The Power of Your love

What is true love?

Love presents itself in many forms, at its purest essence love simply is a wave of light that fills you and radiates from you connecting you with something that is more than you. Love is the connection that bonds mother and child, the strength that braves suffering, it is compassion in action, a choice of forgiveness, the bond of two hearts in unity, it is a force that dissolves fear in its radiance and empowers you with the strength to embrace vulnerability allowing for your authentic presence to connect heart-to heart with another human being, and it is the energy that inspires and empowers you to craft ways of living and being that honour your heart-centred truth, allowing for your greatest possibility and potential for inner peace, emotional freedom, true happiness, deep personal fulfilment and joy to be truly lived.

Growing the power of your love begins with self-love:

While some aspects of love may be experienced quite naturally, there is one aspect that I believe most of us can benefit from developing, self-love.

“Self-love is about connecting with your innermost needs and celebrating the freedom of being your authentic self, accepting, respecting and honouring all that you are:

When you love yourself, you recognise your value and prioritise your needs, instead of giving priority to fear-based needs, or other people.
When you love yourself, you set and uphold healthy boundaries; you are clear about what is healthy for you and what is toxic, and you make loving choices about the energies you allow into your life.
When you love yourself, you make your happiness your priority.
When you love yourself, you have more true love to share with others, without any resentment, because you make conscious choices aligned with your core heart values.
When you love yourself, you embrace vulnerability, because your vulnerability is your truth, and love cannot live a lie.
When you love yourself, you approach and respond to yourself with care, compassion and kindness.
When you love yourself, you choose to forgive yourself for the times when you were not able to make a loving choice or when you hurt yourself, and you forgive others because holding on to anger stands in the way of your healing, happiness and well-being” (Antonia Behan, in ‘Grow your love grow your life’)

How do you develop self-love? First, discover yourself: To allow your authentic presence to shine and the power of your love to be felt, first, you need to know who you really are!

Ask yourself:

Who am I?
What am I?
What do I have?
What do I do?
How do I feel?
What do I love?
What makes my heart sing?
What are my best qualities, and why?
What are my top 10 core values? (Each time you identify a value ask yourself why this matters to you, and keep asking until you get the same core value repeating, this is when you know you have reached the core; the real value)

Example:

One value may be time.

Why does this matter?

Because then I am free do more of what I want?

Why does this matter?

Because then I have a better quality of life and more enjoyment

Why does this matter?

Because then I feel better?

Why does this matter?

Because I want to feel happy?

Why does this matter?

Because happiness matters (Here is your core value, happiness)

Then consider what this exercise is showing you about who you are

Then, cultivate mind mastery

Harnessing the power of your love involves consciously working on your mind mastery, so that you become stronger in filtering negative beliefs and thoughts, and better at choosing to input positive, loving and empowering thoughts.

Grow your voice of love: There are many ‘voices’ in your head: the voices of care, kindness, compassion, passion, acceptance, bravery, fear, doubt, worry, anger, frustration and so many more, but there is only one listener. Learning to better listen to your voices, empowers you to strengthen the awareness of your ‘inner listener’ so that you can better discern which voices to listen to, which to ignore, which to fuel, and where to begin creating a new voice that aligns with self-love and loving qualities.

Try this,

Treat yourself a lovely pot of flowers and then create 10 minutes of quiet time without interruption or distraction. Your task is to give all your focus to noticing the flower before you, and as you do, listen to the voices that enter your mind, and name them as ‘loving’ or ‘unloving’, before bringing your focus back to the flower, to avoid your mind drifting with the ‘voices’. This is to help grow awareness of your own mind.

Then, you are ready to begin mastering your mind…

Your next challenge is to try to let the ‘unloving’ voices pass, without engaging in them and without fuelling them, because they are not loving and you are choosing to input more loving voices.

Get a large piece of paper and draw 20 circles on it, each circle represents a voice in your head. Label each voice, for example: ‘Voice of love’, ‘Voice of anger’, ‘Voice of fear’ or, ‘Voice of wonderment’, based on the voices you recognised within your own mind.

When you have 20 labels, ask yourself:

Where did this voice originate?
How did it develop?
How is this voice serving me now
What do I want to do with this voice?

Grow your self-acceptance: Make the decision today to stop mentally comparing yourself to anyone and instead stand in your truth with the big brave and bold decisions to accept yourself for who you are.

Miror work: One powerful exercise that supports this is to stand in front of a full-length mirror, look at your full self and say: ‘I love you’ and mean it, sincerely, from the centre of your heart. Notice what comes up for you when you try this exercise, if there is anything standing in the way of you choosing to love you, this may signal a time for personal therapy or personal reflection time to work through this with yourself, so than you heart can be set free.

Grow your self-belief: Believing in yourself can develop through an accumulation of success stories, but generating success usually begins with believing that you can. This ability to believe in self is born in the environment in which we were raised, where caregivers told you or showed you that they love, accept and believe in you, and these words of love and support gradually became integrated as your truth. If life told your other stories or changed the narrative that originally empowered you, it is never too late to get up on the stage of your life, before the faces of fear, doubt and uncertainty, and decide that, you are choosing to believe in you, in the name of love.

Grow your self-care: Practicing daily self-care is a representation of your commitment to love. When you nurture your mind with words of loving kindness for yourself and others, when you fuel your body with healthy nutrient rich foods, when you exercise your body, place yourself in healthy environments with positive people, when you make choices that support your core values, when you do what makes you happy and when you allow yourself time to be nurturing in the ways that feel soulful for you, you are living love.

Grow your self-respect: I would like to offer that “When your say ‘No’ to others and this is your truth, it is not negative, it is love”. Self-respect means treating yourself the way your heart wants you to treat yourself, it means placing a boundary before toxicity, negativity and energy drains, so that you can thrive and grow more love in your world.

Learn to be with yourself: Being alone with yourself in your own space and in the natural flow of your world of feeling and emotions, gives you great power, because it means you are okay with you, you do not ‘need’ anyone or anything to distract, soothe or support you in this moment. This supports the development of self-esteem, emotional resilience and inner peace. Sometimes all you need to do is make time to be with yourself, by yourself, without distraction, so that it become familiar, so that you become familiar with you.

Consider this:

When will you make some time to be with yourself, by yourself?
How could you make this a regular practice?

When you discover or re-discover who you are, how you think, and what truly matters to you, you have the foundation on which to develop a way of living and being that allows for your authentic self to shine confidently and your true heart-centred values to be lived. This is a pathway to inner peace, emotional freedom, happiness, fulfilment and joy. When you walk the path to love, honouring your truth along the way, and I walk my heart path, we naturally meet in the dawn of harmony.

Antonia Behan is a UK coaching psychologist BSc MSc GMBPS MICFPCC, and the author of ‘Grow your love grow your life – Discover your power, purpose and potential’- a 430 page workbook designed to support your personal discovery, growth, healing and life transformation towards living your authentic truth in alignment with the true values of your heart.

You can purchase the digital or paperback edition here: www.antoniabehan.com