🤔 ❤️ ✨ WHY LOVE
Is there anything more empowering than to become more Loving?
Dear Why Team member,
I hope this week’s message finds you well and encouraged.
Here we are closing out the first month of 2024. How is the year unfolding for you?
Are you experiencing a shift?
If not, consider more your intentions for 2024. I highly recommend writing your intentions down - we must plant the seed if we are ever to get the tree. There is power in the written word - more real than the mere thoughts in our head. And, I find, there is no more powerful a seed than the WHY of LOVE.
I find it interesting that I hesitated to write on LOVE - concerned that I would fall short in my sharing of its significance. But this mountain is worthy of the climb. I cannot imagine a more powerful WHY than LOVE. As a father to three amazing children, I have discovered what love can do far more than what I could do without it
I’ve noticed that commitments I’ve made to myself for myself are weaker than those I’ve made for my children. When I was younger, I worked out for myself, to look better, to feel better about myself. I approached the effort from a place of scarcity:
Doing to Be rather than Being to Do
When I shifted from Doing to Be which was all about me - to Being to Do - my life shifted in dramatic ways. Being all I could be as a father for my children - my doing, for example, shifted from working out for me to training for them. While I might let myself down - breaking a promise I make to myself - I am far more determined to not let others down.
A secret sauce ingredient to Becoming More in ‘24 is to Love more than ever before.
Why Live our Best Life Ever?
Because our lives matter - others are watching us, we are leading by example.
We don’t just hurt ourselves when we let ourselves down - we let those who love us down - it is one of the reasons an accountability relationship is so powerful. When we do more than just think about what we’re interested in doing and make a commitment to another that we’ll do it, we’re absolutely more likely to do it. Especially with a More Powerful Why.
The ‘Why’ of Love becomes a guidepost to answer most of our ever changing ‘What’s and How’s’ of life.
When I am particularly challenged as a father about how to answer a ‘What & How’ question related to my children, I ask myself ‘Why would I answer the way I do?’
Does the answer best serve me or them? When they get answers they don’t like, I sometimes ask them to consider why I gave them the answer?
If I wanted to win their approval, I could just say yes to whatever they want for example - it’s the harder answers I am more able to give when I consider more my “why” - to win them with the path of least resistance or to serve them at times with the more difficult answer of “no”.
While children often rail against boundaries, it is the parent who loves them the most who sets and maintains them.
Truth be known, it is also why I climb mountains.
Carl Jung said, “The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.”
If you are blessed to have children, consider your incredible influence in their life; how are you becoming more to open more possibilities for them?
What higher hurdles might you jump when your Why is more about those you love?
My personal Why is to positively affect as many lives as I can before I die - my children’s lives first and foremost. This Why informs most all my decisions. And calls me to face more fears than I would if it were just about me.
To Become More in ‘24 I cannot think of anything more empowering than to become more Loving. We learn in the ancient text that it is better to give than to receive. I’ve found that giving is its own reward, and any receiving is just icing on an already incredible cake.
Becoming More Aware of how much we already have is found through the discipline of gratitude: wanting more of what we have rather than having more of what we want.
When we awaken to how our cups are not lacking but rather overflowing, we are then empowered to give more than ever before - more of our time, more of our attention and even more of our resources. It’s from a spirit of abundance that we break through our limits. It is the lies that limit - the lie that we are not enough and that we don’t have enough.
Consider more in ‘24 the love you have for others. How might that love fuel you more than ever before - especially knowing that how you are living your life is affecting how others live theirs.
This week and beyond, consider more than ever before, how the power of love may just be what you need more of to break through those lies that limit.
Let more limits die so that you and others may live the BEST LIFE EVER!!
Make it a great week!
Steve Luckenbach