The 5 Components of Love: Building Healthy Relationships That Last

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0:44 Denzel Washington, Welcome to Inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same. Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you so glad to be here. Hey, I'm excited to have you on this show. Interesting topic, and it's interesting how you've kind of narrowed things down to a singular type of topic to some degree at least. But what I'd love for you to do is share with the audiage your journey. You know, was there an aha moment that brought you to this point or what brought you to the point of you're writing the book and you're really focusing in this area. Yeah, there's really three paths that have led me to this point of writing the book Learning Love. One is I'm a counselor a therapist. I have a master's degree in mental health counseling, and in the world of counseling, what we deal with mostly is relationships, whether it's a relationship with ourselves or a relationship at home, at the things going on at work, whatever connections we have in life, that's usually where we focus in the area of counseling.

1:48 My other professional track is in the area of spirituality and theology, and in that area we deal with relationships, relationship with ourselves, relationship with other people, relationship with God, relationship with the humanity. And so those two professional tracks led me in that area, but probably most importantly, my personal experience led me down this road. I was raised a healthy, happy, thriving family, wonderful childhood parents who always loved me and treated me well, and I grew up thinking that that's just how relationships work, that this is easy. We know what's the problem, and that led me into a lot of naive decisions as an early adult, and I ended up in a very toxic first marriage, terrible experience, ended in divorce. Still have the emotional scars to prove that one. And that really led me to a place of asking a lot of questions. Didn't fully understand it at the time, but looking back, I can see those seats planet of just wondering is love even possible? Doesn't even exist? Is it just for somebody who's lucky, who happens to stumble into it and meet that perfect person?

3:00 Is it really something that we all can have? And that type of question is what is love? And how do we live that out in a realistic way in our lives led me into wanting to understand what love is. And that's what my book's about. From my counseling background, from a theological standpoint, and from my personal experience and those deep questions that I was sort of pushed into asking, I came to this place that I could write the book Learning Love, building a life that matters and healthy relationships that last. And in that book, I teach the five components of love, and if we learn and practice these five components, anybody can build healthy, happy, thriving relationships, even if you come from a dysfunctional family, even if you've been through a divorce, even if you've been through some sort of relationship trauma. Because what I have come to understand, and what I want everyone to understand, is that love is a learned skill set. It is something that we learn. Now, if you came up in a healthy family, you've probably learned a lot of it before you even remember learning it. You learned it as an infant, as a child. You were taught good things growing up, but you still learned it, and that means you can learn it later if you need to. There are five components of love. You learn these five components, put them into practice every day in your relationships, both at home and at work. You can build healthy relationships. Now, obviously the relationship you have with the spouse is different than those you have at work, but right the foundational components

4:33 for building those relationships are the same. Okay, And you know you talk about some research that's been done that talks about loneliness and how that's affecting people. Share with the audience a little bit what that research is and what you have discovered. With that, and then we'll get into some of the other stuff a little bit later. Okay, Yeah, The Surgeon General of the United States I actually put out a report a couple of years ago about the loneliness epidemic. He called it, so there's a public health crisis that we have come to a place in our society. And while that report was about the United States, I don't think it's limited to the US. I think this is a global phenomenon because of the pandemic because of social media in some ways, and I don't want to criticize social media. There's a lot of good things that come from that, but one of the unintended consequences is that we have a lot of acquaintances but no one that really knows us. And there's a lot of eminemity, and people can say a lot of stuff we know without real consequence, and we can be whatever we want to be but not really ourselves on social media. And so these type of phenomenons have all kind of merged into a life of loneliness that we may be in a crowd of people. We may have a lot of acquaintances, we may know a lot of people at work, we may have a lot of contacts on social media, but we may still be lonely in that crowd and making real connections, learning what love really is, whether it's love for family or the type of love

6:04 we have for coworkers and neighbors and friends, different type of love, but still a connection and an important connection that we have. Learning how to do that has become sort of a lost art. We don't have those type of connections enough in our lives and we need to relearn how to build those real connections of thriving relationships. All right, And you know, you. Talk about the word love, and obviously it can have different meanings, and you kind of alluded to that, But what is your definition? I mean, here's your book, you know, Learning Love, But what that's that's a very general statement. What is your definition of love? So the audience really understands what we're talking about here.

6:48 Yeah, I'm using love as a learned skill set. It is something we can do. And those five components are what love is. It is the practice that we put in place. It does seem like love and the discussion of love is a million moving parts and there's so many mysteries involved in it. And what I want to do is boil it down to those five components to understand that love these connections that we make, love being a connection that we have in our life that is important to us, and a relationship that is important to us, and that love is a learned skill set that can be practiced like all other skills, and we get better at it as we go. We've treated love as if it's some type of mystery. We treat love as if the only people that can speak of it are poets and songwriters, and they do a beautiful job describing the aspects of love. But what I want to do is define love as that learned skill set that it's not just in the language of poets and songwriters, that is something all of us can actually practice and develop in our life.

7:58 Yeah, and you know it's interest. I mean, I mean, here we have what is it now, it's sixty to fifty sixty percent divorce rate at least in the US. And you you brought up the point that you came up in a very healthy family and so on and so forth, and yet you still made that major mistake. And we have all made these mistakes more than once sometimes and it takes a while to figure out why So what is it that can be done for our young people to be able to learn how to make good choices? And I'm assuming the that's part of the components there, But how do they make sure that.

8:39 They make good choices so they avoid. That situation where they end up in a relationship, they get out of it and they finally get right back into another one like that, and so on and so forth, and all of a sudden start to really feel like a failure, when in fact it's just a matter of they've not learned some principles. Yeah, I think what happens is that people tend to know one or two or three of the components of love pretty naturally, especially if they grew up in a family that was healthy, and even if they didn't, a lot of times you pick up one or two just instinctively. These things come natural to some of us, and we assume, then that's what love is, that this is it, this is what love is, and this is how we practice it and we get out into the world and that doesn't actually always work, and we wonder what's wrong, And the reality is, it may not be wrong. What we're doing may be right, but it's just not enough that we really need all five of the components of love.

9:38 And what we tend to do then is if we are practicing love the way our family did, and that's the way we know how, and hopefully that has certain elements of love to it. If we raised in a very dysfunctional or abuse of family, we may just be repeating generational abuse. But if we were raised in a healthy family, or even partially so, then we may they know one or two or three aspects of what love is, these components and be practicing those and think, well, I'm doing it right, so it must be my partner that's wrong. And we sometimes start to point fingers at other people and if everybody else could just get their act together, I'd be fine. And we look at people at work, and we look at people in our family, and we look at our own spouse sometimes and we wonder what's wrong with them, and the fact is they may not have anything wrong either. Now, there are abusers in the world, don't get me wrong. There are people that are toxic and they're abusive, and we were never meant to be abused.

10:33 And some relationships do have to end. I do not believe every relationship can be saved. Even though I'm a relationship coach, even though I'm a therapist and come from a theological background, a spiritual background, people sometimes assume that about me, that I believe every relationship can be saved in theory, if everyone's a good person, everyone's practicing five components of love, everyone's putting the effort in and practicing love, then yes, theoretically, but that's the reality is some people are abuse and we were never meant to be abused. So some relationships do have to end, but not fifty sixty percent of marriages in the US. No, Okay, we can build these relationships. We have to know all five all right.

11:15 And so here's the question, you know, what is the outcome? I think about this and think, all right, we're talking about love, and you know, you mentioned you're talking about love in the workplace. You're talking about just love with friends, love. In connections and so forth, love and relationships, which we've just kind of been focusing on. But what is the outcome if I'm able to take those five components and ultimately really bring them into my life and in my soul, and it becomes who I am, and therefore my behavior. Reflects that then what am I going to experience? What is the ultimate experience that I'm going to have? And to me, that.

11:56 Becomes the reason why we need to focus so much on what you're talking about. Exactly right. And there was a study that asked asked the question. In fact, it came out of Harvard. It was an eighty year study. Over the course of eighty years, they followed people asking one question what makes people happy? And the results after an eighty year study where relationships, healthy thriving relationships make people happy above everything else, you mean, rich or poor. You can have hardships in your life, and everyone has hardships in their life to some extent or another. There's no escaping that we're all gonna have difficult times along the way. We're gonna have good times along the way through all ups and downs of life.

12:38 What truly made people happy were healthy, thriving relationships. And that goes beyond that goes beyond marriage. That it does go beyond marriage. And that's why I emphasized that yes, it's marriage is important, or romantic partnerships, those are important, Families important, but friends are important. Loving what you do for a living and loving the people that you do that appreciating them Again, different type of love, but it's still a deep appreciation and connection and friendship with the people you work side by side with every day to fulfill your vocational goals. All these relationships are important. And when we have those healthy relationships in our life, family, friends, co workers, that's what builds happiness. The outcome. It's a wonderful question, you ask, what's the outcome? The outcome is a happy life.

13:27 Well, and you know in the US we have the one word in Greek they have what five is it five components. Of love or there's there's there's the various words in Greek for love and most and most languages do have more than one for love. And yes, unfortunately in English we have one. And so we'll use the same word for our spouse as we use for co workers, as we use for corn bread, because we have an affection for all of these things. And uh, you know, it's it's steel important to understand. Yes, there's different types, but what I always love to emphasize is that regardless of the personal connection you're talking about, the core components of love are the same. It manifest different ways, but it are all we can build a relationship in every area.

14:16 So if you're like you know, I may have a good home life, but I'm struggling at work. These still that the components of love still work. Okay, so we keep talking about the five components. Let's get into it. What's your opponent number one? This one surprises people. The first component of love is grief, because you're not going to get through life without scars. Everyone thinks about love and we think we're going to talk about bubblegum and butterflies. Everything's sweet and beautiful, and we get to that. That is definitely part of it, but one of the things that happens in life. Because life is hard and we go through difficult times. When we get hurt, there is an instinct for a lot of us to start putting up emotional walls, to put up barriers, to keep people in arms linked to protect ourselves from getting hurt. Particularly if we did come from an abusive childhood or dysfunction, or we were hurt as a child in some way, It is natural to put up those defenses and to keep people out. While that makes logical sense, it doesn't actually work for building a life that is a happy, healthy life. We get rid of the connections we need and want because we're trying to protect ourselves. Grief, while it's painful, is a healer.

15:28 It's our comeback story. It's a way to heal from the hurts of life, to stay connected. Some things are so painful in life that it's like it leaves a hole in our heart. But what I want people to know is you can live a really good life with a whole in your heart. That we can go from the hurts of life and stay connected and still love and still have great relationships at home, at work, with friends. Even though we may live our whole life for the whole in our heart, we still have the capacity for love. But we have to heal and that comes through grief. Okay, and you talk about that. You know, I'm in Thailand right now. We've figured out the time difference there. But you know, it's interesting. So as I've come here, I love theology, and so I've studied a bit about Buddhism, just because I'm living among people and it's about ninety eight percent Buddhists here. And it's interesting that he talks about suffering, and he talks about the whole goal. And I would say suffering grief probably good synonyms, but basically that he works with people or he did helping them to understand that they can move.

16:36 From suffering to not suffering. And it doesn't mean that they don't. Experience those grieful situations, they don't experience those difficult times, but somehow their response emotionally internally is they're no longer allowing themselves to suffer. Okayactly, that's what you're talking about. So with component one, how do people overcome or allow those experiences that cause grief and what they're failing grief to become a situation where they are not experiencing the emotional hardship of grief but rather, as you say, experiencing it as a teaching opportunity, a gratitude opportunity, those type of things.

17:23 How do you help people do that? It is a process, and it's important to understand that it is not something that we're going to get just by picking up ourselves by our bootstraps and gritting our teeth and leaning into the storm. That's not how it works, and so many people try to do that. But it's not a matter of being tough. It is a matter of healing. It is a matter of going through that grief process to get to that place where we can live that good life despite the scars of life. And one of the things that I push a lot is to make sure you don't try to do that alone. Get help with that, particularly from a professional. I'm an advocate that everyone should have a counselor or coach or someone in their life, a therapist, someone in their life that can help them in that process because there are state are there is a process of grief. I started to say stages of grief because that's a common term, but it's not a great one because that gives the impression where it's a stairstap process and it's not a It is a cumbersome process, and you need help with that.

18:25 It can be complex, and you're gonna feel different things every day, and you're gonna feel good some days and then fall back into feeling bad and that's okay. Get help with that because there is a process of healing, but it's not one that we tend to do alone. It's one that we do with help. And family and friends can be helpful, but particularly get that professional help, Get that therapist, get that grief coach or spiritual guidance or something in your life that can help you in that grief process because everyone goes through it uniquely. We can talk about the process generally, but everyone goes through it uniquely, and you need people in your life that can help you going through that process of healing. Okay, and I'm going to ask the question again. All right, I've just had an experience that I haven't but we're going to say. You know, I'm calling you, you're my therapist.

19:14 I've just had a horrible experience and I'm experiencing tremendous grief. How are you gonna help me overcome that? What are some of the basic steps? And as you say, it's very individual, but some of the basic steps, how are you going to help me to start to overcome that grief? Of the if you want to get to the very basics of that grief process, one is talk about it. And so many people don't want to open up. They feel like, well, I don't need to tell that story because it happened and is done. You'd be amazed what happens when you have to tell the story to someone else, going to a therapist, just telling them the story so they understand it has amazing healing effects, and that is hard for a lot of people to grasp, Well, what good is it going to do for me to talk about it? And I say, don'tknock it till you've tried it.

19:59 It is amazing what happens when we speak something aloud, when we write things down, such as journaling. When we start doing those type of things, it gets those emotions out in a way that is different than keeping them in. So that's one of the reasons that that therapy is so important because it does require talking, it does require getting the story out. The other thing that happens in that process that in that counseling process is that once we've told the story, we have a tendency to get something in our minds and it's uh, it gets set. We say to ourselves so many times over and over again that it becomes our reality. And one of the things that helps is to hear a different perspective. I'll give a very simple example. It is easy if we're going through a tough time to think to ourselves, I'm never going to be happy again, and we get into that mindset where that becomes something that we just believe is true and I am never going to be happy again.

21:00 But when we start to analyze that, we start to really look at that is that is that really the truth? And while we while we can think that and while it seems that way, that is not the reality. The reality is We're going to have good times and bad times again, because that's what life is. And that's just a couple of the aspects of that counseling process of kind of getting into a different mindset, of challenging some of the things that we instinctively just grab hope to. I'm never gonna be happy again, I'm never gonna smile again, my life is over. Seems like it feels like it, but not actually the reality. And as we talk through the story and we start getting new perspectives, we actually start finding some healing that that doesn't really seem like it would help, but it does. Well. I had a guy come to me one time that was grieving and he had been basically been pushed into it by his wife, and he said, I know what you're gonna say already, and I said, okay, well tell me what I'm gonna and he lays out some things that you get from television hearing you know, therapists talk on TV and movies, the stereotypes, and I said, no, it's not at all what I was thinking about saying. Can I say what I was actually thinking? And he said sure. So I talked about some things and I said, is that what you expected? And he said no, I said, is that at all helpful? He's actually it's extremely helpful. And so people that are hesitant to go to counseling, hesitant to tell their story, hesitant to get out of mindset that they currently have, I say, just try it. It's not

22:31 what you think it is. And so the healing process can actually be a very powerful thing in counseling and therapy and with coaching. It's just a matter of having the courage to try it, even though we may not understand where we're going to end up. Okay, good grief, all right. Number two. The second one is emotion. This is what everyone everyone thinks of when you think about love. You think about the emotional connection of those those special moments, those feelings of love that we have. Again, the feelings are different for or co workers, but we still have those moments of deep appreciation and really just connection with those people as well. And For some people this comes naturally. We don't have to really teach them. They express emotion very well.

23:12 They enjoy the emotional side of life, and they don't really have to be taught how to do that. But there's other people that struggle. Some people, emotion is difficult for them to express. They're more cerebral, they're more introverted. It's not easy for them to show emotion. And for those people, I say, it's a practice. Just start small. It's like every other practice. You get better at it as you go. The important thing is the people in your life you care about need to know you care about them. They shouldn't have to assume it if we say, well, they know I love them. Don't just assume that. Let them know. Say the words I love you, say things like I appreciate you. And sometimes people can't say I love you because they were raising an abusive family and love was you as a weapon. Then don't say that, Say I appreciate you. Say a sincere thank you when people do something to do something nice for you. Little expressions are very important, especially if it doesn't come natural for you. People are gonna know that if it doesn't come natural for you, they're going to know that in your personality, and so small gestures make a big connection.

24:23 And so it's a practice. You'll get better at it, you'll get more used to it, and so practice showing that emotion and showing that appreciation for the people in your life. Okay, so you're familiar with Abraham Hicks scale of emotion, yes, Okay. To me, that is so fascinating because I have found that people tend to be stuck in certain levels of emotion. I mean, you have those as you're describing, who are happy or joyous or loving and experiencing that. But there are so many people, and we're seeing this in the United States right now. We're seeing so much. Anger and hatred and all that type of stuff, and they're stuck. They're stuck there.

25:03 Anything that happens right here comes the emotion out of that. How do you help people when they come to you and you find that they may be stuck in anger, or they may be stuck in victimhood, or you know, if it's that low, whatever it is, how do you help them to elevate their innate emotion to the point where they start to experience that happiness and joy rather than constantly experiencing the anger, of the frustration, the victimhood, whatever it happens to be. Yeah, one of the things that we will see in all five of the components is there is a connection with them. And when we're talking about being hindered in our emotions because of this anger, because of the fear, because the hatred, we're getting back to grief, because that comes from somewhere that comes from being hurt. People get angry and they're fearful, and they're hate and there's hatred because they've been hurt or they are afraid of being hurt.

25:58 They have this fear of being here. There's a scenario that they have bought into that they believe they're going to be hurt in the future, and there is a grief process to that. Even if it hasn't happened, Even if there is a sense that I haven't personally been harmed, but I feel like that that harm is coming, there is a grief process to that. And anger, fear, hatred. A lot of this comes from a place of hurt. It comes from a place of struggle in our own life to feel good about who we are in the world, and there is that grief process. A lot of subconscious imprints there that can cause that.

26:39 So absolutely right, and so grief is still that healer. Yeah, how do you help people to what is your methodology? If someone comes in and you find that because of imprints and their subconscious which they don't even recognize, and yet when an event occurs, their response is something in that lower level of anger or frustration or whatever that happens to be, how do you help them to identify those subconscious elements and overcome them. Yeah, the main thing is to go back to telling the story. But if I'm talking with someone, I want to get past the cliches. When people have anger, they have hatred, they have fear. That'll usually go to a couple of cliches, a couple of just taglines that they have bought into. Get past that. Tell the story, Tell it in detail. What are you truly afraid of? What is it that you're really angry about? What happened? And sometimes people will get to, well it hasn't actually happened to me, Well, then what are you angry about? Well, I feel like it's going to happen. Okay, what is the evidence that you feel like it's going to happen, getting into the details of the story, challenging the mantras that just take place, challenging the cliches and the conspiracies that are thrown out and people buy into sometimes and getting into the details of what is it you actually believe and why do you believe that, what is your motivation?

28:10 And more often than not, and I'm generalizing here when I say this, but it just seems like very often when you really start questioning the details of why people are so afraid or why they're so angry, they will go back to, well, that's just the way I was raised, and that is the worst reason to do anything, The worst reason you can choose to do anything is that's just the way I was raised. Even if you were raised in a good family, even if you can look at your family and say, well, they were basically good people. Okay, I'll believe that, But just following the instincts of your family doesn't make it right. Yeah, and you know, make it. It's tough for people to recognize that and be willing to be aware of it and to recognize it and to look at it. So all right, Number three, we've got grief, We've got emotion, What's number three.

29:02 The third ist practicality, And this is a very balancing element to emotion. Emotion tends to bring us together, Practicality keeps us together. These are the decisions that we make every day to just live a good life together. And so if a married couple, for instance, we'll need to think about how they deal with money, who's making these decisions, and how we have to think about parenting decisions, how we deal with household chores. All these type of things that are seem small in the scheme of love are actually very important that we live life well together. You may have heard someone say, well, I love them, but I can't live with them. Well, these are people that have connected on an emotional level, but they've failed in the area of practicality. We have to make practical, good decisions.

29:50 And as I referred to earlier, sometimes the practical reality of life is some relationships have to end. If we're going to have healthy relationships, we have to make make room for them. And dysfunctional, toxic, abusive relationships tend to be all consuming, and so we have to make room to have actual healthy relationships. It's also things like dealing with our health, particularly our mental health. Things like depression and anxiety, they take a terrible toll on us, but they also take a toll on our relationships, and those are treatable conditions. Those are things that can be treated. And so getting the help we need from a doctor, from a psychiatrist, from a counselor getting the help we need to deal with things like anxiety and depression are critical to making sure we stay healthy and stay engaged in those relationships. Those are practical decisions that we make.

30:41 It's living well together so that we can build that happy life. Well, as we talked about practicality, and you know, again you were talking a little bit more about the marriage relationships, but how many people find themselves? What have you seen? How many people that you've worked with, you observe and hopefully eventually they figure it out that they are living among toxic people and that that is literally affecting their well being, their happiness, their love, And how do you help them to recognize one and number two have the courage to break away and eliminate. Those toxic relationships. And I would assume that's part of practicality.

31:23 It is it is especially recognizing it as an important part, because yes, it is extraordinarily difficult, especially if we've been raised in it as functional family. One of the things we do as children is we assume what we were raised with is normal. We normalize what we knew growing up. And that's why it is so easy to revert back to, well, that's just the way I was raised because we assume that was normal. We need to challenge that assumption. There's no such thing as a normal family. Every family's nuts in their own way. Someone is more functional than others. The goal is to be functional, and so we struggle to identify toxicity in and around us, because very often we were raised in it or some element of it.

32:06 We begin to we and people who are toxic, people who are abusive, Are you really good at gas lighting? It's a skill they tend to have, and so they will put that on us. And very often it's easy for us to assume that, well, if I just acted different, if I just did things different, I can make every relationship work. Yes, we can adjust sometimes and do things a little differently in order to help our relationships along, but we cannot make a basic change in our entire personality completely for the sake of someone else. And even if we did, it wouldn't help if that's an abuse or a toxic person. Now, the question that you ask of how do we break free from that? That really gets us as into the fourth component of love, which is acceptance of ourselves. Yes, there's an element of acceptance that goes to other people. We don't accept abuse. We do have to accept flaws and other people. But really, when we're talking about acceptance, we're talking about loving ourselves.

33:04 Brene Brown's done some great work in this area, very noted for it. Other people have as well. You cannot love other people more than you love yourself. And so often if we're in abusive relationships, especially if we are chronically finding ourselves in one toxic relationship after another, it's usually because we have an idea that if I can get people to love me, it will validate me and then I can love myself. And that, while it sounds logical, does not work in reality. The reality is we cannot love other people more than we love ourselves. That's the capacity. We can't give love unless it's grown organically within us. And that organic growth of love is for ourselves so that we can give it away to other people. So, if you want to have great relationships in your life.

33:52 Love yourself, love yourself more, show more compassion, more empathy for yourself, more self care, so that you can give all that to others. Now, when we love ourselves, we got to start understanding our own value. It's much easier to say, you know, I don't deserve to be treated this way. No one deserves to be treated this way. That we are of value, and we don't deserve those abusive, toxic relationships in our lives. And so the best way to break free from that is to understand your own value. That takes time if you weren't raised with it, but again, through therapy, through counseling, through self growth and development, through spirituality.

34:33 There's a lot of paths to get there. But find that way of understanding your own value, and you'll find a lot easier to set those boundaries with those toxic people and say that's not how I'm going to live. Well, you know, and what you said, a theological thing comes into my mind. You know, there's that great commandment out of the New Testament that says, you know, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, my mind and strength. And the second is like and to it, love thy neighbor as thyself. Well, you know, people look at that as all right, this is God telling us that we need to love. And I'm as you were just talking about that, I'm thinking, you know what, he was just explaining that you can only love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. That's exactly what he's explained. He already knew. Jesus the Great Teacher, already knew what Brene Brown would would write about in her research two thousand years later. He already knew this because otherwise it sounds like Jesus is lowballing it.

35:27 Would he say, I know you can love your neighbor more than yourself, but don't bother. Don't bother with that, just love them at the level you love yourself. Knowing how much we need love in the world, why would Jesus fall short? Why would Jesus lowball the idea of love? If we can love others more by all means, do that, Jesus knew we couldn't. He gave us that commandment of love your neighbor as yourself because he already knew that's the capacity that we have. And so if we want to love others more. We have to love ourselves more. And again that keeps us out very often gets us out of those toxic relationships because we understand our own value creates more room in our life for those healthy relationships to give more love away. Well.

36:10 And it reminds me of a pet peeve that I have and a philosophical situation that I love to talk about, and that is being becoming. And how so many times. People think that they need to do this, then you need to do that in order to achieve this and so forth, rather than looking at the behavior. And if they honestly step outside of themselves and. Look at their behavior, whether it's love or whatever, understand that that behavior is a reflection of who they are, of the level of beingness that they've achieved. And as you say, once they can get to that point of truly loving themselves, all of a sudden, they're going to observe that they're loving others and it's just a.

36:58 Natural behavior that occur. Is nothing that's forced. Exactly right. Yeah, if you love yourself, loving others becomes easy. That's the task is to love ourselves, show compassion and care for ourselves, giving that to other people becomes very easy, and you're exactly right. Understanding our own value, our own being, not based on what we've done, not based on our achievements or our mistakes. Sometimes we sort of look at what we've done well, we look at what we've done wrong, look at what's happened to us in life, and we judge ourselves based on that. It's not on that, it's on who we are, our own inherent value. Things in life are going to go well, sometimes they're going to go badly. We're all going to make mistakes, we're all going to achieve some things along the way. We're gonna get it right occasionally. But all of that is just stuff that happens. It's the stuff of the world around us.

37:47 It's not who we are. Inherently. We understand our own value as a person, then we can address all the other stuff that's going on around us. Okay, So you know, if you go from a theological standpoint, that's pretty easy, well not easy, but at least it's pretty straightforward on how to help someone to understand that eternal light within themselves. But what do you do with your clients that are not into that theology? How do you help them. To understand, and I use the example of the diamond within them, how do you help them to get to the point where they literally start to understand that innately as you say, there's a goodness in them, there's a value in them. There's something in there that most people don't even realize because so many of them are taught, unfortunately theologically that you know what, you were born in sin, you're naturally sinful, all of this.

38:40 Kind of stuff. How do you help them to get to the. Point to recognize that there's that goodness that's innate within each of us. Yeah, I think there are. As you say, there's two ways we got here, there's a lot of nuances in that, but everyone basically agrees there's one of two ways that we arrived here as we are. One is we created by a God, a supreme being who created us and from a theological Christian perspective, is a God of love that is love and created us in that image of love. So that's an easy storyline to say that light within us, that love within us, that we are the image of love. But yes, as you put it, what about those who don't believe that? Well, that's the second line that people believe that we arrived here is through billions and billions and billions and billions of years of evolution of things happening, random acts coming together, so that we eventually became a being with the capacity for love. That's still an amazing origin story. Whichever one you take. Whichever track you take, you believe that we came from a supreme being, a God of love who created us in the image of love, or you believe that we came from billions of random events that eventually came together to a being with a capacity for laughter and love and connection and humanity, with a spirit of humanity. Even if you don't believe in a religious spirit, a spirit of God, we have a

40:11 human spirit. We have a connection of spirit if we could evolve through billions of years of random acts to come to that place. Either one of those tracks is an amazing origin story. We have inherent value regardless of which road you take. Now we argue back and forth among us over which one is correct, and we have nuances in both those pasts. But if you bull it down to those two paths, both come from an amazing, incredible origin story. There is no escaping whichever path you take that we are of inherent value. Okay, I love that all right. Number five fifth is passion. The fifth component of love is passion. This is a passion for life. This is an enjoyment of the life we have and the people that we have in life. The secret ingredient to bring passion into your life is fun. Remembering to have fun.

41:06 Some people make fun a dirty word, and it's just not. It is an important aspect for our health. It's an important aspect for love that we remember to have fun and put that enjoyment in life. Now, people sometimes push back on that and say, but life is serious. Well, yes, that's why practicality is the third component of love. And yes there are tragedies to life, and that's why grief is the first component of love. We don't forget those. But let's also not forget about passion. Having a passion for life, because this puts the wind in our sails, is the fuel and our engine. It gets us up every day to look and see what we can achieve today, what we can learn today, what we can find today, and what fun we can have in the process. If we can go to work and have as much fun as possible. Yes, there's a lot of work to do, but let's enjoy it. Let's enjoy what we do for a living, and let's enjoy our family. Let's have fun with our family. If we can laugh together as coworkers, as friends, as family, it takes us a long way down that road of a healthy relationship. And if we forget about that, then what happens is we may be doing a lot of things well. We may have come through the tough times and grieved through those. We may have emotional connections, we may be making very good practical decisions and clicking off things every day, and then we wonder, what's wrong, something's missing in this. You know, we've got a household, we're running well, we love the people in our life. We're doing well as a job. But something's just not right. And very often I see this in people that are in their thirties forties. They've been told,

42:39 you know, get the degree, or get the trading, get the job, get the promotion by the house, you know, find that special someone, get married, have kids, and they've clicked all these things off the list, and they're doing very well at all of them, and then they wonder, what's wrong? Is this really it? And what they've forgotten. Is we society given that list? Because that is a road, a road, not the road, but a road to a happy life that very many people have bought into. And so, okay, get the family, get the job, get all the stuff, but remember to enjoy it and look for the fun. One of the things that happens is that our brains are wired up to protect us, and so we're always going to be looking for bad stuff that might hurt us, either physically or emotionally. We're always going to be looking to protect ourselves. That's a natural human instinct. We are not wired up to look for things that are fun and enjoyable. We have to learn to do that. We have to look for it on purpose, because we will always see if somebody is saying something's going to offend us.

43:42 Our brains are wired up to protect us from things that will hurt us emotionally. We're not necessarily wired up to see things that are funny and humorous. Remembering to do that brings the spice of life. It brings the wind in our selves. And so if we can grieve the hurts of life and let that be our comeback story that we continually heal. When we're hurt that we stay connected emotionally to the people we love in every area of life. We make good, sound, practical decisions in order to live life well together. We love ourselves in order to love other people, and we remember to have fun and have a passion for life. You can build healthy relationships in every area of your life.

44:25 Ah, that's wonderful. And you know, as we're coming to a close, and I love what you've said here what I think you just kind of gave the message that I was going to ask you about as you just went through that process. So how do people find you and how do they find your book? Go to my website. It's Mark A. Hicks dot com. Make sure you get my middle initial in there Markahicks dot com. Everything is available there, links to my podcast, links to my YouTube channel, information about my book. My book is being released by Morgan James Publishing on June tenth, to be available wherever books are sold very soon of June. In the meantime, you can go to my website and get my free ebook, The Five Components of Love. It's a brief overview, just as I've given today of the five components of love, and of course when my book comes out in June, a lot of more detail, lot a lot more information about those five components and how to live them out in your life. There's also a contact form on my website. I'm available for speaking engagements, for workshops, for coaching, or just email me on my contact form to say hi and let me know that you saw me on the show today. I'd love to hear from you. That's rather form.

45:35 Mark, Thanks so much. You know, I love all of these different approaches. It's interesting. I love to play golf, all right, there's one of my loves, Okay, my passion, my fun, and I'm not a good golfer. And so I sit and watch YouTube and you know, I watched this, and I watched that, and just the other day, I sign an entirely different approach to hitting, you know, hitting the golf ball, and so I tried it this morning and I that, wow, that did not work. And I went back to the other way and it started to work. And that's what I love is that, you know, we all come up with these individual philosophies and ideas of how things have worked based on our own personal experience and professional experience in your case, and it works for some people.

46:20 For other people they find something a little bit different. But I think for the audience, I want you to understand, folks, that here is here is a pathway that could be potentially the difference between happiness and a lack of joy in your lives by getting the book, by listening a little bit to more of what Mark has to say about this, and really applying it into your life. So Mark, thanks again so much. Oh my pleasure. Thank you, and folks, thanks for listening. I hope you will be enjoyed this and I look forward to having your join us again soon. So this is doctor Doug saying, I'm a stay has been filled with their