What is your language of love?
Valentine’s Day provokes mixed emotions. Some of us will be loved up and ready to embrace it; others resist the commercialism or sense of exclusion.
The first thing is to start with self love. How are we speaking to ourselves? What negative thoughts or beliefs are we telling ourselves? How can we replace this with positive thoughts or affirmations instead. One affirmation that I use and share with my clients is “I am enough” or “I am good enough”. What are you saying to yourself?
How can we spread some kindness this week? Going out of our way to do something kind for others is a win/win. We get to feel good as well as doing something good for others. In my coaching group we are taking part in Random Acts of Kindness week which encourages us to perform small acts of kindness throughout the week through small acts such as: posting something positive on social media, leaving a bigger tip than usual or making a handmade card to send to someone special.
Tony Robbins speaks about investing in our relationships and states that if we do everything we do do at the beginning of a relationship, there won’t be an end to the relationship. At the beginning of the relationship we do everything and nothing is too much trouble, whereas as time passes it’s easy to become resentful or unwilling to invest our time and energy in the relationship.
In my LIVE this week I spoke about Dr Gary Chapman’s brilliant book The Five Languages of Love. In this he explains that we respond differently to acts or expressions of love and lists five dominant languages of love:
Receiving gifts may be a significant love language for some and therefore very important, whereas others respond more to other forms such as physical touch or words of affirmation. In the book Dr Chapman cites examples of relationships which have struggled in spite of both partners’ best efforts because they did not understand each others’ languages of love. One man expressed his love through acts of service by doing tasks in the house but his wife was lonely and felt unloved because her dominant love language was words of affirmation, which he failed to give.
There are quizzes for adults and children. We have a tendency to treat our children the same, with some allowances for age, assuming that they need the same things. We’ve got this wrong. My youngest at 3 is too still to little to take the quiz but my sons, aged 10 and 7 absolutely loved it. Interestingly, receiving gifts came low down the list for both of them. The dominant love language for our eldest son is quality time. This made us stop and think. As the eldest he is the one who is the most demanding of our time and attention. This is a challenge in a family of five. He also has the greatest responsibility in terms of chores, independence and helping with the youngest. Knowing that quality time is his dominant love language can help stop us criticising him for being demanding and build in the quality time he needs. Our middle son has a dominant love language of words of affirmation. At home he’s independent and rebellious and a true superstar at school. Every time I write in his reading record he wants to know exactly what I’ve written- he thrives on those words of affirmation. Just having this knowledge is incredibly powerful- do take the quiz and let me know what you discover.
To carry on the conversation, please come and join my private group.
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