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Saturday, 28 June 2008 12:00 |
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It"s Valentine"s Day. This day focused on expressions of love
can be wonderful. Unexpected flowers arrive. Gold embossed boxes
of delicious chocolates are given. Cute stuffed animals
proclaiming love are exchanged. Great start! A good beginning.
The important question, though, is: "Do you demonstrate your
love every other day?" Unless you do, Valentine"s Day is just
another "Hallmark Holiday".
In the U.S. and Canada, I"ve noticed an interesting phenomenon.
I did not have to look very far or very hard, either. Maybe
you"ve noticed it where you are.
It"s simple. Folks seem to treat the people they interact with
outside the home a little better than they often treat the folks
they say they love the most at home. Isn"t this curious?
People will say or do things at home that they would not do in
public. They leave their manners outside their doors. They
forget that "please" and "thank you", used freely, make life
much simpler. Recently I was giving a parenting workshop at a
college. There were fifteen couples in the room and I asked them
what they thought were the greatest lessons they were teaching
their children. Many good answers came forth. Then, I told them
that with every look, word and action, they were teaching their
children how to treat a partner. Oooh! There were some pained
expressions in that room.
You know how much simpler it is so say "I love you" than to act
"I love you". What could ever be the reason for not using simple
manners with your family? Why would you give up saying, "Thank
you" when the simplest things are done for you? Are you not
thankful? Do you simply expect that you should be considered,
taken care of, or done for? That"s the beginning of the end of
love...and, maybe, the relationship as well.
No matter how many times a person says they love you, believe
their behaviour. Behaviour over time tells the truth. If someone
whispers, "I love you", it is simply pleasant noise unless their
behaviour screams the same message daily!
Make this Valentine"s Day the renewal of your love and let it
come with a secret unspoken promise: Every day, my loved ones
will feel loved by my words and actions.
Happy Valentine"s Day!
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Saturday, 28 June 2008 07:00 |
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What is love? A ticklish sensation around the heart that can"t
be scratched? Something I earn when I do things right? Something
I give to get something back? My definition is that love is a
willingness to choose to see and respond to the best in another
person, even when they are not experiencing or expressing it
themselves at the moment. This gives you the opportunity to be
loving, no matter what the other is doing! It also requires that
you decide to give up petty (and not-so-petty) judgments of
others and replace that with the willingness to see them in
their best light. Quite a tall order!
Now, how do you recognize love in your life? Do you have a
well-defined way of recognizing love coming to you? Is it "it
has to look, sound, feel like this or it isn"t love"? Or, are
you open to seeing, hearing and feeling love in many forms? You
can miss a lot of love in your life if you have a narrow,
restricting perception of which form is acceptable to you.
How do you express love in your life? Familiar quotes worthy of
bringing into application are "Work is love made visible."
"Works, not words, are proof of love." and "Service is nothing
more than love in work clothes." Consider your expressions of
love. Do your words match your actions? Do you say you"ll do
something for another but "forget" regularly? Are you willing to
match your walk with your talk? It seems to me to be a waste of
energy to spend much valuable time talking about what I"m going
to do, or what I think I should do, when I could be using that
time for doing it!
Love also looks a lot like time. When we say we love someone,
or, for that matter, that we love to do something, the proof is
often in the time we spend with the person or the time we spend
doing the activity, isn"t it? When I was seeing many couples in
my counselling practice, I would often hear the pain as one
partner expressed their loneliness, saying, "You do not spend
time with me." The demonstration of love means spending time
with those you say you love, doesn"t it? We"ve all seen or heard
stories about parents who were too busy and missed their
children"s childhoods. Regretting it later is not nearly as
effective as doing it now!
Remember, too, that you cannot give a gift you do not have. Be
loving to yourself. Spend time with yourself. Know what you
enjoy and do it! It is also important to have good communication
skills so that you can communicate to others clearly when you
think they are being unloving to you. I think it is unloving to
allow others to be unloving to you. We are responsible for
teaching people how to treat us! If you do not say anything, you
are telling them it is all right with you.
IMPORTANT: If love makes the world go round, we"d better do our
bit because the world is turning at 2,000 miles per hour, and
we"d get quite a jolt if it stopped.
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Tuesday, 13 May 2008 12:00 |
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I was recently having a conversation with a client about
relationships and we uncovered an interesting fact: Sometimes,
the way we need to show love isn"t the way that others need to
feel love.
I"m sure there are many books written on this subject, but we
came up with a simple way to find out how the other important
people in your life get to feel loved. Just pay attention to how
they show love to you.
For the most part, we know what makes us feel loved, so we
assume that is true for everyone else. When we encounter others
we love, we show them our love by what works for us. Most of us
don"t even think about, let alone talk about it, so it"s not
surprising that we don"t "get" that there are different ways to
show and feel loved. Some examples might be:
(a) Physical demonstration, lots and lots of hugs
(b) Small gifts or "necessities" that say "I was thinking about
you when you weren"t in my face". (c) Saying, frequently, "I
love you".
(d) Asking pertinent questions about your day, how you"re
feeling, what you think about things, etc.
(e) Working their butt off to provide the other person with
stability, security, food, shelter.
Here are some ideas to make use of this information:
1. Once you notice how they are showing love to you, and you
know how you show love to them, try an experiment. Within a half
hour period, show them love in two ways. First, show it your
normal way and then within 20 to 30 minutes, show them love the
way you notice they show you love. Check out the reaction from
each. Which one seemed to be felt deeper? Which one got the
biggest smile? Wow! Just think what it would do to your
relationship if you always got that biggest smile!
2. Either share the experiment or tell the others in your life
what really makes you feel loved. Unless it"s pointed out to us,
most of us don"t get this "intuitively". Why sit around waiting
for them to figure it out when you could be feeling loved? After
all, you needed someone to point it out to you!
3. If the other person shows their love by working their butt
off to make your life better, I think the simplest way to have
them feel love is to acknowledge what they do and how much you
appreciate it.
4. What makes me feel loved might be different depending on who
the person is (a parent vs a spouse, for example)
5. I probably need all the different forms of being shown love
at different times, depending on what I"m experiencing at the
time. However, there is one that is dominant, that will do the
trick most of the time.
6. It is possible to experience the shift of "knowing" that you
are loved to "feeling" you are loved. And feeling that you are
loved may be one of the greatest tonics ever.
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