed that This has been quite a week already, and it's only Tuesday. So Picture Love was born in October three years ago. That makes it 2023. That's right. I have been a team of one, with the exception of loving, wonderful collaborators who come in, to create dialogue or something creative or read one of the roles that I've written. And I know my way around creating this show. You know, recording, editing, publishing, presenting. Well, yesterday I was trying to get this episode published, as usual, 'cause that's, that's my rhythm. Monday is my lining things up, getting ready to go, speaking from my heart, and, and putting out what I think is the most timely version of Picture Love possible. Well, three times in different versions, I recorded an episode that did not either record even though it said it did, or there was no sound, or there were pieces missing, or the most recent version was there was a preview image of me on the screen, but no content. So there were, technical crumbs of evidence that something tried to work, and I realized that the theme that I had in mind was actually really more of a precursor. And I was gonna talk to you about time, and we'll get there, and time is a facet of this dialogue, but really what life was showing me was how I have learned and changed when it comes to allocating my resources. Now, I'm not talking about money and time and food and fuel. What I'm talking about is what I consider the most precious commodity of human existence, and that is our energy. Now, you can argue with me if you like. There's always people saying, "Your time and your money are your most precious commodity," but I don't agree with that. It's your life force. It's your energy. That is your most precious commodity. That is the only thing you could never put a price tag on. And I think that we've- been deceived to believe that there's a finite amount of anything. I absolutely, completely disagree with that concept I, as you know, I'm professionally trained as a teacher, and I lived very obediently along the time, the scheduling, the planning of that career, and it served me to show up and teach three-dimensional life to classrooms full of elementary-aged children, and that was wonderful. It taught me a lot. But the time factor, hmm, it was definitely a distraction. It was a distraction from really what I overspent on any job or anything, and that was my energy, my life force. So that is why-- that is one of the breadcrumbs that took me to the sequence of events that's inspired this conversation. So I have a question for you. What would it look like and what would happen if outside circumstances or demands or headlines or jobs or relationships or any kind of experience as a human that has historically stirred negative emotion from you, my friend, me, I'm speaking to myself as well. What if we starved the negative e-emotion demand, cut off that water supply, and repurposed that water supply, AKA your energy, in a, in a flourishing way, in a nourishing way, in a way that suffocates fear-mongering, distractions, things that at the end of life, looking back, mean nothing? Sometimes because they're exaggerations and fabrications, but other times it's simply beliefs that something is more important than it really is. Now, while my neighbor across the street might take it to the grave that his lawn is his pride and joy, and any single weed that takes root on his lawn is an insult, that's his choice. I'm not judging that. But I'm saying I choose to live in a place of space and freedom where The trash that somebody threw out of their window that blew onto my front lawn did not ruin my morning walk. Nope. I picked up the trash and I put it in its place, and I thanked myself for not getting ticked off. I did. And this isn't me bragging about me. This is just me giving you an illustration of, of what I'm asking What kind of wonderful things can open up? What kind of beautiful freedom and space can be created by reallocating our emotions? You know, emotions are like our energy put into something, right? Our emotions are what create relationships. They create the glue, the attraction, the repelling. Our emotions keep us attached to a political party or a religious practice or a routine. Our emotions are ways that the human spirit experiences life, and I think they're beautiful and they're wonderful. Not all of them feel good. A lot-- all of them in that moment feel like truth to the person experiencing them. But I'm asking us to, not in the heat of the moment, but right now, proactively think about a situation that might have gotten you all bunched up, to look at it with detachment, take off the emotions, and see what actually was happening. I know I've had disagreements or said something really snippy that really wasn't called for. You ever had that? You know, looking back, you realize saying, "Hmm, I don't think that that response matched the circumstances." My poor husband's received that more than once. and that was unfair to either one of us. So what would it look like if the next big headline that sounds tragic, that sounds like travesty, that sounds like somebody victimizing another, what could happen if we didn't feed it with our fear and our anger? Can we still care without letting it suck our life force? What would that look like for you? Maybe that sounds ridiculous, depending on how you're hearing this. I'm-- everybody experiences everything differently, but my curiosity lies in Why have I spent so much of my life force, my energy, my vitality on things out of my control when I could have been doing something the polar opposite? Metaphors are just easier for me to grasp, so if you'll just bear with me, here's one. Why would I water my neighbor's weeds when my garden is thirsty? You know? Why would I ruin my sleep worrying about something that hasn't happened when I could be focusing on gratitude for things that did unfold in my favor, letting me invest my emotions in something supportive and flourishing? I think that my emotions deserve to be used as a valuable resource with discretion. Now, I'm not inviting, for those who are gonna come back at me, I am not inviting us to go around passing judgments on good, bad, good, bad. No. This is a practice of detaching to look at something with a fresh, detached experience, with, with a perspective of observation. Because I know that just because somebody found it on Google does not make it a truth. Certainly doesn't make it automatically my truth. And, you know, scientists who run experiments, there's never one test in one lab that a whole population can build the truth of medicine on. That's why there's more and more and more and more scientists and groups of people doing research and testing and learning, because they're all like one little hair on the body of a horse. One little hair. All of these little pieces together collectively paint a picture, and thank goodness none of us are expected to know everything at once. I don't think that that would be a human experience. But approaching life with discernment when it comes to allocating the resources of our emotions with discretion, with love, with love for yourself, that you don't just dump your cup on the street into the gutter, not benefiting anybody. Let's fill our cup. Let's fill our cup, keep it full, and let's give generously from the overflow. I may sound like a broken record, because I use that expression all the time, but I really believe that is the nature of abundance. Keep picturing love, friends, however you choose to do that. You deserve it. I love you. See you next time.