When I choose not to love, I am the one who feels it (the resentment, anger, disconnection). When I choose to love, I am the one who gets to benefit from how good it feels.
Sometimes we may choose to feel the former, and no judgement. I notice I sometimes opt for it, too. Life with no contrast (all joy and love) isn’t the full human experience—and why not embrace all the emotions?
But just know your choice to love or withdraw love is felt inside YOU, and no one else. So choose on purpose —for your sake.
Every moment is another chance to re-choose how you want to show up, how you want to be, how you want to communicate, how you want to love, and how you want to feel.
Relationships give us lots of opportunities to explore this! (Aren’t they fun like that!?!) To make these choices— then mess up —and then re-choose.
Again and again.
But it’s hard to show up the best you can when you’re not aware that it’s a CHOICE —when you think life and people just happen to you. That love just overcomes you. Or evades you. That others create it for you. Or take it away.
That’s how I used to live. Thinking that others, or certain circumstances, brought out the best or the worst of me.
But WE are the ones who bring out the best in ourselves—or not. Never others.
Once I learned intellectually that I get to CHOOSE how I show up I was able to finally get to work to put it into practice. Awareness is always the first breakthrough.
Every day now I make that choice to show up the best I know how, the best I am able —even when it isn’t easy. Even when my kids throw temper tantrums, my husband is really stressed and short-fused. When money is super tight, or I keep failing at achieving my goals. When my instinct is to lash out at all of it, or quit and hide from it all.
Even then, I can still choose to show up in a way I feel good about. For them, sure, but mostly for ME.
When I am sharper than I want to be with my husband, I’ve learned it feels bad TO ME. I’ve learned to apologize and then just try again to speak out in a way that I feel good about. Because I love feeling proud of how I conduct myself.
Don’t you love that feeling?Just feeling good about who you are and how you are being with those you care about?
And that choice is yours alone to make.
Don’t get bogged down with the “but Hows?”. You don’t even have to know HOW to show up as the person you’d like to be, you just need to see that it’s POSSIBLE to choose to learn how. That nothing can stop you from learning how the you choose to do so.
So start now. Choose today, and again this afternoon, and again tomorrow to learn how to be who you WANT to be. To love how you want to love. No matter what. It’ll fuel you like nothing else.
And if you want a starting place for those “how’s” this guide is a perfect place: The 7 Phrases to Deepen Connection In Your Marriage. Though I call it a guide, it’s more like a little training in how to show up as who you want to be in your relationship and create the understanding and closeness you want with your partner.