Thank you for giving Learn Love a try. Episode 2 focuses completely on the question, "How can I love the people already in my life?" Episode 1 asked 10 questions and set up a general framework of why don't we learn about love the way we do about all other subjects. Episode 2 now answers a specific part and goes into learning more about how I can love the people already in my life.
If you made it to the end of my first episode, the example I gave, or the scenario I pictured, was you attending your own funeral. You're there, and all the people you love are there. And the question is, how many people do you want to come to your funeral? That's up to you. The main thing that influences that is how you love the people who are already in your life.
Start with the people already in your life
The easiest place to start working on learning love and being loving is loving the people already in your life. And I pray you have at least one person who loves you in your life. I would guess everyone has at least one person who loves them, whether that's your mom or your dad, your brother or your sister, your best friend, your girlfriend or boyfriend, or your dog. I guess that's an animal that loves you in your life. I would pray that all of you have at least one person or one pet that loves you. The easiest way to get started learning love is to love the people and pets that already love you.
Think of it this way. If you like metaphors, one bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Or how about this one? Six beers in the fridge is worth way more than 12 beers at the store. What you already have is a lot easier to focus on loving than trying to find something new. And very often, if you're always going to the store trying to buy more beer, when are you going to get a chance to drink the beer you have at home? A lot of you might say, well, that doesn't sound like a bad problem to have. But if you're never home to drink the beer you already have, it doesn't matter how many beers you go buy out at the store unless you drink them in the store or in the parking lot.
Anyway, let's move on to love. If you love the people who are at home with you, and you love your pets, and you love your friends, that's a lot easier place to start focusing on loving than it is to try and find someone new to love. And I would argue, if you can't love the people close to you, it's going to be very hard to love the people who are potentially out there to be the perfect person for you. So the key question is, how can I love the people already in my life? Episode 1 shared why I should love them. Now I want to get into how to start.
I was selfish and self-centered
I was able to love the people in my life more by simply thinking about them more often. I was always told I was selfish and self-centered growing up, and I'm sure a lot of us are selfish and self-centered growing up. I didn't really get what that meant, though. I took it for granted. I think about myself all the time. That's what I do. Especially when I was 18, 20, 25, all I did all day was think about what I want. What do I want to do? What would I like to do? How much did I enjoy what I did? What did I do the other day? That was great. What would I like to do tomorrow? My thoughts were centered on me, me, me.
If I happened to think about anyone else, it was usually out of simple convenience. If I'm hanging out with you, then I might consider thinking about you a little bit. What would you like to eat? What would you like to play? Where would you like to go? But generally, when you weren't around, then I wouldn't think about you. That was how I functioned until 2009, when I was 25 years old. I generally took the people in my life for granted. Now, I wouldn't say I was the worst son, or the worst in a relationship, but I generally thought about myself most of the time. Unless I was with you, or talking with you, then I would be more considerate. But if you weren't around, then I wouldn't think about you.
So when my parents lived 500 miles away in Mississippi, you could say the main times I thought about them were when I was on the phone. My dad was the person I felt loved the most by, and the person I cared the most for. I felt like he really understood me, and if I needed to talk to him about something, if I had something bad happen, if I had something great happen, I always wanted to tell my dad about it. I also had friends, and I still am fortunate to have most of the same friends I cared about a lot as well. But if you look at it simply, the number one person on Earth that I loved the most was my dad.
And yet I thought about my dad, almost exclusively, when he called, or maybe another time or two a week. I never wondered what my dad was doing, or what my dad needed, or what might happen to my dad, or anything like that. Very often I would be a jerk on the phone, and then I would think about how that impacted Dad. But when I was nice and when I was a good son, I very rarely thought about how Dad was feeling, or what was going on with him today. And sure, he didn't need me hovering over him all the time. But considering that he was the person I loved the most, you'd think I would think about him a little bit more often. I got thoughtful gifts, but I wasn't okay. I wasn't acceptable. Maybe I was a good son, but I wasn't a great son.
The wake-up call in 2009
Well, I got a bit of a wake-up call in 2009 when Dad had his chest pains and went to the hospital. And I realized, holy crap, the number one person I love in my life, I hardly think about, I hardly see. I usually would only see my parents a few times a year, maybe two or three times a year for a few days. I thought, he could have died right now, and I would be out here in the world, alone. I have my mom, I love my mom, and that was another thing, I didn't think of my mom hardly at all. I focused on my dad, and I ignored her. I should have been thinking about Mom and Dad together. I wasn't thinking about my family, but when I looked at the possibility of losing my family, then I could see, whoa, this is what I should be focusing on. This is what I'm doing wrong. This is what I should be doing right.
And it didn't take long for the wake-up call to keep coming. Even though I was still thinking about myself, my whole life just fell apart after that. I tried stubbornly to hold on to thinking about myself, and I tried to dive deeper into thinking about myself. What ended up happening was I just wrecked the whole life I had around me, and then I did what I should have done to begin with. I moved home with my parents. I hadn't seen the two people who loved me the most. I hadn't spent any real time with them or gotten to know them. I hadn't devoted any significant amount of energy in my adult life to loving my parents.
I moved home with my parents. Oddly enough, before that, I had never had a great relationship either. It was as if the love I was able and willing to give to my parents was my threshold for the love I could give any girl I tried to date.
Learning to love by showing up every day
I moved home with my parents, and I set out to be a better son. I applied to grad school. I spent almost every night there, probably 95 plus percent of the nights I lived there, with them. I talked with them every day. I ate dinner with them every night. I watched at least an hour of TV with my dad every night. And most nights, I would watch something with my mom also. I put time and energy into loving my parents. I thought about them every day. I gave love, and I was there with them.
In developing and learning again how to love and live a life of love, when I moved out a year later, my parents hadn't planned on it being a permanent arrangement. My life was such a disaster that they told me to move home with them. They wanted to help me get back on my feet, build me back up after I had broken and smashed myself down. They wanted to help and work and love me and build me back up and send me out again, fixed. And that's what happened. But all I would have had to do is think more about them to begin with, and I would have been able to love more. I would have made different decisions. I would have moved home with them sooner for a little while, when it was more convenient. All I had to do was think about my parents.
And once I got in the habit of thinking about my parents, the whole rest of my life worked around that. I had love in my life. Every day I thought about my parents. I called them more often. I got more considerate and thoughtful gifts for them. And only five months after I moved out from living with my parents, I ended up meeting my wife. Now, if you look at how I dated pretty much constantly, with the exception of a year and a half relationship when I was a senior in college, I dated almost constantly, as much as I could, before that. And I never found the right person. What are the odds that five months after I move out from my parents, I then find my wife, and I'm able to love her like I had never been able to love anyone else before? That's not a coincidence. Loving the people around me gave me the ability to love someone new.
So the key is, we want to get into how to really do this, because I've explained a lot of ideas and I've shared my story. I'm sure a lot of you don't live with your parents, or your parents aren't around, and you don't have the option or the desire to just move home with your parents. Well, you don't have to move home with your parents. That's just what I did. Like I said in the first episode, a lot of what I've done has been a bit haphazard. I certainly didn't plan it that way. That's just what happened. You can make a little bit better plan. You can make it a little bit smoother.
A simple three-step process: think, grow, maintain
You can do it with this simple three-step process. First, you think about them. This is where you begin. One thought at a time. About one person at a time. And whenever you can, one action at a time. For example, a friend sends you a text message. You haven't hung out with them in a while. You find yourself saying, "I'll respond to that later. I need to hang out with them, I don't have time right now." Alright, let's change that. What if something happened to this friend? Now, this is assuming this is a friend you genuinely like. I'm not talking about an acquaintance. I'm talking about a friend. Someone you've been friends with a long time, who if they were no longer in your life, you would be sad. A friend like that texts you while you're busy. If you're checking your phone, you're not busy enough to not respond, in my experience. For example, I'm not checking my text messages while I do this podcast. So if my friend texts me, and then I check my phone, I will work to respond to their text immediately.
If you have the chance to think about someone else, do what you would want done to you, instead of doing whatever is convenient for you. Say you're cooking dinner. If you go and check your phone, and you see a text message from your friend, or your brother, or your sister, think about them for a minute. They took the time to send you that message. Send them a message back. If your friend took the time to call you, give them a call back. There's no point in saying, "I need to," or "I will in the future," or "I'd like to," or "someday I want to." Just give them a call back. Just do it. One thought at a time. One person at a time. One action at a time. That's how you love people.
It's not what you see in the movies with these grand gestures at the airport, or great ridiculous heroics. Love is one thought, one action, with one person at a time, done every day. Or every other day. But frequently. Love is more about being consistent all the time.
Why love has to happen every day
My friends often say to me, "Man, my wife wants to fall in love with me all over again, every day. I got her flowers last week, we went and saw a movie on Wednesday, why do I have to do something every day? I give her something, and the next day it doesn't even matter. It's like she wakes up and it's a whole new day. It doesn't matter what I did yesterday. Why? Why can't I just do something on Monday and I'm good for the rest of the week?"
That's not how love works, because that's not how life works. We are an everyday kind of being. It's a right-here, right-now kind of world. For better or worse, and it hurts sometimes. If you want to be loving and be loved, it usually takes a little bit of love every day. One thought about someone is all it takes. Just think about them. Think about what they might want, or what you could do for them.
Sometimes there is no immediate action to take. Like right now, I know I want to buy Christmas presents for my nephews. But I know I'm going to do that in the future. So the action I'm taking now is that I've made plans for who I will get them for, and I'll get them all at once. It's a little too early to order right now. But at least make plans, and then stick to those plans. The simple version is, you begin loving the people in your life just by thinking about them. And the more you think about other people, and what they're doing, and what they want, and what they need, you will continue to grow the relationships around you.
Like, I went to Publix. Actually it was Monday. I went shopping for a whole lot of groceries. And I got deli meat for myself. But the one flavor I got, I thought, what would Laura like? What kind of deli meat would she prefer? I got one for me, and then I got another one that I thought she would like. And I made her a sandwich out of it this morning. That's not a grand gesture. But just me getting up this morning, making her a sandwich with deli meat that I had thought she might like, it's considerate. And I try to do several things like that every single day. Just a little small thing to say, "Hey, I love you today." And the best part is, she does the same back with me. It's a very healthy and loving thing. And I work to do that in all of my relationships.
With friends and family, if you don't live with them, it often is a little less frequent. I would say the timetable is once a week, or once a month at the absolute most. If you can think of someone and take some kind of action, maybe once a month, whether it's a text, a phone call, a Facebook post, or a message, if you can think of a friend or family member at least once a month, but preferably once a week, then you have the chance to make the most out of that relationship.
How you grow: really listen
So the first step is to begin with thoughts. The second step, which I jumped a little ahead into, is how to grow. How do you build on thoughts? Once you think about other people, then how do you build up to the point of taking more actions and being more loving with them? What you have to do is keep them in your mind. Keep thinking about them. And here are a couple of simple ways to keep people in your mind.
The first is to listen to them. Listen to what they have to say. And I mean really listen. Most importantly, you want to focus on the things they say they need or they care about. For example, if your friend is complaining. Or your mom, your brother, your sister, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, or your child is complaining: "I had a really crappy day at work today and I just wish I had recorded an episode of Ancient Aliens," or whatever. They forgot to do that. Well, how hard is it for you to set that up real quick for them? Or even simpler things. They say, "I love all these rescue animals, I'd love to get one someday." What if you take the time to look a few of them up, or ask them a little bit more once they've expounded on that?
The dog for my mom
My mom was looking to get a new dog and I just kept thinking about how I could help her. She's in a tough situation. My dad is terminally ill. He's got just too many things to go through and he doesn't have a whole lot of time left. And mom is a vet. She has always obviously loved animals. Before, when her and dad got together, she had dogs and cats. But when we moved overseas to Japan — mom was in the army — she had to get rid of our dog. She gave it away, or at least that's what they tell me. They never got another dog because dad always said he didn't want to have to pick up after a dog. Mom had her career, and dad said, "I'll be picking up after the dog all the time, so we're not having a dog because I know you won't pick up after it." Which is reasonable given the situation.
Well, dad's terminally ill now and mom was saying she wanted to get a dog when dad wasn't around. The problem is, it can take a while. She was having a hard time getting a dog — not getting a dog as much, but she's looking at dogs, and it was looking like it'd probably be months after something happened to dad before she could actually get the dog in the house with her. So I kept thinking about this over and over. What can I do to fix this? How can I help? What can I do to solve this problem for mom? How can I use what I have in my life to solve this problem?
At the same time, my wife was consistently looking at these rescue labs from the shelter we adopted our last puppy from. She kept saying, "I want to have all the dogs and I love the dogs and they're so adorable." And it finally connected. I'm like, well, we have two dogs already. Why don't we rescue a dog for mom? We'll keep the dog for mom until she needs it, and then we will give mom the dog. We will have the dog immediately for mom as soon as she needs it. So I asked my wife, and I asked mom, "How does this plan sound to you?" And now dad — we went and got the dog — dad calls it "the dead dad dog." I'm like, "Dad, that's absolutely horrible." And it's funny, but it's for mom to have some company after you're not there. It's the "dead dad dog."
Anyway, that's how you grow the love you have with people. You listen to what they need. And my point is, if I hadn't learned consistently more about love, if this had happened — God forbid — when I was younger, I would have never been this considerate, because I wasn't in the habit. I hadn't put the time and energy into really listening to what the people that loved me needed. I wouldn't have thought so much about how I could do something helpful. It's so easy to think about what you can't do: "I can't do anything for dad to make his health better. I can't go live at home again with mom." It's easy to think about what you can't do. But if you listen to what people want and then you think about what you can do — think about what you can offer them, even if it's not ideal — at least it's the gesture. If you can offer anything to help, it's better than nothing. And people appreciate that. The thing is, if you're loving the right people, and usually you are loving the right people, they will give back the love that you give them. So you grow your love by giving the things they need to them.
Once you grow — so now it's a three-step process. You begin by thinking. You grow by listening and taking action based on what you hear. How do you maintain? Getting mom this dog is not going to be the reason she loves me for the rest of her life. She will love me the rest of my life because she's my mother, and she's a great person.
Loving people is a marathon, not a finish line
Doing all of that once does not mean it is all I ever have to do again when it comes to loving my mom. When it comes to maintaining a relationship, you have to keep doing what you are doing. You have to keep those good habits in place. You have to always take action instead of saying you should, or you need to, or you will. You have to keep doing it right over and over again. So once you begin and you grow, you have to keep doing it.
It is like a marathon. I have never run a marathon. I have run eight or nine miles at once, but never a marathon. Still, it is fine to get up to nine miles. I did not run nine miles to begin with. I started off by running one mile, then two miles, then three miles, and then three and a half, four, four and a half, five, five and a half. I worked up to nine miles. Once you get to nine miles, or once you get to whatever pace you set, whenever you get to where you are happy with it, you have to keep going. You have to keep doing what you did to get there. That does not mean I run as much as I did before. Running was hard on my knees and my ankles. But I do work out three or four times a week now, consistently. I keep doing what I did to get in better shape before.
Love is the exact same way. It is like a muscle, and I know I have heard that before. You have to keep working it in order to keep it in shape. So for me, in my life, that means I have to keep doing the same things I have told you I know worked well. I am giving more love now and expanding more now. This is a part of continuing and growing, and you have to keep doing that.
I made my wife a sandwich this morning. The best way I can show her I love her is to walk the dogs with her, watch an episode of whatever we are watching now (I think Entourage, and we are almost done with Sopranos), and then go to bed with her. Very simple things, but to her it really winds her day up. It shows her that I love her and that I am there for her, and she really appreciates that. For every night that I do not do those things with her, it hurts.
There is no perfect relationship, so add more good
Here is the reality: none of your relationships are ever going to be absolutely perfect. There is always going to be a certain amount of hurt. You are always going to neglect to do things sometimes. You are never going to be able to maintain an absolutely perfect scenario. It is just like with exercising. You might drag yourself down and take a week off. Or you might get hurt and be forced to take time off. The key with maintaining is to always keep going once you can. So there have been weeks I did not go to the gym all week, but the next week I went back and I kept working out. There have been weeks where I have not called my parents, or weeks where I have had two or three nights in a row where I did not get to walk the dogs, or watch something with my wife, or I was not there to go to bed with her. That is acceptable, as long as it is in moderation, as long as that is a small amount of the time.
The existing ratios say anywhere from seven to one to ten to one. The amount of good in the relationship should overwhelm the bad. More often, the easiest solution is to do more good than to minimize the bad, because you are going to be bad sometimes. You are going to be a jerk. You are going to have a bad day. You are going to come home and complain, or you are going to just pick a fight for no reason. If you can put more good into the relationship, it will wash out the bad. The good is what you really have control over. You can stack good thing on good thing on top of what you already do. You can build doing more good in. You usually can only cut so much bad out.
It is like a steak. For vegetarians, I do not know, an onion. You can cut off the outside, you can trim the fat off, but you can only trim so much. You cannot perfectly trim everything, and a lot of times the more you try to trim, the more good things you will hack off with it. So by maintaining, you want to maintain by doing as much good as possible, and being accepting that sometimes things are going to go wrong. No matter what relationship it is (your immediate family, extended family, your friends, your close business partners) you are always going to have things go wrong. But as long as you keep throwing more good at it, you will have done your part.
Even if the other party decides otherwise, if you are with a significant other and they break up with you and will not get back together, well, I would not recommend getting back together anyway. But if they break up with you and you did as much good as you had in your heart, then how can you feel bad? What is there to feel bad about if you did as much good as you could? Are you doing as much good as you can? That surfaces up sometimes. But if you are not doing as much good as you can, why can't you do better? In my experience, you can do better. There is no reason you can't do better. No matter who you are, you can do a little better. I can do better. I am trying to do better every day, and I believe we all can do better. That is the way to maintain a relationship: just by trying to do a little better every day. A little better every day.
The practical limits of love
A couple more notes to put this in perspective. There are limits to love and loving. There are some practical limits. For example, the human brain, according to the latest research, is wired for about 150 people. If you are trying to be great friends, and if you are trying to give your love one on one directly and keep more than 150 people in mind, you do risk pushing that limit and dropping people out unintentionally. Now, there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, just as long as you recognize that for most people you can only love so many people at once.
Think of it like a fridge. You can only put so much stuff in your fridge, and the more you cram stuff in, the harder it is to get to any one thing in there. So if you can keep your life neatly organized with the people who love you in it, people you pay attention to and can easily access, that can be a successful approach. If you like to just have chaos, then keep as many people in your life as you can and love each of them. You can love each person during the time you spend with them, and when you are not with them, by thinking about them.
Give freely and check that you are not taking people for granted
The final point: make sure the people you love are not taking you for granted, and that they are giving back to you. Usually this works itself out. If you keep giving good and people are not responding to it, then you are not likely to just continue giving good out blindly. But this works both ways. Lots of times, some of the easiest relationships to neglect are some of those closest to you. And when you think "they are taking me for granted," the reality might be that you are taking them for granted. If you are looking at one of your family members or friends and saying, "I don't think they appreciate me," the second question you should ask is, "Well, how do they know? What am I doing to show them I appreciate them? How can I show them I appreciate them more?"
Most people are very quid pro quo at a base level. If you give them something, most people will give that back. I had a great example with my business recently. One of my best clients is from Canada, and I took the time to email him. I had been sharing his Facebook page with everyone I thought might be interested, to give him the opportunity to make something out of that, so my clients might be interested in doing business with him. I had been doing this, but I had not told him I was doing it, and I realized that in case someone messaged him I should let him know the kind of clients I have, the kind of people who are liable to like what he has to offer. So I sent him a quick email. I said, "Hey, I appreciate your business, I want to know how things are going." It had been a few months since I completed the work he had me do. I said I hoped things were well, and I just wanted to let him know I was working out here trying to get someone else to do business with him.
I had not heard from him in a couple of months. Within a week of that original email, he took the time to talk to one of his good friends about me, and he put me in touch with one of his good friends who could use my online advertising services. So the idea is: the easiest way to get in life is to give. Just give freely. Just give. You do not expect anything in return, and sure, you are not going to get things in return lots of times. I give out a lot of my best information for totally free. Anyone in the world can watch it. I do not get paid out of that. What I get is a lot of enthusiasm, response, and positive energy back at me, which gives me more positive energy to do more positive things, and it just builds on itself. So make sure you are giving to the people around you. And if you think, "Maybe they are taking me for granted," well, that is the first question to turn around: am I giving to them all that I could be? If you want to keep exploring how this shows up in how we connect with the people we are closest to, I dig deeper into that side of it across my Dating playlist.
So in summary, this began with a question: how can I love the people already in my life? The simple answer is that you think about them more often, you listen to them, and then you take action based on listening to what they need and how you can help them. I really appreciate your time reading this, and I hope it has been helpful. Thank you so much.