I’m not sure if it’s because March is my birth month and I always get excited to welcome in my next birthday by focusing a little more on me, or because with the onset of Spring and longer days, I always feel I have a little more energy. Either way, March tends to be the month that I dedicate to personal challenges. 

A couple years ago, for example, I got on Instagram every day in March to lead live meditations. I am not a huge fan of going live on Instagram, it somehow feels very intimate but also incredibly exposed, all at the same time. But I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to push myself out of my comfort zone a bit while also taking time every day to meditate and share that time and connection with others. It was a really good experience. And while I’m still not a huge fan of going live on Instagram, it definitely helped me feel more comfortable with it. Not to mention, I absolutely loved getting messages from people who joined me in the challenge to meditate daily for a month. It helped keep me motivated to keep going.

During that month of live Instagram meditations, the Ukraine war broke out and I used the live platform to raise money and support for those in need. It heartwarming when I see people come together to donate their time and love to others.

Interestingly, I also had some of loving-kindness and peace meditations flagged for “hate speech” and Instagram took them down for a few months. Eventually, after weeks of saying the meditations definitely were not hate speech, META decided the red-flag allegations were untrue (obviously) and re-posted the videos. 

Their removal came as a vivid reminder that while dedications of love and peace can often seem so flimsy, they are actually very powerful acts of protest and true game changers.

Over and over again across history we see that the more we focus on hate and negativity, the more we get sucked into the cycles of hate and negativity. As saying goes, “like begets like.”

But, when we allow a push for love and peace, this cracks the negative cycles. 

There’s a powerful poem by Dr. Kamand Kojouri, They Want Us To Be Afraid, that does an beautiful job at summing up my feelings on negativity and hate cycles that perverse our humanity. I first came across this poem in 2017 after the inauguration of President Trump in 2017—I believe that’s what she wrote the poem as a response to—and distinctly felt Kojouri’s pain and fear of what might come to pass, but also felt the poem’s promise that no matter what, we will not give in to the cycles of negativity. As she writes, “we will not hate.”

Kojouri was gracious enough to allow me to share her poem here with you:

They want us to be afraid.
They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes,
to barricade our doors and hide our children.
They aim to make us fear life!

They want us to hate.
They want us to hate the other,
to practice aggression and promote oppression.
They aim to divide us all!

They want us to be inhuman.
They want us to throw out our kindness,
to conceal our love and bury our hope.
They aim to take our light!

They think their brick walls
will separate us.
They think their damned bombs
will defeat us.

They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that my soul and your soul are old friends.
They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that when they cut you, I bleed.

They are so ignorant they don’t understand
that we will never be afraid,
we will never hate,
and we will never be silent.
For life is only ours!

And as life is ours, it is ours to dictate how we will respond or react to the events that we encounter. 

Everyday we have the opportunity to notice that life is a spectrum and while all emotions are good to feel and accept, that does not mean we have to dwell.

Everyday we have the choice to protest and challenge cycles of negativity with moments of pause and small acts of love.

Everyday we have the ability to find the opposite of the inner cycles that hold us back so we can instead break free of their chains.

And by us, I don’t just mean ourselves as individuals, but us as in a collective. Collectively, negative inner cycles morph into global cycles which lead to mass suffering. (Cue horrific images of the devastation and dehumanization currently happening in Gaza and the continued onslaught of the war in Ukraine.)

Studies have shown that internal negativity and negative emotionality leads to increased aggression and violence. When we’re unhappy, hateful and negative with ourselves, this leads to us being unhappy, hateful and negative with others. It’s a dangerous cycle. But one we do have the ability to start to break each time we choose to challenge our own hate and negativity and instead inspire love and peace within ourselves.

That’s why, in my experience, it’s so important to take time every day to pause, reconnect and move with love. And so that leads me to this March’s challenge: move & meditate for 30 days. I view it as an act of love and giving back. Sending love to myself through movement and meditation, inspiring greater connection through intentional affirmations, and from there inviting that love to spill out into the world around me.