Transforming in March

This month has transformed me.

My 100-year-old self now motivates me every day. In times of doubt and fear, she’s there to love me and root me on.

This month, I’ve worked on loving myself. Initially it felt so foreign to me. My humble attempts in the past to be conscious and not allow myself to slip into narcissism caused me to have an imbalance with nurturing myself with love. I didn't know how to do it.

On top of tuning into an old-self, I also decided to read a book given to me by a lovely friend of mine two years ago: "You are Oprah: Igniting the Fires of Greatness” by Howard Glasser.

It’s a piece about learning to love oneself and standing in greatness. It helped me make a huge shift in my depressing state of mind this month to a positive state of mind.

It was because of this book I managed to get myself out of that muck that I was in last month.

I learned that in coming to love oneself, one must be in the present.

I tried many different things to help me with this process. Some of those things I already once practiced in my journey of love and joy, but had forgotten about them because I wasn’t being in the moment when practicing them.

For instance, I drink coffee or tea a lot, but very little do I actually take in the essence of them, the aroma, the sight of steam, the feeling of the hot cup, the sip of sweetness touching my tongue, smoothly (or bitterly) going down my throat.

Normally, I just chug them down and call it a day.

I made sure to use my senses during this process because they’re based on the present. The gorgeous weather we got this month helped me out. I got to go outside and absorb the energy.

I also got to feel the grass or get, what I call, "grass therapy."

Other techniques I used were putting my hands over my heart and taking in deep deep breaths. Breathing and noticing little details made me appreciate life, and the way that transmitted into self-love was by energizing myself by telling myself "I am the greatness of awareness," or "I am the greatness of gratitude." It really felt funny but the more I did it the more I manifested that greatness. And then after that, it just became contagious, and it started turning into love.

Don't get me wrong, I still had many bumps on the road, but I was learning to feel comfortable taking people's positive comments about me and detaching myself from the negativity. I was even challenged a bit on my depth reporting trip to Canada with the journalism school at ASU.

The weather and teamwork bumps challenged me. Being petite in size, the freezing weather easily sent chills across my body.

I didn't let things bring me down for too long. If I needed to feel sad or cold, I let myself feel it, but not for too long.

Once I was able to recognize the situation, I was able to detach from my expectations or concerns and was able to feel free.

Once I did that, I felt so much gratitude for the cold.

I even did a late night photo shoot with my roommate who was also working on her own 365 project amidst the snow. We were two southwestern desert photographers freezing their butts off to capture greatness.

Moments like these pushed me to move forward. With all the positivity, I was attracting good things like getting a beautiful letter from my pen pal in Germany.

I was feeling happier and my imagination kept getting bigger.

I was playing with light a lot in my photos and that just brought me joy.

The sun really does give off so much good energy, and I can say now that I am loving myself, and I feel proud to stand in my greatness of love.

 

Reach the photographer at pfarias@asu.edu or via Twitter @farias_perla

---

---

Subscribe to Pressing Matters

Email