How Deep is Your Love?

Source: photo by pixabay

“Love means that everything is right with the world. Love and only love. Love means that you are content within your own heart and in the presence of the person that you love, who fills your day and makes you stronger and wiser, and gives you the confidence to go out into the world. Love is just the most beautiful, joyous feeling.”

—Pierce Brosnan

I’m sure by now you’ve seen all kinds of articles telling you how to get ready for Valentine’s Day. Find the perfect outfit, book the perfect restaurant, send the perfect card, buy the perfect gift, pick out the perfect flowers. From advice columnists to department stores, everyone’s eager to help you experience the best Valentine’s Day ever!

Or are they just making sure you feel like you’re not enough? That without their products and advice, your Valentine’s Day is doomed to be dismal?

Our modern culture insists we need to become better, slimmer, stronger, richer, smarter. Everyone—from Madison Avenue to human potential gurus—bombards us with messages that we aren’t okay just as we are. And at this time of year, they choose a particularly sensitive area to make us feel inadequate: our love lives.

One of the earliest examples is good ol’ Listerine. In the 1800’s, Listerine was used as a surgical antiseptic. Its sales were pretty small until some smart ad guy in the 1920s starting pitching Listerine as the solution for "chronic halitosis,” a fancy medical term for bad breath. Before this ad campaign, stinky breath was no big deal. But Listerine's 1920s ads made it clear that true love was impossible unless your breath was “Listerine fresh.” Within seven years, Listerine's sales went from $115,000 to over $8 million!

Now, I’m not against good oral hygiene or gifts or nice dinners. But rather than plunking out money to cover the “fact” that you’re not enough to deserve romance, I’ve got a better idea:

Get pono.

Get what?

Pono is a Hawaiian word that has no good translation. Pono means to feel “right” with the world, to feel comfortable in your own skin, to know who and what you are. Pono is a deep sense of well-being. It’s a kind of quiet confidence without the Don Draper kind of swagger. It’s similar to “loving yourself”—a concept most people just can’t grasp— but without the Me Generation sense of entitlement and self-absorption.

Pono is about standing in your own power. You feel right with who and what you are. When you feel pono, any effort to persuade you otherwise is pointless.

When you’re pono with yourself, you feel congruent with your path and with what you’re doing. When you’re pono with someone else, everything is clear, transparent and comfortable between the two of you. When you’re pono with your environment, you feel a sense of well-being, ease.

When you’re pono, you feel connected on all levels. You are part of it all and you fit perfectly.

Most of us have experienced tastes of being pono. It feels amazing, doesn’t it? You feel expressive and free and centered. And if you’ve hung out with someone who is pono, you know how awesome it feels to be in their company!

The ancient Hawaiians did not take being pono lightly. Because they believed they were connected to all things and each other – a belief that quantum physics has now "proven" to be true—pono was essential to their way of life. To be out of synch or at odds with anyone or anything meant you were at odds with your own self.

The ancient Hawaiians were not surrounded by today’s messages they weren’t good enough, smart enough, sexy enough. But staying pono with themselves, each other and their world was still a constant, active process. Here are some of the qualities they believed in:

Being authentic and truthful: Too many of us are too polite or too frightened to tell the truth. We may not be blatantly dishonest, yet we hold back parts of ourselves and withhold our true thoughts. We say we’re okay when we aren't. We pretend to agree to avoid conflict. Without authenticity, we can’t be truly pono with ourselves or anyone else.

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Being in charge of their connections: The ancient Hawaiians believed that we are energetically connected to everyone we have ever met. They made it a point to either keep those connections clear and positive, or cut them off. Too often we hang on to negative relationships long after their shelf life. Most of us allow small irritations and disappointments to fester in our relationships causing these relationships to corrode over time.

Honoring their emotions: Ancient Hawaiians believed that the natural state of being is to be pono and positive. Therefore, when something didn't feel good or positive, it was believed to be feedback from the unconscious or Higher Conscious mind that something was off or needed to be learned. Today, we accept feeling grumpy or out of sorts as just part of life. We blame it on circumstances or low blood sugar but we rarely stop and ask for the message it’s giving us.

To remain authentic, stay in charge of their connections, honor their emotions and stay pono, the Hawaiians used a practice I wrote about last month: ho’oponopono. Ho’oponopono is often called the Hawaiian forgiveness process, and by doing it on a regular basis—and especially if they felt at odds in any relationship— the Hawaiians kept themselves clear and right with the world.

Whether you have a significant other in your life or not, you can enhance the depth and intimacy of all your relationships by getting pono with yourself.

“To be happy, it first takes being comfortable being in your own shoes. The rest can work up from there.”

-Sophia Bush

To your TOTAL empowerment!

Mahalo—

Dr. Matt.

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Byline: Matthew B. James, MA, Ph.D., is President of The Empowerment Partnership. Author of several books, Dr. Matt has trained thousands of students to be totally empowered using Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), Huna, Mental Emotional Release® (MER®) therapy, and Empowerment Fit, a program that incorporates targeted mind/body/spirit practices to create optimal physical fitness and health. See where Dr. Matt and his team are headed next at www.nlp.com and keep in touch on his Facebook Page