6. Love what you love, you silly goose! Love Liberations Series + Heart opening rituals

This is the inaugural episode of the Love Liberation series - every 5th episode or so, I’ll be declaring my love for something or someone, no holding back. 

This series is a rebellion against the ways we’ve been taught to tone down our joy (or eliminate it altogether), hide our passions, & apologize for being lit up. Because when we hold back our love, we dim ourselves—and that’s a form of self-rejection. 

In this episode, I unpack the cost of suppression, the power of sincerity, and the freedom of letting yourself love what you love. We end with a three-part ritual to tune into your own heart’s voice.

Outline of this episode:

1. Introduction to a new series within the podcast - the Love Liberation Series!
2. Consequences of holding back on what you love
3. Why we hold back from saying what we love out loud aka self-rejection
4. How to know you've been holding back on your love
5. Wild Geese by Mary Oliver as inspiration for this series
6. A sure-fire way to know what it is that you truly love 
7. 3 part ritual to attuning to your heart
   • taking stock
   • difference between heart and head energy
   • bespoke heart words

📖 Ritual Accompaniment: Each episode has a webpage with the full ritual questions, pictures, notes, & relevant downloads (no sign-up needed). Check out this episode’s page here: https://www.dilshadmehta.com/delicious-dignity-podcast/6

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🙋🏽‍♀️ Questions? Requests for Future Episodes? DM me on Instagram @deliciousdignity or email me at podcast@dilshadmehta.com

Transcript

Dilshad: 0:00

Welcome to the Delicious Dignity Podcast. Let's settle in securely and ever so nicely into the brilliance of our own dignity. Hello, lovelies. I'm so excited to introduce a new series within this podcast called And it's going to be called Love Liberations. And this is a series within the podcast that I imagine will be a constant theme for the entire life of the podcast. So as long as the podcast lasts, this series lasts. And it's called Love Liberations because it's a concept I want to keep reminding you of, which is liberating the love that you hold inside, which is about loving what you love. It's about not holding back. Every five episodes, I am going to do a Love Liberations episode and I'm going to pick a thing, a person or a place that just brings out the love in me and that love is big and loud and spicy or quiet and gentle. It just depends, right? Because love comes in all shapes and sizes and forms. And so, yeah, it's for the joy. It's for the vibes. It's for positivity. It's for just being uplifting. and inspiring and really giving something for you to tune into that is about passion and sincerity. Because what are the consequences of holding back or what are the consequences of not loving what you love? When we are not allowed to say what we love or when we feel like we cannot say what we love or when we feel like we don't even know what we love, then that's how we lose our grounding, our stability, and therefore our dignity. We become like a rootless tree. We lose the light in our eyes. Because if we cannot ground ourselves, if we cannot root ourselves in love, then what are we grounding in? What are we rooting in? Is there something better than that for you to ground in? And what I've seen is that when we lose that grounding in the things that we love and our love in general, what happens is we sort of get lost in the humdrum and in the tasking of every day. And it's almost like we live an automatic life instead of a creative one. And I think that's why I chose the tagline for my business is, here's to being lit up from the inside out. Because this is about lighting you up, enlightenment, right? So that's what I'm hoping that this series does because it gives you the opportunity to love what you love by sort of tuning in or riding the coattails or the energy wave of what I love. And so that's why I'm kind of excited for this series. And so I thought I might also give you an analysis of why I have seen my clients and just people in general hold back from saying out loud what we, what they love, what they love, what we love, and what I've seen, what are the reasons that I have held back from loving what I love, whether it's out loud to another being, whether it's just to myself, whether it's just me and my diary, why have I held back from that love? And so here are all the reasons that I've seen over time. The number one reason is because we think that somebody else might corrupt what we love. They might yuck our yum. They might taint what it is that we love so much because what we love is so precious to us. We don't want to share it and then have somebody else just crap all over it. And that's a very real fear, right? So then instead of declaring what we love to people who would receive us well, we just stop declaring what we love at all. And so we hold back so much out of this fear that somebody might even take it away. And that's the second reason, not only just corrupt it, but also take it away from us. Somebody might steal it from us. We also hold back because we think what we love makes us foolish or silly or cheesy or cringy. We feel too vulnerable, too intimate declaring what we love. And a lot of us have intimacy avoidance. And this is one of the ways in which we engage with that is to hold back from loving what we love. We also think that sometimes someone may get offended by what we love, which is, you know, nowadays, the offensive levels or being offended is at an all time high, right? And so we think we'll offend someone by declaring what we love. For example, one of the things that I absolutely love is not wearing makeup, having my hair natural, not fussing too much with my appearance. And sometimes when I say that, other people think that I am attacking them for wearing makeup. And that's not what I was saying. What I was saying was, is that I just really enjoy having a clean, clear face and not fussing with my appearance too much. So that's an example of we think we might offend someone by declaring what it is we love. I have also seen, and I see women do this a lot, which is they apologize in advance before they declare something that they're excited by or something that they enjoy because they think their love is too much. I've done this myself too. And I've seen other women do it where they say something like, oh my God, I hope this is not too much, but I'm really excited by this thing. And I need to tell you about it. And they're just so excited. They're like, oh, I'm so sorry if this is too much. Because So they hold back from declaring what they love because they think their love is too much. And I know one of my biggest reasons from holding back on declaring what I love is because I've felt that people get suspicious of me when I declare what I love or they think I'm trying to sell them something or that I'm hitting on them or flirting with them by declaring what I love. I fear that people think I have an agenda of some kind, whether flirtatious or otherwise, for declaring what I love. For example, one of my favorite things to do, especially when I want to show appreciation to someone for doing something for me, is to offer them chai, homemade, real chai. It's my favorite thing to do, and so it doesn't matter who it is. I will offer them chai, as a way to say thank you. It's a silly little thing I do. I love chai and I love to share it with people. So many times people have accepted it with full love and full gratitude and full appreciation. But quite a few times people have been like suspicious of me thinking that I was selling them my chai or thinking that I was flirting with them because I was offering them chai. And I was just trying to say thank you. And when they had that reaction, I felt myself shut down just a little bit, but I felt it. I felt myself holding back from offering other people chai that I otherwise would have offered freely because of that one incident that happened just prior to me offering. You get what I mean, right? Sorry, I went all over the place there for a second, but you get what I mean that, um, By the way, I'm new to this podcasting thing. So please be patient with me as I learn how to explain my insides on the outsides for you. I will get better, I promise. Okay, so I felt myself shut down because I see a recent incident will happen where somebody is suspicious of me. And then when I am inspired again to offer chai to somebody, I will have a hesitation that I otherwise wouldn't have had. had that incident not happened. And so that kind of shutting down, that kind of closing off is what I'm talking about. It's not so much to prevent that closing down from happening. It's to just recognize that it is happening and go back to your normal, natural state of love and joy. And all of these things, you know, holding back from saying out loud what you love, from engaging with what you love, from just even noticing what it is you love, that holding back is a form of self-abuse. It's a form of self-rejection. It's almost as if it is less painful for you to reject yourself than it is for somebody else to reject you when you are in a state of joy and love. These are all the reasons why I've seen people hold back from loving what they love. And I give you those reasons just to To sort of see if you can see yourself in one of those reasons and to help you catch it when it happens, whenever it happens. Now, if you're someone who thinks that you don't hold back from loving what you love, then let me just ask you, because we need to get to the truth of what's going on, right? So just a question for self-contemplation. So if you think you don't hold back, let's just assess that. How comfortable are you talking about the events of your day, your opinions on your preferred political agenda, the news, the weather? How comfortable are you talking about other people's problems, your problems, gossip of the day, how bad your workday was, how a coworker irritated you? How often are you talking about those things versus how often have you just let it rip even for two minutes about something you love? What is the ratio or what is the percentage of those things? And that percentage will give you an assessment of where you are in loving what you love. You know what I've seen right now is the new trend of loving what you love. It's kind of sad that this is how people express themselves, but I understand there's also a sweetness to it. But I feel like we send each other gifts or memes. We see something funny that we like. And so we send it to our friends as a way of showing them or sharing with them what we love. And it's very sweet and it's nice, but it's kind of a cop-out, I think. And please don't come at me for this, but I do think it's a cop-out from actually sharing what it is you truly enjoy. Jokes are great. Memes are great. Gifts are great. But actually letting it rip for a few minutes on what it is you love and enjoy is is where the real sauce is, and that's what we're trying to get to. For example, one of my favorite conversations with one of my friends that I will remember until the day I die is how she let it rip just randomly. She just let it rip randomly in the middle of a conversation for three minutes about how much she loves looking at vegetables in the grocery store. To this day, it's my most favorite conversation and I will never forget it because all she talked about was how much she liked looking at all these vegetables and all the colors and how she just wanted to eat them and how it was the most beautiful thing. And I could have sat there listening to her talk about this for three days. I wanted her to continue. And it was so simple. But it's funny because I too have the same reaction to vegetables in the grocery store. So we had this bonding moment over vegetables in the grocery store. It just shows how you can declare what you love and have that love be a form of connection with another being instead of having a connection because of shared trauma or shared cultural conditioning or whatever other thing. systems are built around bonding that are not based in love. And that's just an example. An example of what loving what you love out loud with a friend may look like. So loving what you love as a concept is, I took inspiration, that phrase, that particular phrase of loving what you love, I took inspiration from the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. And I really want to read this poem out to you Because I think she says it even better than I do. So here we go. Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over, Announcing your place in the family of things. Now do you get why I named this episode, the title of this episode, Love What You Love, You Silly Goose? It's a homage to this poem. Okay, so I hope that poem helped you sink into what it is I'm trying to convey here. So here's a little caveat and disclaimer for loving what you love as an energy or as a sort of a life goal, if you will. Here's how you know that you actually love what you love, and it's not necessarily a habit or an addiction or part of your conditioning. When we really love what we love, it makes you want to share it with others in this very genuine way. And you're sharing it with others, not to convert them, not to convince them, not to not for any other agenda, but because you want to give away this love you have. And maybe you have a small agenda to see them benefit from it, but you have no other agenda other than that. And I think for me and from what I've seen, that's the number one way to tell that you sincerely love this thing that you love. So how does this concept and this new series sound to you? I don't know if I already said it before, but it will be every five episodes. There will be a Love Liberation episode. And yeah, so let me know. You can tell me over at Delicious Dignity on Instagram. Okay, so here is a three-part ritual to just sort of open up your heart, help you tune into the energy of what it is you love, and give you a little boost, if nothing else. And this is a ritual we'll work on will sort of add to as we go through every Love Liberation episode of this podcast. So maybe you have a separate book just for Love Liberation, or maybe you just... By a separate book, I mean a separate journal. Or maybe you just have a part of your journal just dedicated to this intention of loving what you love, okay? All right, so the three-part ritual starts with something we've already done, and that is taking stock. So how comfortable are you talking about your opinions, the weather, problems, gossip, et cetera, the economy, your job, versus how comfortable are you letting it rip for two to three minutes on what it is you love? You can rate that comfort. from one to 10, 10 being something you're most comfortable with and one being something you're least comfortable with. You can even take stock of the people that you are most comfortable saying those things to. So maybe you have a person in mind and you think, how comfortable am I telling them my political agenda or my problems versus how comfortable am I telling them what it is I love. And note the rating that you gave for that specific person. You can even take stock of what situations you find yourself being more comfortable in, talking about what you love versus talking about other things. And you're just sort of taking stock, okay? And then overall, you want to see, you want to get a percentage, a ratio of How much do you actually talk about what it is you love versus about everything else? So maybe look at the last three days or the last week and what did you actually talk about? What did you actually think about, engage with, and use that as a comparison to give you a rating or an actual lived life experience fact about how you've been holding back or not holding back on what it is you love. Okay, so once you have that ratio, now we're going to go to the second part of this ritual. And why do we do this? Why do we take stock? It is not to shame you. It is not to create problems. It is not to make you think that you're not doing well in life. You're taking stock because of the simple fact that most of healing involves awareness. Sometimes awareness is half the battle. Sometimes awareness is the entire point. And just being aware of something is enough. That is why we take stock. Not for any other reason, okay? Okay. The second part of this ritual is tuning in to heart energy or heart philosophy, if you don't like the word energy, okay? And as with anything new, When you first start to do it, maybe you'll feel weird. Maybe you'll feel strange. Maybe you think nothing happened. This is all normal. Don't pay any attention to that. Just pay attention to actually doing the exercise. And this exercise will take two minutes, okay? So it's really simple. This is how you know when an exercise is powerful because it's simple. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but it's really... Just commit yourself to this exercise, okay? So... Take a glass of water and put it in front of you. It can be water. It can be your favorite drink. It can be chai, as in my case. Take a drink or a beverage and put it in front of you. And now say to yourself that you want to sip this drink mindfully. And so pick up your drink and sip the drink with the intention to sip it mindfully. Just note the effect or the feeling or thoughts. Put your drink back down. Look at the drink and say to yourself that now you want to sip this drink heartfully. Just pick up your drink and take a sip with the intention of sipping this drink heartfully. Just note the effect or the feelings or the thought. What was the shift between these feelings and thoughts? What was the effect compared to what you had before? You might have to do this exercise a few times over the course of a few days to really be able to feel the difference. We're not thinking about the difference. We're not analyzing the difference. We're feeling the difference. So go ahead and do it a few more times. And I say to do it over the course of a few days to just give yourself a break so you're not trying to force an effect, but you're just allowing an effect. to see the difference. And what you're really doing here is shifting your awareness from just always going head forward to a little bit more heart forward. And that helps you get a little bit more space in your joy and in your love. And it also helps you lighten up over time the more you do this exercise. It's so simple. It's amazing. Okay, now the third and final part of this ritual is heart words. So a lot of modern day language, especially English and in Western countries, has become a little bit violent and hyper-masculine and devoid of feeling. For example, I did so well, I killed it. I got to bang that out. You know, it's just unnecessarily violent. and using violence as a way to explain impact. Bang, kill, whatever, you get my point. And I just feel like we don't need to fight that, but I do feel like we have to reclaim language in order to reclaim the way we think, feel, and experience the world. Because the way we experience the world is directly tied to how we experience language. So in this ritual, you will make a list of your very own heart words. These are words that are close to your soul. They help you identify what is close to your tenderness, that tender spot in you. And that's what we're going for. Here are my requirements for this list, okay? There has to be at least 20 words in your list. That may seem like a lot, but that's the point. Just don't get up until you've made it through 20 words. And if 20 words came easy, then write down 50. You want to feel a stretch in this exercise. And here's the thing, they do not all have to be in English or in any particular language. You can mix them up. You can say some of them are in English, some of them are in Hindi, some of them are in Chinese. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be a particular language. Just make sure that a majority of the words are in the dominant language you speak. You can even have the words in this 20-word list, you can even have them be sounds you make. For example, for me, one of my heart words, which is a sound that I make, is eee! Eee! Like I just have this, I have this very, it's not too shrill, but it's not deep either. But it's a little voice I make when I know that I've tuned into heart energy. And that's my signal to my brain to say, oh, I love this. They can also be gestures. So those 20 words don't have to just be words or sounds. They can also be gestures. One of the things I do is I go on my tippy toes when I am in my heart or when I love something. I go on my tippy toes and I do this little bouncy thing. So that's one of my gestures in my heart words. None of these words have to make sense to anyone else except you. Nobody is grading you. Nobody is looking at them. Nobody is telling you what's right and what's wrong. This is your language, your own language in which you experience the world of what it is you love to love. Oh, let that just sink in. I gave you two examples of my heart words. I didn't want to give you too many because I didn't want to influence your list. But if you really need more examples of heart words, I put them in the podcast accompaniment, the ritual accompaniment that I have. You'll see the link in the podcast description. But I really recommend you don't read that list until you've at least tried to do this on your own, okay? And what I imagine is that every episode, we will build on this list of heart words. So you want to get them started. Okay. All right. Watch out for every fifth episode and let me know how these rituals go. And if you have any questions over at Delicious Dignity and stay tuned. And until next time, may you uphold your dignity by loving what you love. Bye.