Love for Resilience

Life happens. Difficulties sneak in through the blind spots. Relationships are strained by difficult circumstances. Division creeps in and deteriorates relationships, energy, and emotions. With each trial, the door into fear is opened, enticing us to focus on negative possibilities. It can be paralyzing. Once the door is open, we have a choice. We can enter it and let it consume us, or we can choose to deliberately create an alternative door that leads us towards love.

But choosing the door to love in the midst of turmoil and paralyzing fear can feel impossible. You know what you should do, but in the moment, it’s too easy to slip into self-pity or blaming someone or something for your current state of mind. Taking responsibility for your thoughts and emotions can be daunting.

Sometimes I find myself just wanting to be angry or sad because of an adverse circumstance. I need to vent or mourn. And that’s ok. Feel it. Experience. Then analyze it, learn from it and keep taking steps to move forward, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant.

Along the road to enlightenment, I’ve learned that when I am constantly fostering a foundation of love at my core, it’s a lot easier to choose love in the heat of adverse circumstances. That means I have to invest daily in a perspective of love and create habits of unconditional love, grace, and patience.

Due to our work, transient living and ardent activism, Ilea and I have lived an adventurous and often tumultuous life together. We are often faced with very difficult circumstances. Our ability to navigate these circumstances with love, rather than fear, profoundly affect our lives, the lives of our children and often the lives of many others we are serving.

When chaos or conflict presents itself, it can be quite difficult to be disciplined enough to respond in love or to defy potential negative emotions. However, I’ve found that when we constantly invest in a foundation of love in our relationship, we build resilience toward circumstances that would ordinarily divide us or drain our emotional energy.

When we angry, we often lash out at those that are closest to us. When we are deeply saddened, we tend to retract and wallow in our sorrow. When difficulties come hurling at my family, it’s easy for us to bicker and blame one another. But when we work diligently on fostering a foundation of unconditional, non-circumstantial love in our relationship, those difficulties don’t affect us so negatively. More often than not, they just inform us when to recalibrate or when to walk away.

Ilea and I are constantly investing in our unconditional love for one another. This plays a vital role in our ability to navigate difficulty with much more ease and peace of mind. Rather than allowing it to drive us apart, it actually causes us to cling to one another in solidarity. Together we are more powerful than as individuals.

When we truly love ourselves and operate from wholeness, we are more resilient to potentially destructive outside circumstances. When we have a strong foundation of love in our relationships, difficulties bring us together rather than drive us apart.

When you are bound together by love and trust, your decisions are collective rather than individual. This solidarity breeds confidence and forward momentum.

There is a very similar dynamic in business. If you want to build a brand that fosters loyalty and trust amongst your team and customers alike, you must foster a foundation of love. Invest in the environment and experiences that bring you together as a team. Build trusting relationships founded in love, grace and patience. Don’t compromise your integrity. Stand together for what you collectively believe.

This solidarity and community dynamic helps the team to withstand adversity and actually thrive together. If your collective purpose is clear and meaningful, the team takes pride and ownership of the brand.

And of course, the opposite is also true.

In a team environment that doesn’t invest in the love, its easy to fall apart every time adversity strikes. Everyone blames someone else. People don’t take responsibility or ownership. This dynamic can be paralyzing, keeping you in a state of constantly having to slug it out in a continual crisis state. You fight and bicker because it’s easy to do in the absence of authentic relationships, inspirational leadership and purpose.

If you want to build an extraordinary brand, foster an environment of love, grace and patience. Work diligently to build trust. Do meaningful work that you all believe in. Set your standards and principles together and never let circumstances lure you into compromising them.

When difficulty hits the team and causes a problem, don’t focus on the difficulty, focus on the team. Invest in a foundation of love and watch the outside difficulties melt away. Too often we focus only on trying to fix the obvious outside circumstances rather than realizing what is needed most is to tighten up the team and invest more deeply in a foundation of love and purpose.

Spend more time together being vulnerable and more deeply engaged.

Be honest and patient.

Listen. Love.

And enjoy the resilience.

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