Why The Love You’ve Been Searching For Is Already Inside You | EP 105

personal development space has it backward.

We're often told we need to eliminate negative feelings to experience more love.

But true love doesn't require we get rid of anything.

Love meets life exactly as it is.

If judgment shows up, it welcomes it.

If joy arises, love welcomes all of it with the same openness.

Feelings aren't hard, it's our resistance to them that is.

So people develop strategies.

Do you overthink as a subtle way to avoid?

Or are you somebody that indulges?

There is a way to go deep without wallowing and a way to stop avoiding what's asking to be felt.

This isn't about fixing yourself because you don't need fixing.

Maybe your mind, but not you.

This is about something so much deeper, more profound than any one person could ever give you.

It's about a love that is so big that it welcomes all of life.

It's just been hiding in the last place you would think to look.

The love that you really want isn't out of reach, it is available right here and right now.

Something in you already knows.

These three steps are gonna help you transform how much love you get to experience in your life.

Welcome back to the Healing and Human Potential podcast.

So, I just got back keynoting in Amsterdam, and many of you were asking to hear that talk.

So, I thought to put it together as a podcast for you.

And when I was preparing for this, I got brought to tears multiple times because this is the work that I'm here to do in the world to help you live with more freedom, to live with more love than you ever imagined possible.

And so, in this episode, I'm sharing with you a slightly modified version of the talk, and it is filled with personal stories, highlighting myths that were told about what love is, so we can unlearn them and remember what's true, as well as practical tools to open your heart and mind so it doesn't just transform your relationships, but this transform your entire life.

And I'm so excited to get to share this work with you.

I hope hearing some of my stories serves you deeply.

I think one of the greatest arts in life is learning how to love.

And I know that pain and old patterns can get in the way.

And most of us at this point have realized that our relationship with our partner oftentimes will mirror a relationship with our caregiver.

And for me, some of the deepest lessons about love came from my own family, but specifically my mom.

And so I want to share with you a story that changed everything for me.

So I'm in Bhutan.

I'm 32 and I'm sitting on a bed with tissues everywhere.

My heart is cracked wide open.

And I'm surrounded by seven therapists.

And I know what you're thinking.

You're like, why are you with seven therapists?

So I'm there at the Gross National Happiness Conference.

And I happen to be there with my friends who are all therapists.

And we have this unusual thing that we do where some friends go on vacation and they hold margaritas.

My friends and I, we go on vacation and hold space for each other, which I know is such a therapist thing to do.

And so organically, each of us had a different moment where something would come up and we would hold space for each other.

For me, this was my moment.

My mom's stuff came up.

For my entire life, I felt responsible for my mom's happiness.

And that carried into my adult life where she would just be sweet and call me and say hi.

And I was already triggered.

And then I was frustrated that I was triggered.

And then I felt guilty for being triggered because she literally devoted her life to me.

She didn't do anything wrong.

And I kept thinking, what's wrong with me?

Why do I have this?

And so I'm there sitting on this bed with my friends surrounding me, feeling some of the deepest wounds of my life around what I now know to be a pattern of over-responsibility.

And I go there.

And after I went into the ugly cry, something lifted.

I felt felt lighter.

It was like I had left lifetimes of weight in the mountains of Bhutan.

And I was so excited because I've been working on this for decades, healing my relationship with my mom, and something was different.

And so I run to the phone to call my mom.

So excited.

I'm like, mom, I've healed us.

It's done.

She's like, I'm so happy for you, honey.

I have breast cancer.

And in that moment, something extraordinary happened.

For the first time in my life, I I could be there for my mom, not out of the pattern of obligation or abandoning myself to care for her, but to genuinely be there for her in a completely new way.

I was able to support my mom through her breast cancer journey in a new way because of the healing work that I had done.

And I'm happy to report she caught it early, had a surgery, and has not had cancer for over a decade.

But because of the healing work I did within me, our relationship blossomed into something I didn't even realize possible.

So I would would oftentimes get triggered by my mom within a few hours.

After this, I actually hired her to work with me.

We would talk every single day and the charge wasn't there.

So what used to be a trigger ended up being a lot of laughter.

But the revelation was that I didn't need her to change for me to heal and shift my relationship with her.

I healed it with inside of me.

And because I did that deep work inside of myself, then I didn't have to carry those patterns into my marriage.

I got to save years of unnecessarily suffering in my marriage.

And because when you shift something at the root, it doesn't just change one relationship, it changes all of them.

And so what if I told you the most profound changes you could have in your relationship, whether with your partner, your colleagues, your family, even strangers, don't require anyone else to change.

And so today I want to talk to you about love and relationships in a way that might completely surprise you.

I'm going to expose some of the myths about relationships that cause most people pain so that you can stop falling into those traps.

We'll redefine what love actually is.

And best of all, I'll give you practical tools that you can apply right away.

And if you do, they're not going to just change your relationships, they're going to change your entire life.

But before we dive into the topic of love, I want to be really clear what this conversation is and isn't.

So this isn't about fixing yourself because you don't need fixing, maybe your mind, but not you.

This is about something so much deeper, more profound than any one person could ever give you.

It's about a love that is so big that it welcomes all of life.

And I find that the personal development space has it backward.

So we're often told we need to eliminate negative feelings to experience more love.

But true love doesn't require we get rid of anything.

Love meets life exactly as it is.

If judgment shows up, it welcomes it.

If resistance, unworthiness, joy arises, love meets and welcomes all of it with the same openness.

And so experiencing more love isn't about getting rid of any of our human experience.

It's about compassionately welcoming all of it, the beautiful and the messy.

And so as you meet the moment with acceptance, this is what parts the clouds so that you can more fully experience a love that is always here, a love that is your true nature.

And I tell clients, if you work with me, I guarantee you will find the love of your life.

And so I want to offer you this same guarantee.

If you take up the practices that I'm going to share with you today, I guarantee you will discover the love of your life.

And so my invitation, if you're interested in this, is for the rest of the episode, I want to invite you to experience as much love as you can in your heart, to really stretch your capacity to allow it to be good, to let this be a new set point in your subconscious, letting your nervous system know that it's safe to open this much, to stretch the capacity and allow yourself to feel good, to be open and reprogram this as a new set point of safety.

And you have the power to do that right now if you want.

Okay, fun.

So let's talk about why relationships are often so hard.

So here are some of the common struggles that I hear.

It feels like all the good ones are taken or they just don't exist.

Or why do I keep falling for people who can't show up for me?

If I'm honest, I'm scared I'm going to push them away or hurt them.

How do I let somebody in without losing myself?

Or I'm afraid if I keep evolving, we're going to grow apart.

If you can relate to any of these, I want you to know that you're not alone.

And it makes sense to me because from a young age, we are conditioned collectively around myths and misunderstandings about what love is, not only from our family, but from from our culture, from music and media.

And these misunderstandings have been ingrained in our subconscious.

And so I want to highlight how wild some of these songs are that you've probably heard hundreds of times so you can start waking up to the misunderstandings about what we've been conditioned around love.

So the first song is by the police, every breath I take.

So the lyrics are, every move you make, I'll be watching you.

Okay, that's creepy.

People think this is romantic, but this is actually obsession and control.

There's also Mariah Carey song that's very popular without you.

The lyrics are, I can't live if living is without you, right?

And this teaches that love is survival.

Like this is, I am nothing without you.

This is codependency.

This is not love.

Let's be clear.

And then another one is Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis.

She says, you cut me open and I keep, keep bleeding.

This is essentially teaching that love is suffering.

It also blames.

It says, you cut me open.

You made me feel this way.

No, my thoughts, my patterns made me feel this way, right?

So it's no wonder that we're confused around what love actually is.

And when you start hearing them again and again, especially as we're kids, we get internalized belief systems that really confuse us.

And so today let's unlearn some of these myths and reconnect with a deeper truth about love, one that's more empowering and that helps us experience it right here and right now.

And I'll share with you a story about a woman who came to see me as a new potential client in my office.

So she is sitting on the edge of her seat.

Her anxiety is palpable.

So she saw her friend's transformation that I worked with, and she was convinced that I could help her, although it felt more like I could save her.

And so she tells me her goal, if we were to work together, would be to get married.

And I know that goal is not going to serve her.

So I say, I'm only willing to work with you if you have a different goal.

And literally her face shows desperation.

She's like, what do you mean?

And to me, at this point, it's clear that she thinks she needs to get married.

And her core wound was this fear of abandonment.

So she was terrified of being rejected, of being left behind.

And she thought that that marriage, that ring, that commitment, that legal document was going to be her safety net, her insurance policy to never feeling abandoned again.

And so rather than helping her get the guy that she's with to help her feel secure, I help her do something else.

Because here's what I know about the wound of abandonment.

I know oftentimes what happens is when this fear, this wound comes up, most people abandon that feeling to try to get something outside of themselves to get the security that they want, right?

It could be in a partner, it could be in a certain type of income, it could be in a body type, but essentially they're abandoning their own abandonment.

So they're skipping over that feeling to try to outsource it.

And here's what I know about life: it's a mirror.

And so she's abandoning that, her own sense of abandonment.

She's going to feel abandoned in the world until she meets it directly.

And so I help her see this.

And then I help her bring love to the terrified part of her, the part that's convinced that she's not worth staying for, and really really teach her to welcome it instead of run from it, to really forgive the judgment she's had about herself that she bought into when her dad left, that she wasn't worth staying for, she was too much, not enough.

And I help her really forgive and let go.

And because of that, something beautiful starts to happen.

She starts to really feel a sense of security in herself, independent of anything else shifting outside of herself.

And by the end of our work together, she is so embodied in a deeper security within herself that it doesn't matter if she gets married or not because she's giving herself the security she thought marriage would give her.

And her whole energy shifts, she's not leading with that desperate, clingy energy anymore.

And because she's not abandoning herself, she's really embodying a deeper sense of confidence that starts reflecting in all areas of her life.

She ends up taking greater leadership at work.

She gets a raise and she also does get married.

But by then, it doesn't matter because she's not looking for her security or sense of self and worth in it.

Okay, so let's break this down because most people have been taught to outsource love, right?

And then they try to manage and control life to feel better, but then we're victims to something that we can't control.

And so how it goes is like, you give me love, I'll give you love.

And that's really just called codependency.

So when we outsource love, we're unconsciously making it somebody else's responsibility.

And I would be all for that, but it doesn't work, right?

It just leads to failed relationships, frustration, neediness, and desperation.

And so the other option is what I call insourcing love, which is where you bring love to all the parts of you that have been looking for love outside.

It's like you take all that leaky energy and you become the source of love to these disenfranchised parts.

And applying this will change your life.

So when you're starting to insource love, you don't need other people to be different because again, you embody and become the source of love for all sensations, thoughts, and feelings.

And so how do you actually do this?

Let's break it down.

The first step is to realize that outsourcing just doesn't work.

You don't need any drama, it's just not effective.

The second step is to identify what is your core wound.

So if you don't know what your core wound is, take my free love quiz.

It'll help you understand it.

I'll put it in the show notes here below.

If you want to save years of unnecessarily struggling in relationships, whether you're singled or coupled, I have created a free love quiz for you that just takes 15 minutes.

And it's going to help you understand why you're attracted to who you're attracted to, the hidden ways you might be pushing love away, and what you actually need most in relationships so that you can nurture that.

And this is normally a paid offer, but for a limited time, I'm sharing it with you as a gift for being a part of my podcast community.

You're also gonna receive a workshop that guides you through the quiz step by step.

And I take you through a powerful guided meditation as well as coach you on how to apply these insights to your life right away.

So just click the link in the show notes right now so that you can take the quiz and start applying all of the insights, creating the connection that you deeply desire.

But once you know what your core wound is, then you won't be blaming somebody else for making you feel that way because you knew it was there before you.

They're just activating it inside of you.

And when you communicate with them, say if your core wound is abandonment, then if they don't call you back, they know that it's just tapping into that core wound.

They can hold compassionate space for you, especially if you go unconscious into it.

But don't have the assumption that it's not going to come up because it will.

It's just that when it comes up, you want to then learn how to be with it, which is the third step.

Welcome the core wound.

So this doesn't mean that you're judging it, you're ignoring it, or trying to heal it.

You're not changing it in any way.

You're genuinely being with it, being present, and then forgiving any judgments that you've had about yourself so you can start waking up beyond it.

And there's more to this process that I call insourcing, but these three steps are going to help you transform how much love you get to experience in your life.

And when you do, one of two things starts to happen.

So it will either improve the relationship you're in because you're not unconsciously playing that pattern out anymore, or two, if you're single, then you'll attract a newer, healthier level of relationship.

And honestly, it doesn't totally matter who you're with because your core wounds are going to come up whether you're with person A or B.

But my opinion is why not work whatever comes up sooner so that you live freer longer.

And I'm just curious, how many of you have done what I'm about to do?

So how many of you have been like, oh my God, please, I'm ready for my soulmate.

I'm manifesting my partner.

I am just like calling it in right now.

And then the next person that you meet, it triggers all your childhood wounds.

And suddenly you're like, wait, universe, I think you made a mistake.

This is definitely not my person.

Can we get, can I trade this person?

So you thought you were signing up for cuddles and compatibility, but what you really got was a crash course in self-worth and boundaries.

Be honest.

Have you really done this?

And it's totally okay if you do, but I want you to know that triggers are not bad.

They are here to show you what's looking to be tended to inside of yourself so that you can have the relationship that you want.

Triggers are not bad.

They're here showing you what's looking to be tended to so you can have the relationship that you deeply desire.

And the honeymoon doesn't have to end.

The honeymoon shows you what's possible after you do the work.

So it's kind of like this bait and switch, like life gets you drunk on cocktails of oxytocin, feeling really good and motivated to do the work so that you actually heal, so that you resolve whatever the core misunderstanding was that you've been viewing life from.

And then the best part is you don't need somebody else to change for you to experience more love.

Really, you get to use everyone as your mirror.

And I know that most of the time romantic relationships are our closest mirrors, but every relationship can be used because everyone is the one.

Everyone is your soulmate here helping you evolve your soul if you choose to use them that way.

And so I'll introduce the second tool to help you experience more love with a story.

So it's 2012 and I'm volunteering at a week-long intensive in the desert with 300 people doing transformational work and it is deep.

And I'm starting to walk back to join the volunteers when this wave of grief came out of nowhere around an ex that I didn't even realize that I had and it is ready to be cleared.

And I find that when that many people come together intentionally, it amplifies everything.

And so my boyfriend at the time, Emilio, is there too volunteering and I let him know what's coming up and he's like, let's go back to the room and clear it.

And I remind him that we only have five minutes to circle up with the volunteers.

We're literally walking on our way there.

And in typical Emilio fashion, he smiles.

He calmly grabs my hand and he starts leading me to the room.

And just to give you context about Emilio, he's the kind of guy that jumps and grows wings on the way down.

And it works for him every single time.

So I'm like, okay, we have five minutes.

Let's see what happens.

And I grab his hand and we rush back to the room.

And because I know I need to speed heal this thing, I do what any emotionally intelligent but slightly dramatic woman would do.

And I put on one of the songs to my ex because he was a musician.

And nothing says, let's move on, like playing the soundtrack of Heartbreak, right?

And so, I put on a song, and I go all in on my grief.

Literally, I am on my knees, feeling this gut-wrenching grief all the way through.

But to my surprise, it only took 90 seconds because I felt it without thinking about it.

And bless Emilio, he's literally just holding space, totally calm, not trying to fix me, not weirded out, not saying maybe don't play the music of your ex while you cry about him.

He's just present.

And what's remarkable is that before that moment, Emilio and I had been together for almost three years.

And he was clear on his intention to get married, but I was one foot in, one foot out.

And before that experience, I was with him almost like my shoulders were to the side, my head was looking at him.

But after those 90 seconds, I was face on 100% all in on this relationship.

Because once I released this block, marrying Emilio was the clearest, most dramatic yes for me.

And I literally kept showing in my hand for the rest of the retreat.

I kept being like, something's missing on my finger.

I was night and day so clear because of those 90 seconds.

And those weren't just about an X.

They were about processing a grief that was in the way of a deeper level of intimacy.

And Emilio and I have now been together for 16 years.

We're celebrating 12 years of being married.

And it only took 90 seconds to clear something that had been in my heart for years.

And neuroscientists have discovered that that's that's all it takes to move an emotion through the body if you're not mentally resisting it or indulging in it.

And we all have 90 seconds, right?

That's shorter than a lot of your voice messages.

And so that means if you can stay present with a feeling as a sensation for a minute and a half, it will clear.

Isn't that wild?

But here's the thing.

Most people don't want to feel quote-unquote negative feelings.

They think that those are hard, but feelings aren't hard.

It's our resistance to them that is.

And so people develop strategies.

Some people start avoiding emotions altogether.

Other people dive in, but they don't know how to get out.

It's almost like you're in a washing machine on spin cycle feeling it again and again.

And so just think about where you land, right?

Do you overthink as a subtle way to avoid?

Be honest with yourself, no shame.

These are safety strategies that we've learned until we start learning something right here, which is a new way to let emotions move through the body.

Or are you somebody that indulges, right?

You feel your emotions, but then sometimes you don't know how to get out.

But I want you to know, either way, there is a way to go deep without wallowing, and there's a way to stop avoiding what's asking to be felt.

And the goal isn't indulge or avoid.

It's to allow an emotion to come up fully for 90 seconds, to presence it, and then it clears through and integrates in your nervous system.

And then we're not trying to manage and control life.

We feel empowered to really stretch the capacity to meet the range of our experience exactly as it is.

And this is how you start to transform the triggers that show up in your relationships.

Because remember, triggers aren't bad.

They are breadcrumbs showing you to the love that you really want.

But don't just take my word for it.

Let's test it.

Let's do a short somatic exercise so you can notice what it feels like in your own system when you open to a contraction or something that's been blocking more love.

So if you're in a safe place to close your eyes, go ahead and do this.

If you're not, it's going to be about 90 seconds.

So you can do this with your eyes open.

Keep yourself safe.

So just take a nice, slow, deep breath in through your nose

and just drop your awareness into your heart and start to bring somebody to mind that opens your heart.

It could be a lover, it could be a four-legged friend, even a place in nature.

And just let yourself focus on this sensation of safety and love, letting it soften any barriers around your heart, breathing in, letting go.

And as you anchor into this safety in your body, just notice and scan your body to see if there's a contraction here or feeling that you've been avoiding.

You might want to place your hand on your body where it is to hold presence.

And then just breathing into this energy exactly as it is.

There's nothing to judge, nothing to change, just breathing and saying hello to it energetically.

And then I'm going to invite you to silently repeat after me, talking to this energy.

I see that I've judged you.

I didn't know how to be with you before.

But I'm learning now.

Thank you for arising to teach me how to open.

You can stay as long as you want.

I love you.

And just breathing in, letting all of it be here.

Even if resistance comes up, that gets to be welcomed too.

It's just trying to protect you.

Just thank it.

Giving all of it infinite space to be here as much as it wants to be here, whatever is arising in this moment.

And when you're ready, you can gently open your eyes.

And what I want you to see is that ironically, whatever you welcome dissolves

and if for some reason that wasn't your experience it's just feedback that you were in your mind thinking about it or you didn't feel safe enough to drop in so test this out when you have a little bit more space and keep coming back to noticing that what you welcome what you accept dissolves and opens and so i'll share with you the story about how i discovered this so I know that the breakdown moment usually happens on the bathroom floor.

For some reason, I have no idea why.

I happen to be on the carpeted floor in my daughter's bedroom, surrounded by pink walls and stuffed animals and this deep crushing sense of unworthiness.

And downstairs, Zeepak Chopra's producers are setting up to have me coach two people for his show.

And I'm upstairs paralyzed, not good.

And so how did I actually get here?

I at that point had spent years playing small, hiding, not putting my work out there.

And I really looked at everything through the lens of not good enough.

I'm not good enough.

I'm not successful enough.

Fill in the blank.

And I had randomly met a woman who I'd offered a coaching session to and she was blown away.

Turns out she was Depox producer and wanted to share my work with a lot larger audience.

And what should have felt like a big moment, the morning of the shoot, all of my stuff came up and I was confronted with what I was running away from.

I was like, oh, this is why I was hiding.

I was hiding from all these feelings.

And so while they're setting up in my office, I am upstairs spiraling, panicked, and convinced that there's no way that I can perform my way out of this one.

Because that's what I used to do.

I would perform to succeed, to feel worthy and loved.

And at this point, it felt like defeat because that strategy wasn't going to work.

So for the first time in my life, I literally just stopped.

I was like, okay, I'm not enough.

I'm not going to run away from this feeling anymore.

I'm just going to stop and allow it to be here.

And what happened surprised me.

So by actually embracing unworthiness, I discovered my wholeness.

I mean, it makes more sense now that I didn't feel whole because I was rejecting a part of me, my unworthiness.

But the moment I stopped stopped to welcome it, I felt lighter.

I felt more peace.

And that changed my life.

Not because I figured anything out, but because I stopped pushing it away.

And so with that, I just stood up.

I wiped my face.

I walked downstairs.

And I went from being focused on how I was seen to just genuinely being in my heart and being in service to these two people.

Because that session was so powerful that I'd just taken myself through.

I wanted to offer them the same experience.

And I did.

And those sessions were powerful.

Not because I was trying to prove anything, but because I got out of my own way.

I wasn't attaching my performance to my worth.

And who knew that the very thing I was trying to avoid, feeling unworthy, was the doorway to feeling completely worthy?

And so this is what I've discovered, and what I now call the paradox of transformation.

And it's the game of opposites.

It's powerful.

And I teach it in my certification program.

And it goes like this.

If you want to feel worthy, embrace unworthiness.

If you want to feel free, embrace stuck.

If you want to feel peace, embrace stress.

It's the game of opposites.

This is the paradox.

The very thing that you've been running from holds the key to what you deeply desire.

But you need to feel it as a sensation, not a story.

And as you presence it as a sensation, that's what starts parting the clouds so that you can experience a deeper love that is always here underneath all the insecure thoughts and feelings.

And truly, if you feel any feeling all the way through, you discover that love is at the heart of it.

But it takes courage, it takes honesty, it takes willingness to discover this for yourself.

And in my experience, when you realize that what you avoid is what you create, you become a lot more willing to face it.

So, what you avoid, you create.

Let me give you an example.

So, if you're feeling insecure and you try to get the guy or the person to give you that security, you're going to cling on to them and that's going to push them away.

And ironically, you're going to get left to be alone, which will have you feel more insecure.

Versus, what I'm sharing with you here is if insecurity comes up, feel it with presence for 90 seconds as a sensation.

That starts parting the clouds to the insecure thoughts and feelings where you feel a deeper security that doesn't come and go, that's always here at the heart of it.

Because the truth is, the love that you really want isn't out of reach.

It is available right here and right now.

It's just been hiding in the last place you would think to look, and the very thing that you've been avoiding, whether it's fear, insecurity, abandonment, that's actually the doorway to everything you deeply desire.

And so meeting it with love is that key that opens the door.

And so the next tool that I want to share with you to unlock and experience more love begins with a discovery that I had that your heart only hurts when you close it.

And so I'll share with you a story that taught me this.

This is some fierce love.

So I'm sitting at a restaurant and my husband's ex-wife is sitting in front of me and she is making it very clear that she doesn't like me.

I mean, very clear.

The energy in her words could cut glass.

And I start to feel my own dislike of her arising and then anger at this new family dynamic, at the confusion, at the tension and all the complications.

But I also notice that I want her to like me because I want easy co-parenting and I want harmony.

I want one happy, big, blended family, like the Pinterest version of divorce.

But that's not available.

And every time I notice her disapproval, I feel my own heart wanting to close.

That's what our hearts do, right?

They close as this like protective shield.

But here's what I also start to notice.

When I leave myself trying to manage how she sees me, I hurt even more.

So then I stop that and I just check in, what's my honest, authentic experience?

And I discover that I actually care for her and that feels good.

Not because she earned it, not because I'm trying to be nice, but because I like who I am when my heart is open.

And so I make a conscious choice to keep my heart open, not for her, not even for her liking me or not liking me.

It's just about staying true to myself no matter how somebody somebody else responds.

And that's when I realized my heart only hurts when I close it.

Now, that doesn't mean I don't have boundaries.

It's not like we're braiding each other's hair and planning a girl's trip to Bali.

But what it does mean is I don't let her disapproval be the reason I close my heart.

And here's what's wild.

Once I realized that, I took all my energy to stop trying to get her to like me.

And I just took that leaky energy and focused it on myself.

And I kept my heart open.

That's when everything started to shift.

Not because she changed, but because I stopped making her responsible for how I felt.

And so a few months go by, and slowly something beautiful started to happen between us.

We start genuinely connecting.

We start genuinely enjoying each other's company.

And then one day she said something that completely floored me.

She said, You know, I've been doing my own work this whole time to come back to my heart, even when I felt threatened by you.

I was like, Wait, what?

This whole time, I thought I was the only one doing the work.

And she said, No, I've been doing the work to come back to my heart to really stay open even when my ego wanted to make you the enemy and so here we were both choosing love over protection both doing the inner work and not even knowing it about each other and now we genuinely are at a place where we are in family together and the kids get to see two women who have figured out how to love instead of compete how to stay open instead of closed.

And I learned that love isn't something you just give to people who earn it.

Love is something that you choose because of how it makes you feel to be loving.

And sometimes when two people make that choice, miracles happen.

And that's the difference between conditional love and unconditional love.

We get to choose which one we want to live.

When our hearts are open, love moves through.

Our hearts are like a valve.

When they're closed, it can't flow.

And so how open we are determines how much love gets to move through our lives.

And you can even open your heart to your closed heart.

That's a hack so that you can be authentic with whatever your experience is.

And so check in with your heart right now.

How open is it?

And do you want to breathe into it to open, even if it's 5% more?

You get to decide how much you want to open moment to moment.

You have that power.

And so, the last story I want to share with you is one of the greatest lessons of my life.

So, before I met my husband, I was seeing this man and really grappling with the question: should I stay or should I go?

And when I was around him, I was high.

Like, I didn't eat much.

I didn't sleep much.

I was just blissed out in this ecstatic state of love.

But there's this one thing that didn't work for me around him.

So I wanted to be in a committed relationship and he wasn't available for that.

He seemed a bit avoidant.

And at the time, I had this spiritual practice of keeping my heart open no matter what.

And somehow I got this crazy idea.

If I was able to do that, then I should be able to be with anyone.

And so I felt trapped between what my heart knew to leave and what my mind thought I should be able to handle.

And so I wrestled with these two for a bit, but I did end up giving myself permission to follow my heart and really hold for what I wanted, which was a committed relationship.

And I remember after I left, I'm lying on the couch one night, and like this wave of, I had the thought of him, and this wave of emotion from my feet all the way up into my heart came.

And I just felt that same ecstatic, open, euphoric love all over again.

And then a nanosecond later, I remembered that he's not here, and poof, all of it disappears.

It was gone.

And in that moment, it hits me that I was feeling everything I felt in his presence, but he wasn't there.

And that moment on the couch changed everything because I realized that he never gave me love.

He simply helped me access what was already inside of me.

I had just been associating these feelings with him, but the truth was they came from me.

So if he didn't give them to me, he couldn't take them away.

I had just been giving my power to the idea that somebody else was the source of love.

But it was within me this whole time.

And that's when I started to wake up to a deeper truth and inquiry around what is love.

And I discovered that this love is who and what I am.

And so I want to leave you with this, a new perspective on love.

That it's not just about getting love, it's not about giving love, it's about being love.

It's about recognizing that love is your true nature and that you've always been whole and never lacked anything.

And nothing needs to change for you to realize this right now.

And most people are trying to get love, but when we do that, we become emotional addicts hooked on their love and approval.

And then some people will try to give love which feels good it's closer because then we realize at least we have it but the more we go searching for love the more we lose sight that it's already here and this love that you are searching for in the world is already within you and anything can evoke it a lover a child a sunset but look to where it's evoking from which is within you And so there is a greater love available to you more than any one person you project your love onto could ever give you.

A love that is experienced in, as, and through all of life.

And this deeper love is always here.

It doesn't come and go.

Just our awareness of it does.

And so all we're doing is parting the clouds that block our awareness so that we can more fully awaken to and embody this love consciously.

And so we use everything that comes up in our human experience to bring love to it from the heartbreak to the honeymoon.

And as you start bringing love to all parts of you, you wake up to the realization of your wholeness.

I wouldn't say love yourself into wholeness, you love yourself into the realization of your wholeness.

And as you embrace all of yourself, you then realize that you've just embraced everyone and everything in the universe, too.

And from this place, you love more freely because you're not afraid of it leaving.

And I promise you, no matter where you are in your life, no matter what you've gone through, this is available to you right here and right now.

Something in you already knows.

And my experience is that life wouldn't want us to stay deluded in egoic love and miss out on this bigger love affair.

And my favorite quote is from St.

Francis of Assisi.

He says, what you are looking for

is what's looking, is what's looking through your eyes right now.

And so as I said in the beginning, I can guarantee you will find the love of your life because you are it.

It has been here all along.

It is who and what you are.

And so my hope is that you discover that everyone is here to help you realize that you are the source of love itself.

And as you embody this more fully, it doesn't only feel good, it's the most magnetic and attractive force in the universe.

And you bring opportunities to you.

But when you're living from this place, you also don't put up with anything less than you're offering yourself.

Not out of judgment, just out of alignment.

And in a world that protects their hearts, it's a rebellious act to love fully, to let that love pour through you without holding back.

So, right now, see how much love you can allow, even if it's just for 30 seconds, to access as much love as possible without holding it back.

You don't even need a reason to access this.

And it's not just a gift to yourself that's nourishing and to your health, but it's an offering that ripples throughout the world.

And so right now, just breathing into, letting yourself be brave, loving full out, softening your shoulders, any resistance that may come up, this is where it changes in your life right now.

Not by pushing resistance away, but by embracing it to know that this gets to be allowed and welcomed too.

That's how true love moves.

It moves towards and welcomes everything.

And you give this to yourself moment to moment.

You have the power to choose that anytime you want, if you want that without any reason.

Thank you for being here in the world.

Thank you for being a beneficial presence in the world and just opening your heart and your mind.

What a gift it is to have you in the community.

Thank you so much for doing this work that changes the world, starting with yourself.

It truly does make a difference.

And if you're finding value in this podcast, a cost-free way to support us is by following us.

It does help us grow and we are so grateful.

Leave a review on Apple or Spotify.

Submit a screenshot of that and upload it to alissinabriga.com forward slash podcast.

As a thank you gift, we will be sending you one of the most powerful tools that you can use on any area of your life to help you tap into your full potential so that you don't let fear hold you back from really stepping into your dreams.

I have so much more magic I want to share with you and I cannot wait to do that soon.

But for now, I just want to say thank you so much for being an example of what it's like to live with an open heart and mind in the world.