Real Love Quotes
Clinging to our ideas of perfection isolates us from life and is a barrier.
Even as we recognize our resentment, bitterness, or jealousy, we can also honor our own wish to be happy, to feel free.
Cultivation of positive emotions, including self-love and self-respect, strengthens our inner resources and opens us to a broader range of thoughts and actions.
Genuine awe connects us with the world in a new way.
A key barometer to help us weigh the rightness of our actions is self-respect.
The wholesome pursuit of excellence feels quite different from perfectionism.
We cannot simply forgive and forget, nor should we.
Real forgiveness in close relationships is never easy. It can’t be rushed or engineered.
We nurture our sense of connection with the larger whole, noticing that the whole is only as healthy as its smallest part.
When we set an intention to explore our emotional hot spots, we create a pathway to real love.
Often in close relationships, the subject being discussed is not the subject at all.
When we develop our ability to love in one realm, we simultaneously nourish our ability in others, as long as we remain open to the flow of insight and compassion.
So often we operate from ideas of love that don’t fit our reality.
Feelings of apathy as they relate to our relationships often stem from insufficiently paying attention to those around us.
Only when we start to distinguish reality from fantasy that we can humbly, with eyes wide open, forge loving and sustainable connections with others.
One foundation of loving relationships is curiosity, keeping open to the idea that we have much to learn even about those we have been close to for decades.
When we don’t tell those we love about what’s really going on or listen carefully to what they have to say, we tend to fill in the blanks with stories.
With our close friends, family members, and lovers, we hope to create a special world, one in which we can expect to be treated fairly, with care, tenderness, and compassion.
Be open to the possibility that there are other paths available to you in relating to yourself and to another.
Without equanimity, we might give love to others only in an effort to bridge the inevitable and healthy space that always exists between two people.
How we traverse the space between us when conflict arises has a profound effect on the health and longevity of our relationships.
The paradigm for our relationships is formed from our earliest experiences and is actually hardwired into our neurological and emotional network.
Letting go of the belief that we’re powerless to help relieve our own suffering enhances our ability not only to heal but also to genuinely love and receive the love of others.
We learn from conflicts only when we are willing to do so.
Love is a living capacity within us that is always present, even when we don’t sense it.
When our focus is on seeking, perfecting, or clinging to romance, the charge is often generated by instability, rather than by an authentic connection with another person.
Real Love may run on a lower voltage, but it’s also more grounded & sustainable.
Whatever language we use use to describe healthy relationships, when we’re in them, we feel nourished by them, in body as well as mind.
Though it may seem counter intuitive to our inner perfectionist, recognizing our mistakes as valuable lessons (not failures) helps us lay the groundwork for later success.
Science tells us that love not only diminishes the experience of physical pain but can make us—and our beloveds—healthier.
When we pay attention to sensations in our bodies, we can feel that love is the energetic opposite of fear.
Love seems to open and expand us right down to the cellular level, while fear causes us to contract and withdraw into ourselves.
There is a sentiment common among most of us when it comes to love—letting go can feel scary.
Forgiveness is a personal process that doesn’t depend on us having direct contact with the people who have hurt us.
Healing comes in many ways, and no one formula fits all.
Letting go is an inside job, something only we can do for ourselves.
Taking responsibility for oneself is by definition an act of kindness.
In more ways than any of us can name, love is wrapped up with the idea of expectation.
Letting go is actually a healthy foundation upon which we can open up to real love—to giving, receiving, and experiencing it authentically and organically.
Mindfulness may help you gain insight into your role in conflicts with others, it won’t single-highhandedly help you resolve them.
These are times when sympathetic joy comes naturally, but in a complex relationship the heart may not leap up so easily.
Laughing at your pettiness probably works better than scolding yourself for it.
By experimenting with sympathetic joy, we break from the constricted world of individual struggle and see that joy exists in more places than we have yet imagined.
To celebrate someone else’s life, we need to find a way to look at it straight on, not from above with judgment or from below with envy.
There is no conflict between loving others deeply and living mindfully.
Even when we do our very best to treat those close to us with utmost respect and understanding, conflict happens. That’s life. That’s human nature.
Love is defined by difficult acts of human compassion & generosity.