I have always heard that it is a greater blessing to give love than to receive. I have listened but never quite understood how it can be possible.

Receiving someone else’s love is such a beautiful blessing that lifts you up and gives you meaning. It motivates you to bounce out of bed in the morning; it causes you to skip through the garden and wear an inane smile all day. It is your life blood. It is therefore no wonder that losing that love is then so painful and tragic: the very thing that was driving your every move is taken away and you are left with nothing.

This is the important difference in giving love without expectation of anything in return: it all relies on you. You choose to give your love or you choose not to. It is not dependent on another and so when you choose not to love anymore you can take responsibility and deal with the pain.

But in order to give that love you need to love yourself. We have all heard this but it is not always an easy concept to grasp. Love yourself? This means loving yourself despite your perceived “weaknesses”; loving yourself whether others whom you love, love you as much or not; loving yourself because you will then have so much love that you will attract others to love.

Giving love should be unconditional, which means it is free of expectation and the resultant anxiety. It is free of past experience. It comes from a place of knowing that is so certain that nothing can shake it. It comes from within YOU and is therefore not reliant on anything or anyone but you.

These are all easy words but how do you roll this out in practice? What helps me is to always imagine myself when I was five (you can pick any age that personifies innocence for you). When I was five there was no expectation of a situation and I lived always for the moment: if I saw the moment as sad then I was sad; if it was happy then I was happy. I did not force myself out of sadness because I wanted happiness and I did not hang onto the happiness because I did not want to lose it. I merely experienced the feelings and these feelings were unique and special because I did not know them from past experience.

And so it should be in giving love: like it is the first time. You have a blank canvass to create the most beautiful experience you know how to in that moment in time and you are doing it without any other painting or artist in mind…it is only you, your emotions and the canvass.

Give of yourself freely and create the love you want to see in the world because then you will see nothing else.

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