How to Increase Your Love Ability

You are one hundred percent lovable. Always. Your mistakes, the way you show up, and what someone else thinks about you do not change that.

But your lovability and someone else's ability to love you are two different things. And when you are the person doing the loving, there is a different question to ask: how good are you at loving?

That question gives us something to practice. We can develop our ability to love, just as we develop a muscle. We can get better at it. And we are the ones who get to experience the love we create.

Separate lovability from your ability to love

When we think someone is difficult to love, we often make that mean something about them. But their lovability is still one hundred percent. What we're encountering is our own challenge in loving them.

They aren't behaving the way we want. They aren't showing up the way we expect. We have thoughts about their presence, their words, or their actions that make loving them difficult.

When we accept responsibility for those thoughts, the relationship becomes an opportunity to develop our loving skillset.

I practiced this in my marriage and in difficult times with my mom. Instead of treating the challenge as proof that love wasn't available, I used it as a curriculum for learning to love harder and better.

This isn't a tool to use against yourself. Explore it, apply it, and notice how it affects your life. You don't need to turn it into another reason to feel bad about yourself.

Start with the person who may be hardest to love

For me, the most challenging person to love has been myself. Loving myself has taken practice, and the better I get at it, the easier it becomes to love other people.

I've had to unravel the judgments I carry about my flaws, mistakes, misdeeds, and things I've said. I practice giving myself room to be human and loving myself in that space.

Start by asking how good you are at loving yourself. What are the reasons you don't love yourself more? Write them down.

Those reasons show you the obstacles. Instead of accepting them as reasons love isn't possible, you can work on them.

What if you loved yourself more than anyone else had ever loved you? How would you show up for yourself? You would become the person creating the love, experiencing it, and receiving the effect of how you treat yourself.

Judgment blocks loving

Coaching has made this work especially important to me. A coach needs to hold space for a client to explore their mind, emotions, and behavior without judgment.

Our brains are designed to judge. But judgment gets in the way of holding clean space. When you judge someone negatively, you block your own experience of loving them.

One way I practice is to remind myself that the person is completely worthy and lovable. Sometimes I imagine them as a small, innocent child. That helps me find our shared humanness and fallibility.

I have plenty of experience making mistakes and treating myself terribly. Practicing nonjudgment with myself makes it easier to offer that same space to someone else.

You can hold loving space without telling the person you love them or acting out the feeling in a deliberate way. The work begins with the emotion you experience.

Give yourself a bigger love goal

In a 90-day relationship, I kept thinking about loving him more than anyone had ever loved anyone. You know me and impossible goals.

That question opened my mind to possibility. It made me consider how I could love more deeply, feel more love, and show up in a way that helped the other person understand it.

Consider someone in your life you might want to practice this with. It could be your children, your mom, or someone else you love.

Where do you think your capacity to love is right now, on a scale of one to ten? What would need to change for you to love more?

Then choose someone who challenges you. Notice the reasons you have for not loving them and ask how you could work through each obstacle. Loving someone when it is challenging makes you stronger at loving.

Generate love with your thoughts

We create love the way we create any emotion: with our thoughts.

Choose the object of your love, whether that is yourself, a partner, a friend, or a colleague. Think about them and notice what comes up that blocks the feeling.

Work on those obstacles. Then get creative about thoughts that increase the love: what you love about the person, what is positive, and how much you want to love them.

When you remove the expectations and the manual for how they should behave, you can practice loving them unconditionally. You get to experience the love regardless of whether they do what you want.

Feeling love doesn't require expressing all of it

As you develop this capacity, you may feel so much love that you want to express it everywhere. Be conscious of how you do that.

I'm not suggesting you overwhelm someone with loving behavior when they don't want it. And I'm not suggesting you love them so they will love you back. That is manipulation.

You can feel love without the other person knowing. You can be discerning about how you express it and whether that expression is appropriate and can be received.

All the love you have does not need to be demonstrated. It can be felt by you.

Practice with yourself every day, then practice with other people. The challenging ones give you an opportunity to become stronger. Loving in the biggest way you can is an honor—and you get to experience that love as you create it.