Isn’t that a great title?

I’m reading a book by Dr. Henry Cloud about how failing to end something blocks businesses from creating something new and better, whether that ending is a way of doing business, or discontinuing a product line that is no longer selling, or letting an employee go when they are not receptive to going in a new direction.

Applying this idea to a more personal and global context about living a life, I think about how our fears of letting something or someone go, often without a clear sense of what’s next, can keep us from trying something new and better for us.

The idea of needing to let go of the brass ring for the chance to catch the gold one comes to mind here.

But there’s risk you say. Of course there is!
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But there is risk, while not as obvious, to holding on to what is not working too.
Not ending something that deep down you know is no longer working for you, leaving a job or a relationship or a way of doing something, is scary. And, often it is the only way to clear the space for something new and better to come forward.

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“In real life, love is much more than a feeling.
It is a long series of decisions to be together and to give to one another,
a commitment to work together to build a shared life,
a day to day involvement that changes who we are as people.
Love involves your entire being:
your love for someone is a part of you because it involves your feelings, your thoughts, and your actions.”
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–Blaine J. Fowler
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I’ve been thinking about love lately, about what it really means to love someone. Not just romantic love, but love in a more general way.   I think our culture overemphasizes the feeling part of love and underemphasizes the thinking and doing parts of love. Dr. Fowler’s quote above is talking about love in marriage but I think it also applies to love in other relationships, in our friendships, in our family relationships.

Especially the “long series of decisions” part. ACT refers to this as “values in action”, living your life, behaving in your life, in ways that are congruent with what you value, what you want your life to stand for. Loving someone means feeling the feeling of love (that seems to me the easy part:-) but it also means choosing to think loving thoughts and act in loving ways.

Thinking loving thoughts and acting in loving ways when you are not feeling loving feelings is where the rubber meets the road, in my opinion. This deliberate and intentional “values in action” is the part that isn’t taught or emphasized enough in our culture, that loving someone is wonderful and feels good a lot of the time but it is also hard work and deliberate effort.

Worth it, as the saying goes, love is what makes the journey worth it. But also good to be prepared to live love, to think love and do love, not just feel it.

Continuing on the theme of gratitude, for what we have and what we don’t have…..

In the last post, I wrote about being grateful for the things I wanted that didn’t work out.   Here’s another quote related to that.   I like this idea of seeing our life experiences as beads on a necklace, links on a chain.  Seeing all that has happened as necessary steps to put me on the path to the life I have now.  I wouldn’t have my today without the yesterday.

Even the suffering.

Not that those experiences weren’t difficult, but that they were creating the way for what lay ahead.
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How about you? Do you find this to be true in your own life?