episode 04. SENSORY VIEWS pt2

who do we follow? thelawdsway

Touch | Taste

Welcome to part two of Sensory Views. In this post, we’re going to look at the touch and taste senses. These will be split into two different topics being: love languages and the power of the tongue.

TOUCH: love languages

The fourth sense is touch. Touch is responsible for a lot of factors that affects the human body. This includes protection from certain elements, sensing what is in contact with our bodies and communicating with other human beings.

I wanted to talk about the well-known topic of Love Languages but rather than talk about it within the context of relationships with a partner, I am going to talk about it in relation to the relationship we have with ourselves.

There are 5 well known love languages which are: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time and physical touch.

Words of Affirmation: these are verbal acknowledgements of affection, words of appreciation and verbal encouragement. These are written and/or spoken words used to communicate the love and respect that you have for someone.

Acts of Service: an act done fulfilled in acknowledgement that the outcome will be of appreciation to who the act of service was done for and/or to. It is the act of going out of your way to make someone else’s life easier. It follows the mantra of ‘actions speak louder than words’ for those who prefer to see the love being shown and not just through words said aloud.

Receiving Gifts: it is the visual symbols of love. I have actually seen debates about this love language in terms of how it is materialistic love and not genuine love. However, while strong points can be made agreeing with the former statement, this love language does not focus on the monetary values of the gifts but rather the symbolic thoughts and reasons behind why a specific item had been chosen to show someone’s love to their loved one.

Quality Time: it is the time spent close with loved ones that is more important and special than the generic moments that you would usually share. It is productive and portrays the true meaning of offering someone your undivided attention.

Physical Touch: it is how we can express love through touch, physical closeness and other forms of physical connection that portrays the value of feeling secure, warm and at home with that person.

To me, out of all the five love languages, I would say that showing words of affirmations would be the simplest way to start in the development of your self-love. Speaking words of affirmation to yourself can be as simple as waking up each day, looking into the mirror and saying:

I am loved.

I am smart.

I am beautiful.

I am appreciated.

Today will be a great day.

Trust me, it goes a long way when you take the time to speak positive words to yourself about yourself. In the same process, whilst you progress into adapting these daily words of affirmations into your lifestyle, it gives you the opportunity to reflect on the image that you had of yourself and realise the growth that you have been able to experience, since you took that first step to love yourself a bit more and appreciate how far you have come and where you will go.

I think in turn, once you have been able to grasp that ability to love yourself through words of affirmations, you can now put in the work to show how much you love and appreciate yourself through actions. This leads swiftly onto the next love language- acts of service.

Now an act of service can be ticking off that task you needed to complete off from your checklist, doing that gym workout that you needed to get done or putting in the effort required towards planning for your present and future goals. As an example, I am a Christian, and one act of service I do as a symbol of the self-love that I have for myself is to spend time with God daily. This act of service would usually be done by completing my daily devotion, listening to worship songs, praying, taking time out of my day to just talk to Him and for some seasons to undertake a period of prayer and fasting. Honestly, my days feel more productive, promising, peaceful, loving, and just good from deciding to do this act of service of spending time with God.

An act of service has the power to uplift your mood for the day and make you feel more appreciative of your day and that is why I think it to be a crucial way on how to grow your self-love. Yes, these acts do not necessarily link to the generic meaning of self-love, but who said it needed to have a link in the first place?! The true meaning of self-love is in the word itself- self. The acts that you do throughout the day needs to be beneficial for yourself first, after all, it’s the same acts that will be affecting you the most out of everyone who may be involved in the service.

I think it would be great to move on to receiving gifts as, for the greater understanding of how these love languages can be effectively used to grow self-love, it can be easy to draw a linkage between the connotations of acts of service to receiving gifts. As an example, the act of service of working hard and getting things ticked off of your checklist could be matched with gifting yourself with a day off. Another example of the act of service was doing that gym workout you needed to get done. You have been consistent; you are seeing results so gift yourself with a rest day that you needed to have. Lastly, the act of putting in the effort to work on your present and future goals could be gifted with buying yourself some jewellery, clothes, or shoes that you may have had your eye on for a while or taking yourself out on a date. It could even be buying items to add to the stock of your goal if such goal was a product.

Gifts do not need to be expensive; they just need to symbolise your appreciation for yourself. Gifts can be handmade. The main purpose and outcome is to treat yourself.

Now in terms of showing self-love through the physical touch love language, I wanted to focus it on things like skin care, health care, hygiene and pamper days. It is so important that you plan some time where you just focus on treating yourself good physically. There is that saying of ‘when you look good you feel good’ and by following this motion through the examples I previously mentioned, or maybe the ideas that you have already planned to do, it can help to improve your self-love.

As for quality time, I think it can be casted as an umbrella over all of the different love languages that we know of today. Every love language needs quality time to be carefully and deeply carried out to ensure that you are actually taking the time to show genuine appreciation and love to yourself. To focus on it as its own individual love language, this language is so important, and could be met on a daily basis, but if that is not possible, we should aim to do it often.

This is YOUR LIFE!

Again, this is your life.

Everything that happens externally, from your own actions and everything you experience in this life centres around YOU. The time you are using to do certain things, is it beneficial to your lifestyle, or the lifestyle towards which you are aspiring? From another perspective, in this life of yours, are you putting aside quality time where you give yourself your undivided attention to take the time to learn more about yourself? These are signs of the type of self-love that you should be showing to yourself.

You can adapt both types of quality time into your lifestyle or just one of them, either way, start making use of the quality time that you need to be showing yourself.

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TASTE: the power of the tongue

The fifth and last sense is taste. Taste allows us to figure out if something is going to be useful to our bodies or dangerous.

The power of the tongue- there is a theoretically, shared common knowledge of how we can perceive the definition of the power of the tongue to mean life and death.

The Bible speaks of this in Proverbs 18:20-21. From the Christian Standard Bible version, verse 20 states from the fruit of a person’s mouth his stomach is satisfied; he is filled with the product of his lips and verse 21 death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who live it will eat its fruit.

Frank Sonnenberg, an author, depicts the meaning saying it is better to bite your tongue than to eat your words.

Samuel Johnson, also an author, implied to never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.

Faydra D. Fields, an author and publisher said sometimes you have to decide which will hurt more: biting your tongue or having your say.

Diogenes, a Greek philosopher inferred, we have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.

Joel Osteen, an American pastor said, you can change your world by changing your words. Remember death and life are in the power of the tongue.

6 examples, though using different words to explain their perspective, each explored and concluded with similar definitions to the connotations that surrounds the meaning of the Power of the Tongue.

I am a Christian, born and raised and I have had this statement instilled in me since I was young. Needless to say, I wholeheartedly believe in the prospect that what you say out loud will come to pass in its own way, in its own time and will have its own consequences whether positive or negative. But let’s break this statement down to its two main words, power, and tongue, to explore their meaning as separate components.

Power. It’s the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way. To direct or influence the behaviour of your own or others in the course of events. It provides a person or organisation strong influence within a particular context.

Tongue. So scientifically, it is the fleshy muscular organ in the mouth used for tasting, licking, swallowing, and articulating speech. In general, it is used in reference to a person’s style or manner of speaking and gives us the ability to express our feelings and opinions freely.

Let’s draw out key words from their meanings. We have direct, influence, particular acts, articulating speech, style, manner, express, feelings, opinions and freely.

Now we can spend forever dissecting the meaning of the power of the tongue, but let’s just focus on this:

‘What you speak over your life and about yourself matters.’

It matters over the connotations, descriptions, perceptions, outlooks, presentations, viewpoints, stance, and positions that it can move, place, settle, and develop your life in. I say this because you can’t be manifesting through your mouth everything that you want to achieve and which you seek to obtain in life and be using that same mouth to be wishing on other people’s downfall, let alone your own downfall, through the doubts and feelings of imposter syndrome that you casted over yourself when things got tough. Just like the great things that you manifested for will come to pass, so will the negativity and stress that you spoke of for your life, even though you did not directly mean to.

Words matter.

What you say for yourself matters.

What you say about yourself matters.

What you pray for yourself matters.

How you speak about yourself to others matters.

The visions and dreams that you speak out loud about yourself to yourself and/or to others matters.

Be careful about what you say.

You may be in passing conversations, and subconsciously, as you try to make sure you fit in within the group, agree and speak the negative words like ‘oh I’m failing too,’ ‘I know this is so hard, I’m never going to pass it,’ ‘oh no yeah, I’m just as bad or I’m just as stupid, don’t worry about it.’ Okay you can let out that breath of relief as you now feel a part of the group, but do you even understand the detriment that you had just placed over your life and future because you allowed yourself to speak those words about yourself?

You did it.

No one else.

Though I know that we live in a society where people can troll you or make you feel less than on a daily basis-oh the influence of social media!- but that does not mean that you should join the movement and start applying that mindset about yourself to yourself.

No.

What good will that do? Being quick to openly say negative, damaging, set backing, limiting and stilling words over your life to either fit in or when things get tough does you no good. It has the power to place you in an environment where you move backwards in your progression.

Again, I say be careful and think twice before you speak.

I wanted to end this part of the episode with some positive words that you can speak over your life daily. These are words that you can say in the mirror every morning, say to others when you speak to yourself, say to others when you speak about yourself, say to yourself when you’re praying or manifesting about your goals, your dreams. Maybe you can write them down and share with others so more people can build up this mindset and perception about themselves. As you read it, speak it over yourself:

I am aspiring, authentic, amazing, bright, blessed, beautiful, creative, caring, courageous, delightful, devoted, divine, enliven, excellent, elegant, fearless, fulfilled, fabulous, gifted, great, genuine, happy, hopeful, honourable, invaluable, indispensable, iconic, joyful, jubilant, just, kind, knowledgeable, kingly, loved, living, liberated, majestic, magnificent, made, noble, now, notable, opportunistic, open-minded, original, powerful, prepared, peaceful, qualified, queenly, quality, respected, radiant, real, succeeding, safe, secured, talented, trustworthy, thriving, uplifting, unique, understanding, valiant, virtuous, victorious, wonderful, wealth, worthy, youthful, young, and zenful.

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BIBLICAL REFERENCE

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 CSB Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things

Proverbs 18:21 CSB Death and life are in the power of the tongue

It is important for us to be interconnected with our senses as they affect our everyday lives. For me, I believe that such interconnection should be aligned to our ability to discern to know how we are to navigate life in this world. Who should lead the navigation? God. In this world it is paramount that we stay close to God and ensure we live a life through Him. With that said, we need to keep love, output love to others and show ourselves love how God orchestrated for love to mean; we need to be mindful for what we say to and over ourselves and others as words sting and there are consequences behind what we speak. Let us live in the way of the Lord, speaking life-fulfilling, motivational and encouraging words.

Remember, Trust in the Lord, Love like the Lord and Walk with the Lord. TLW

who do we follow? thelawdsway