Love Is Great

Love is in the air. And whether you currently have a lover or not, I suspect you know how it feels to be in love? On your continuous journey of improvement, all you need to do is conjure up that warm and loving feeling and “transmute” it into whatever success looks like to you. Transmute is from Latin transmutare, meaning to change, from one thing to another.

“Love, romance and sex are all emotions capable of driving people to heights of super achievement,” writes Napoleon Hill in Think And Grow Rich. “Love is the emotion that serves as a safety valve, and ensures balance, poise and constructive effort.”

Hill’s book, a “go to” for business self-help enthusiasts, was first published in 1937 (Hill died in 1970), and then updated in 2005. I find it interesting, because of the era in which Hill was writing, that he devotes an entire chapter to The Mystery of Sex Transmutation. Hill is all about gathering and harnessing energy to achieve goals. He points out that “‘personal magnetism’ is nothing more or less than sex energy”.

Let’s think about this. When meeting someone for the first time there are clues to what is behind the package in front of us, what attracts, what might repel. People capable of transmuting sex energy, whether aware of it or not, often do so through these methods:

1. Handshake
2. Tone of Voice
3. Posture and Carriage of the Body
4. Vibrations of Thought
5. Choice of Clothing

Hill feels you should waste no time worrying about having loved and lost. He says, “Go back into your yesterdays, at times, and bathe your mind in the beautiful memories of past love. It will soften the influence of the present worries and annoyances. It will give you a source of escape from the unpleasant realities of life, and maybe – who knows? – your mind will yield to you, during this temporary retreat into the world of fantasy, ideas or plans which may change the entire financial or spiritual status of your life.”

And since we’re on the topic of romantic love, I want to suggest a recent TED Talk I watched. In A better way to talk about love, writer Mandy Len Catron questions metaphors we use to describe it. Falling, for example. Picture the proverbial cartoon character dropping through an uncovered sewer opening. This suggests we have no active role in love, doesn’t it? Like, oh la-di-dah, was just walking along one day, minding my own business and fell madly, irreparably, into the cesspool of love.

Then, there’s words like burning, crazy, sick, smitten. (Okay, so these days smitten is instantly associated with love, but it comes from smite, which comes from Old English smitan, meaning “to hit, strike, beat”.) They all sound like a lot of pain and suffering, don’t they?

Our culture insists love is madness. Wikipedia “Crazy Love” and you’ll find it’s the title of 8 films, 17 songs and a couple of books. And since our culture also insists on monogamy, we want our “crazy love” and we want it for a lifetime. Is this realistic, in any way, shape or form?

In their book Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, suggest this new metaphor for love: “Love is a Collaborative Work of Art”. Oh. Well that changes things, doesn’t it? Let’s create something beautiful together! Here’s a list of bullet points from page 140:

*Love is work
*Love is active
*Love requires cooperation
*Love involves creativity
*Love reflects how you see the world
*Love needs funding
*Love demands sacrificing
*Love involves shared responsibility
*Love is an expression of who you are

As Catron points out, the application of this notion of love does not have to be limited to romantic love. You can go around all day creating masterpieces with anyone you want to share love with, who also wants to share love with you. It moves love from passive to active. It invites trust. It asks you to stop thinking about your own needs and start thinking about what you have to offer.

Be madly, oops I mean happily, in love. It’s free. And it’s guaranteed to bring you the riches you seek.