230: Increasing Your Love Ability

How is everybody doing today? Today, we're going to be reframing what lovability actually means.

Because usually when people talk about lovability, then they might say something like, oh, they are just so adorable.

They're so kind.

They're so gracious.

They're just so amazing.

They are just so lovable.

But when we think about lovability in this way, then it often creates things that we don't actually want, okay? It often creates inauthentic relationships, people pleasing, and a minimizing of one's own needs.

Because when our definition of lovability, when it's limited to how easy we can make it for other people to love us, then it actually keeps us small.

And it makes our worth conditional upon how other people see us.

And that means that our level of lovability, it is 100% in the eye of the beholder.

And that is something that is completely out of our control.

But what if your lovability has nothing to do with how many people find you to be absolutely adorable, brilliant, and amazing? What if instead it's actually about your ability to love other people? Your love ability.

Now, if somebody came up to me today and they said, Marianne, you are not very lovable.

In fact, I find you to be downright annoying.

Then guess what? That's their opinion.

They are entitled to their opinion, and that's just fine.

The truth is that there are people on this planet that don't really like me, and that's okay.

And what if that actually doesn't mean as much about me as it does the other person's ability to love other people, their own capacity to love others? It can be really, really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that, okay, well, I need to change who I am so that other people will like me, so they'll love me more, so they'll love me better.

It can be so tempting to live life like a chameleon and kind of shift and change who it is that we are, depending on who it is that we're currently sharing the space with.

Sometimes it can feel like, no, but it's gonna be safer if I can just make myself smaller.

If I can make myself have no needs, then I will be easier to love.

That is the way to increase my lovability.

But the truth is that everything shifts when we're able to shift our mindset from how can I become more lovable to other people into how can I increase my own love ability, my own capacity to love.

Now, let me be clear that as I talk about this, I'm not talking about becoming a doormat.

I'm not saying, nope, if you love them, you have to let them use you.