Leading With Love
Leading with love is at the heart of what I do. It is at the core of who and what I am. And it's a hard thing to accomplish. Every morning I get up, look in the mirror, and tell myself, "Today, I will be kind, I will show up, and I'll do my best." And let me tell you, some days, it's tough to achieve. Pulling it off requires work and attention. It starts with choosing to show kindness toward myself. For many years I thought dimly of myself, and how I behaved mirrored that. I made terrible choices, which profoundly affected my state of mind, eroding and corroding my personal and professional relationships.
Looking back on that time, I compare my past self to a bomb; the people who got hit the hardest were the people standing the closest. I was lucky, that I had some supportive, loving people around me who urged me to get help. They saw that I was in pain and was causing pain as a result. I didn't know what to do; I was stuck in that cycle. All I knew was that I didn't know the answers and wanted to stop feeling the pain. So I reached out and got some help. It took some time, but I gained a lot of self-knowledge. The people around me loved me and showed me how to love myself. Once I learned how to do that, I could start being kind to myself and become more forgiving. Self-forgiveness was a difficult thing to do but extremely rewarding. It unanchored me from the past and allowed me to move forward. The essential part of forgiveness is that I finally recognized that it is, and had always been, for me. Forgiving someone else for something didn't let them off the hook; it allowed me to move on. I stopped renting head space to these people and took back some agency in my life. My resentments no longer controlled me.
I learned that empathy is different from sympathy. Empathy is compassion, and it says I feel your pain. I'm with you on this. Sympathy is pity, and it says something different. It says I'm sorry you're going through that. I feel bad for you. Empathy builds stronger connections between people. When you show it toward yourself, it can help develop self-compassion and self-worth. Sympathy, on the other hand, creates distance between people. So I always try to choose empathy; it produces the strongest bonds. I also learned about respect and how it differs from control in a relationship. It comes down to a matter of trust. Respect says I have confidence and trust that you will do the right thing, and control says I don't trust you to do this right, so I'll control how this happens. I've learned that trying to control situations or people strips the experience of joy. Ask yourself a question. Do you want it done, or do you want it done your way? I found that asking myself this question enabled me to enjoy life with much less stress.
I learned that expectations breed resentment. One of the wisest things I heard came from a first-year prof in college. She said, "Don't should on people, and don't should on yourself." I don't enjoy it when someone else holds their moral/ethical measuring stick up to me and finds me lacking in their eyes. So why would I do this to someone else? I try to remember that people are doing their best. Most people don't get out of bed in the morning telling themselves things like I want to hurt myself and others today. They want to move through their day as enjoyably as they can. They try to make decisions that lead to their happiness as well as the happiness of those they care about. Problems arise when people are in pain. When people are hurting, they make unhealthy decisions to avoid feeling pain. I have found that this is the root of many problems. But this brings us right back to love and compassion. Pain can heal in the presence of love and compassion, but without these things, pain can be more intense and last longer.
Loving myself also means looking after myself physically It took a long time, but I finally started eating healthier and now I enjoy a healthy diet that fits my preferences. The right amount of sleep and exercise is essential for mental and emotional well-being. It's only possible to be your best when you provide your body with the proper fuel and rest.
These are some of the foundational things I suggest to others and practice myself. I have found that love builds things more substantial than anything else. We all have our skills and tools and can choose how to use them. Think of skills like a hammer. Someone can use a hammer to build something beautiful. Someone else can come along right after and use that same hammer to destroy it. So, when you go forth, do you intend to build? Or to break?
