21DJC Day 14 – What Is Love?

This is Day 14 of the 21-Day Journaling Challenge held in Nov 2011. The challenge is now over but you can do the tasks in your own time. Visit the overview page for all the challenge tasks.Hi everyone – Welcome to Day 14 of 21DJC! :) Yesterday’s question was: “What Do You Fear Most?“. (Read the responses.)What do I fear the most? One of my 5 core values (We will work on uncovering our values next month, during Day 15 of Live a Better Life in 30 Days) is “Courage”. The reason why I picked Courage as my core value, is because I think living in fear is one of the worst ways to live life.Why do I say that? Because fear is the mind killer. When you live in fear or something, you start living in a box, whereby the boundary of the box is defined by your fear. The thing is, this fear, if not linked to any physical danger, is merely an illusion that limits your life experience. You may think you are safe by having your life governed by this fear, and you may theoretically feel safe, but the truth is you are repressing yourself for no real reason. Read: Why Overcome Fear?Because fear is such a pointless, disempowering emotion, I make a conscious effort to unroot my fears whenever I face one. I first get clarity on what I’m fearful about, after I seek to understand them. Then, I work on dissolving the fear itself.That said, there are definitely things I’m fearful of, that I’ve not worked through. I’d say working through our fears is a life long journey. For every layer of fear I unravel, there will be new layers of fear underneath. These reflect the new phases of growth I’ve to to through. Personally, I see fears as indicators of what I need to work on next, so it’s a great compass for my growth.The current fears I’m dealing with include fear that I’m not good enough, fear that I’ll be all alone, fear that no one loves me, fear that I cannot lose weight, fear that I’m too ugly, fear that I’ll never be loved. These are things which I look forward to writing and sharing in detail at Personal Excellence in the upcoming future, as I work through the issues.I want to take this chance to thank all of you for earnestly sharing your fears here.With PE, I strive to create a safe space where all of us can share our thoughts and pursue our growth without judgment or prejudice. As I look at the community we have right now, I feel that we *are* living this at this moment. This is incredible. I was just having a conversation with one of the regular PE members, Matt, earlier this week, and we both agreed that PE is easily the most conscious communities either of us have seen online. I can’t be prouder of all of us here.Thank you for being a part of Personal Excellence. I’m very grateful for your existence.With that said, let’s now move to today’s question!

21DJC Day 14

Today’s question is:

What Is Love?

What words or phrases would you use to describe love? How do you identify if you are feeling the emotion of love, or something else? What does the word ‘love’ mean to you?(Note: “Love” here refers to whatever kind of love you define it to be. For example, love between humans, parental love, sibling love, love between friends, love between spouses. It doesn’t (and shouldn’t) have to be just romantic love.)

Your Task Today:

1. Reflect and answer today’s question. There’s no word limit – whether minimum or maximum. Write as few or as many words as you want. It’s all up to what you want to express!
2. Share your answer. After you are done writing, copy and paste your answer in the comments area and post it there.
3. Check out other participants’ answers. Other participants will be sharing their answers too, so feel free to read and reply to their answers. This is a group course, so let’s support each other in these 21 days.

((Images: Empty book for journaling, Red heart))