Episode 124: Love One Another

Episode Summary 

Today, I want to talk to you about love - about increasing your ability to love and increasing the amount of love in the world because of your own personal skill to love. Our brain automatically wants to go to work fixing the world and making everyone love you and love each other, but that’s not how it works.

But love is hard, because you have a human brain. Your brain is looking for threats and problem in yourself and in the world you live in, in the other humans you live with, and this automatically puts your brain in an oppositional relationship with love.

Your brain makes loving hard in four ways:

It’s filtering everything defensively.

It fights to be right.

It needs to feel validated.

It thinks that the things outside of you will create your experience, and that you need control in order to control your experience.

Our brain wants us to think that our ability to love is impacted and affected by what other people do. Our brain wants to think that lovability is based on the thing we are loving. But it isn’t. Lovability is not about whether or not someone else is lovable. Every person is 100% lovable, no matter what. No matter what anyone else says or does or thinks or behaves, love is always an option. You can always choose love if you want to feel love.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price. You might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome.

Hello, podcast universe! Welcome to episode 124 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I want to welcome you to the podcast. I am back in my daughter's closet! I am back in the podcast studio, and it feels really amazing. There's actually been quite the process of moving back in, like we completely moved out of our house and then we had to move back in. So, it involved, like all the unpacking, all the unboxing, all the reorganizing, and I had that experience that we often have when we go to move or we're just like, holy cow, where did all this stuff come from? Like, how did we accumulate this much stuff? Do we really need this? Is this useful? Why am I carrying this around? Why am I unboxing this and trying to find a place to put this right? It just kind of like makes you so aware of all the choices that you've made in your life and quite frankly, questioned most of them, right?

So, I'm actually going to do a whole podcast episode in the coming weeks about that experience and all the things that I have relearned through the process of cleaning out my house and cleaning out my closets. And because there are so many parallels with our own brains and cleaning out our own brains and the thoughts that we have carried around with us for years that I've just accumulated, and are like packed away in there, and we don't really even give them any thought. So, that is coming in a few weeks, but today I want to talk to you about something that has been on my mind a lot, especially in the last week or so. But I just want to like kind of acknowledge how heavy things feel right now. How do you feel heavy? Do you feel weighed down by the concerns and the worries and the cares and the pains and the suffering that is going on in the world? If you do, you are not alone.

And it seems especially like there's an enormous amount of judgment and criticism of each other that feels like it is almost at an all time high, right? Like, everybody has an opinion, and everybody else is doing it wrong. And we're like all letting each other know right, and whether it's about vaccinations, or mask wearing, or the correct foreign policy, or how a certain groups are being marginalized. Like it seems like everywhere you look, there is someone that is in pain, and somebody that is being blamed for it, right? And whatever your opinion is of that, there is most likely at least one person, probably many people that disagree with you. And someone is happy to tell you all the time that you shouldn't be the way you are. You shouldn't act the way you do. You shouldn't think the way you do, right? And there's an enormous amount of criticism in the world. And I know that my brain is just programmed to notice what's gone wrong, and so it's very hyper aware of this, but it does sort of feel like the conflict between the humans is particularly intense in the last few weeks, right?

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And I know that that can be hard. I know it can be overwhelming in our brain that likes to stir up drama all the time can make this conflict feel sort of pervasive and almost hopeless. But I want you to remember that conflict, and criticism, and judgment, all of that stuff that happens sort of on the negative side of our emotional experience. All of that negativity never increases unilaterally, meaning it's not just getting worse, it is also getting better, right? Life is always 50-50. There is opposition in all things, which means that if there is something negative in the world, the opposite of it also exist, right? There is in opposition to criticism, and hate, and judgment, right? And that opposite can be found in equal measure in our world. The opposite of peace, and love, and compassion, and understanding are also increasing that your brain may be unaware of that because it is only programmed to notice the problems, but the negative literally can't outweigh the positive, it's impossible.

We live in a world of contrasts, which means there is always an opposition even to the bad, right? It is always 50-50. So, take heart, have hope, all is not lost. It is not just increasing negatively, it is equally increasing and expanding towards the positive. And that's what I want to talk to you today about. I want to talk about how you personally can expand the amount of good and positivity in the world, right? I want to talk to you about love, about increasing your ability to love, and increasing the amount of love in the world. When you do that, as you increase your personal skill at loving, the amount of love goes up in the world automatically. Right now, our brain automatically wants to work at fixing the world, and fixing the other people and making sure they are loving, right? Making all of them love you and love each other and love all the things you do, but that is not how it works. You have no control outside of you. You have no control over the world, even for a good cause, all right? Even for love, even to argue for love. You don't get a control that you only get to control you, that's it, right? Your amount of control begins, and ends with you in this world. But believe me, that is enough.

That's enough work for each of us to be able to learn the skill of love. We have enough work on our own minds and our own hearts to last a lifetime, right? And I also want you to know that it is enough to make a difference in the world. The work that you do to increase the skill in your life does make a difference in the world. It increases the amount of love in your home, in your neighborhood, in your city, in your country, in the world and whatever love you increase in your life has an exponential impact for good on the world, okay? So, today I want to first talk about why it is so hard to love, and then what you can do specifically to increase your own ability to love.

So first, why is love hard? Why is it hard? It sounds so good, it sounds so easy, right? Like I always say like the commitment is three words love one another, it sounds so simple. And yet it is the hardest thing we will do right as humans. Love is the hardest choice we make always, and that is because you have a brain. Your brain is biologically programmed to look for threats and problems in yourself, in other people in the world that you live in, right? And it notifies you when other people aren't living the right way, right? And it says, like, this is dangerous, this is threatening, and your brain offers you fear, it always offers you the opposite of love, okay? Your brain automatically puts you in an oppositional relationship with love. And specifically, I think our brain makes loving hard in four ways probably more than this. But these are the four that I kind of like wrote down today as like things that I think stand in the way of loving for each of us.

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So, the first one is that your brain filters everything defensively like from the get go on purpose, right? It's filtering and interpreting everything through a very defensive lens because your brain is constantly trying to protect you. It's going to it's trying to make sure you don't get rejected, and so it's always on the defense looking for threats, and it's interpreting, and filtering everything that other people do and say in a way that is defensive, okay? As a protective mechanism, I want you to know that we, as humans, we can't ever hear things neutrally like it never filters in neutrally. Our brain always has an agenda, right? It is constantly on the lookout for what is dangerous in another person's opinion about us, and there is no exception to that, okay?

Even the other night, I was at an event at church with all the women in my congregation, and we were going around the room and we were asked to say something complimentary, and nice that we appreciated about the person to our right, and the woman who was sitting at our right like she is a very extroverted, like, like charismatic personality, you know? And I just mentioned how she like is so good at making conversation, and making other people feel comfortable and like like remembering things, and sharing stories, and making you feel like, she is so happy to see you, and like sharing like just like wholeheartedly all the time, right? And after I said that, like, we went on with the night, but later she came and she apologized. And she said, like, I'm so sorry that I'm like, always dominating conversations like, I don't know why I am like that, right? And I was like, you have a gift and this is something thing I appreciate about you. But look how her brain, which is automatically programmed for defense, automatically filtered what I said as like, like painful, and offensive, and like sort of like like pointing out what was negative about her. I could not have meant it like any more towards the positive, right? Like I could not have meant it more complimentary. But this is true for all of our brains. Everything that we hear, and see, and interpret. You have to understand that it's not going through a neutral filter. Your brain is automatically primed for the defense, okay?

The second thing is your brain fights to be right. It wants so desperately to be right. At one point in the human evolution, being wrong was equivalent to being dead. Like, you couldn't choose the wrong berries, you couldn't choose the wrong turn, you couldn't like, you just couldn't do it wrong, right? Or it was very life threatening. And so, your brain is just still so scared to be wrong, and it fights to be right even about dumb things. For example, like I said, we've been like renovating our house, and like for some reason, like all the decisions fell to me, right? Like picking out the flooring, and the cabinets, and whatever every fixture, like all the all the decisions, the paint color, everything, right? And like, I was always with every decision, worried that I was going to do the, you know, the wrong thing, that I was going to make the wrong decision, and we were going to waste time, and money, and effort. And like, it wasn't going to look as good as it could look.

And anyway, so then like, notice how my brain is already defensive, right, and wants so badly to do it right. And then like my husband would come and he would make comments, and like my brain, interpreted every one of those as disparaging. Like I had done it wrong. And I just noticed, like, I put my dukes up all the time. Like any time he brought up anything with the house, I was just like, like, do you want to fight, right? Like, like, I just wanted to be right, and I felt like every comment he made, every opinion he offers like made me wrong. And I was just like, I kept choosing to be hurt, and offended rather than like choosing love, or just curiosity, and listening to his opinion, right? So, I read this quote that Mark Manson wrote in one of his books recently, and I thought it was like so telling to each of us when we feel offended and defensive as our brains naturally do, right? And he wrote, people get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high. Being self-righteous, and morally superior feels good, right? Like when I could be offended that my husband, like, disagreed with my choices like I felt sort of like, yeah, like a little bit superior. Like I had done all this work, you know, and I played the martyr. Like I had made all these decisions, and now he was questioning them, right? And I got on my high horse kind of and felt self-righteous, and morally superior to him because of these, like, you know, his criticism.

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Anyway, Mark Manson goes on and he writes as political cartoonist Tim Kreider put it in a New York Times op-ed, Outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good, but over time, devour us from the inside out. And it's even more insidious than most vices, because we don't even consciously acknowledge that it's a pleasure. I think that is so fascinating, right? That it is pleasurable for our brain to feel outraged, to feel offended, to like, have a moment where it can be like self-righteous and morally superior, right? Because it likes so badly to be right, this is like the supreme moment, right? Where I'm right, and I'm outraged because you are wrong, right? And our brain gets such like a little high from that. And it's really good for us to recognize that, and be aware of that, that it's a false high because like, like he said, like it does devour us from the inside out, always needing to be right.

Many, many years ago, somebody I love, wrote me a letter and in it, like, pointed out many of my flaws. And like at the time, I was so outraged, and just so like offended, and angry about it, right? And self-righteous, morally superior. Like, how dare they question my character, and my intentions? And I kept that letter like in my nightstand, like I would read it occasionally just to get that little high, that little like they don't know, right? They've misjudged me kind of feeling. And I just like after I found coaching, like, I was like, Why am I carrying this? I don't want this. I don't want to feel like this is devouring me, and my relationship. I want to feel love, right? So, just like it's just so good to acknowledge like, gosh, my brain really does like to be right. And in fact, it likes to be right more than it likes to feel love, okay?

So, going right along with that is the third thing that I wanted to talk about our brains. It's very similar to being right, but it's our brains need to feel validated, right? Like we really like to be acknowledged, and validated, and our brain likes to be in the company of other people who acknowledge it as right, okay? So, Emily Dickinson has a poem that says the first couple of lines say, the soul selects her own society, then shuts the door. And I love that so much like Adam Grant calls Emily Dickinson, the great social scientist, I love it so much, right? You know, our brain selects society where it is right, and then it shuts the door on everybody else. It likes to be validated, and then it like dismisses and shuts the door on everybody else. And that prevents us from loving other people that are different than us, that think different than us, that act different than us, right? Our brain doesn't want to entertain any other audience that might like not validate it and might say that it's not right. Your brain is very binary, meaning like it's just like two options, it's either right or it's wrong. And there isn't any world for the brain that exists where, like both of us could be right. Like, that's just like so difficult for the brain to to really like grasp.

So, I recently heard a commencement address, a given by Wendy Nelson at Utah Valley University, and she was talking about conflict and contention, and she was saying that conflict happens when you think like, I'm right and you're wrong and you must change, right? That when we demand that other people change, then we are in fact in contention with them, with who they are, with what they think with their perspective. We are like up in arms with this phrase that they must change, that there's a right and there's a wrong, and you must change to be like me. That's what creates contention. And so, if you move, remove that part of the thought and must change, then there's no conflict, right? We can have differing opinions, we can have two rights, we could have two wrongs, I mean, you could even think that you were right, and they're wrong. But if you don't believe they must change, then the contention disappears and the conflict disappears, okay?

And currently in our world, there's a lot of and must change going on. We're looking around at everybody and we're like, Hey, listen, like you must change so that I can feel safe in this world, so that I can feel validated, so that I can feel right. And that is precisely what is keeping you from feeling love, right? This idea that other people must change. And of course, that's all well and good until your brain thinks that other people's actions are actually dangerous, and they are actually going to negatively impact your life, right?

And so, this brings us to the last way that I want to talk about about why your brain makes it hard to love, and that is that your brain believes that the things outside of you are going to create your experience, and that if other people's decisions, and other people's actions affect you, then you've got to exercise some sort of control over there so that you can control your experience. But here's the thing I want you to remember, it's like so powerful to remember, like, of course, we are humans sharing this planet. We do not live in a vacuum, right? It wasn't like, come to Earth by yourself, and learn to love, like that was never the plan. The plan was come to Earth, be impacted by other people, and other people's agency, and other people's choices, and other people's actions, and then learn to love.

So, of course, other people's actions will impact us, we are sharing this planet, right, their choices do change what happens to us. But that is never a problem, unless you think that, like those things will impact ultimately your experience, and your results, your results are never created by the things outside of you. They are created by the way you think, okay? And so like, this is how the world works, like when every person is given free agency, right? The fact that other people get to choose, and those actions impact you can feel really terrifying, and vulnerable to your brain until you realize that the only measure of control that you have ever had is within you. No matter what happens, you choose how you feel, you choose your experience of it, by the way you think, right, like your brain doesn't want to love other people and their actions because it's too scared there's going to be impacted by them. But your experience, your life, your life experience, the experience you create for yourself while you're here is always your choice. No matter what anyone else does, you get to choose how you feel about it. And when you really understand that, then choosing love starts to become a real possibility.

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And of course, like the example that comes to my mind, which I've talked about before, is like Joseph, who was sold by his brothers into Egypt. Like their actions sincerely impacted his life. They impacted his circumstances. They changed how he grew up, and what his life looked like, and the experiences he had. Yes, his brother's actions did, but they did not change, like his choices, his his ability to choose for himself what he would do with his life, what he would create, by the way that he thought, and felt, and trusted, and it's the same for you, okay?

So, I hope that I've established that your brain has a like a lot of good reasons for not loving. And that's why you live in a world where they're like, it feels like there's a lot of conflict, because all these people are walking around with brains, all the brains are working the exact same way, right? All these brains are like defensive, and needing to be right, and needing to be validated, and really scared that other people's actions are going to impact them. And so, all of us are walking around like this. So, of course, there's conflict, right? Because our brains are just like, Yeah, it's a lot for them, okay? And love is not the natural choice, but it is available to you. So, that brings us to the second part of the podcast, how we increase our ability to love our capacity, in fact, to choose love. Because that's what it is, it's a choice, it is something you create. By the way, you choose to think, and that is the first thing you need to know.

And if you're not choosing love right now then you don't have to make yourself wrong for it, right? Like whatever you are choosing right now is fine, but also I want you to like not succeed your power to someone else, or to things outside of you, right? I don't want you to make like the love you feel dependent upon other people, right? Loving is your choice, and yours alone. And no matter what anyone does, "it is an option" was one of the very first thoughts I learned through coaching. Love is always an option, right? Like my coach would have us imagine a platter of emotions like a platter of order, and you could pick anyone you wanted, right? And love was always on that platter. And that doesn't mean I'm always good at choosing it, but I want you to know it's always available. You get to choose that experience any time you want. No matter what anyone else says, or does, or thinks, or behaves, love is always an option, meaning that you can choose love if you want to feel love, and nobody can do anything about that.

Your brain wants you to think that your ability to love is based on what other people do, right? But that is so powerless. If love ability is based on other people, then we have to like spend our life waiting for them to be different in order to experience love. But love is never based on the thing we are loving. It is based on our abilities like it is. It is created by what we think, right? And every single person is 100% lovable, no matter what. Now, whether or not we have the ability and the capacity to love them is another story altogether. But every person is in fact lovable. So I've been using this little example, my two older kids went to the same movie, and when my daughter saw the movie, she was like, Oh my gosh, it's so good. You will love it. So good, mom, you will love it. I've seen it two times, right? And I talked to my son about it. He's like, You will hate it. It's terrible. He's like, Don't spend your money on it is not worth your time, right? He's like, You will hate it.

Now what I want to point out to you is that the movie they saw was exactly the same rate, had the same actors, ads, the same script, the same directors, the same lighting, the same sound, and music like they were exactly the same, right? But my son's capacity, or ability to love that movie is like severely limited, right? Because he has certain conditions that need to be met for him to feel love for a film, and this one did not meet those conditions, okay? But of course, the film is 100% lovable. My daughter proves that right. She doesn't have the same conditions. So, what I want to point out is that like, if there is something that you are not loving, if there is someone that you are not loving, it's because you have conditions on that loving. And not to make you wrong, and not to say that you shouldn't, but you want to examine those because those thoughts, your conditions about how they should be, and what they need to be in order to feel loved, those are preventing you from feeling love, right? You are depriving yourself of the experience of love by setting up those conditions. And I just want you to know that if you don't want to do that, if you want to feel more love, you can remove those conditions by deciding not to think the way you are, okay? We remove the conditions on love, by the way we choose to think about other people.

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The second thing that I want to offer you to help you increase the amount of love that you feel in your life is I want to offer you that the commandment to love one another is for you. I think it's so powerful to think about the commandments this way, the commandments are never for someone else. Now our brain sort of thinks that writing like our brain is like, Hey, you, you're supposed to be loving one another and you do. You're like being mean, and you're supposed to love one another. And if you're a Christian and like, you know, if you're a good person, you are supposed to be loving one another. And as we do that, we are withholding love, right? But I want to offer you, is that the commandment is for you, and for you alone, right?

Your brain wants to sort of weaponize the commandment of love and like, like make you not love those who don't love, right? But like your brain loves to say you're supposed to love, and you aren't the loving, you aren't loving the way I think you should. But it doesn't matter the commandment is for you, not them. The commandment is always for us. It's just about us loving one another. And I want you to think about why, why is that the commandment? Like if I love another person, that other person like it doesn't even know, doesn't even have to know, right? If I love someone else, that feeling is experienced by me in my body. When Christ asks us to love one another he's asking us to live a life like he does to feel feelings like he does, right? And someday, if we master that skill, will get to live with God again, and it will be in heaven. But it won't be heaven because all the people are so good, and so enlightened that they never get it wrong, and they never hurt, and they never offend us. Instead, it will be heaven because they won't have to be for us to love them. We will be so good at the skill of love that they won't have to be nice, or good, or inoffensive because like, we will have the skill of love.

That's the only thing that has to change, right? And that's what we are here working to do. We are working to be good at love. Just us. We are working within ourselves on the skill of love. And it happens inside our own mind. We're just trying to get really good at choosing the opposite of what our brain is offering us, that is how we get to love. We are trying to get good at making that choice. Even when loving seems impossible, right? Your brain is constantly presenting you a world in which it's saying, be defensive, be offended, like make someone else wrong. And we are exercising our agency to choose love instead to overcome and to master our brain, to decide we're in charge, and we decide what we're going to feel and make the choice to love, right? That is the kind of skill that Christ has, and that he is inviting us to follow him. And sometimes we're going to get it right, and sometimes we're not. But we don't need to worry about how other people are getting it right or wrong. We only have to worry about us, and the choice that we are making to manage our own mind about, like the thoughts our brain gives us about other people.

And that brings us to the third thing that I want to offer you when it comes to increasing the amount of love you feel in your life. And that is that it isn't easy, it does take work to overcome your brain. Your brain is like very persuasive, and very persistent and always offering you like the opposite of love. But it is work worth doing. It's hard work, but it's work worth doing, and it is supposed to be hard, right? The people in your life are exactly what they need to be for you to practice, and learn the skill of love. I believe they are perfectly designed that you live in the place you do. Your family is the way that it is, that your in-laws are the way that they are, that your congregation that like everyone that you worship with and you know, you vote with and, you know, share this country with, share this world with. They are all designed to be the perfect presentation to challenge your brain, and to like, like, really challenge you to be able to manage your brain, and choose love, right.

Like, they are the perfect ones, not because they make it easy, but because they don't. They are flawed, they don't think like you do, they don't act like you do, and that is the challenge. It's not the problem, right? It's actually the answer. It's how we get good at the skill of love. So, I was listening to a podcast the other day, it's called Questions from the Closet, and it's hosted by Charlie Bird and Ben Malati. And they were talking about like, when you're offended by the things that that other people say. And they were talking about a talk that was given at BYU that was painful, and hurtful to many people in the LGBT community. And they talked about there was a line in the talk that said, we do all look forward to the day when we can beat our swords into plowshares, and our spears into pruning hooks, and at least on this subject, learn war no more.

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And they talked about how we do that, how we turn these weapons, you know, the offensive, painful words that each one of us choose, and hurt each other with. They talked about how do we turn those, you know, into tools, that build, and grow and add to the beauty of the world, right? And what I loved about their discussion is they like, noted the imagery there in the talk, right? This idea of turning swords into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks. And they talked about how much effort that would really take, right? That those aren't going to turn into like plowshares and pruning hooks by magic. We're not going to just like wave a magic wand and turn those into like instruments, and tools that grow, and nourish and make the world beautiful, but that in fact, it would take so much effort, right? We would have to reforge the swords and the spears. We'd have to put them under heat. We'd have to like, you know, turn up the bellows. We'd have to melted down. We'd have to like, really work hard to reforge, and create a new tool, right? And then we'd have to use that tool and plant seeds and wait for those seats to grow and in order to create something beautiful.

And they talked about like, really think about that like the amount of work that that would take. To turn a sword into a ploughshare like its powerful imagery because it is about like, difficulty, it's about like effort. It's about hot fire, and that is what has to happen in each one of us, right? Having a sword, and cutting with it is easy. But this work of turning our swords into plowshares, that is going to be real hard work, and that is work that happens in the chamber of your own mind. When you resist your brain's temptation to hate, and to fear, and to, like, be angry, and instead to choose love, and that is hot, hard work. And that is work, I hope that you feel called to do. There is a very good reason that your brain doesn't naturally choose love. Like, it's not programmed to do it, but that doesn't mean that you are not capable of it. That is actually the whole reason you are here to learn to make that choice. And as much practice is it takes all these people that you are surrounded with that think differently and do differently and like, behave in ways that you don't agree with.

That is your opportunity to do the hard work in your mind to choose love anyway. And as you do that, you help heal the world, you add to the love, and the compassion, and the understanding that is just as big, and just as strong as any negative force in this world. You have an unlimited capacity to love one another. And it's a choice that is going to happen within the chambers of your own mind. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening, and I will see you next week.

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your Earth-life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com. This is where the real magic happens, and your life starts to change forever as your coach. I'll show you that believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay. And that, my friends is 100% awesome!