Love -- it's been written about my psychologists, admired by artists, philosophized about by mystics and hated by singles every February 14th. This thing called Love runs our world. Everything we do revolves around Love.
From my Western male point of view, I make money to be able to one day provide for a family and to experience Love. The way I make money is by doing what I love and I love inspiring people. I love giving. I love seeing myself and friends succeed! Love makes my world go round.
On my journey to experience Love in my life I've created two outlets to express the lessons I've learned about Love. An apparel company called Love Yourself and blog called The Daily Love. When I first stepped out of "fearing" (the opposite of loving) and into attempting to Love, the first insight I had was that it would be impossible for me to love others until I loved myself -- and then quickly found this corroborated by many other sources (both human and "divine"). The next step on my journey was to express what I was learning about myself everyday as a part of loving myself which manifested as The Daily Love. It's sort of my way of journaling what I'm learning out loud. And after learning about loving myself and expressing that journey through a blog a wonderful thing happened -- I found out I wasn't alone.
Now that I have experienced success with both of my businesses and met some internal goals, I still feel that love is lacking in my life. I'm left with the question "where's the love?"
I recently attended a "love" seminar by "love expert" Pat Allen that dramatically changed my life. I asked her how I could go from being a normal 28 year old guy "exploring dating" to a "real man" in a committed relationship. I've always longed for a girlfriend (and eventually a family), but they always ended up being "girls" that were my "friends". I was always in the friend zone -- you know -- "that" guy.
Her answer was simple, yet profound. She told me that biologically a man knows where he is going and the right woman will come with him. She also told me to promise not to sleep with a woman until I decided I only want to be with her.
This was terrifying. This meant I had to risk rejection and entrapment. Looking at my life through Pat's eyes I realized two things. One -- my standards had to go way up! And two -- I needed to take responsibility for my life. And in that, to me, lies the key to love.
Realizing that my evolution required that I loved myself enough to choose a better woman and to make that choice seriously meant I had to become more. Not only with women, but with all my relationships. I had to love myself enough to say "no" to the good and leave room for the "great". To not let my emotions run me, but to let my awareness guide my emotions.
To me, this is the key to true love. Until you are the true love of your life and you commit to that change, the outside world will not reflect true love back to you.
True love was asking me to step up. And I did. I faced the fears of rejection and entrapment and to my surprise I've been met with amazing new opportunities both personally and professionally.
I was so busy making low level choices and fearing responsibility that Love eluded me. Love was asking me to take it seriously. When I finally did, it took me seriously, too.