Love Takes Courage!

It takes courage to love.  A lot of it.

Why? Because nothing makes you feel more vulnerable, raw, exposed, filled with emotion and often feeling out of control than love.

So why do we put ourselves through all of that?  Because NOTHING feels more exciting, powerful, intoxicating, exhilarating, uplifting, and joyous to your heart, mind, body and spirit than love. 

Yes we all want acceptance.  We all want to be seen and heard. True love gives you those things and more.  But you won’t get to experience the gifts of love without the courage.

Love gives you the feeling you can do anything in this world. It helps you realize you’re not alone.  It helps you thrive in difficult situations and it makes life worth living.  It’s why you are living – to give and receive love and the joy that accompanies it.

So why do many people pull away from love?  In a word: FEAR.

They give up all the good stuff because they experienced love not working out.  A powerful relationship ended; a person died; a loved one couldn’t manage to find the courage to stay in a loving relationship and work through difficulties; or you picked the wrong person the first, second or third time around. But so what? You tried and that’s what counts.  You tried.  You were courageous!

But many people aren’t courageous.  They don’t allow love to come into their lives in the form it can – they impose ideals, expectations, obligations, agendas on love and the relationship. Those things squelch love – quickly. 

And that leaves you and the other person with a non-loving relationship that will end.  It has to, there’s no love left in it to keep it going.

Then the mind convinces them not to go through that pain again.  Can you hear it saying something like that?  It’ll never work out, I’m no good at love, I’m not worthy of love.  You know all the nonsense the mind can bring up.  But that’s all it is, nonsense.  It’s a cop out.  Just a plain old cop out.

The problem with a cop out is that if you choose to cop out, you lose.  You don’t get love and all the joy, power, excitement, fun and peace that comes with it.  You lose.

Don’t choose to lose.  Don’t listen to your mind.  Don’t choose to wallow in the past.  It will make your life miserable.

The heart always heals.  It wants to give love, more than anything else.  Your spirit is all love and joy.

Love takes courage and courage is from the heart.  A brave heart.   I’m not talking about “the guts to do something.”  I’m talking about the true power of the courageous heart.

Doesn’t it feel good when you think of being courageous? About anything?  For me, there’s an exhilaration that comes with it. Thinking and being courageous brings me the awareness of my connection to a higher power, of my oneness with Divine Source. And that always feels great!!

Let’s look at some of the ways it takes courage to love:

It takes courage to withstand your lover getting mad at you. 

It takes courage to work out difficulties in relationships. 

It takes courage to be responsible for your feelings. 

It takes courage to not blame someone for your feelings, but to instead take ownership of your reactions.

It takes courage to leave a relationship that isn’t serving you.  It takes courage to realize if it isn’t serving you, it definitely is not serving the other person.

It takes courage to get back into the world and date and be willing to love again.  It takes courage to focus on the positive and not let your mind keep you from the joys of love by reminding you of what happened last time you opened your heart.

It takes courage to believe in love and to open up to giving and receiving it – again and again and again.

It takes courage to forgive and honor a soul mate who didn’t have the courage to love.

It takes courage to believe in yourself when you’ve been hurt.

It takes courage to love yourself when the person you wanted to be with left you for somebody else. 

We’ve all been hurt in love.  It goes with the territory.  But if you stop and shut down, you guarantee yourself a life without love. Why would you choose that for yourself?  Wouldn’t you rather be courageous and try again? Choose your heart, not your mind, and step into courage.

I’m not going to sugar coat this — relationships are challenging.  But good relationships aren’t as challenging or as painful as the bad ones.  And you know the bad ones:  the ones with the man who is insecure, needy, a victim of life, addicted to his job, addicted to his drama with his ex-wife or any other drama, the man who doesn’t physically take care of himself.  Those guys.  The ones you’ll never have a fulfilling relationship with.

We’ve all tried to have fulfilling relationships with these guys.  They’ll never work.  Because you can only have a meaningful, exciting, fun, loving relationship with a man who is mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually healthy. You can only have a great relationship with a man who is courageous in love.

Please don’t let their struggle with love ruin your love life. Have compassion for them. That will bring you freedom and peace.

And YOU have to be courageous in love to attract a man who is also courageous in love.  So start today.  Don’t listen to your mind.  Listen to your heart and step into courage.

Be willing to be vulnerable, messy, exposed, raw, filled with emotion and sometimes feeling out-of-control.  Be willing to do those things for the incredible gifts that come with love.  The rewards for that courage are worth every ounce of discomfort.

Be willing to be courageous and then don’t settle until you meet someone who also has courage because that’s what it takes to have a long lasting, loving, healthy, exciting, joyful relationship. 

Choose Courage!

Imagine the possibilities…

© Carol Chanel