3 Ways to Open Up and Receive More Love

Hi there, it’s Lisa Nichols here, founder and CEO of Motivating The Masses. Empowering leaders like you to serve and inspire in an even bigger way than you currently do. I’m here to share with you many things, but one of the things I want to focus on now is how do we, as leaders, as change agents, how do we open up to even more love in our life? Love from others and love from ourselves.

While we’re creating change in the world, love is an important conversation. Experiencing love is an important necessity in our lives. For me, early in my career my love energy was focused on business, quite honestly. Focused first on raising my son and then focused on building this dream, the dream of touching others. I realized that I didn’t open up a space to find love, romantic love, and to prioritize it, but I realized that I wasn’t in that space because I was still learning how to forgive and fall in love with Lisa.

Finding love, discovering love, uncovering love. I think love in a romantic way, whether you’re in a marriage that you’ve been in for years, uncovering the constant love, recognizing that love is a verb, and that when love is moving and flowing through your life. I love the concept of the fact that love flows through your life. When love is an action flowing through your life, from romantic love to familial love to friendship love to community love, agape love. When love is flowing through your life, all tides rise. Love is a curator of possibility.

Love is a liberator of possibility. You stand bolder, you leap further, you fly further when there’s the love energy flowing through your life. You know, when I look at it, that the number one love is first to fall madly in love with yourself. That was the number one thing for me, was that I had to learn how to fall madly in love, not just in love, but madly in love with Lisa. Not in a way that dismissed anyone else but in a way that honored my contribution. And it also gave me the space, the love space, to have a grace with myself.

So I invite you to go, what is that next level of falling madly in love with myself? Then once I do that, then I’m ready for someone else to love me at that level as well. Because when I’m demonstrating a level of self-love, which ignites a level of self-care, which steps into a level self-acknowledgement, which allows me to have time and create time for restoration, for rejuvenation, for celebration of self. I’m in fact modeling for the people around me how I like to be loved.

So often we are looking and expecting for others to love us without giving them any insight, any awareness, any guidelines on what loving us looks like. Even in marriages, even in long-term relationships, even in familiar relationships that you’ve had all your life. What does loving you look like? Yesterday I asked a question to a group of my students. I said, define what loving you looks like. What does love look like to you? And then more importantly, what does loving you look like to you? What does it feel like to you?

Continuing on the journey of opening up for love, number one is the importance of self-love. The importance of falling madly in love with yourself first. Number two is forgiveness. The act, the verb of forgiveness, so many people have a relationship to forgiveness Forgiveness and forgiving others and forgiving yourself is not about pardoning a behavior.

Forgiveness is truly about opening up space for you to trust yourself again, in your future. Forgiveness is not about pardoning a behavior or aligning with a practice or a past behavior. Forgiveness is about saying there is freedom, there is freedom in releasing and holding myself or someone else hostage to a past thought, belief system or action.

It wasn’t until I could truly step into forgiveness of things that had happened, things that occurred with people in my life and events in my life that I could truly open up, truly to new possibility and run with excitement toward the new possibility. Because every time there’s a let down, every time, and when I say forgiveness, it’s not just forgiveness of something that was done to you. Forgiveness is also when you have made a poor decision. I’ve made poor financial decisions. I’ve made poor relationship decisions. I’ve made poor self-care decisions in my past. And a part of me continuing to evolve and become is forgiving myself for those decisions. So forgiveness is a doorway. To me forgiveness is the access to future freedom. Because so often, I know I’ve been here, so often we’re holding ourselves hostage to old shame, old blame, quiet guilt, quiet regret and old anger.

We don’t talk about it. It’s not mentioned. And especially if you can be really successful while you’re still dragging around that stuff, it’s really easy to act like it’s not there. But when you go into the crevices, into the old file cabinets, into the den, into the cave, and you pull out old experiences and you do the work to forgive yourself or others around that situation, more of your being, more of your essence is available to make your future breathtaking. Oh, this is why I always say, listen, the degree of your business success is going to reflect to a degree of your personal awareness.

If you want more business success, and create more personal awareness, dive into personal development, to the evolution of self. So, the second thing I’ll say in the journey to excelling is forgiveness. Number three, recognize that every relationship evolves. There’s not one relationship in your life that will ever stay stagnant. And as you grow, as you expand, relationships will do the same. I often hear people say, I’d love to go back to the way we used to be. That’s impossible because the way you used to be depended on where you were. That was 1999. That was 2012. You were a different person.

So recognize that as you evolve, as the world evolves, as humanity evolves, as the individuals that you’re in relationships with evolve, the relationship must take a new course. We don’t like change. Unless we’re adventurous and we’re willing to step into the unknown. Very few people run into the unknown, right? Like very few people do that. We like to have some assurance. We like to have security. And relationships evolving at times can feel like the unknown. That’s relationships with your children, relationships with your siblings, relationships with your significant others and relationships with yourself, and the relationship with yourself. So number three is allow evolution inside every relationship that you’re in. Don’t try to fit a size 12 now in a size 7 yesterday. It’s like a shoe. If you try to put a size 12 foot in a size 7 shoe, what do you get? Pain. And that’s what happens in relationships. So, just understand that relationships move, relationships are organic. They’re not static.

In summary, three ways to open up and receive love, experience love, elevate love and feel the love. One is to fall in love with yourself first. Find ways to celebrate, honor you. Find ways to acknowledge you. Don’t just look at your to-do list. Celebrate your to-done list. Number two, allow forgiveness to be a standard practice. Forgiveness isn’t surrendering to something. Surrender isn’t releasing your morals or your goals. Forgiveness isn’t pardoning behaviors. Forgiveness is giving your future freedom. All of you is available to love and to expand. And number three, honor, celebrate and encourage the evolution of your relationships. Encourage the evolution, the growth, the expansion, and all of that comes with embracing the change and allowing the change to come in with you being parked between fluid and flexible. You’re right here. Fluid and flexible is right here. Grace and ease is what you’re parked in between. Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for allowing me to have this time with you. Thank you for allowing me to pour into you. I hope there’s one thing I said that you can walk away with and say, you know what? That can really help me inside my really radically wonderful life, experience and see more love.

I’m your sister. I’m your sister in prosperity and in possibility. And when I say I believe in you, it’s because I do. I hope to see you again real soon.

Related: Gabby Bernstein Shows You How to Love Yourself First

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