The truth about love is you can’t ignore it. I know this because I’ve tried myself. I’m not just talking about romantic love; I’m talking about these four topics:

– Loving yourself first
– Falling in love with a significant other
– Giving love to the world
– Knowing how to receive love

A friend of a friend, named Mark Lack, shocked me a few weeks ago. He said on his TV show that he wanted to share one secret with his business audience that was the best advice you’ll ever hear. I’m naturally on the edge of my seat ready to write down some online business hack that could make me millions.

Mark said,

“Nothing in your life matters, but one thing: how much love you give and how much love you receive. Love is the only thing in life that matters.”

It’s not just Mark that is spreading this message. This message is coming from entrepreneurs consistently now who’ve made it, climbed to the top of the mountain and figured out that love is all there is.

You’d think after two failed relationships within twelve months and a massive heartbreak I’d know that by now. So stop chasing fame, money, cool friends, parties or whatever else is distracting you from this one thing: love.

You can’t avoid it and instead, should embrace it. Love has so much power once you move out of thinking it’s uncool, and into a place of understanding. There is, however, two rules you must follow to play the game of love and get the benefits.

Rule One: Sacrifice

Love will not happen for you my friend unless you are prepared to sacrifice. If the benefits of love were so easy to obtain, we’d all be drinking the Kool-Aid by now and stop numbing our pain with food, drugs and alcohol.

The sacrifice I’m talking about is the biggest one you can make: give your entire life to love. In practical terms this doesn’t mean you go join some hippie cult; it means you must choose love in every situation.

Someone cuts you off, choose love; someone pisses on your front door, choose love; someone cuts in front of you at the grocery store and makes you late for work, choose love. It’s freaking hard work to choose love every day.

In romantic relationships, you’re going to have to get used to the good and the bad. No one is going to meet all of your requirements. You are going to have to do some things you don’t want to do that hurt like hell and are the opposite of what you believe. That’s plain bad luck because if you want the joy of living in a place of love with another person, that’s what it takes.

Rule Two: Compromise

If sacrifice had a sibling, it would be compromise. To enjoy a world of love you have to be prepared to negotiate on what you are willing to settle for. This is really hard for us entrepreneurs because we think we can negotiate our way out of every situation.

The trouble with love is that it only enters your life when you’re ready. The warrior who is ready to experience true love in their life knows that compromise is a must.

Loving yourself first

The beauty of love has come and gone so many times in my own life until I recently had a significant realization: you have to love yourself first. Before love can enter your life, you have to first love yourself. This is not some Kama Sutra spiritual junk, this is real.

Many of us go through life experiencing so much pain because we don’t love ourself. We have to love ourself the way we would love a romantic partner. We have to be able to look ourselves in the eye and know that we’re freaking awesome the way we are.

“If you lack love in your life, it’s because you haven’t started with you”

I read a book the other day about this entrepreneur who lost the one thing he loved: his company. Shortly after, he lost his romantic partner and everything else that he perceived to be good in his life.

He ended up at rock bottom and very sick. What got him out of this hellish nightmare was getting up every day and telling himself out loud one phrase: “I love myself! I love myself! I love myself!”

This seemingly stupid habit made his brain finally believe that he was enough and that he was special the way he is. This gentleman has now rebuilt his life and can be seen in rooms giving speeches about how he now loves himself, and repeats that phrase every day, so he doesn’t forget.

Key Action:

Every morning for a week, look at one of your eyes in the mirror and repeat the phrase “I love myself” for five minutes a day.

At night, put on a hypnotic piece of music that goes for around five minutes. Close your eyes, and repeat to yourself in your head or ideally out loud “I love myself” over and over.” If you want a recommendation for a good piece of music, then try the Gladiator Theme Song from the movie.

Falling in love with a significant other

You can’t ignore having someone to spend your life with, whom you truly love. Maybe you’re in a relationship and you don’t love the person, or maybe you are single and haven’t got anyone at all. The reality is that you must sort out this part of your life.

You cannot go on forever without solving this riddle. Loving someone other than yourself requires you to take lots of risks, and the chances are that you’re going to fail a lot. In fact, finding that one person is like doing a startup; failure is predictable, guaranteed and full of valuable lessons.

Our brain is programmed through evolution to find another human being and settle down at some point. Don’t fool yourself and try to postpone this rule of love forever. You’ll end up miserable if you do. Be strong, have courage and love like you’ve never been hurt before.

Giving love to the world

This is where things get interesting. Many of us are not giving any love (or hardly any) to the world around us. By not giving love to all those around you, you deprive yourself of some of the best happiness that exists on the planet.

When you’re down, and you give love, you get to focus your brain on all the abundance that exists. Selfishness is what causes us pain and makes us unfulfilled. Turn the spotlight away from you and onto someone other than yourself.

There’s so much beauty to be seen when you give love. Giving love brings out the best in those you give it to. Giving love generates more smiles and fewer haters. Giving love is what makes the world go round and continue existing.

If we all hated each other, then we’d nuke the heck out of one another and nobody would be left. What stops this event from occurring is the fact there is more love, than evil on our planet. Love is the currency you want to adopt.

Key Action:

I want you to try an experiment to see if this whole giving love thing works. Give a brand new pair of shoes away to a homeless person – the more expensive, the better the result. Don’t pretend like you don’t have any because we all have a pair of shoes lying around that we haven’t worn yet and probably don’t need.

The purpose of this exercise is to show yourself how good it is when you come from a place of love when you’re not being asked to. The results will speak for themselves. Try it! If I’m wrong, I’ll give you a 100% money back guarantee like those 90’s infomercials.

Knowing how to receive love

Over the last few months, I’ve experienced a few struggles and people have been there to offer acts of love. I’ve been lousy at accepting this love, and I’ve realized that it’s a double edge sword. You can’t give love and then refuse to receive any back.

“By shutting off your ability to receive love, you force yourself to do the hard times alone”

This, in turn, makes you lonely, which makes you feel like crap, which becomes a downward spiral. It’s especially hard for blokes to receive love because we somehow think we’re too big and strong to ever need a helping hand.

Being strong in the truest sense means that we don’t only give love, but we receive it and be grateful for this gift no matter what. The amount of love you receive is directly correlated to how much love you give. If it’s all about you and your Instagram selfies, then you’ll find pretty quickly that there is no love waiting for you when you need it most.

No matter how perfect anyone’s life may seem, we all have major setbacks, dark times and failure. Having people to give you love in those times makes the struggle one hundred times easier.

Summary

The truth about love is that it’s the greatest experience in the world. It’s the secret sauce to everything we’ve ever wanted if we’ll just try it out for a bit. It’s so easy to miss though because we all get chances, but we never maximize the opportunity. We choose ourselves first instead of love.

Then we wonder why the thoughts in our head won’t go away, and why we have to numb the pain all the time. We wonder why we’ve got to escape on a holiday to take our mind off this void that we can’t explain. The void is the lack of love in your life.

Make some sacrifices, compromise on your rules for life once in a while, open your arms wide and be prepared for some cool stuff to happen. We are all here to do one thing and one thing only; love our freaking hearts out until they stop beating.

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net