Episode 12: Love

Hello, and welcome to the Love Your Life podcast. This is episode 12, Love. Today we're going to talk about love. It's my favorite feeling and it's what I'm inviting each of us to partake in every time we join in and listen to the podcast with me. It seems fitting that I should break down the what love is since I'm using it in my title. I think it's safe to say that cultures and societies around the world in general would agree that we need more love. So let's use our time today to help us create more love in our own lives and spheres of influence. And if enough of us do this, the collective love account will rise.. The problem I see is that love can feel elusive for some of us and many times outside of our control. It can also be hard to remember that love is available to us when we're focusing on things that are outside of us, . Even when we're doing good things for a good reason, we can get lost in the pressure, the hurry, and the work of it all, and end up feeling all of the feelings that are anything and everything but love. So let me simplify it for you. I think I can even give you An equation before we get off today that will make the outcome of love more predictable and consistent for you to start with. Let's decide what love is just like when we talked about gratitude. Love can be things that we do. which would make me classify it as an action. In fact, my favorite song about love is titled Something That We Do by Clint Black. It's back from the late 90s. It says, love isn't something that we have, it's something that we do. I do agree that there is so much love to be found in the actions that we take and many times even in the actions that we intentionally do not take. But you're probably starting to catch on that I'm always telling you that actions are things that we do because of what we feel. Back in podcast number six, I introduced the idea to you that feelings are fuel for our actions and understanding that feelings are vibrations of energy. That are created by our thoughts and that the energy of these feelings drives our actions for me. is and was a game changer because it labels and demystifies the process of where feelings come from. And I don't have to be at the will or whim of my feelings. I get to understand that I'm a participant in the process of feelings. If you're sitting around waiting for other people to do things that make you feel loved, thinking that you only get to feel love if someone else does something good or kind or attractive, then you are at the mercy of people and the world outside of you, and depending on who and what you're surrounded by, it can make love feel very far away. On the contrary, if you understand that love is a feeling, and that feeling is created by the thoughts you think, you will have the power to feel love anytime you choose. This makes thinking thoughts that create the feeling of love in our body and actual skillset instead of something that happens to us, falls upon us or can be given or taken from us. I think about the idea of lovability a little differently now than I grew up thinking or understanding. I used to think that lovability was something that people are or are not. Like I'm lovable to others when I behave sweetly and am clean and look good. Or others were lovable when they did nice things for me, acted in ways that I like, showed me they care about me, or when my kids were asleep instead of throwing fits. The problem is that if you only get to feel the feeling of love, when things outside of you are generally working in your favor, and you only get to feel loved by others when you're at your best, which will never be more than 50 percent of the time, you're pretty much sunk. A better way to think about lovability is to separate the words and to think about it as your ability to love. Like, I have a high level of ability to love, or I have a high level of love. ability, or he has a low level of ability to love, or he has a low level of love ability. It has nothing to do with what people outside of us bring to the table, and everything to do with how we think about people and things outside of us, and how we think about ourselves. Because it can be hard to feel love for others when you don't know how to feel love for yourself. So if the feeling of love depends on me, Or on my ability to think quality thoughts about the people and things around me. This means I can choose to feel this feeling any time I want to. No matter how imperfect the people and things around me are. And this is fantastic news. Because I don't know about you, but I know for sure I'm not always lovable. And some might say, not often lovable. But I can love me anyway. And I know that the people around me are not perfectly lovable and I can love them right where they are too. One of my favorite things about being a life coach is that I get to see love as a fuel for people's actions up close all the time. Most of the people I work with are fighting for more love in their lives, in one arena or another. Whether it's taming some habit or belief in strains relationships or learning how to surrender and accept the people we do love exactly as they are, the desire to feel more love is the driver. Maybe someone is noticing that they're so focused on work that they're depleted and short tempered at home, and they want to figure out how to balance their life. Love is the driver. Others think they want to change things in their lives, like their homes, their jobs, their locations, or their partners, so that they can feel more satisfaction and love for their lives. And they find out they need to love it just the way it is before they make a change. This is because they need to develop the skill set of thinking quality and loving thoughts about imperfect things that they have right now. , if they want to have any chance to think quality and loving thoughts about the next set of imperfect things they bring into their world, because we can all change circumstances as much as we want, but we will always bring our thinking patterns with us to every new person, place or thing we get to, and those thoughts will determine how we experience the next new and shiny thing, I see people look in the mirror at self every day and help them learn what they can control and what they cannot control. Every time someone takes a step forward in the realm of personal responsibility and emotional sovereignty, the chance for more love is created and it is one of the most beautiful things on this planet. So where is it that you want to feel and create more love this holiday season? Do you want to start with accepting yourself right where you are and let go of expectations that turn you into a pretzel? I invite you to decide today that no matter what you get done this season or this lifetime, You are worthy of love. Pick one thing about yourself that's not so much of a stretch to love and practice appreciating that until it's easy to love it. Then move on to something that you feel a little more judgmental about and be curious about a way you could appreciate that attribute of self. What if you're so busy feeling resentful that there are too many things you're supposed to do and you can't feel love and joy doing them anymore? This is a perfect place to up your ability to love. My favorite reframe here is to ask yourself what you actually want to have happen. You might actually want to make cookies, but you got sidetracked by feeling overwhelmed. And then you reframe that job into a should, or a have to category. As long as it stays filed in have to, or should land, land, it will be hard to feel love or positivity even. So ask yourself if this is something you have to do or something you want to do. If it still feels like it is something you have to do, then I would ask yourself if you really want to believe that thought. What would happen if you didn't do it? Maybe the consequences of not doing it are something you're not willing to live with. Well then, my friend, it is actually something you want to do. Because you could certainly let the consequences happen, but you're choosing not to. And once you're choosing it, you get to remember that nobody is pushing it on you. This is all yours. And if you're going to choose to do it, I might as well find a reason inside of that choice that feels more loving and less resentful. I can feel annoyed all day that I have to get the Christmas decorations up or my kids will be disappointed and then resent my kids and Christmas. Or I can remember that it's not my job to manage their feelings for them and that disappointment is always an option. , but that I actually really like when they are excited to sit by the glow of the Christmas tree. And I can let that desire be the thing I focus on. Their faces in the glow of a Christmas tree, their smiles when they eat my warm bread with butter, their excitement when they open a present they really wanted, are all things that I want. None of it has to happen, but I sure love it when it's here. So what do I want to do about all the details between now and then? I've now shifted the fuel for my actions when I think about what I want, and what I want is to feel the feeling of love that comes when I think of and serve others. Which brings me to my conclusion today. The very idea of Christmas brings the chance to think about so many loving things. Whether it be from the religious perspective that there's a God from heaven who came down in human form and started that journey as a helpless babe in the humblest of circumstances so that he could make a sacrifice for the sins and imperfections that are inevitable in this human condition we are all experiencing. And we remember that no matter what gift we try to give others, it will never equate to the gift he gave to the world when he laid his life down for us, which is the ultimate reminder of love. Or whether it be from a secular perspective, where we take the time to think about what a good and kind Santa figure will bring to those little ones around us. And we join in the spirit of it all and think about what gifts we can give to those we love. and those in need. And we reach outside of ourselves to do good and kind things for others. That is also love. There's so much light and goodness in this world. . And light has something going for it that dark does not have. Light will always take away dark, but dark cannot take away light. It's up to each of us to decide what we're going to look for. And if you focus on what you want to find, you will be able to think the thoughts that create feelings that will lead you to it. So what's the equation for love I promised you at the beginning today? My equation is thoughts create feelings, feelings drive actions, and actions create results. So, plug in love into that equation. Loving thoughts equal loving feelings, which create loving actions. which create the results of more love in your life. It is always the thoughts that begin each equation. Thank you for spending your time with me today during this holiday season. I feel so much love when I think about what I want to share with you and when I think about who might be listening and where you are in your lives, what trials you might be facing, what circumstances you might want to change, and what desires you have in your heart, I hope you're able to make the little thought corrections or decisions you need to make to suck all of the goodness, love and joy you can out of this time of the year. I'll talk to you soon.