ChoozLuv
For about 20 years, I’ve held the mantra and guiding life principle, ChoozLuv (choose love) and after a lengthy inner debate, I decided that it’s time to open up and share bits and pieces of what I’ve learned over the years, on this blog, starting with this post.
My hope is that it helps you, the person who stumbled upon this, in some meaningful, transformative way. I’d be filled with a sense of rightness with the universe if that came true.
So, saying I’ve been embracing this principle for nearly 20 years kind of dates me. I’m now a middle-aged guy, married for 16 years, a cat and a dog as kids, living a quiet life as a reclusive life coach and personal growth mentor, and I spend much of my time connecting with people on a really deep, authentic and soulful level.
Over these years, as I’ve grown on my journey, and as a way that’s helped me grow (that’s more like it), I’ve also been helping others find out who they really are and reconnect to that being, so they can create more meaning in their lives, and live with more presence, courage, wisdom and love.
How did I get here? And where is here? Here is a place of living from the heart, guided by a force that most of us identify as love. It’s a life-giving, life-enhancing force.
When what we do and who we’re being is in alignment with that force, we’re empowered and things feel right and usually tend to work out for the highest good. When what we do and who we’re being is out of alignment with that force, there’s often pain and struggle and ultimately, suffering.
I got here just as much by learning what love is as learning what it’s not. It was by no means a straight and easy path.
Lost to Myself
When I first stumbled upon the field of personal growth, I was living a lie, only I didn’t fully realize it at the time. The real me was so hidden away, not just from others but from myself. I only had the faintest idea that I was missing something. I remembered that there were times (just a few) when I felt fully alive and vibrant and confident but I had already lost the belief that I could feel that way again.
It seemed that each time I came out of a depressive period, more of me was lost or covered up. Especially after my 1.5-year dysfunctional relationship with Zoloft.
Eventually, my true self was eclipsed and out of reach. Overridden by a constant buzz and grip of fear. Fear of being hurt, humiliated, feeling not good enough. This was accompanied by enduring anxiety and depression, and feelings of guilt and shame for being this way.
Eventually, in place of my true self, a false one was created. A self that figured out that living to avoid pain and hurt and fear and sadness was better than being real.
I learned this false self was called the Ego.
One of the first, and truly helpful concepts I learned on those beginner steps of my journey was that we can change how we are experiencing life without needing to change life itself. We can change our beliefs, and with them, our perceptions and interpretations of what’s going on in life also change. That blew my mind! That’s what I ultimately wanted – a more pleasurable and painless way to experience life. I wasn’t asking for ecstasy and bliss, just not so much pain and sadness.
So how does one do this? I was hopeful and eager to learn. And I’m still learning.
It starts with the awareness and the recognition that we have something very powerful at our disposal if we claim it, it’s called choice. When we aim to choose how we wish to live, we become the creators of our lives.
Choice
One of the first simple models I learned was that of the Parable of the Two Wolves. Let me share an updated version of that for you:
A Cherokee Elder, is talking to a younger tribe member saying there’s a battle going on inside me. It’s between these two wolves.
One wolf is full of love and hope and courage and bravery and kindness and peace and joy.
And the other is full of fear and anger and rage and shame and guilt.
This battle is going on inside me and it’s going on inside mostly everybody else too. Maybe you too.
The younger tribe member ponders this for a while and then asks, “which wolf will win?”
The Elder simply replies, “the one you feed”.
The message is clear and simple – we might all have a battle of wolves going on inside ourselves and we have the capacity to make a choice to feed one or the other. We get to choose how we want to see things, interpret things, and respond to things.
I still use this parable when I begin coaching journeys with my clients to spark this important discussion about who they want to be, what they really want to choose. Sometimes, we carry it further and discuss the same theme from Neale Donald Walsch’s book, Conversations with God. In it, he says,
“All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by one of two emotions – fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions – only two words in the language of the soul.
…
Every human thought, and every human action, is based in either love or fear. There is no other human motivation, and all other ideas are but derivatives of these two. They are simply different versions – different twists on the same theme.
Think on this deeply and you will see that it is true. This is what I have called the Sponsoring Thought. It is either a thought of love or fear. This is the thought behind the thought behind the thought. It is the first thought. It is the prime force. It is the raw energy that drives the engine of human experience.”
Though I don’t agree that love is an emotion or that there are only two emotions, I can still get on board with this binary way of looking at things, as a tool. Not as a truth.
Many others throughout the years have also given us the same provocation – to realize that how we experience and live life can be chosen – and the choice lies somewhere on the spectrum from fear to love.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~ Viktor Frankl
Nearly 20 years ago, I embraced this provocation and call to action. I so badly wanted to be done with fear – I committed to choose love. I can see and admit now that fear was driving my choice to choose love in many situations but I don’t blame or judge myself for it. I was in pain and without hope until I embraced this binary paradigm and decided I would do my best to always choose love.
Fear / Pain
We are born with two innate fears – the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. Otherwise, we are conceived without fearing much of anything. It is our environments, starting in the womb, that prime our nervous systems and answer the questions – am I safe? Am I loved and cared for? Do I belong? Will I have enough?
Over the course of our lives, whenever we have an experience that causes any kind of pain – physical or emotional – we learn to fear that pain. Pain is an alarm – a danger signal. It tells us to stop or else things might get worse. It tells us to protect and take care of ourselves.
Pain is also a teacher of sorts. Once we burn ourselves on a hot stove, do we forget? Once we humiliate ourselves in front of a crowd, do we forget? Once we open our hearts to love and get rejected or abandoned, do we forget? These pains make lasting impressions that can shape how we live, how we relate to others, and who we become. They shape our false self, and eclipse the authentic self.
Once we have a certain kind of pain, we can develop a great fear of that pain happening again. Fear is our way to avoid future pain. Fear in itself is a kind of pain – it’s so disturbing that we usually hate it unless we’re paying for it or have some control over it – think, scary movies or thrilling rides or hiring a dominatrix, if that’s your kind of thing.
Of all the painful moments in our lives, some cut deeper than others. Some are merely faint memories of one-off experiences – like breaking a leg skating or skiing or doing a trick on a bike. We may fear skating or skiing but that kind of fear won’t necessarily interfere with how we conduct our lives.
Some painful experiences change us on a whole mind-body level and alter the course of our lives – it’s as if the message we got from these experiences is “if this happens again you won’t survive, avoid at all costs!”
It’s these kinds of experiences – the deeply emotionally painful ones – that can rob someone of their natural spirit, confidence and willingness to show up authentically and vulnerably.
It’s this kind of fear that we’re pitting against love, moment to moment.
Who are we going to be? Our natural, free, open-hearted self? Our false, reactive, close-hearted self?
Love
I won’t dare try to define love. I don’t need to – deep down you know what it is as well as I do. I can share some of its aspects or qualities though.
It’s not an emotion. It is a force that sparks all sorts of emotions – from care to desire to joy to compassion. It is a state of being that carries with it a sort of attitude and way of seeing things. It opens us up so we can both receive loving energy from others and, supply it.
It’s the energy or force behind our will to live and make the most out of life, and our motivation to connect to and want the best for others.
Love is a vibe, an essence that nurtures and enhances life. In us and in others.
Love is strong and powerful. It’s the force behind courage and bravery. When we choose love, we are in service of the highest good in any situation. In some situations that might mean giving and sharing and serving others. In other situations it might mean protecting and defending and serving ourselves.
Love – serves life, enhances life, nurtures life, supports life, enables life. Take any step in the direction of love and you somehow serve life.
Fear – protects life at all costs, even life itself. We may become so paralyzed by fear that we fail to choose, fail to act and we remain closed off from love and inhibit or prevent it’s restorative and life-enhancing benefits.
Back to Fear Again
When you choose fear, you are trying to say no to pain, and maybe even death. We can’t judge this harshly – we must appreciate the drive to survive and live without suffering. However, there are too many things in today’s day and age that hurt us emotionally that we learn to fear and avoid.
So we can cut ourselves off from the very things that make life worth living. Like love itself.
Choosing fear doesn’t provide relief for long and when the momentary relief we confuse for happiness fades, we suffer even more. This cycle leads to hopelessness and despair. It’s a sure-fire path to anxiety and depression and the pain-avoidance patterns (addictions) we figure out and that stick to us along the way.
When you choose love, you’re saying yes to life and you are free to be who you are. You increase your stores of vitality, joy, hope, inner peace, fulfillment and love too.
Yes, there will be pain at times and we can learn to accept it and embrace it and no longer fear it unnecessarily.
And Back to Love Again
Though choosing love over fear seems binary – it’s all on a spectrum. You don’t have to go all in, all the time. You can choose even the tiniest bit of love you can muster, and it will be better than none at all.
Like a sliver of light shining through the cracks in the darkness, it can guide your way. Love does the same.
There are countless ways you can choose love from moment to moment.Simply ask yourself, ‘what would love do’? or How can I choose love now?
I’ll share some more when I can.
Till then, ChoozLuv my friends!
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