Morning Vibes With Dr Jerry - The First-Episode 138/Choose Love

Monday                         29th January 2018

Morning Vibes With Dr. Jerry - the First

Hello and welcome to #MorningVibesWithDrJerryTheFirst-Episode 138

Title:          3 Critical Choices To Make In This 2018 - Choose Love

In the past 2 days I had been discussing what I termed the critical choices to make in order to make 2018 a great year.

I had discussed Choose Health as the first, and I had discussed Choose Yourself as the second, today I want to discuss the third one and which is Choose Love

What Is Love?

In the course of preparing this text, I had called up some persons I know and asked them what I thought was a simple question - What is love?, the answers I got ranged from the very banal to the very esoteric.

Searching online, did not help matters either because the definitions were muddled and confusing. As confusing as stating that love was simply sex. Like seriously?

Isn't it amazing that one of the most extraordinary and satisfying feelings we can have as human beings cannot really be captured by us in words?

However, I eventually found a definition of love that satisfied me and would satisfy you too.

So, what is love?

Love is “An intangible connection between two people that feels exceptionally good.”

The strength and depth of the connection is determined by two conditions.

The level of self-acceptance each person has for themselves.

How open, honest and exposed each individual is willing to be.

Qualities always present with these connections are:

Trust – believing in their integrity and good intentions towards you.

Respect – concluding they are good and worthy of appreciation.

Affection – demonstrating your good intentions through your actions.

Love is not an emotion. Love is the connection. Your feelings are a reaction to the quality of that connection.

From the above definition, there are two parts to love

Loving Yourself First

The part I find most interesting in this definition is the condition that makes love more powerful.

First, self-acceptance. You’ve heard the phrase “you can’t love someone more than you love yourself.” What exactly does that mean and how does it work?

If there are aspects of yourself you reject, these issues are your hot buttons. They’re a source of discomfort. When someone hits or gets near one of your buttons, you’ll unmindfully react to the discomfort with blame, shame, disrespect and withhold your affection until the discomfort dissipates. So even if you are a parent who profoundly loves your child, you will not be loving towards them when they tickle your insecurities.

The second condition necessary is openness. Think of two people you feel the closest to in your life. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

I bet one of the common denominators in both relationships is – you have let them see who you really are. They have witnessed you being strong, capable and exceptional, but they have also seen you be scared, neurotic and weak. You’re honest with them about what you’re facing and feeling. You let it all hang out. It’s not surprising the love is palpable, it’s real! Love is genuine when you take off the masks, otherwise it’s a ruse. 

All of us crave truth and relationships that are real.

With most everyone else, you hide your imperfections. When you don’t let someone see the icky parts of you, you question their love. Would they love me if they knew I was [ fill in the blank ]? This unanswered question lingers between the two of you as an impenetrable web. Open up to them and the barrier easily splits in two. The more you let them know your shortcomings, AND they stick around, the more powerful the love.

Being honest and open is not easy. Working at being at peace with the things you wish weren’t a part of you is hard work. Not only is it a tough internal process, but you’re also working against a culture that doesn’t understand, appreciate or support these changes. You’ll need to be Don Quixote, fighting dragons only you can see and tilting at windmills as far as anyone else is concerned. Be prepared, you’re going to get bumped around.

In the end, the love you experience will make it all worthwhile. You might end up having less relationships, but the ones you have, will be infinitely more precious. 

Types Of Love

I shall just mention them in passing, and hoping to deal with them in details in the next two or three conversations

They are

Eros or erotic love

Philia or affectionate love

Storge or familiar love

Ludus or playful love

Mania or obsessive love

Pragma or enduring love

Philautia or self love

Agape or Universal love

So when I advise you to Choose Love if you want your year to be great, what exactly do I mean?

I mean to draw your attention to your innate ability to acquire the knowledge, attitude, and skills you need to choose love in any situation.

These abilities include:

Understanding and managing emotions

(self-awareness and self-management),

setting and achieving positive goals,

feeling and showing empathy and compassion for others

(social awareness),

establishing and maintaining positive relationships, and

making responsible decisions.

To be able to choose love to overcome any situation or circumstance, you have to learn to exhibit these 4 character values so that you can stoop to conquer

COURAGE:

Courage is the willingness and ability to work through obstacles despite feeling embarrassment, fear, reluctance, or uncertainty.

GRATITUDE:

You have to learn that gratitude is mindful thankfulness and the ability to be thankful even when things in life are challenging.

FORGIVENESS:

Forgiveness means choosing to let go of anger and resentment toward yourself or someone else, to surrender thoughts of revenge, and to move forward with your personal power intact.

COMPASSION IN ACTION:

Compassion is the understanding of a problem or the suffering of another and acting to solve the problem or alleviate the suffering.

You apply your empathy and communication skills to support other persons through compassionate action.

These 4 character values help to cultivate optimism, resilience and personal responsibility. Included elements are positive psychology, mindfulness, neuroscience, character values, and many more.

You get to learn that Choosing Love means choosing to live a life with Courage and Gratitude, practicing Forgiveness, and being Compassionate individuals.

Being able to Choose Love promotes your resilience in challenging times. This helps you to learn personal responsibility and the understanding that you always have a choice in how to respond to extenuating situations and circumstances.

The world is deeply hurting and if we all are to practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, very soon we shall all be blind and toothless.

But when you choose love, you have the power to choose to love yourself, and show compassion to others who are also hurting and who may even hurt you out of deeply engrained self defence mechanisms.

When you willingly and willfully open up to love, you derive these benefits

• Less anxiety and stress

• Less fearful (in the present and future)

• Enhanced self-esteem

• Improved ability to express oneself and one’s feelings

• Increased self-awareness

• Willingness to try difficult tasks

"Although we can't always choose what happens to us, we can always choose how to respond. We can learn to choose a loving thought over an angry one. When we realize that we have the power to positively impact ourselves and those around us, it is empowering and perpetuates our positive actions and interactions

Through decades of research, including long-term studies spanning over 30+ years, we know that SEL is the most proactive and preventative mental health initiative available.

SEL is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions

You cannot love and fear at the same time. These two states of being cannot exist in the same space. You have to let go of one or the other.

What we fear always turns out to be a “boogieman” when faced. What we fear can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy should we choose not to face it.

Life abhors a vacuum—and when we choose to let go of fear, dreams rush in to fill that space.

Life never turns out the way we plan it. But it often turns out better when we simply let go of our fear of life.

Love is what we are, and when we refuse to love, we too are dying. Our loved ones would not want that for us. They’d want us to choose love. They’d want us to choose life.

Love can help you feel your power, feel safe in your bodies, and remove any shame or guilt that is holding you back from reaching your full potential.

Today I ask you to choose love over hatred, choose love over anger, choose love over spite, choose love over blackmail, choose love over petty jealousies and envy.

The more you choose love over these temporal emotions, the more stable you are in your personality and which can make you very dependable.

Until I come your way again, this is #MorningVibesWithDrJerryTheFirst

Keep it coming!!!

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