“At the end of life, our questions are very simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?” ~ Jack Kornfield
Nicole Antonie, my friend and the owner of Soylites, sent this lovely piece about 10 Ways to Love, and I wanted to share it with you. If we could all love like this, imagine how different the world would be.
10 Ways to Love
Tell them about their brilliance. They likely can’t see it and they don’t know its immensity, but you can see it, and you can illuminate it for them.
Be authentic, and give others the gift of the real you and a real relationship. Ask your real questions. Share your real beliefs. Go for your real dreams. Tell your truth.
Don’t confuse “authenticity” with sharing every complaint, resentment, or petty reaction in the name of “being yourself.” Meditate, write, or do yoga to work through anxiety, resentment, and stress on your own so you don’t hand off those negative moods to everyone around you. Sure, share sadness, honest dilemmas, and fears, but be mindful: don’t pollute.
Listen, listen, listen. Don’t listen to determine if you agree or disagree. Listen to get to know what is true for the person in front of you. Get to know an inner landscape that is different from your own, and enjoy the journey. Remember that if, in any conversation, nothing piqued your curiosity and nothing surprised you, you weren’t really listening.
Don’t waste your time or energy thinking about how they need to be different. Really. Chuck that whole thing. Their habits are their habits. Their personalities are their personalities. Let them be, and work on what you want to change about you—not what you think would be good to change about them.
Remember that you don’t have to understand their choices to respect or accept them.
Don’t conflate accepting with being a doormat or betraying yourself. Let them be who they are, entirely. Then, you decide what you need, in light of who they are. Do you need to make a direct request that they change their behavior in some way? Do you need to take care of yourself better? Do you need to set a boundary or to change the relationship? Take care of yourself well, without holding anyone else in contempt.
Give of yourself, but never sacrifice or compromise yourself. Stop if resentment is building and retool. Don’t do the martyr thing. It helps no one and nothing.
Remember that everyone you encounter was created by divine intelligence and has an important role to play in the universe. Treat them as such.
If you want to keep growing emotionally and spiritually for the rest of your life, accept this as your mantra and try to live as if it were true: Everything that I experience from another human being is either love, or a call for love.
February might be the month of Love. But I think that we can proclaim every day a ‘Day of Love’. Why not?
In the Hawaiian framework, the word ALOHA means many things beyond just ‘hello’. It also means ‘To Love is To Be Happy With. Be Loving. Be Happy’.
For me, when I say this statement to myself a few times, I breathe more deeply, and accept everything more lovingly. It is a great mantra to help to relax and feel acceptance. Acceptance for ‘what is’. When we accept the way things are, without an energy of resignation (a very different energy), then we relax,and we have more space to love.
The fears drop away, the resistance melts, and there is more breath in our bodies, and more space for Life to work things out for us – without all that effort of forcing things to be different than what they are. Try it out now – say the sentence a few times over and let it seep into your cells. And please let me know your experience in the comments below.
With Easter around the corner, no matter what your faith, it’s a good time for New Beginnings – to reflect on what you’d like to change, what you need to accept, and how you can love more authentically – yourself, others and situations.
