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Huh. The Love Option vs. The Asshole Option (Part 2 of 2)

You know that feeling you get when you feel so seen and accepted by someone that it resonates in the depths of your being, right into your bone marrow?
 
When you know that you are joyfully welcomed into the attention—or even the arms—of another?
 
And not just for the glory that is you—for all your not-so-secret flaws and quirky foibles, too?
 
YEEEEAAH. UMMMMH. Like that.
We call it LOVE.
(We often have a truly giddy look on our face when we admit it).
 
Call me crazy. 

Yeah. Because I believe with every fiber of my being that truly receiving and tapping into this feeling of Being Loved is our Superpower.
  • Like Superman: we can leap tall buildings in a single bound.
  • Like The Flash: we can withstand ANYTHING, heal ANYTHING and even time travel.
  • Like Wonder Woman: we have the beauty of Aphrodite, the wisdom of Athena, the strength of Artemis and the ability of discerning the truth like Hestia.
OMG! Feeling this way is FREAKIN’ GLORIOUS, right??
 
Wait.
 
Was that a shoe dropping—or was that your jaw?
 
No worries. It’s a totally normal response to my euphoria over Love that I’ve been getting for over 30 years.
 
Fortunately, that hasn’t stopped me—and you’re still reading, so it isn’t stopping you either.
 
And Hey, I am NOT a Disney Princess—THIS is BIGGER than Disney.
 
Despite the pushback I often get, my euphoria about Love is not just me! Living with this deeply nourishing feeling for the past 33 years, I have seen its power to move a wide range of emotional-and-relationship-mountains over and over and over again because it’s 100% effective. Love brings more life to everything it touches because it warms up everything it touches.

For instance:
  • Love is the Superpower that fuels a variety of communities who are up to creating more Peace and Lovingkindness in the world. From the 37 years of Burning Man events that welcome everyone into an annual weeklong community gathering of thousands of like-minded souls—they  celebrate their collective unique humanity, and then leave their campsite measurably better than they found it; to the Habitat For Humanity Community who’s had almost 50 years of national impact of being their brother’s keeper, with a mission of “building strength, stability and self-reliance through shelter”; to Emily Murphy, Founder of Pass The Pistil (www.passthepistil.com) one woman who decided in 2010 to DO SOMETHING to add Love into the world: she started growing Love, and showing others how to grow it, too.
     
  • Love is the Superpower that has been harnessed for over a decade by 7 brilliant millennial young men from South Korea who call themselves BTS. Their mission on the planet is to spread the kind of Love you read about in my opening three sentences through their music and their global artistry. In the service of this deep commitment to Love, they have inspired over 50 million passionate people—called ARMY, all ages, races, cultures, genders, and any other differences, from 131 countries around the world—to come together as Family. (In case you haven’t heard of them yet, BTS continues to smash through any obstacles to their genius of Love & Passion that the world can present. They are making history as the biggest “boy-band” on the planet, breaking a wide variety of records, both as a group and individually. (And OH. HECK. YEAH—no surprise that I am absolutely a proud member of this BTS global family)!
     
  • Love is the Superpower that is activated throughout the world, 24/7, by anyone, when they chose—as philosopher Alain Badiou says in his small book, In Praise of Love—”to love…to struggle, beyond solitude, with everything in the world that can animate existence.” (The beauty of his words struck me as simply one famous man’s way of supporting the practice: “Choose Love every chance you get—no matter what it costs.”)
Where Does That Leave The Asshole Option?
 
No worries. The AO will always be at our fingertips—because it always begins with a lack of Love. That makes it easy to recognize, talk about and use. 

On the other hand, thinking, writing, or talking about Love requires that we be comfortable being in the presence of something much more mysterious. It’s almost as if Love is like a writhing jaguar cub that is so full of life that it simply cannot be held down. 

The AO is more like concrete: inanimate, solid—and capable of snuffing out the breath of your life when used strategically. It’s no surprise that the AO is simply so much EASIER to wield.
 
So How Do I Chose the Love Option (LO)?
 
The good news is that now you know you have a choice—and—you know exactly what might prompt you to choose the AO. That’s 95% of your success.
 
The rest of your choosing comes down to building your LO muscles by increasing your supply of love-enhancing practices. Just like working out at the gym, you continually pick up the weights (practices) that will build the muscles (behaviors) that you want.
 
Here are several of my favorite Love-enhancing practices:
  • Give them/yourself the benefit of the doubt.
  • Let them/yourself off the hook.
  • Walk away from blame.
  • Forgive them—and yourself.
  • See them/yourself as simply another flawed human being doing their/your best.
It’s also much easier to choose the Love Option when you continue with the AO-busting practices from last week (to further break the hold that the AO may have gotten on you over the years). 

Here they are so you don’t have to go back and look:
  1. Remember that the cause of the AO in the first place is you feeling a lack of love.  Add Love for yourself right now and CHANGE THE WHOLE STORY.
  2. Change the whole story (to benefit yourself with your learning)—and seriously decrease the odds that the AO will hijack you when you least expect it, or that your emotions will carry you away like a storm.
  3. Remember that the AO is simply a human response to feeling a lack of love (which you attempt to solve by using the three elements below to make yourself FEEL BETTER).  Now you can unpack each element for yourself—and reduce the danger of unleashing that emotional storm on anyone else.
Remember how to lean in and embrace yourself
when you’re right in the throes of the AO:
 
HUG YOURSELF.
 
(Yeah. Right in the middle of you being FULL ON AO.)
 
Remember WHY:
  1. When you’re feeling vulnerable, your embrace is a great big HUG. It feels good—it relaxes you. It opens the door for you to drop that “invulnerability” crap—because it’s a lie anyway. (Right?)
  2. When you’re feeling solitary—feeling like it’s you against the world and you are alone in your pain—your warm embrace leaves you feeling comforted, so you can drop all that crap about being untouched. The one thing that so many of us need right now is human touch—so give it to yourself. (“Havening” is a great practice to develop.)
  3. When you feel like you’re right and your experience is the only truth, it always helps to get a HUG to feel validated. Once you feel safe and held, it’s a lot easier to consider other perspectives besides your own. 
Play of the week: This week, I invite you to consider the possibility that you can benefit mightily when you choose the Love Option in real time.
  1. Anytime this week, see if you can catch yourself choosing Love—any practice counts (including your own practices that you didn’t discover here). 
  2. No matter how insignificant or small your action may seem in the moment, CONGRATULATE YOURSELF! WHOO HOOO!! You DID IT!
  3. GIVE YOURSELF A GREAT BIG HUG—YOU WIN!!! Laughing is totally optional (It’s still totally useful, though)
Try out these three steps and see what happens. The Big Win here is to consider the possibility that these steps have merit—something you can only prove one way or the other by trying them out.
 
Important Note: All you’re doing this week 
is PLAYING & EXPLORING.
There’s NOTHING to SOLVE—and EVERYTHING TO DISCOVER.