Two things happened recently that inspired me deeply. How they intertwine is the topic of today’s post.
First, you need to know that I believe that how we love is how we live. In other words, if we can really master our experience and ability to give and receive love, everything else in our life improves.
What comes up for you when you think – How I love is how I live?
Do you want to stay where you are at right now?
Do you want to change something?
Listen to that voice that whispers in your heart and see what comes up for you when you take that question into your heart.
Okay, so if how we love is how we live, then what does that have to do with allowing discomfort?
Here is the news-to-no-one newsflash.
Love can be way uncomfortable. It can press buttons we didn’t know we had – good ones filled with joy and glee and bad ones filled with fear and pain.
A lot of us (myself included) have a way hard time with discomfort. Discomfort feels so hard.
I will never forget part of my training as a Life Coach with the Masterful Brooke Castillo when she explained that we often spend so much energy fighting a feeling because we are so scared to feel it, that if we just let ourselves feel it, it would lose its power over us.
She said it better, I swear.
But the main idea is, we want to AVOID the discomfort of speaking our truth or making a different choice, and in order to avoid that discomfort, we drive ourselves in circles, bend into emotional pretzels and feel all kinds of other wacky feelings instead of just the one that needs to be said or spoken.
So here are the two things that happened this week –
I was speaking with one of my amazing private coaching clients (who gave me permission to share this snippet of our conversation) and talking about giving ourselves permission to feel the discomfort of disagreeing with someone and loving them anyway.
As in, I still don’t agree with that thing you want to do. I am not going to change my mind on that. But I can create a safe space in our relationship for you to do your thing and I can love you while you do your thing, even though I think differently.
Do you see how that is a very high level of emotional mastery? But if you get that, if you really get it and try it on for size this week – Boom! How you love will shift forever.
Which means how you live will shift forever.
The second thing that happened this week is I became fully aware of something massively disappointing and difficult that I have to deal with that involves someone I love and respect and at the same time have to express a difficult truth to.
In other words, the same theme I was coaching my client on landed right in the middle of my life so I could REALLY gain mastery on it!
And in the middle of this moment of a lot of intense feelings, I am practicing allowing the discomfort.
I am practicing looking at that person with the same love I had for them before, even though something they (completely unintentionally) did hurt me deeply.
This is what I call loving from your edge.
Loving from your edge is loving that person who is difficult to love in that moment because you made a choice to be loving. They may or may not deserve it, it doesn’t matter. YOU deserve it, because you decided who you were going to be in that situation and you decided to be loving.
So how do you love from your edge?
(You know I love a good list!)
1. You set an intention. You decide in advance what quality you want to embody regardless of the circumstance. Then you embody it. For example:
What does love look like now?
What does patience feel like now?
What would compassion do?
If I fully owned the space I stand in, how would I react to this?
2. You forgive. Yourself, the other person, the situation. The fern in the corner of the room if necessary. You forgive and keep forgiving until there is no cloudiness in your heart. You will know sunshine when it’s there and you will know from that place of light that your options are limitless.
3. You pour love into it. You just pour love. You do the most loving, generous kind thing you can do. Even if you don’t feel like it.
I am sure there are many other things you can do. Start with those three. At home, at work, in the soccer field or at Target. See what happens.
And allow the discomfort of generosity. Allow the discomfort of fear. Allow yourself to feel things you have never felt before so you can create a life you have never lived before. Give yourself permission to stop fighting. Give yourself permission to relax. And then see what happens.
And breathe. Most of us are breathing shallow breaths which leads to shallow lives. (Shallow means “of little depth” in case you were wondering.).
Breathe deep breaths. Live a deep life. Take a moment right now to take a nice long, gentle, deep breath. Breathe in and then breathe out slowly. See how that centers you immediately?
Breathing when you feel discomfort instead of trying to run away mentally from it will help you experience it and let it pass.
That is your homework for this week – REMEMBER TO BREATHE.
We multiply the love in the world everytime we show someone what love looks like. If you found this post useful, please share it. Thank you!
