Two Insights Required To Become A More Loving Person - Dick Rauscher
Do people experience you as being a kind and loving person? Are your relationships with others as peaceful as you would like them to be?
Would your spouse, children, and co-workers agree with your answer?
The Roller Coaster Experience
I pose these questions because creating happy, loving relationships is one of the more difficult and challenging issues in the lives of many people. They report their relationships feel like they are on a roller coaster ride. One day their relationships are clickety-clacking up the long slope to the top of the mountain. They are basking in the warmth of love and intimacy. Life is good. And then without warning, they are in free fall headed once again into a foggy valley where the warmth of the sun is but a distant memory. Life in the valley is not so good. After a series of quick ups-and-downs, the ride starts all over again.
If you can relate to this in your life, there are two insights that could be helpful for you.
Insight #1 Your Ego’s Need To Be “Right”
We all have a primitive ego from childhood living in the depths of our unconscious mind. And that primitive ego has one very important need. The need to be “right”. Unfortunately, our primitive ego can unconsciously knee-jerk aggressive negative energy into our relationships when that need to be “right” is triggered. That is until we recognize where the negative energy is coming from, and why.
Think about the last time you had a relationship head south. There’s a good chance that one of you knee-jerked some negative energy into the relationship because of the need to be “right”. When that happened, it would have been very hard for the primitive ego of the other person to ignore the challenge. Why? Because their primitive ego also needs to be “right”.
At that unconscious knee-jerk moment, the relationship began its free-fall south into the valley. When you understand the need to be “right” trigger, which created all the negative energy, the conscious part of you can make the choice to stay calm. At that moment, you will be making the conscious choice to behave more loving rather than “right”.
Insight #2 Love Is A Behavior, Not A Feeling:
When you understand the primitive ego trigger that creates negative energy in a relationship, you can remain loving even when your primitive ego would like to respond with its own knee-jerk negative need to be “right” energy. At that moment, you might be having a negative feeling, but your behavior will be loving. Within moments, the negative primitive ego energy will settle down and disappear.
Summary
It is important to acknowledge that our primitive ego will almost always act out whatever it is feeling. This is especially true when our primitive ego needs to be “right”. This knee-jerk reaction is the primary reason we create conflict and hurt in our relationships with others. Just because we feel unloving does not mean we have to behave in an unloving way with those around us. Just because we have a feeling does not mean we have to act on that feeling.
As we become more self-aware and learn to pay attention to the behaviors we are sending into the world, we will become less and less comfortable with behaviors that create conflict and hurt. Over time, those knee-jerk behaviors will begin to diminish. We will begin to understand at a deeper and deeper level of consciousness that they are clearly not helpful if we want to be happy.
Loving behaviors create happy relationships, and loving behaviors in our relationships with others is always a choice that is separate from our feelings. To state it simply, loving behaviors and the creation of happiness in our relationships with others is always our responsibility and is always a choice we can make.
