I believe the world needs more love.
I don't mean that in the abstract sense.
I mean we need to learn what love is and how to
build it in the real sense, whether that be in
marriages, romantic partnerships, in
families, in friendships, in workplaces, with
coworkers and communities, and as humanity,
we need to learn how to build relationships
with people who are not just your friends,
your family, your friends, your friends.
We need to learn how to build relationships
with people who are not just your friends,
your family, your friends, your friends.
I believe that love is practical.
It's tangible.
It's not just bubble gum and butterflies.
It's not just sweet and beautiful, although
that's part of it.
I teach the five components of love.
In my book, learning love, I teach the five
components of love that anyone can learn and
practice to build healthy, happy, thriving
relationships in every area of life.
And so if people will learn how to build
relationships with people who are not just
your friends, their friends, your friends,
your family, your friends, your family,
it's really important for people to learn
these components and put them into practice.
They can change their marriages, their
romantic relationships, their families, and we
change the world.
That's phenomenal.
I love that vision.
So I'm curious, where did that vision come from?
What sparked this thought that we need more
love in the world?
What sparked that?
Well, a lot of things, but one was I didn't
always know what I know now.
I was in a toxic marriage, terrible relationship,
ended in divorce.
I still have the emotional scars from that one.
And that among other things,
kind of planted some seeds in me that grew over time
that I wanted to know what love really is
and how to build it.
That it needed to be more than something abstract,
that we could actually learn how to live out
relationships of love.
And so over time, I've worked not only
through my own personal experiences,
but I have a master's degree in mental health counseling.
And so from a therapist standpoint,
I thought about and researched the idea of love.
I also have a faith-based background
with degrees in divinity and in ministry.
And I have worked in the faith-based area
and in spirituality.
And so I look from a spiritual component.
Because as human beings, regardless of our religious
backgrounds, we are a human spirit.
We have a spiritual component to us.
And we have a psychological and emotional component to us.
And we have our experiences.
And so I brought all that together in my own life,
in my own practice of how to live out love,
and from an academic standpoint as well.
And ended up, from all those perspectives,
being able to write my book and teach
the five components of love.
What exactly are the five components?
A quick brief overview.
Absolutely.
The first one is grief.
And that's a strange place to start.
People very often react to that one about you're
talking about love and you start with grief.
Yes.
Because you talk to someone who has put up emotional walls,
keeps people at arm's length, fails to connect with even
people who love them.
These are people that have been hurt.
These people will tell you a story of heartbreak.
And when we go through these tough times in life,
when we go through divorce, when we
go through a terrible breakup, when someone close to us dies
and where our heart is broken, we
have a tendency to want to avoid that pain.
And so we put up emotional walls that keep people out
of our life.
We distance ourselves even from the people we love most
and end up damaging and even separating ourselves
from the relationships that we could have.
We're not going to get through life without scars.
Life is going to be painful sometimes.
The message that I want people to hear
is that, yes, there is pain in life that is so heartbreaking
it can leave a hole in your heart.
But you can live a really good life with a hole in your heart.
And that's what I want people to see,
that you're not going to escape pain,
but we can learn to make those connections,
those emotional connections, those connections of love,
despite the hole in our heart.
We can live that good life anyway
if we learn how to grieve those hurts of life.
So the first component, the foundational component
that keeps us engaged in love is grief.
The second one is emotion.
This is the bubble gum and butterflies.
This is the connections that we all
think about, the sweet and beautiful,
those wonderful connections that we make that
are the connections of the heart.
And for some people, that comes really easy.
Other people are not as emotional.
They don't know how to express their emotions as much.
That's OK.
It's a practice.
We practice the components of love.
And so even if love, maybe if you came out
of an abusive background, the word love
may have bad connotations to you.
Say things like, I appreciate you.
Find ways of expressing emotion.
The third one is practicality.
I always say that emotion brings us together.
Practicality keeps us together.
The practical side of love is learning
how to deal with finances in your relationship,
in your family, in your marriage.
Dealing with communication skills, and it is a skill.
We can learn how to communicate.
Dealing with mental health issues.
Mental health is key to a relationship.
And it condemns so many relationships
that could be salvaged and could be thriving
if we got help with our mental health.
And that's a practical matter, just like getting help
with our physical health if we have an ailment.
Mental health is treatable as well.
And so if we take care of our practical issues,
our practical matters of life, we
enhance, we thrive in our relationships
because we can stay connected.
We sometimes hear people say, I love them.
I just can't live with them.
And that's when we know that the practical side of love
has failed.
The emotional side is still there,
but practicality has fallen.
The fourth is acceptance.
And of course, we have to accept people as they are.
People are not going to be perfect,
but that's a small part of it.
What we're really talking about in acceptance
is learning to love and accept ourselves.
Brene Brown has done some tremendous research on this.
Many people don't realize you cannot love other people more
than you love yourself.
That's the limit.
That's as far as you can go.
You have to love yourself because love is not
a commodity like money.
If you need more money, you can get a second job.
You can take out a loan.
You could steal money.
I don't recommend that last one.
But you can get money in a lot of ways to give it away.
But love is organic.
It has to be grown, and it has to be grown within us.
And so the only way you can love other people more
is to love yourself more.
And finally, the fifth component is passion.
When we say passion, we often think
about intimacy and romantic relationships.
That's part of it, but it's not the whole story.
We're talking about a passion for life,
being able to enjoy the life you have.
That's the wind in your sails.
That's the fuel in your engine.
It gets you going in the morning to see
what life's going to bring.
And the way to have passion in life is fun, to keep life fun.
Now, of course, life is serious.
That's why practicality is the third component of love.
And yes, there is tragedy.
That's why grief is the first component of love.
But despite those things, learn to have fun.
Keep fun as part of your life.
That keeps passion in your relationships.
It keeps passion in every area of your life,
what you do for a living, your connections in family,
your connections in community.
Go to the job.
Have fun with your coworkers as much as you can in life.
When we do those five things, when we know how to grieve,
we know how to connect emotionally,
we know how to live life in a practical manner
to make life livable with each other.
We love ourselves first, and we keep life fun
and keep the passion in life.
You can build healthy relationships,
even if you've never known how to have them before.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these
episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.