Loving Consciously

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day ...a day filled with exquisite flowers, heart-shaped boxes of candy, hand-holding, and picnics.

I love the romance, but I also believe the most romantic gesture we can make is learning how to take care of ourselves within relationship.

You are only as good of a partner as you are a partner to yourself.

How often have you found yourself exhausted attempting to make your partner happy?

How often have you felt like your partner just doesn't get you?

Have you ever paused to recognize how they might be sending you signals of love?

Have you ever thought about loving them in the way that they prefer to be loved rather than the way that feels natural to you?

This is conscious loving.

Loving someone the way they need to be loved simply because you love them is conscious love.

The framework of the 5 Love Languages offers us a wonderful tool to help us be more efficient with our love. Efficient love. Sounds sexy, right?

Well, it kind of is, actually.

What happens when we are more efficient with our love? We have more energy to take care of ourselves and, in turn, we have more energy to give love and to feel sexy.

Exhaustion is not sexy for anyone- not for the bearer of the exhaustion nor for the recipient of their lack of energy.

Exhaustion is the fuel for that racecar speeding down the road of resentment.

Loving efficiently makes a difference.

Loving consciously offers you the opportunity to love in a way that allows you to wake up in the morning feeling joyous and appreciated.

So how do we do this?

The Five Love Languages provides an incredible framework that illuminates five different ways people crave love and express their love.

The Five Love Languages include:

Acts of Service

Gifts

Words of Affirmation

Quality Time

Physical Touch

Like spoken word, each of us has a primary love language that we default to when we express our love. It is also in the receiving of this same language that we feel the most loved.

While it is important to know your love language, that is only one part of this experience.

This system is not just about knowing how you want to be loved. It's also about knowing the love languages of those you love most so that you can love them consciously.

I'm an Acts of Service primary love language and my family has truly learned how to make me feel the most loved.

We have a wall of Santa pictures for every year my daughters visited Santa. This display of time capsule photos is one of my most treasured holiday decorations. I remember and appreciate each and every year as I look through the photos. One year, we lost our Santa picture.

To this day, I still don't know what happened.

Perhaps it was thrown away in a bag. As you can imagine, I was heartbroken. The following year, my daughter found the video we had taken from that day, screen grabbed an image and put it in a frame and displayed it on the shelf. I had never felt more loved. She knew how important it was to me and found a solution and surprised me.

My daughters also used to make up all sorts of songs and one year for Christmas gave me their album on CD, a compilation of all of their songs. To top it off, they had me go on a scavenger hunt to find my gift. I truly felt the love.

But to someone who prefers words of affirmation, this entire scene could have felt "nice" but not ignited the same primal affection because those gifts didn't come with a card with words on it.

Many people exhaust themselves trying to love their partner through their primary love language only to have their partner feel unloved because their primary love language is something different and everyone ends up feeling exhausted and frustrated from "giving so much."

The Love Languages help us communicate our love in the way our loved ones need to hear it.

Have you ever worked so hard to create the perfect experience for someone, down to the very detail, only to have them say, "Why didn't I get a gift with this?"

Did you find yourself exhausted from the planning and frustrated that they didn't appreciate you?

This is a love language miscommunication.

Miscommunications happen in every language.

As you come to know how to meet your own needs by loving yourself consciously - by spending quality time with yourself or buying yourself a gift- you will have more energy to love those around you in the way that they need to be loved.

Here are three ways this system helps you love more consciously:

1) Know your own love language so you can tell everyone who loves you. If they love you, they will want to shower you with this form of love so don't be shy.

2) Reciprocate. Know all of the love languages of those you love most and show them your love in this manner. Speaking someone else's language can feel foreign, much like speaking a new verbal language can feel foreign. Keep in mind that just how genuinely loved you feel by someone speaking your language, your loved one feels the most adored when cared for in their language. Learn their language and shower them with their kind of love.

3) Watch for the love. Like all languages, it takes time to learn someone else's language but as you seek out the ways your loved one is showing you love in their language, you can begin to appreciate how much they are loving you. While it might not feel as wonderful as love in your primary language, by recognizing their efforts you can know how much they love you.

This entire system teaches us how to give and receive love more consciously to ourselves and to others. As we do so, we no longer expend unnecessary energy. This allows our energetic vibration to remain higher, resulting in a healthier and happier body that manifests more of what you desire.

Join me for an exploration of Loving Consciously as we dive into your specific love language and how you can use this system to love more efficiently and effectively, leaving you nourished rather than exhausted and depleted from trying too hard.

I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day filled with so much genuine conscious love!

Much love,
Erin

Not sure what your Love Language is? Take the 5 Love Languages quiz here.