Love is challenging.
Here’s the easy part; Love will make you happier than anything else. The hard part; it will be the most difficult decision you’ll ever follow through on.
Is that an encouraging opener? No….well, yes and no. But, it’s real.
You’re not going to get it right the first time. Or, the second time. Or, the thirty-seventh time. In fact, chances are, you’ll never always get it right. The number of years you’ve been on this Earth is the number of years of learned behaviour and thoughts that you have to reverse. Thoughts that; you’re not good enough, smart enough, attractive enough, that you can’t be happy, that more for someone else means less for you, that you’re in competition with the person beside you, and the list goes on.
None of these things is true. We believe them because we’ve heard them and thought them enough times throughout “life”, that we’ve created truth of them.
When you learned to ride a bicycle, did you fall down? When you set your goal to complete a half-marathon, was your first practice run 13.1 miles? Your first day at a new job; did you know how to do everything?
Yet, when it comes to being Love, we think we should be able to do this right away. And, in every instance. Then, obviously, when it doesn’t happen that way, we think we’re failing.
You only fail when you quit.
The only way we can get to where we’re going is to know that we’re where we need to be. And, practice.
Practice, practice, practice.
Like learning to ride a bike, like running a half-marathon and like the first day at anything, Love takes practice. What we need to keep present is that to be Love and to Love ourselves, understand that we’re going to slip up. It’s okay. We have the preconceived notion that when it comes to our mental or emotional capacity, we’re static – we have no room for change and “how we are is how we are”. False. If Love = infinite and you = Love, the math is easy. Your potential has zero limitations.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
If this seems familiar, it’s because it is. Repetition is the hook. To be Love, we need to constantly remind ourselves of what we really are. And, we need change. Whether that’s changing physically what’s around us, emotionally what’s in us or our mental response to those who challenge us, we need to remind ourselves that we are who changes us. Change doesn’t necessarily mean removing yourself from your environment (although, it can), it just means changing your response to your environment. I know that it’s often said that “you’re a product of your environment” but I’d like to challenge that by adding “your environment is a product of you”.
Anything we’ve learned, we can unlearn. Feelings of guilt and resentment and judgement are not who we really are. Keep practising and keep repeating and keep giving yourself (and the people around you) second and third and forty first chances at Love. And, for gosh sake, don’t be so serious. 🙂
be Love.
Love takes time. I think before I can love someone or something, I need to trust them first.
Trust Love. Trust that it knows what you need to be you.