Feeling Love for Life

By Fred Sterk and Sjoerd Swaen

Feeling love for life

 

Positive psychological and personal life lessons: What can you learn from your unique life story when you're able to look at your development, history, and future possibilities with respect and understanding?

 

This book encourages you to continue believing in yourself. Love is the strongest force in its purest form. Realize that you are more and better than what you can currently see in yourself. By nature, you have everything within you to make your life more loving.

 

Psychologists Fred Sterk and Sjoerd Swaen describe, with practical examples and techniques from positive psychology, mindfulness, and cognitive behavioral therapy, that self-compassion, acceptance, and inner peace are always within reach. Pure and simple, through the things you can do on your own or with others.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sterk Publishers
• Release date: Jul 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223719649

Book preview

1 Love

A great wondrous power, present everywhere, in all kinds of forms. All-encompassing and healing. Love calms. It provides comfort in the darkest of nights. It helps you admire the things that others have achieved and given. Love is pure inspiration in its most pristine form.

We'll do anything for a little bit of love. We frantically try to achieve perfection and prestige, hoping to be appreciated by everyone. You can become so absorbed in your struggle for recognition that you forget that love has little to do with the outside.

Love is honest; you just have to give it away to get it back in abundance. Loving life gives recognition, but it doesn't work the other way around. Pursuing recognition will yield little love. Loving yourself and others protects you and offers hope and confidence.

The first crucial step in alleviating sadness, pain, and gloom is learning to be kinder to yourself. People who are too hard on themselves often feel even more miserable. If you don't take good care of yourself, you have little to offer others. Overextending or sacrificing yourself comes across as fake, and the other person feels something is wrong, disrupting the connection.

Hopeful love can be learned. Realize that you are more and better than what you can currently see. Naturally, you have everything you need to make your life more loving. Keep trying; the possibilities to achieve your goals are never exhausted, despite setbacks and obstacles. Reap, without judgments, every form of human contact.

Relationships improve when you are able to accept yourself under all circumstances. Rejection hurts, and why shouldn't you be allowed to accept yourself as you are? The people you love the most deserve all the love, appreciation, compassion, and attention. Wherever you go, bring your love with you.

*Love is pure inspiration in its purest form.

2 Live with love

We all share the same fear, the deep-seated feeling that we are not good enough and do not deserve love. But our true nature can only consist of love. Everyone is worthy of being loved; each person deserves pure love. If you could look deep enough into your heart, it would be written in beautiful letters: You are good.

Life is kind to us, but because of our own insecurity, we don't dare to follow our hearts, and we miss vital clues and opportunities.

Don't be fooled by your internal critic; even though he is a champion detractor, he has never accomplished anything of value. His advice is based on ignorance and fear. Refuse to be discouraged; keep looking for ways to expand your positive influence. Or, as Emma described it to a 47-year-old client from our practice:

"I am beginning to understand more and more that, since puberty, I have had a wonderful life, thanks to everything I have built, and despite all the fears, pain, loneliness, and uncertainty. My nostalgia for some aspects of the past is the best proof of that. But luckily, I can also clearly see how incredibly rich I am with so much warm, safe love in my life. Love transcends everything."

The ideal reality is in your own life, NOW! Fantasies about other people, other times or places, other worlds have one significant, central feature: you-yourself; you are the creator, director, and writer. A fantasy reality can only be elusively beautiful because you yourself play the leading role.

We all think we can only be happy when we have achieved what we fantasize about. But we forget and overlook that we are already in the place we so passionately desire, namely with ourselves.

Your unique personality and characteristics make your stories beautiful; you are the most important happiness factor in your own dreams. Without you, your own story could never be complete. From that beautiful starting point, you can continue to grow.

So if there's something you're longing for or homesick for, it's better to focus on the biggest and best part of your fairy tale that's out there right now, that's you yourself. Everything else belongs to the ever-changing decor.

Again: a desire always consists of two parts, you... and what you long for; as soon as the desire starts to hurt, it is time for more love, attention, and care for the most essential part of your desire: you-yourself!

*Your unique personality and characteristics make your stories beautiful; you are the most important happiness factor in your own dreams.

3 The flip side

Love and 'loving' also have another side: the fear of losing someone you love deeply. When you are young, it's fear of abandonment: what if someone else takes them away from you? And when you are older, it's the realization that illness and losing your partner are inevitable for everyone. It's a suffocating pain and fear that causes you to hold onto what is so dear to you even tighter.

You don't have to be alarmed by these fears, just look at them calmly and realize that they are a part of it. Pleasant and painful emotions alternate and feed each other. By looking at them attentively, you discover they move along with your development. If you know that suffering is a part of love, you can also help others with more warmth and emotional understanding.

Many other emotions accompany love. The better you can understand your feelings, the more room there is for friendship and connection. Because feelings alternate, inevitably, you can also feel gloomy, lonely, and anxious. These feelings are by no means a sign of weakness. They do not have to be combated by various means.

Especially in romantic relationships, it's good to communicate your emotional desires. The need to belong and feel safe is human and recognizable to everyone. Your connection with another person becomes stronger when you're allowed to admit that you can sometimes feel deeply lonely and dependent; there's nothing wrong with that. Admit your vulnerability and dare to ask for protection.

Whether you feel it consciously or not, you are connected to everything and everyone in this life. That means there are countless opportunities for happiness. Pure and simple because of the things you can do yourself, alone, or with others. There is enough for everyone.

Invisible connections between people become tangible by striving to do good things for each other. Every valuable emotional investment in your relationship makes sense.

*The need to belong to someone and to feel safe is human and recognizable to everyone.

4 Courage

She walks with a crutch, bent, shuffling with her free hand, trying to hold on to the wall. Her husband dropped her off downstairs and will wait there in the car.

She sits at my desk and looks at me with big sad, and angry eyes.

It's no use anymore, she says, crying and tense. I can't do anything; I'm just a burden.

She speaks of the brain disease that has disabled her; she can only do one thing a day—cleaning the windows or running an errand. But then it's over. Stunned and with restrained anger, she says it.

Yes, she has had many sweet reactions from her (ex) students and colleagues. For years, she has been a very active and successful primary school teacher, and suddenly, that has disappeared.

I feel her sadness and anger when she says she doesn't believe in it. Do you really think I can get through this? Do you really think I can accept the way I am now?

Yes, I say firmly. You can get through this. You are in mourning; you are furious and sad. I understand that very well; you have lost a lot.

She cries; deep sorrow shakes through her body.

I'm just a burden now.

No, you are very sad, and that is understandable. You have taken the first step by coming here to talk, to process. I think that's very brave, and it commands respect.

My husband sent me; he's so good to me. What's the use of me?

He's worried because he loves you; isn't that what it's all about, that he loves you?

Yes, she says softly.

She comes every week to talk. Her emotions flow, her words flow. Furious at the disease and its limitations. Somber about her future as a nuisance. But there are also bright spots. First in contact. Glowing eyes. Teasing, jokes at the end of the conversation.

Then the sadness fades away. The stream dries up and makes room for here and now. About the love of her husband and children. Gratitude for their care. About new travel plans that seemed impossible at first. About now, enjoying the moment.

At the end of the therapy, she is grateful, very grateful. I couldn't believe it was possible? What? I ask teasingly. Accepting, she says softly.

One last time I take her to the elevator, and she says, You won't forget me, will you?

No, I say, I will never forget you and your courage.

*You can get through this.

5 It's okay

One of the most hopeful basic ideas about people is the realization that we are naturally good and complete. This thought offers comfort in difficult phases of life. Our innocent inability can sometimes cause us to drift away from our basic goodness, but there is always the opportunity to return to our loving, wise humanity.

When you feel good, you are more likely to respond to the behavior of others with kindness and understanding. What we experience in our lives can add many hindering layers of disappointment, mistrust, fear, and pain. However, beneath all that, everything that is good, wise, and complete remains present and accessible.

Goodness and love go together. There