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Everybody has a different criteria to say if someone loves someone else, or how to know.
Most people say it is a feeling. And truth be told, when you actually love someone, it does feel gentle, and expansive, and warm.
But that is not my question, or not really.
How do you know if someone loves YOU?
You definitely can’t feel it. Love is not an energy, even if some guru said that it is. So how do you know?
And here is where your definition, cultural and personal, comes to play.
Landmark Education’s definition is “love is a commitment to love… regardless of behavior, regardless of circumstances”
they also have another one, saying “love is accepting another exactly the way they are and exactly the way they aren’t”
And I have been experimenting with both definitions, and neither one gives me access to know if someone loves me or not.
Remember, the question isn’t whether I love you, or whether I know I love you… No. The question I am asking: how do YOU KNOW that someone loves you… very different question.
I could ask a different question… a question I heard just today… to tell if someone is your friend.
Ross McCammon author of Works Well With Others https://bit.ly/2N1TWU6 suggests you ask yourself two questions:
Would I want to have two beers with this person?
Would I trust them to look after my puppy over a weekend?
The first question really asks if you enjoy being this this person. I can count the number of people who would earn a yes from me on two hands… The second question is really a trust question… Almost anyone could trust me, for example, to look after their puppy over a weekend. But unless I have had an experience of yourself as a conscientious person, I would not leave my puppy with you.
And most people haven’t earned that trust with me. And when I look carefully, they haven’t earned that trust even with themselves.
So back to how you would know that I love you.
MY definition is this: I want for you what you want for yourself.
In my work it is especially important that I love my students and my clients. It is both important to YOU and it is important to ME.
It is important in our relationship that I want for you what you want for yourself… or I am selling you snake oil, a lie, b.s.
And if I want to love myself… and I do, it is important to me to come from love, loving you, whenever I suggest anything to you.
I am almost certain that you would at least like to love yourself… And you can’t see how, or haven’t been able to. But you can see the value, the effect on your life, on your health, on your relationships, on your work.
Hell yeah, when you love yourself everything works better.
Two years ago in the summer I conducted a webinar that is slightly longer than an hour long.
I invited five students… all on a different level of knowledge of my work. I just re-listened and it is very very good.
In addition to that, I may, if there is a demand, a follow-up live workshop…
You can buy it when you buy the Love Yourself workshop…
You can access it on the desktop, in your browser, or in my mobile app.
Find out what it takes to love yourself
