SharingIt

Autumn comes with gifts I said in one of my recent blogs. So many gifts! Did you noticed how Autumn gives her gifts with such ease and panache?   I feel like writing her a note:

” Dear Autumn, thank you so much for the bounty, thank you so much for the beauty:-) Gosh you are ever so sweet to share all this with me. I love it that you don’t hold back, you just give, give, give! Everywhere I turn in nature there is abundance right now. Everywhere I turn there is beauty, every day you show me new sides of you. This is fun, thank you, I am so grateful!”

Giving and receiving… isn’t that pure magic? I am sure, like me, you probably find giving a bit easier than receiving. There is a lot of pleasure in giving. Most of us are really thrilled to give.

Back a few years I witness someone receiving with such pure joy, with such a child like delight that it stopped me in my tracks! Right then I realised that I totally forgot how to do that, that I forgot how to light up with pleasure when a gift comes to me. I forgot to even recognise when a gift comes to me. And I don’t talk only about things here – life has been generous with me and often given me gifts of all sorts. I just somehow stopped noticing – what a sad affair! But you know what? I found that life kept on giving, it was only me that stopped noticing!  As I witnessed my friends’ delight in receiving I made myself a metal note – to keep an eye out for the gifts life gives all the time and to receive with joy. This was my friends’ gift to me: showing me how to receive with panache, reminding me about that joy!

I must have done well since because yesterday a colleague life coach commented on how wonderful was I at receiving. When I receive the give-receive cycle is complete. If I give, I must also receive, otherwise I deny others the opportunity to give.

I feel I can truly receive when I stop and notice the beauty of each moment.  As I allowed myself to feel the joy of receiving I remembered to love to fully experience being given to: it can be really touching and so nourishing! When I receive, life opens up to me often in new and unexpected ways. when I fully receive my heart opens and it fills with deep gratitude. With gratitude comes shift and transformation.

I read somewhere that at the heart of our resistance to receiving is our fear of the unknown. Not-knowing is the essence of receiving, we can’t receive if we think we know everything!

Receiving is not that easy – if it was, we’d all be better at it, we’d be receiving with more gratitude and sometimes with more grace. Yet receiving is essential for an enriched life.

How are you at receiving?   Does it make you flinch when someone is offering to help? Do you receive with grace?  Do you notice when people do something nice for you? How good are you at receiving compliments? How good are you at stopping and marvelling in the now?

For me today the now was this immense sky. Autumn this year is keep gifting me this vast skies, full of drama and beautiful light. I love to take it in, it often comes so unexpected. Feeling grateful for big blue skies.