The Happiness Explorer
How to…get more love. By Lydia Kimmerling
It amazes me how being an educator is still awarding me my most valuable education. The insight granted to me whilst teaching my Emotional Needs class on my Become a Coach course, wasn’t something you’d learn at school. What I learned about love that day may have been 36 years delayed, but it was worth the wait.
When I thought that I would write about love in February, I snorted, “How cliche!” But quicker than you can say Valentine’s Day, my snort became a smirk: there’s nothing cliche in what I know about love.
My darling, if love and that deep connection feels missing from your life, I can stand eye to eye in front of you, taking both of your palms in mine and say, “I know how you feel”. My longest relationship was 10 years, with a loving, kind and good man, but the all-knowing part of me knew that love could be felt in a way I was yet to experience.
Taking class that day and hearing each of my students’ emotional needs, whilst seeing them mature with their greater sense of self (even those in their 50’s) I confessed, “Guys, I’ve just realised I have a need for connection”. A year later, whilst hiding in my bathroom for the only precious privacy I could find during lockdown, I regurgitated this to my therapist also.
The paradox with emotional needs is learning how to meet them yourself, so that they become something that you no longer need — which was a truth I knew all too well (one my therapist hit me with too). I wanted to blame my boyfriend, my ex, or my father, but the connection and love I needed couldn’t come from them, I had to find it in me.
For all the single soldiers out there marching to the beat of their own drum, or to you who are silently suffering in your relationship, I know that being told, “You need to love yourself first” can be boring and annoying. I wish to be neither. You deserve love and my want for you is that it’s poured so richly into your life, you become a human fountain of love. I want you to know where the love tap is, so that you can keep it running whether you’re in a happy relationship or not.
So how do you turn the love tap on?
Well I want to leave you with the life changing question my therapist asked me that day, which enquired daily, took me way beyond a fountain…I’m the Niagara Falls of love now!
Give it a go. Take in the question. Close your eyes. Quiet your mind.
“How much are you allowing your external world to impact your inner world?” (You’ll find the love tap in the latter).
Write it on your mirrors, put it in your journal, place post-it notes on your laptop and I promise that over time, this question will connect the dots, turning them into one giant love heart.
If you would like to super speed your answer to the above question then join Lydia Kimmerling on her seven-day programme ‘The Happiness Reset’ which will run daily online from 6 February, 2022 at 7pm.
Cost £199.
Om Magazine
First published in November 2009, OM Yoga magazine has become the most popular yoga title in the UK. Available from all major supermarkets, independents and newsstands across the UK. Also available on all digital platforms.
