Love in the Workplace, I Dare You

(2 minute read time)

So Valentine’s Day is around the corner.  I have to be honest, I am not a huge fan.

I prefer to think about love as something that’s just a part of me – my fabric, my DNA. I like to express it frequently versus when prompted to do so by Hallmark.    

Now, some of you might really enjoy Valentine’s Day – and that’s totally cool!  There is nothing wrong with that. What I want to challenge all of you to consider is how much do you give love every other day of the year?  Is “loving” a word you would use to describe yourself?

We don’t think about love in the workplace often.  Maybe we do when there is an in-office romance or perhaps we drop the L-word casually when we say something like “I love my boss/team/job”.      

But can we really love at work?  The good kind, the real kind, the unconditional kind.  

I believe the answer is YES.  Love is not just reserved for our family and those closest to us.  

Love feels awesome.  It’s amazing. Why wouldn’t we want to feel it as frequently as possible???

Here are some of the reasons my clients give me for why they don’t choose love:

• “He’s always in a bad mood”
• “She’s just mean and unlovable”
• “He did a terrible thing, he doesn’t deserve it”
• “I have to do everything around here, if he/she would only try harder…”

We think that if we withhold love then the other person will somehow feel punished.  

Or, we think that if the other person in the equation changes then we can feel love.

Love, like any other emotion, just does not work like that.  

Think about the feeling of frustration.  Imagine you’re working hard on a task and it’s not going as smoothly as you would like.  Someone walks in your office right in the middle of it. Do they immediately feel frustrated?  Not likely.

Feelings don’t just leap out of us and into those around us.  Feelings don’t come from other people, they come from thoughts.  

Love is always an option.  And when you choose it, you benefit.  You get to feel the awesomeness of love.

I was working with a client who was convinced he hated his boss.  He was attached to the belief that his boss was just a “bad person”.  Every day he would choose to hate his boss. The boss did not feel the hate.  My client felt it though. Not only did that feel awful for my client but it also influenced his performance – negatively of course.    

When we manage our minds we can get to the place where we choose love for our own sake.  We get to feel love because we like how it feels. Not because someone “deserves it” or has “earned it”.  

Walk around your workplace today and practice just feeling love for those around you.  You don’t even have to say a word. Just try it for one whole day and see what happens.

Test me on this.  I dare ya. And, if you don’t – it’s ok, I love you anyway.                       

Do you have an unlovable person or situation in your life?  I can help. Click here to schedule a free 30-minute coaching session.