As what has been discussed that we believe everything in our world is actualy a reflection of you. Therefore, if you believe in unconditional love, it's possible. But have you ever wondered what unconditional love actually means and what it would take to give yourself or your spouse this kind of love? To many individuals hold unconditional love as an ideal, not as a possibility. However, unconditional love is possible and you should keep in mind that everything starts with you. You don't have to fix, change, or concern yourself with what's out there, all you need to do is to understand and focus unconditional love on yourself. Such self-love can lead you to a life filled with more self-confidence,peace and authentic happiness.
What is unconditional love?
According to the dictionary, unconditional love means "showing love toward someone regardless of their actions or beliefs". Think about what would it take to love yourself unconditionally? Since a very young age, we've learned that the most effective way to change one's behavior is to criticize, blame, judge, humiliate, threaten, punish or to use any number of other tactics that will cause them to fear acting the same way in the future. Or we learn to use different kinds of reward to reinforce behaviors we like. The punishment and reward system is basically a behavior controlling technique. What most people learn from being subjected to the "behavior control" techniques is to learn how to be on the receiving end of rewards and to avoid being on the receiving end of the punishments.
When we're caught doing something "wrong", we quickly leanr how to be very careful so that we don't get caught again! Is it any surprise then, that at a very young age, we begin to use this behavior control system on ourselves whenever we don't live up to our own expectations?
Actually the process of internal behavior control is one of the biggest factors that hinder your ability to love yourself unconditionally.
Two questions leading to self-love
To understand how completely misguided the "behavior control" techniques are, you need to understand two questions leading to self-love.The first question is: what do we want people to do? The answer to this question is that you want them to behave according to certain socially accepted norms. When you consider it independently of any others, the system of punishment and rewards may seem like an effective system. This system of course will produce the desired results but the problem is that when people are motivated solely by a fear of punishment or promise of reward, you'll likely see a high prison populations and rampant corporate fraud. Because people only learned to focus on getting the rewards rather than avoid the punishments.
Thus, the second question seems to be more important: why do we want people to do them? You need to stop for a moment and think about the basic things we want other people and ourselves to do. Almost everyone would like people to be truthful, honest, respectful,kind and considerate. Actually how we want others to act is simply a reflection of what we most highly value.
Create unconditional love yourself
Creating unconditional love is really very simple. This doesn't mean that the process involved is easy but it will definitely be worth the effort. You start by turning your attention away from the system of punishment and rewards and instead focus on taking the actions you value the most. Sometimes you may feel uncomfortable in situations when your most cherished values are missing in your words or deeds. Instead of punishing yourself for having done something "wrong", you can use these feelings to focus all of your attention on how to create what you value in the situation. Because what you focus your attention on grows. This makes it essential for you to learn how to dig below any disappointment in yourself or your behavior and discover for yourself what you value is missing in the situation.
Unconditional love can be practiced
Love is a commitment to support someone such as your spouse in reaching their highest potential and achieving what is important to them in their life. Unconditional love can only exist when you're able to keep your attention focused on what you truly value and find ways to create that. You can't achieve this if you focus your attention on using a punishment and reward system to control behavior. Under the influence of the reward-and-punishment model, you may have thoughts similar to ones as below:
"I'm so stupid."
"I should have left earlier."
"They probably won't trust me in the future."
Under conditions when you have thoughts similar to the ones as above, you could stop to take a deep breath and experience the discomfort of these thoughts but without any desire to mentally punish yourself for being late. You can ask yourself what these thoughts really reflect. If you think about it they reflect nothing more than your value for respect, puntuality, consideration, cooperation, and trust. Now you can clearly see your discomfort is stimulated because these values are missing in this particular situation. The next step is simply to start identifying strategies to help ensure you action are more in harmony with your values in the future. Instead of scolding yourself, you can consider other ways to ensure you act differently in the future.
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