This week I received the same message in 2 very different situations. I believe that everything is energy so of course I begin to wonder what I am giving out to the universe that is making me receive this message.
THE MESSAGE: LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY EVERYTHING YOU DO BECAUSE YOU HAVE A CHOICE
I first heard this message during the Knowmads WTF Lecture on Love by Michael Doneman. He compared love and your business to a lasting marriage. When people ask Doneman the secret to his 30 year plus marriage he says, “You don’t get divorced.” Meaning that no matter what happens you stay committed to each other because you love each other even though you hate each other at the moment. Doneman also mentioned arranged marriages and that the reason they work is because the husband and wife learn to love each other (because their moms and dads tell them getting married is the best choice).
It is instilled in us that most marriages don’t last. I just googled “do marriages last” and the US Census Bureau told me, “Many Americans stay married and have long marriages. Did you know that the median duration of American women’s first marriages in 2009 was 20.8 years? Even when American women remarry, the median duration of their second marriages in 2009 was 14.5 years.” However that really doesn’t tell me if the marriage lasted unless after those 20.8 years one of them in the marriage dies. Anyways, I digress. We always hear someone is getting a divorce, the marriage fell apart and it that is supposed to be normal.
The same is true of start up businesses. We are told most businesses don’t last. What Doneman pointed out (to get it out of the way) was that it’s because of the cash flow that businesses fail. Cash flow is like the blood in our body. We need blood in our body to function just like we need cash for our business to function. But cash flow isn’t what keeps us motivated in our business, it’s just in the background like blood. So what keeps us motivated to stay with our business? Love, just as in marriage. You make the choice to stay with your business (wife/husband) because in the whole scheme of things you love it. It’s when you start to lose focus on what you love about your business that your business starts to go towards that tragic business statistic. When you have a great business idea and things seem to be going south instead of jumping ship and allowing your business to fail you hold tight. You remind yourself why you started the business in the first place and find that love again to do whatever you have to do to keep it alive. You always have a choice to love your business. You either make the decision not to love it and watch it fail or you make the choice to love it and watch its heart beat.
The 2nd place I heard the message about unconditional love was at dinner tonight. Being a real friend is about having unconditional love for them. Not expecting anything in return. What’s interesting is that it’s actually easier to love someone else than to love ourselves <—so true! We treat others better than we treat ourselves because we lack the unconditional love for ourselves. Why don’t we have as much compassion for ourselves as we do for others? We’re the ones that have to put up with ourselves 24hrs. When we make a mistake we beat ourselves up over it even though the best way to become a better person is to make the mistake and then learn from it. Pain is the messenger, it helps bring out the medicine. I’m excited to see the day when we glorify mistakes and failures instead of perfect performance. Because these days we constantly crave that perfection and end up being tight and therefore never reaching perfection. And does that make us happy, being a perfectionist? This constant state of trying do perfect things is tiring. Let’s let go of perfection and choose compassion. Let’s praise the mistakes and failures and learn so much more from them but remember to not beat yourself up over those mistakes/failures. Remember that love is a choice and when you choose to have unconditional self love you just be. Which brings me back to my quote of the day (what a coincidence!), “Whatever you are, you are. Be proud of it.” – Yogi Bhajan
