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Live A Life Of Love

I am giv­ing a speech in a few days at the TEDx event at the Uni­ver­sity of Florida and they have asked me to talk about “The MOST Impor­tant Thing I Have Ever Learned.” I plan to share three key ideas with the 1,600 or so attendees…

1. You become what you focus on and like the peo­ple you sur­round your­self with. What­ever you fill your mind with — what­ever you watch, read, lis­ten to, and think about… and who you choose to spend your time with, will pretty much deter­mine what your life will look like a decade from now!

2. Ask For HELP.  It is NOT weak to admit that you are in over your head, that you are con­fused, that you do not what to do… that you need some help. It takes a great deal of courage to finally face that fact that you can­not do it all alone. But here is the neat thing… once you learn to ask for help your life will get much eas­ier and more enjoy­able because peo­ple who love and respect you will will­ingly offer you all of the help they can give — and that is a beau­ti­ful thing my friend, a beau­ti­ful thing indeed.

3. The ONLY mea­sure that counts in life is how much love you can give, cre­ate and receive. The amaz­ing thing is that you can give and give and give love… and you will have even more love left to give away the very next day.  You have an end­less sup­ply… and you always will. Is that cool or what? And lest you think that receiv­ing love is self­ish, some­times the great­est way to show love is to allow oth­ers to give their love to you. That is really cool too!

So I leave you with my favorite pas­sages on love from “The Prophet” by the amaz­ing Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran.

Love has no other desire but to ful­fill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a run­ning brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much ten­der­ness.
To be wounded by your own under­stand­ing of love;
And to bleed will­ingly and joy­fully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of lov­ing;
To rest at the noon hour and med­i­tate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at even­tide with grat­i­tude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.


by John Spence

Love Will Keep Us Together

Love keeps us together, right? But what hap­pens when our soci­ety por­trays love through per­fec­tion, wealth, lust, and greed? What do we teach our chil­dren about love? With a skewed def­i­n­i­tion in place, it is even more impor­tant to share with our fam­ily the true mean­ing of love: which encom­passes hope, pos­i­tive behav­ior, strength and giv­ing unconditionally.

Some­times to achieve the pos­i­tive effects of an emo­tion, we must let go of other emo­tions that are tak­ing up too much energy. So to let Love in, We must let other emo­tions OUT. This means get­ting rid of anger, guilt, resent­ment, and judgment.

L= Let Go of neg­a­tive destruc­tive emotions

1. Raise aware­ness of when you are putting your­self or oth­ers down

a. Carry a note­book for a day, and write down when a neg­a­tive thought comes in

b. Carry a golf clicker and keep track

2. Notice where you are feel­ing these emo­tions in your body: your chest, shoul­ders, neck, stom­ach? Where do they seem to con­cen­trate the most?

3. Breath….as you exhale, prac­tice see­ing those thoughts dis­si­pate into thin air, as you inhale, prac­tice replac­ing those emo­tions with a pos­i­tive one, such as joy, hap­pi­ness, love, life, forgiveness.

When we hold on to destruc­tive emo­tions, we hold our­selves back from the many ben­e­fits of love. Let go of neg­a­tive and destruc­tive emo­tions. Let LOVE in.

O=Open your heart to new possibilities

1. Start with HOPE and let go of JUDGEMENT

One can be hope­ful or judg­men­tal, but you can­not be both at the same time!

2. Act like a kid. Kids don’t think too much about going into new sit­u­a­tions, they just go with the flow, open to any out­come because they don’t have any pre­con­ceived ideas about how it is “sup­posed” to flow. Next time you enter a new sit­u­a­tion, try to clear your mind and let what­ever hap­pens unfold with­out plac­ing any undue expec­ta­tion on the event. See what happens.

3. Rec­og­nize that open­ing up can be painful but also heal­ing. Heal­ing takes TIME

Open your heart to new pos­si­bil­i­ties. Let LOVE in.

V=Visualize

Heal­ing just isn’t going to hap­pen with­out love. See your­self being loved. Take note of every source where you feel your­self being loved. See your­self being wor­thy of triple the love you cur­rently feel.

There is almost always more love for us to encounter than we can ever imag­ine. Visu­al­ize love. Let LOVE in.

E=Educate your­self on Emo­tional Intelligence!

Emo­tional intel­li­gence rep­re­sents an abil­ity to validly rea­son with emo­tions and to use emo­tions to enhance thought. We are not used to this in our soci­ety. Most of us were taught to sup­press emo­tions at a young age, but edu­cat­ing your­self on how emo­tional intel­li­gence can help you gain clar­ity and enhance emo­tions such as love.

EI has poten­tial to bring in more love and mean­ing into our daily inter­ac­tions at work, fam­ily, and in our community.

Edu­cate your­self on Emo­tional Intel­li­gence. Let LOVE in.

Love, the right kind of love, will not only bring us together. It will, indeed, keep us together. Let LOVE in.


by Jen Slay­den

Love Is

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Quote: Focus

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How to Determine What to Focus On in Your Life

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