When I first prayed to ask the Lord to teach me about Love, the goal was to learn how to take a romantic relationship to the next level. As I started to research, the first lesson I learned from the late Dr. Myles Munroe was that Love is not an emotion but a decision.
Though there were more lessons to learn over the following years, this first lesson helped me to endure the blow of hearing the person, I made the decision to love, say that they did not love me. As I look back on that day, I could accept that they did not love me the first time. But I was not prepared to hear "I don't love you" over and over. I suppose I should have reacted, but a strange calm sat upon me which enabled me to remain quiet to survive sitting in a public place; riding in the same car and being asked to share what I thought about what was being said to me.
When I was finally ready to speak, you would have thought that I would have expressed hurt, anger or sadness. Instead, I passionately shared the lesson that I learned from Dr. Munroe and went home with my head up! I cannot say that I did not feel some kind of way about what happened--because I did. I was embarrassed, broken hearted and shed my share of tears, but there was a change afoot!
Up to this point of my life, I always sought Love external of myself and would have reacted to this scenario by hating myself for being a fool and for wasting my time. But as the years began to teach me the difference between loving Outside-In versus loving Inside-Out, I discovered that:
Love is never wasted and that I should never be sorry for the Love I feel and decide to express to others.
Love is a constant resource that cannot be exhausted; therefore I am fully stocked with plenty of Love to give to those that choose to bask in the light of it!
Learning to live and Love from the Inside-Out perspective required me to do three things:
Number 1: Revert and understand who I am as an individual before taking anyone else into consideration.
I needed to understand not only who I am, but why I exist; what am I capable of; what I am motivated by; how high I can perform and to what extent I can create. Through communing with my own heart and various self-assessments, I began to understand how to properly value my innate features, senses, instincts and capabilities.
As I gained a greater knowledge and love for myself, I am enabled to form an outward 3D view of the world--as it is, as it could be and what role I am destined to play to reach a desired outcome. Knowing exactly what I bring to the world’s table helps me to find my rightful domain, career or industry to commit, develop and live out my calling in its full concentration and capacity!
Number 2: Consider Love’s character as a metric to approach and evaluate all my personal, professional and faith relationships.
The more I understood that Love:
Is long suffering
Is kind
Cannot envy
Cannot boast
Cannot behave improperly
Cannot insist upon its own way
Cannot provoke easily
Cannot think evil
Cannot rejoice in wrongdoing
Rejoices in the truth
Supports all things
Believes all things
Hopes in all things
Endures all things
Cannot fail
…the more I am responsible for making better informed decisions about who I love, trust, befriend, do business and do life with. And the less likely I am totally devastated should any relationship not survive due to not aligning with Love’s measures.
Away with the notion that just because I am to love others, that I am to allow just anyone into my environment, especially if I consciously see, know or sense that they can bring me harm.
Number 3: Grasp that Love is the most atomic superpower available to help me lead, create and generate wealth!
As sweet as I understood Love to be, I also had to grasp that Love is nothing to be played with and does not play about me! Through real-life challenges and dangers seen and unseen, I learned that:
Love is my defense, so I do not have to pretend to be invincible.
Love is my rear guard, so I do not have to waste energy self-preserving.
Love empowers me to walk through the full force of any experience unaware of the blunt impact.
Love takes on the responsibility of protecting me, so that I can focus on being wonderful; devising solutions to restore beauty to my assigned domain and bring wealth to my family.
So, for those of you that need a fresh perspective about who you are as an individual; how wonderfully you are valued; how you should view the world through Love’s eyes and how to form better relationships, I cordially invite you to consider Love The Success Factor Women’s Leadership Conference as an intimate event for your friends, family, organization, team or congregation!
Together, we will reimagine Love as the ultimate success factor to ensure our everyday success!
To learn more, schedule a Meeting with Teresa and let’s discuss further!
From my heart to yours, Teresa