9 - What Love Actually Looks Like

7 minutes

People talk about love all the time.

I love you.

Love yourself.

We need more love in the world.

Good.

But what does that actually mean?

Because if love is just a feeling, it disappears when the feeling changes.

If love is just being nice, it fails when the truth gets hard.
If love is just approval, it gives people what they want even when it hurts them.
If love is just keeping the peace, it avoids the very thing the relationship needs.

Love has to be more concrete than that.

Love Wants and Does What Is Best

Here is the most important definition in this entire series.

Love is wanting and doing what is best for another — starting with yourself.

Three parts. All three matter.

Wanting means the desire is aimed at the other person's genuine good. Not your comfort. Not their approval of you. What is actually best for them.

What is best means not what is easiest, most comfortable, or most pleasing. It means what is actually best — for who they are and who they are becoming.

Doing means love has to become action. An intention that never moves is not love. It is sentiment.

Wanting what is best without acting is wishful thinking.
Acting without wanting what is best becomes control, performance, or duty without heart.

Love holds both together. It wants what is best. And it acts.

Starting with yourself does not mean making yourself the center of everything. It means wanting and doing what is best for yourself so you become capable of loving others well.

You cannot give what you do not have.
You cannot build trust with others while failing to tell yourself the truth.
You cannot love others well while at war with yourself.

Love starts with you. Then it moves outward.

Love Is Not the Same as Being Nice

This is where people get confused.

They think love means doing what someone wants. Keeping everyone comfortable. Saying yes. Avoiding the hard conversation. Making sure nobody gets upset.

But love is not the same as being nice.

Sometimes love is warm. Sometimes love is tough.
Sometimes love comforts. Sometimes love confronts.
Sometimes love encourages. Sometimes love tells the truth someone doesn’t want to hear.

Love is not defined by how it feels in the moment.

Love is defined by whether it wants and does what is best.

The parent who never lets their child gain strength by working through hard things is not practicing love. They are making life easier today and harder tomorrow.

The friend who always tells you what you want to hear is not practicing love. He is practicing avoidance.

The leader who protects his image instead of doing what is best for his people is not practicing love. He is choosing himself over them.

That is why love is not soft.

Love demands commitment to what is best. And the strength to carry it out.

Especially when what is best costs something.

Love Costs Something

This is the part most people avoid.

Love puts a commitment to what is best ahead of what is convenient.

That commitment means love costs you.

Time. Comfort. Pride. Control. The desire to stay angry. The right to be left alone.

Real love means doing the hard thing. Sometimes the thing that feels unfair.

The exhausted parent who gets up again.
The friend who tells the truth even when the truth might end the relationship.
The spouse who apologizes first.
The leader who takes the blame instead of letting it roll on to others.

That is love.

Not because it feels good. Not because it is easy.

Because love is committed to what is best — despite the cost.

That is why love often feels like sacrifice.
Because it is.

Most people hear sacrifice and think loss.
Giving something up. Being diminished. Losing yourself.

But sacrifice means something deeper.
It comes from the Latin: to make sacred.

When love costs little, it may reveal a little.
When love costs much, it reveals something deeper.

You know someone loves you when they show up in the most difficult moments.
When they have nothing obvious to gain.
When staying costs them.

The friend who stands by you when the world is against you.
The leader who does what is right even when it costs her.
The stranger who risks his life to save yours.

This is agape love. Self-sacrificial love.
Love so deep that you are willing to give up your life for another.

We honor these moments because they show us something true about what it means to be human.

But agape love does not suddenly appear in the dramatic moment.
It is formed long before the moment arrives.

Love does not just affect what happens.
Love changes who we become.

Love Drives Becoming

Our society spends a lot of time asking the question:
Who am I?

It isn’t a bad question, but it assumes that we are unchanging beings. That if you just discover who you are right now, you have the complete answer.

Of course, that’s not reality. We are not unchanging beings. Every thought, every action, every choice, every experience changes us. We are always Becoming.

The better question is, “Who am I Becoming?”

And an even better question, “Am I Becoming on purpose or just letting it happen?”

This is where the depth and impact of love really kicks in.

Love is active. It is the engine that drives human Becoming forward.

The focus on what is best ensures that the engine drives human becoming in the right direction — toward goodness, Happiness, and a life that actually works.

When you love someone, you want what is best for them. You want them to become the person they are capable of becoming and you help them get there.

When you practice love toward them, something happens to you too. You become more loving. Not just in that relationship, but in all your relationships. At home. At work. With yourself.

Love forms the lover.

Agape love does not suddenly appear in one big moment.

The person who gives himself when everything is on the line has been formed by a thousand smaller acts of love before that moment came.

The next truth told.
The next promise kept.
The next apology made.
The next burden carried.
The next decision to put what is best ahead of what is convenient.

Those reps become habits.
Those habits become character.
Character becomes who you are when the big moment arrives.

People don’t rise to the occasion. They perform at the level they have already become.

The Paradox of Love

And here is the part most people miss.

It is in the giving of yourself to others that you most become yourself.

That sounds backwards.

Most people think: If I give myself away, I will have less.
If I love others first, I will lose myself.

But love does the opposite.

You see this in organizations as clearly as anywhere.

The leader who protects himself ends up with a team that hedges.

The leader who genuinely wants and does what is best for her people ends up with a team more willing to trust her, follow her lead, and give themselves to the work.

Not because she demanded it.

Because she earned it.

You see it just as clearly in a single moment, stripped of everything else.

Would you rather be the person who gives up your seat in a lifeboat so another can live — or the person who pushes another out so you can survive?

That question hits us because we already know something deep.

The person who gives himself in love does not become less human. He becomes more human.

The person who saves himself at the cost of another may survive. But something in him becomes smaller.

When you pay the cost of wanting and doing what is best for another, it changes the relationship. It changes you. Sometimes it changes the person who receives it.

The deeper the cost, the deeper the change.

This is the ultimate giving of yourself.

Not thrown away.

Given — and in the giving, most fully becoming who you are.

That is why what is best for you is to practice love for others.

Not because it always feels good. Not because everyone will appreciate it.

Because love forms you into the kind of person who can live a good life and develop the strong relationships that bring Happiness and success.

Practice Love Three Times Today

In the first piece in this series, we talked about doing one thing that could change your life.

Intentionally practice love three times today.

Open a door. Give up a parking space. Smile at someone who needs it. Show up when it would be easier not to.

The specific act matters.
But the intention matters more.

Being intentional means actively looking for the opportunities to practice love.
Every rep builds the mental habit of seeing life through the lens of love.

That was the challenge at the beginning of this series.

Now you know why.

Love is the engine that drives your Becoming and all your relationships forward. It is the foundation of your relationship with yourself, your family, your friends, your work, and your community.

Love drives you to seek wisdom — so you know what is best and how to achieve it.

Love drives you to get results — so what is best becomes real.

So, intentionally practice love three times today.

Then tomorrow. Then for three days. Then for a week.

Not as a grand gesture.

As a rep.

Because the ultimate giving of yourself begins with the next ordinary act of love.

Summary

Love is wanting and doing what is best for another — starting with yourself.

It is not softness. It is not sentiment. It is not approval. It is not avoiding hard things.

Love asks what is best. Then love acts to make it real.

Sometimes that feels good. Sometimes it costs you.

But every time you practice love, you become more loving.

Every time you become more loving, you build more trust.

Every time trust grows, the relationship has room to go deeper.

Love builds the relationship.

Love forms the person practicing it.

Love is the engine that drives your Becoming and your life in the right direction.

And that means love requires wisdom.

Because wanting and doing what is best requires knowing what is best and how to achieve it.

That is where we go next.

Seek Wisdom. Practice Love. Get Results.

— Pete

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