We all want to love and feel loved and February 14th is one of the few days where it’s a special day all over the world.
How do you have a loving day no matter what your situation?
- Express Loving Feelings: Tell and show people you care about/love how you feel.
No matter what your love relationship status, you have one or more people who you care about/love and who care about/love you.
If you are early in a relationship, express who they are for you without labelling or making assumptions about how they feel. Be appropriate to the stage of your relationship! Check out this article on the 5 Stages of a Relationship All Couples Go Through where I’m the featured expert – and see where you are. If you aren’t clear where you are or what the next step is for you then please let me know if you have any questions – just hit reply back.
ACTION: If you are in a committed relationship, and want to acknowledge the connection you have or want to create a deeper connect to your partner, this is the day to express who they are for you. A letter, poem, and drawing is a personal way to express how you feel about them and reaffirm your love. You can also do this with your parents, children and grandchildren, as well as with friends, co-workers and colleagues. Be authentic and loving and realize that you can create a deeper connection by making any special effort.
- Receive Loving Feelings Expressed to You
Are you comfortable telling others you love them but when someone says it to you, you can’t let their love in?
Most of us got messages from parents or teachers to be humble, and to give but don’t receive. Do you block yourself from feeling love from others? If you answer “yes,” you deny part of the design of human beings, a part of your design – to seek connection with others, be part of a “tribe,” and to want to open our heart to give and receive love.
It’s not healthy when it’s just one way – you giving and not receiving. It’s natural to want to feel loving feelings or caring for people in your life yet it can be hard to do that if we didn’t learn to receive as a child.
ACTION: When someone expresses loving feelings, say thank you. Smile. Breathe it into your heart. You have permission to let love into your heart from family, friends, a romantic partner, even colleagues and work friends, and … from yourself! (see #3)
- Self-Love is your birthright: The most important person to love you is yourself!
When you deny receiving love from yourself, you shut your heart down. As a result, any issues with expressing and receiving love are probably linked to a lack of self-love. You believe you are not deserving of love and reject it.
If you don’t love yourself, when anyone says “I love you” or “I like you,” your Inner Judge rejects it. Your Inner Judge is the voice in your head that is always criticizing, shaming or second guessing you. Often, it’s a version of the messages you heard from your parents or others as a small child. See of any of these are familiar:
- You’re bad or It’s your fault
- What were you thinking? You are stupid.
- You are not enough.
- Why aren’t you like your sister/brother/cousin – smart/kind/helpful?
- You are too much – too selfish/mean/emotional/expressive/sensitive
When our parents didn’t get unconditional love they needed as a child, many times they could not give us that love… and we all deserve to be loved for who we are not just for what we do or how we look!
The most important person to love you is yourself. Your self-talk – what you (your Inner Judge) will say to you is more important than what anyone else says to you… and it is often brutal. You are not alone. Be kind to yourself.
ACTION: I know you show caring and compassion for others. Now it’s time to give it to yourself. Here’s an exercise almost no one wants to do but it takes 30 seconds in the morning and at night. And if you do it, it will have you grow the love you have for yourself.
In the morning, and at night, when you look in the mirror while washing your face and brushing your teeth, or styling your hair, do this:
1. Stop.
2. Look at yourself and smile at that person in the mirror.
3. Feel love for her – she is a human being and deserves love.
4. Look at her and say your name then “I love you.”
5. Let it into your heart.
Do this morning and night for a month, let post in the group what happened. I’m betting you’ll be waaaay more comfortable loving yourself in 30 days than you are now. Remember, Valentine’s Day is one day a year. What matters in being loving and being loved is what you do the other 364 days of the year, expressing and receiving love with the people you care about in your life, opening yourself to creating deeper connections with people you know and don’t know, and… connecting more deeply to yourself.
Want to dig a little deeper into your strength and weaknesses inside your relationships? Check out my Relationship IQ Quiz!