Restpiration

The Emotion of Love versus The One we Love

I received this fantastic insight regarding love and relationships not long ago. I’m not sure if it’s novel or not, but I do know that it changed my perspective on relationships dramatically.

I don’t know what to call it yet, but for the sake of this article, I’ll call it “The Emotion of Love vs. The One We Love.” So, what is it all about? And how does it help you with your relationships? Let’s find out in the following paragraphs.

Love can be seen as many things: a force, a decision, an act…but underlying all these different perspectives on love is the simple fact that love is an emotion.

Maybe you’re already familiar with this emotion. We love things, certain activities, people and so many more. Like every emotion, love varies in intensity for purposes only individuals who love can best tell.

Love is an innate quality in every one of us as human beings. It’s very easy to think that those we love bring that love into our lives but the truth is that love has always been a part of who we are- it’s our design.

The only thing that they ever did was to awaken the emotion of love that was already in us. To have love as our design is wonderful but to have the love in us awakened is something extraordinary. Life takes on a new turn for us and we suddenly feel this shifting where life becomes beautiful and rosy no matter how rough and ugly it used to feel.

However, we erroneously (an innocent error we all commit) require too much from those we love. We expect them to make and keep our lives beautiful but they aren’t responsible for that because they didn’t make our lives beautiful in the first place; the emotion of love did.

You’ll appreciate this if you’ve ever felt fear, I mean crippling fear that could even make you jump into a deep ocean without giving it a second thought. At that point, you might think it was the thing that you feared that controlled everything including your response but if you were convinced that it was just a prank-nothing serious- would you still be fearful? Of course not.

The reason wouldn’t be because that thing changed, no… it’s still the same thing. It’s because that point of realization (that it was a prank) chased the fear away. In the absence of that fear, you wouldn’t contemplate jumping into the deep ocean which only shows that the emotion of fear was the motivating factor all along but not the thing you feared.

We are prone to disappointments when fail to distinguish the emotion of love from the one we love — Disappointment

Just take some time in your mental world and create that division between your emotion of love and those you love. They aren’t the same and it’s best for us not to consider them as such. When we do, we give those we love more power than is due. Once they walk out of our lives, we think that love has walked out of our lives.

Love, in itself, is the nurturer of life, keeping it in its beautiful full bloom. When we believe love has gone out of our lives, we suffer. Instead of subjecting ourselves to such untold misery we can believe that love is always there- somewhere deep inside us. Those we love are simply beneficiaries of our innate quality of love. Therefore, even in their absence, yes, we might feel the loss (because we’re humans and we feel stuff) but we also have a love which is far more abiding inside of us.

Article Summary

Anyone who awakens the emotion of love in us does us much good for they show us what it really means to be alive. But let’s have it in mind that the emotion of love in us is far greater than those that we love even to the extent that those we love are beneficiaries of our innate quality of love.

Dramatically upgrade your relationships by becoming a team

“We may have all come in different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

I once had a totally commonplace, uneventful thought that transformed the way I viewed relationships.
I’m not sure that it was mine; it certainly wasn’t anything groundbreaking or unique. I may have read it somewhere; I can’t remember now.
It was the notion that when two people in a relationship think of themselves as on the same team, things get much easier. Positive feelings grow freely. Score-keeping and resentment are nonexistent.

Insights are very personal—a simple phrase that turns my world upside down might do absolutely nothing for you, and vice versa. Perhaps this notion was so life-changing for me because I grew up surrounded by people who seemed self-focused, always looking for where they had been wronged. They weren’t selfish or egotistical people. They were insecure people.

My father had insecurities that led him to make everything about himself—if you didn’t say the right thing at the right time, trouble was sure to follow. I spent years walking on eggshells, trying to anticipate my next misstep. It was exhausting.
And I remember women who constantly, endlessly talked about what was wrong with the “deadbeat men” who never seemed to treat them the way they deserved to be treated.
As a kid, it seemed as if adults everywhere put everyone else on the hook for their own happiness. In my childhood innocence and
natural wisdom I wondered: why didn’t they take care of their own happiness?

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Being on the hook for someone else’s happiness not only felt like enormous pressure, it was an impossible task. No matter how much my dad approved of something I did one day, he might disapprove of the very same thing the next day. No matter how nice a man was to a woman, he’d inevitably forget to compliment her dress and she’d have him back in the doghouse.

All of this look-at-what-you’re-doing -to-me,you-should-be-treating-me- better business is not born out of independent, empowered women (or men) simply refusing to put up with less than what they deserve. That’s often how they like to view themselves, but that’s not it at all. Scavenger hunting for all the ways you aren’t being treated fairly is not an act of self-love. It’s an act of insecurity. It’s born out of fear and looking to someone else to be your savior. It’s born out of the belief that your happiness comes from what others do, which manifests as manipulation, guilt trips, and passive aggressive behavior aimed at changing them so that you can feel better.

“Us” not “me”

When you’re focused on yourself, keeping score, and making sure you’re being treated properly, you’re not actually in relationship with
another person—you’re in relationship with your thoughts about the other person.
You’re focusing on yourself, what you can get, and where your partner is falling short.
Thinking of the two of you as a team shifts your focus.

Suddenly it’s not “me versus you,” it’s “us.” It’s no longer “I did the laundry every day this week; what did you
do?” It’s “We’re a team. I do the laundry more than you at times, and you do a million other things for me at times.” It’s not “If you cared about me you’d call twice a day.” It’s “I’d love to talk to you more.” The you-and-me-together way of looking at things is exactly what was missing for all of those disgruntled women complaining about their deadbeat men. The extreme look-out-for-myself-first approach is what made my relationship with my dad defensive and inauthentic.

Excerpt from Dr. Amy Johnson’s bestselling book “Being Human”

Shared with the permission of the author
Dr. Amy Johnson (www.Dr.AmyJohnson.com)

Life is embarrassingly simple

I had a lot of memorable days back in high school. I kind of had a wide spectrum of experiences ranging from great days to horrible ones. That really isn’t the issue because that’s what I signed up for anyways.
One experience I will never forget was during a standardized test in Mathematics during my second year. It was much anticipated because the stakes were high… bagging a lot of marks in that test meant you could walk into the examination hall with your head held high because you knew there’ll definitely be some marks to fall on.

On the day of the standardized test, there were a lot of surprises. The first was that we had only one question to answer…just one little question. Then the biggest surprise was when our instructor told us that we could refer to any material of our choice and even discuss the question among ourselves…woow, no one saw that coming. After his surprise announcement, he gracefully made his way to the door and exclaimed, “And Oh, there’ll be no invigilation too…see you later. All the best.” One question to answer, freedom to search through any material of our choice, and no invigilation seemed too good to be true. It took some time for me to snap out of my bewilderment. After all, I had a paper to write.

Then it began… textbooks flew all around the room and the brilliant ones obviously had no rest from the incessant calls by the others. As time went by, I could sense frustration all over the room (not just their frustration, I could sense mine too). Close to one hour, we had done everything we could (at least that’s what we thought) but had nothing to show for it… absolutely nothing! Failure was staring us in the face and we couldn’t help ourselves. So after nearly 2 hours of misery, our instructor wearing a mischievous smile walked into the room and yelled “Time up! pass your papers”
We reluctantly passed our papers to him and immediately began pleading with him to show us some academic sympathy. We knew we had failed.To our surprise, he seemed surprised at our plea.

“You mean you couldn’t answer this question?”
” Of course Sir, it was too difficult”
” But it isn’t…”

So with that our instructor walked to the board and asked us two simple questions which we answered aloud in unison ( they were more or less our anthem). As we answered the last question, a sudden silence fell in the room. We realized, it was indeed easy just as he said, if not far easier. Why couldn’t we answer it then? Why couldn’t we provide the answers we knew all the while?

I feel this is not just true about standardized tests in Mathematics; it’s also true about life. Everything suggested to us that the question was difficult. With all the freedom our instructor gave us, we felt he knew that we could never answer the question. But we were wrong; it was easy and he expected us to have answered it with great ease. We erroneously gave meaning to the conditions which surrounded the test by thinking that if he would allow us cheat and that too with no restrictions, then the question had to be damn difficult. Because we never thought the question was easy, we didn’t give ourselves the permission to embrace simple thoughts and ideas.

We didn’t give ourselves the permission to embrace simple thoughts and ideas

A lot of times we also innocently believe so much in difficulty and complexities that we never realize how simple things really are. I think it was Dr. Mort Cooper who re-hushed the words of Albert Einstein by saying ” God made it all simple, only that we complicate. When we simplify, we speak in agreement with God because God made it all simple“. The true solutions are always simple, often embarrassingly simple. It’s not as complicated as we’ve been conditioned to think. It’s a lot easier. When we embrace the simple nature of solutions, it unlocks our inner wisdom were solutions flow effortlessly any time we encounter any challenge. No matter how difficult and harsh the condition of your life is, you might hate me for saying this but the solution is really simple.

It’s not as complicated as we’ve been conditioned to think. It’s a lot easier.

I may not be able to tell you immediately what the solution is and even if I did, you’ll still require some insight on your path to embrace it. The best you can do for yourself is to believe in simplicity. The simple solution will creep into your consciousness from your inner wisdom sooner or later when you believe.

Inside Adrenaline (Restpiration Answers II)

Hi there. Adrenaline was published just two weeks ago and we had this section called Restpiration Answers where we answered some questions from some precious individuals.

However, at a glance, it is often tempting to doubt the rationale and practicality of the answers provided.

So in this post, I’m just taking the time to establish the basis of the answers provided so that you can also appreciate and fully grasp them. For today’s post, we’ll consider a question from Jane. Enjoy…

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Question

Hi Restpiration. I find the things you share very helpful. I’m Jane, a high school student. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been an emotional wreck. Depression seems to be the norm for me and I find it impossible to shake it off. I try doing a lot of fun stuff to cope but nothing seems to be working and that makes me mad at life and myself. Is it that I’m just wired this way or there’s something I can do about it?

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Answer

Hi Jane. Thank you for opening up about how you feel. It really takes some courage to do so. I love how you present two options at the end of your question- “is that just it?” or “there’s something I can do”.

I’m pretty sure you know the answer even better than I do. The only reason why depression seems to be a problem for you is because that isn’t your design. If it were, you’ll feel fantastic about being depressed.

Depression is essentially a thought that manifests as an emotion. When we focus on the emotion of depression, it makes it look all too powerful and invincible. However, considering depression in it’s basic form- thought- makes it controllable.

Yeah, if there’s something to do, then that’s it… realize that depression is nothing else but a fleeting stray thought. Thoughts come and go. We only entrench them when we begin showering them with attention.

Instead of showering depression with unmerited attention, rather shower that attention on the thoughts of clarity and peace that come in between the depressive ones.

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Foundation

There’s more to us than our experiences. We aren’t our experiences; at best, we only experience our experiences.

Who we are is that being that witnesses those experiences. Thus, we need to always draw that line of separation because when you believe that you aren’t any better than your experience, you’ll be embracing something lesser than your true self.

Experiences are thought created. All day long, we create our experiences through the thoughts we ponder on and accept. Thoughts come to us all. We all think stuff from time to time. It’s the flow of life.

Basically, the same thoughts arise in all of us as humans. It may vary in some aspects but the foundation remains consistent in all humans and depressive thoughts are no exception.

Why one person seems to be held down by depressive thoughts and the other seems never to be depressed lies in the way they relate to those depressive thoughts. One sees depressive thoughts as indicative of self while the other sees them as mere thoughts which have no inherent meaning; just some random irrational emotional stuff.

When you understand that thoughts, even depressive ones are normal and true for every human, it reduces the emotional tension that comes with them. Furthermore, it makes you a good observer; just witnessing depression as it rises and wanes without getting yourself dirty in the action.

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Have a question?

You can send it to restpiration4all@gmail.com to receive some incredible insights.

The June edition of Adrenaline is still available for download. Use the link below to download your free copy

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Love,

Restpirant Jerome

This God is good? (Understanding the true nature of God)

One of the greatest tragedies that could ever happen to you is to have the wrong perception about the nature and character of God. The understanding of the character of God forms the basis of the way we relate with Him and with others. It also affects our perception of the world in which we live. Depending on what you believe about God, you may experience insecurity or security, anxiety or calm, frustration or peace and the list goes on. I believe that majority of the problems we face in life is as a result of our lack of understanding of the nature and character of God.

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In this timely book, I’ve sought to clear the fog of confusion surrounding who God really is. We behold God through the lens of Jesus Christ in a practical way that will give you that unshakable confidence before God and men.

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