Thursday, December 6, 2012

Love.. the rest of life is easy

   I love it when people say 'love shouldn't be this hard'. When what they really mean is, my relationship is not working.
   For some strange reason we think that as a human being we should know all about love and relationships.  That is really the furthest thing from the truth. When someone is struggling with their relationship and I ask them... are you talking to anyone who can help? I mean of course.. someone who knows and understands relationships. Most people say not really. Most people, especially men, say they know how to be in love, they know how to make relationships work.. they know.
   The truth is, none of us know. I love when I get the question, if you are not married or in a successful relationship, how can you help others?
   It's like my math teacher growing up... he never had any challenges learning or understanding math. He could just grasp it all. He even said to me, Mr. Sapato, math is easy.
   And it was for that reason he was a terrible teacher to those of us who didn't understand math! He couldn't help us because he didn't understand why we couldn't understand what to him, seemed so simple.
   I share that with everyone... I have had more business failures and successes than most people even dream about. The same is true in relationships... if you haven't had to struggle through situations, if you haven't ever dealt with different personalities, problems, questions... if you haven't ever failed how can you empathise or understand someone who is? It is why I can tell you.. don't do that! Don't even think about that! And I can also share that, some things we will never understand. Some people we will never understand, and, some people will never understand us.
   I want people to know that very few of us truly understand 'love'. Oh we talk about it at times, see it in the movies, laugh and cry when we are involved in it but, in reality.. when I share what love, real love is.. most people want to argue with me, disagree, look for the reasons why what I say is not true... and yet...
   when I talk to people who have successfully kept love.. and in this sense I am talking about partner love, love where they are 'in love', happy, welcoming and invitingly in love, like when most of us start a relationship love... those people almost completely agree with my definition of love. That tells me that I am on the right track. When the people who are and have been for years and even decades successful at it share what love is and tell me all about it... I understand better what real love is and means.
   What I have found is most of us are completely willing to change, adapt, grow in our lives to learn new things. We are all open to learning new skills for our job, for our hobby, for a new hobby, even for a new relationship but we are not open to learning and growing when it's something we think we already know, like love.
   What I have found is, when you take a gold lesson, singing lesson, learn how to do excel spreadsheets that life gets easier. When you know how to do your job better because you are open to growing in the knowledge it takes to make it easier the job is easier. When you learn the skills it takes to be better at your hobby it makes the hobby more appealing and you participate in it more often.
   Therefore I struggle with the facts that people, men and women, don't routinely participate in seminars and events that share ideas and insights into how to make your love life, relationship, easier.
   Without the proper tools to make something work, to keep it running smoothly with regular tune-ups, to complete and participate in routine maintenance, most things we do will not function smoothly or even continuously without breaking down.
  If I asked you to drive your car until it broke down and then you could get it fixed, what would you say to me? Something like.. are you nuts? No! Why wait until it breaks down? That would create all kinds of other problems! No, Steve, do the routine maintenance and upgrades and it should run smoothly for you all the time.
   And yet, if I ask you to participate in a LOVE workshop most of you would say, I don't have the time, it's too far, it costs too much....
   So you see, compared to the rest of your life, the parts where you understand how to make it all work, your life is very easy when compared with love. Your daily tasks, jobs, hobbies are so very easy when compared with love.
   Now I go back to the title of this article...  when compared with LOVE, the rest of your life is easy.

Have an amazing 2013 and rediscover the reasons you go to work. I hope one of them is ... love.

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