“The Five Love Languages” Can Help You More Deeply Connect
As you may or may not know, my Cause in life is “To inspire and empower people to live in a conscious, loving, and connected way.” I believe that humanity is lacking consciousness, often acts in non-loving ways, and ignores our interconnectedness with all the other beings with whom we share our earthly home.
Connecting–whether with nature, our higher-self, or other humans–is a natural gift we all possess. Just observe an infant and you’ll know this is true. As adults, we’ve built up barriers and filters which sometimes make it difficult for others to connect with us or stand in our way from truly connecting with others.
One way to connect is to share your love with the world around you. Opening your heart and offering your gratitude, appreciation, love, and joy. For instance, one of the ways I love to connect is to give my undivided attention. Sometimes I sit with my kitties and focus all my attention on them. Or, when my husband, Bruce, is in his dreaming mode, I give him my complete attention (and reserve my advice and ideas).
I’ve recently finished reading Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate and believe it fits perfectly with this theme of connection and sharing love. I’ve written a full book review on my I Do! I Do! — No-nonsense Resources for Creating Your Ideal Relationship blog. I invite you to visit to read more about the practical, easy-to-use, and highly effective advice Dr. Chapman provides. You can read the book review here.
In the meantime, I invite you to post a comment here and share what you do to show your love and connect with the wider world around you. Simply click the “Comments” link at the end of the post and share what you have to say. I look forward to hearing from you!
How to Tell The Truth Without Beating Yourself Up
One of the blogs I read regularly is Lisa Merlo-Booth’s Straight Talk on Relationships. She offers much wisdom and practical advice that I find valuable and intriguing. Today I clicked on the Authenticity category to find a post she’d titled “Me and My Shadow”. “Shadows” being our alter egos or the parts that we tend to not want to own as part of our whole self. I’m DEFINITELY on board with owning the whole truth about ourselves, and I think it’s incredibly important how we own it.
For instance, saying “I’m a perfectionist,” “I’m irresponsible,” or, “I’m a control freak” communicates to us that these are fundamental truths about us. If instead we say, “I can be perfection-obsessed,” “I can be irresponsible,” or, “I sometimes really would love to be in charge of everything,” we own our shadow and emphasize that it is simply one facet of our whole self.
I make this distinction because I believe in the tremendous power of words on how we perceive the world. If we want to strengthen ourselves, especially while owning those less glowing qualities within, how we talk to ourselves matters. As author Pat Love writes in her book, The Truth About Love, “When you hold a negative belief and have no facts to offset this perception, subsequent thoughts tend to follow that point of view.” I know that I don’t want my mind easily ambling down the path of “I am a perfectionist control freak” more often than it already does (Nope, I don’t have my mind house-broken yet!).
So, by all means, do as Lisa and I suggest–own all of your qualities and love yourself exactly as you are. Simply do so being both truthful and accurate so that you know that even amongst a fair amount of darkness, there exists plenty of light.
Create Your Ideal Life Recipe — Part 3
Here are the final three tips for creating a satisfying life that fits you to a “T.” Reduce stress, get the love you want, and live your life to the fullest with these tips. The rest of this recipe list appears in two earlier posts–part 1 and part 2. Drop a comment with your suggestion of an ingredient for your “ideal life recipe.”
Do I have enough time just for me?
Whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, time alone is essential for your spiritual and emotional well-being. Start experimenting to discover how much time and space YOU truly need. You might find out that you prefer several types of alone time (e.g., to reconnect with your source, to create and exercise your right brain, to journal and reflect, etc.). (more…)
Create Your Ideal Life Recipe — Part 2
Ready to start creating a truly delicious nutritious life? Here are ingredients 4-7 for your ideal life recipe. Part 1 of the recipe can be found here.
What do I need to be my best?
Answers here make it easier for you to bring precision and specificity to your ingredient
list. For instance, if you merely know that you need plenty of sleep to feel rested, you have only vague information. If however, you determine that you need eight hours of sleep, on a firm bed, with cotton sheets, and need to wake up to daylight and gentle music for optimal living, the specificity of your needs will make it much easier to satisfy them. Answering this question will help you draw up a very precise list of ingredients, rather than settling for whatever happens to turn up.
What nurtures, renews, or inspires me?
Life is wonderfully varied and therefore we experience a mix of highs and lows. The ingredients you identify in this question often create your soul food—things which nourish your body and soul, especially when you’re traveling in the valleys of life. How you find comfort, support, energy, and motivation will be demonstrated by your answers here. If you are renewed by “physical activity, prayer, meditation, or painting,” you may want to consider making these ingredients a staple of your spiritual diet so your personal fuel tank doesn’t run low. Also, when you believe your life is taking a downturn and you want an upswing, simply add a dash of any of these ingredients into your daily routine to keep you feeling connected, supported, and in balance. Simply remind yourself of these answers and take one of the actions that revitalizes you.
Who do I want in my life?
The answer to this question establishes what type of personal life diet you want to follow. While a response to this question could include specific people, I think it is most useful in identifying qualities that you want the people in your life to have. For instance, once you know that you want people who appreciate your sense of humor, remember your special days, and are “spiritual and honest,” you can seek out new relationships with people that meet those criteria. You can also use your list of desired qualities to work with current relationships to see if they’re a fit for you. Note too that if your answer includes the quality of “unconditional love,” the “who” might refer to an animal, rather than just humans.
Where or when do I feel limited, shut down, or sapped of energy?
As important as identifying how, when, and with whom you shine, is discerning where and when your life becomes arduous and lackluster. The ingredients here are ones to avoid, almost as if you have allergic reactions to them. For instance, one person might find that “lots of noise, rush-hour traffic, lack of exercise, and telemarketing phone calls” are irritating to them or make it easy for them to feel frustrated or angry. This same individual may then choose to change parts of his life so that these energy drains and tolerations disappear or at least occur less frequently in his life. He might select quieter environments, carpool to work or drive at off-peak times, exercise at least four times each week, and take action to prevent telemarketers’ calls. Your responses to this question are valuable because even if you bring a lot of positive energy into your life, having many personally toxic ingredients could cause that energy to leak right back out.
Create Your Ideal Life Recipe — Part 1
You don’t have to sit on top of a mountain to discover what is right for you. You always know in your heart what you need to do. But you do have to ask yourself if you’re willing to make choices. Put yourself in a position where you’re making choices about your life, rather than letting other people make those choices for you. That’s what balance is all about.
~ Liz Dolan
While there may be no “recipe” for creating the ideal life, there are quality ingredients that help make our life experience richly rewarding. Use the list of questions below to decide on and gather the ingredients for your “ideal life recipe.” Simply read this chapter for now. Answering the questions is covered in the exercises section at the end. Be patient with the process of developing your recipe. Just like cooking, it may take some experimentation to arrive at the perfect ingredient mix. And, as with fine food, the act of creation can be as pleasurable as the final result. Bon appétit! Enjoy the first three “ingredients.” (more…)
Are you living a life that matters?
Here’s a poem I really appreciate. I first shared it with readers in one of my newsletters and attributed it to “author unknown.” Thanks to alert reader Alice LaChapelle, I can now share it again and give correct attribution to Michael Josephson, founder and president of the Josephson Institute of Ethics which helped organize the Character Counts Coalition. Thanks Alice and Michael!
What Will Matter?
Michael Josephson
Live a life that matters.
Ready or not, someday it will all come to an end.
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.
All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten,
will pass to someone else.
Your wealth, fame and temporal power
will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, mean spirit and jealousies
will finally disappear.
So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.
It won’t matter where you came from,
or on what side of the tracks you lived, at the end.
It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.
So what will matter?
How will the value of your days be measured?
What will matter is not what you bought,
but what you built;
not what you got,
but what you gave.
What will matter is not your success,
but your significance.
What will matter is not what you learned,
but what you taught.
What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage, love
or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged
others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence,
but your character.
What will matter is not how many people you knew,
but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone.
What will matter is not your memories, but the memories
that live in those who loved you.
What will matter is how long you will be remembered,
by whom and for what.
Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident.
It’s not a matter of circumstance,
but of choice.
Choose to live a life that matters.
Choosing Thoughts that Lift Us Instead of Weighing Us Down
“No longer can I hold on to some ancient memory. That runs me ’round in circles and will not let me be.” sings Maggie Longmire, a powerful singer-songwriter from East Tennessee.
In Maggie’s song “Lay It Down” (quoted above), she sings about the anger, resentment, and hard feelings that she (and we all) sometimes holds onto, carrying them around and being weighted down by them. In the song she has chosen to “lay it down,” refusing to carry these emotional burdens (which of course impact us physically as well) any longer.
