One of the most powerful concepts we can incorporate more into our lives is that of unconditional love, both for ourselves and for others. According to Wikipedia, unconditional love is “affection without any limitations, or love without conditions”. It almost sounds sacrificial, like you have to give up something in order to feel love. The truth is that you give up much more when you choose not to love.
We think that love is something that just happens to us. The language of our society reinforces this concept. We “fall in love”. As if we accidentally slipped into it. But love is always a choice. Love is a feeling we experience when we think loving thoughts.
Unconditional love is always a choice, too. We think that if we choose to love unconditionally, we benefit the object of our love. But the one who benefits the most is us. Unconditional love is a gift you give to yourself.
When you choose to love without boundaries, you get to experience more love. You might act more loving as a result and the object of your love might get the benefit of that experience. But even if you just sit there and do nothing but feel the emotion of love when you think about someone, YOU are experiencing an incredible emotion. YOU are benefitting from that feeling. YOU are creating more love in your life just by choosing to feel that emotion.
Unconditional love is a gift you give to yourself.
When we think about our challenging relationships, imagine what could be different if you made the choice more often to love unconditionally. No matter what someone else does or says, they can’t take away your ability to love.
Let’s take kids, for example. They may misbehave and talk back and be rude and messy, but you get to choose to love them anyway. A parent-child love is a natural love, so it’s often easier to make that choice here compared to other relationships. But in a moment of chaos or high emotions, we often forget to make this choice. We forget that love is even a choice. We are overcome with negative emotions and in the moment, all thinking is gone.
One of my favorite questions to ask myself when faced with a challenging moment in a relationship where it seems that emotions may be high and the situation may escalate is this:
“What would love do?”
It’s so simple, yet so perfect. You are about to say something or do something that you may later regret. What would love do?
Love feels good. If given the choice, most of us would choose to feel it more often. Instead, we feel disappointment, frustration, and anger. We forget that these feelings are choices, too. We act like we have no control over these feelings. We give our power over to others too often. If they would act a certain way, or say or do the right thing, only then do we get to feel a certain way.
But love is an inside job. Love comes from within, from our own minds.
Whether you are single or married or something else, whether you are a parent or step-parent or have no kids, give yourself a gift this Valentine’s day. Choose love. What would love look like? What would love do?
