“Have you ever believed to be in love with someone up until this person revealed who he/she was? I have and right there I started to question my love for this person. I asked myself: why wasn’t he what I thought of him–I was loving him only for who I wanted him to be”.
Unconditional love is hard to give, and some people don’t get to experience this type of love even once in a lifetime. The cause is that we often love for the wrong reasons.
Love isn’t a feeling, it’s a state of mind. Most people believe that love is a sensation, but if that was true then love should result in happiness. They both aren’t feelings, but a mental state and well-being.
How many people have witnessed statements such as “money is happiness” and then realized it’s further from the truth? The same goes for love.
Despite peoples’ struggle with the definition, there are 7 pillars to unconditional love:
Self-Love
Self-love is one of the greatest step to unconditional love. To love someone, a person must first love themselves.
Self-Worth
Following self-love is self-worth, they are complementary to each other. If a person doesn’t have self-worth, they cannot love, because worth is a human value pair to dignity. When you value yourself, you are likely to value others and look at them the same way you look at yourself.
Respect
No matter how small a person is, give them respect. Give respect to every single human being. If a person doesn’t know what respect is, he/she can’t love or be loved.
Give Without Expectations
This pillar is one many people often struggle with because they give to receive. When you give to a person don’t expect anything in return–if the choice to give comes from your heart, motives shouldn’t exist.
Acceptance
How many times do we point out others’ mistakes?
Learn how to accept yourself so you will accept others. Acceptance is embracing someone else’s good and bad traits, it is key to unconditional love.
Love the person for who they are rather than for who you want them to be, remember that you aren’t perfect either.
Patience
Love is kind, forgiving and patient.
Patience is a virtue that not everyone is able to have, so take your time and remember love shouldn’t have conditions.
Forgiveness
They say “to err is human, to forgive is divine.”
This quote says it all; forgive as many times as possible as long as it doesn’t put you in danger.
Unconditional love is like a constant driving test, So you can fail at times, but also pass at other times.
Love is a commitment and a sacrifice. People will always fail at some point in life. No one is perfect, but you get to choose who is worth suffering for, as long as it doesn’t put you in danger.
What I’ve learned from my experience is that the most important factor is to love and understand myself first. I was judgemental and thought I didn’t deserve pain. I was wrong because he wasn’t the only one who was different, I was too.
Featured image via Pexels
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A lot of people think unconditional love is impossible, or that you can only ever unconditionally love your children. I think that people have the idea of what unconditional love is all twisted up. Like you're saying, it doesn't mean denying self or putting self last or allowing a person to do whatever they want with chance after chance after chance. It just means never giving up on them and always caring about them – even if it may one day mean that you need to reduce their role in your life to protect you.
Well said ! A lot of people is still in the process of understanding this concept
How do you help her understand God’s unconditional love? As a parent, before you can do anything for your daughter, you need to understand God’s unconditional love for yourself.