Unconditional Love

We all have many different ideas of what it is like to be in love, to love someone and to have someone love us. The true way to find out if you truly love a person is to ask yourself what you expect from that person. If you have a laundry list of things they should do for you, although you may love them, your love for them is conditional. Relationships with conditions almost always have major downfalls. No two people will have all of the same ideas of how things should be and what each other should or should not do in a relationship and that is what causes the breakdown between two people. Unconditional love is when you love a person just for who they are and you only have their best interest in your heart, not what you think their best interest should be. You should learn to look beyond a person faults, beyond your expectations of who they should be and you should never burden them with a list of things you want from them. Unconditional love is selfless. It means you are willing to give and do for the people you love, despite what they have to offer you. It is about giving your all and doing your best in a relationship. We set ourselves up for failure when we force our expectations on other people. An excellent example of unconditional love is the kind of love a mother has for her newborn. A mother doesn't expect anything from her newborn child. She loves her child unconditionally! Learning to love unconditionally will certainly change your outlook on life. It frees you up from having anger and resentment in your heart when the people you love do not quite do what you think they should be doing. Instead, you send your loved ones on their way knowing that you have their best interest at heart. When you love unconditionally, it motivates the people in your life to make a positive change in their life (probably not over night, but it does start to happen gradually). So, if you don't already love everyone in your life unconditionally, try turning things around and start to love differently. Remember that you do NOT have the power to make anyone do anything they don't want to do. Continually reinforce the positive things that they are trying to accomplish and calmly express your disagreement with their negative behavior. With the thought that misery loves company, the negative things will eventually fade because they will no longer have you to entertain those negative thoughts.