Please click here to listen to Episode 107 of the Minutes on Growth Podcast
Hi Soul Friends
It’s Tannaz Hosseinpour and welcome to another short solo episode of Minutes on Growth
Next week, our manifesting love 28 day online program starts and I couldn’t be more excited because this is a program that pretty much encompasses everything that I’ve learned about relationships both in the past 15 years from my own personal experience and specifically over the past decade from an academic standpoint. So I thought I would dedicate this episode to love – and how we can feel more of it on a day to day basis.
So what is love? When I think of love I think of this warm feeling inside of my body that is calm and expansive. Expansive in the sense that it gives me the courage to up level myself, to put myself out there, to walk more confidently in the direction of my dreams… perhaps because love feels supportive, and when we feel like someone has our back, that they see us, that they believe in us… well it gives us the nudge we need to believe in ourselves too, and to take inspired action. When I think of love I think of inclusivity, I think of community and nonjudgmental people around me… I don’t think we spend enough time talking about how important it is to be in close proximity to Safe and caring people… their presence can make the world of a difference in the journey of our growth and evolution… When I think of love I think of acceptance, even when I mess up and make mistakes. A love that sees and accepts my humaneness… because we’re all human, and being imperfect is part of it. Perfection is an illusion that I wish upon no one to pursue. Love is knowing that people will extend grace and forgiveness to us when we mess up, and we too will extend the same to others. When I think of love, I think of laughter and giggles and smiling until your jaw starts to hurt, I also think of feeling safe enough to cry, feel your feelings without shame or judgment and have a shoulder to lean on during hard times..
Ooof .. honestly an opportunity to love or be loved can show up in so many different ways, small and big throughout our days… but are we able to see it?
well I think the media, Hollywood and Bollywood and Disney have given us a distorted definition of love and have created this false belief that true love is synonymous with romantic Romeo and Juliet like stories. They’ve made love synonymous with grand and sometimes unrealistic gestures.
Social media has exasperated this issue too. I mean think of Valentine’s Day, for many, it turns into this competition of who gets the more gifts and whose flower bouquet is bigger? & that can really hurt both the relationship we have with our significant other and the relationship we have with ourselves. Why? Because we either want to show our own experience to the world on social media (& it better be a good photo otherwise we’re mad at our significant partner for not doing better) or we’re sad because we’re comparing ourselves to content that has already been posted on social media (& consequently feeling like we’re not enough or don’t have enough”
In those moments of comparison and competition, we lose our opportunity to acknowledge and appreciate the smaller day to day blessings, to connect to our partners… to nurture the love that exists…
which brings me to my next point that love is a choice… love is a verb
When couples start working with me, in one of our first sessions, I explain to them that the hallmark of a healthy relationship is the ability to cultivate a culture of appreciation. So their homework contains 2 parts.
Part 1 is to notice each other’s efforts and to express appreciation often for even the smallest gestures. “Thank you for grabbing that bottle of water for me, thank you for helping with dinner prep”
The other is to notice each other’s strengths and express our admiration. “you handled that situation with such grace and patience. I admire your ability to remain calm and find a solution”
These habits help bring both people closer to one other as it increases their feeling of being valued, appreciated and ultimately loved in the dynamic.
& these tools don’t only apply to romantic relationships -practicing them in any dynamic can cultivate love.
Some platonic friendships become powerful mediums for us to experience deep love. The type of love that makes you feel like you’re worthy of all the beautiful things in the world, the type of love that validates your feelings? The type of love that inspires you to dream big and actually makes it feel like it’s possible for you to accomplish it. One of my biggest blessings that I express gratitude for every single day, are my soul sisters who have elevated my experience of reality from the moment that they entered my life.
I’ve always been a social child, so I always had a lot of friends growing up. My dad is also a super social person, so I always saw him making time for his friends and putting in the effort to cultivate those friendships, so that got engrained in my subconscious mind from a young age, but this is not mean that I didn’t experience my fair share of heartbreak in friendships and I noticed that as I got a little bit older, those experiences kind of prevented me from allowing people in. Yes I had a lot of people around me, but I didn’t allow them in, fully in so I didn’t get to experience the blessings of true friendship. I started therapy at the age of 18, or 17 I believe, and for the first two years I didn’t even let my therapist in. After having a near death experience, somethings shifted inside of me that allowed me to bring down my guards a little bit. It reminds me of the Rumi poem where he quotes the wound is where the light enters you. That was definitely the case for me. This did not mean that I did not practice discernment when it came to allowing people in, but at least the option of allowing people in was now active. Manifesting love in my opinion is becoming aware of the barriers that we have built within ourselves that are preventing us from letting people in. Those wounds, as valid as they are, need to be recognized and healed so that we can allow ourselves to experience an expansive and deep love once again, whether that’s love in our friendships or romantic love.
& let’s not forget self love – many say that we need to love ourselves for others to love us.. and while I agree that the way we treat ourselves sets the precedent for how others treat us… for many who grew up believing they’re not loveable, this advice not only doesn’t serve them but also makes them feel like they’re stuck… safe loving relationships can serve as powerful mediums for us to see the love that exists within us… we heal those parts of us that don’t feel loveable in those relationships, so yes, self love can flourish in loving relationships too…
We’re going to be diving deep into all of these concepts inside the manifesting love program so if this is something that interests you, I highly suggest enrolling. we start on July 2nd.
I’d like to end this episode with a quote by George Sand, “There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved”. I believe that love is our core essence. The analogy I like to use is imagining love as the electricity in the socket. it’s always there. it’s our choice to plug ourselves in and reap its benefits, or unplug ourselves and disconnect from the light.
So may we all have the courage to plug ourselves in as often as possible so that we can feel and experience our true light.
Sending you lots of love,
Speak soon,
Minutes on Growth 