Love is...

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I started listening to an audio book today named tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed. Dear Sugar is a column Strayed authored for The Rumpus, and the very first letter she included in the tiny beautiful things collection was full of thought-provoking statements about relationships and those three little words. For many years I felt that saying "I love you" to a significant other required the kind of earth shattering connection that indicated a life long romance. So I missed out on saying it when it was real, and as life so often goes, eventually clumsily shared it when I thought I should, rather than when I fully felt it in the way I wanted to. The excerpt below is Strayed's response to a Dear Sugar letter written by Johnny, who was holding back on telling his current love how he felt.

http://therumpus.net/2010/06/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-41-like-an-iron-bell/

"Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor and “loaded with promises and commitments” that we may or may not want or keep...

You aren’t afraid of love, sweet pea. You’re afraid of all the junk you’ve yoked to love. And you’ve convinced yourself that withholding one tiny word from the woman you think you love will shield you from that junk. But it won’t. We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not. Our main obligation is to be forthright—to elucidate the nature of our affection when such elucidation would be meaningful or clarifying.

And in your case, it will be. You asked me when is the right time to tell your lover that you love her and the answer is when you think you love her. That’s also the right time to tell her what your love for her means to you. If you continue using avoidance as the main tactic in your romantic relationships with women, you’re going to stunt not only your happiness, but your life...

The point is, Johnny: you get to say. You get to define the terms of your life. You get to negotiate and articulate the complexities and contradictions of your feelings for this woman. You get to describe the particular kind of oh-shit-I-didn’t-mean-to-fall-in-love-but-I-sorta-did love you appear to have for her. Together, the two of you get to come to grips with what it means to have an exclusive, nicely clicking, non-committed commitment in the midst of her bitter divorce and in the not-too-distant wake of your decades-long marriage.

Do it. Doing so will free your relationship from the tense tangle that withholding weaves. Do you realize that your refusal to utter the word love to your lover has created a force field all its own? Withholding distorts reality. It makes the people who do the withholding ugly and small-hearted. It makes the people from whom things are withheld crazy and desperate and incapable of knowing what they actually feel.

So release yourself from that. Don’t be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word love to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will."

Does God Love Introverts?

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"'Sometimes I feel like I'm going through the motions. The outward enthusiasm and passion that seems to be part and parcel of Saddleback's culture doesn't feel natural. Not that introverts can't be eager and enthusiastic, but we're not as overtly expressive as extroverts. At a place like Saddleback, you can start questioning your own experience of God. Is it really as strong as that of other people who look the part of the devout believer?'

Evangelicalism has taken the Extrovert Ideal to its logical extreme, McHugh is telling us. If you don't love Jesus out loud, then it must not be real love. It's not enough to forge your own spiritual connection to the divine; it must be displayed publicly...

It's brave of McHugh, whose spiritual and professional calling depends on his connection to God, to confess his self-doubt. He does so because he wants to spare others the inner conflict he has struggled with, and because he loves evangelicalism and wants it to grow by learning from the introverts in its midst.

But he knows that meaningful change will come slowly to a religious culture that sees extroversion not only as a personality trait but also as an indicator of virtue. Righteous behavior is not so much the good we do behind closed doors when no one is there to praise us; it is what we 'put out into the world.'"

This excerpt from a short section of Susan Cain's book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking detailed in gratifying clarity my own experience and struggle in evangelical settings. This book offers a load of validation and enlightenment regardless of where you fall on the intro/extroversion and (non)religious spectrum, highly recommended!

The Art of Selling

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My blog was previously titled Generous Wives to Be, but I've updated it to Snippets for Life since my own perspective, goals, and literary pursuits have expanded.

I have a backlog of inspiring reads I could share but I’ll have to settle for a snippet that struck me recently, having often vented about my aversion for networking and selling myself (and anything, for that matter).

Marc and Angel Hack Life recently shared a post titled 6 Easy-to-Steal Rituals of Extremely Successful People and tip number six happened to be: “Study, rehearse, and get super comfortable with the art of selling.” Their explanation below definitely shifted my perspective on the subject, and made me want to explore the idea further.

Keep in mind “selling” in its truest sense isn’t an act of manipulating, pressuring, or being deceitful. Selling is explaining the logic and benefits of a decision or point of view. Selling is convincing other people to work directly with YOU. Selling is overcoming concerns and roadblocks, and calming other people’s unwarranted fears. Selling is one of the principal foundations of both business and personal success. It’s about knowing how to negotiate, how to deal with a “no” when you receive one, how to maintain confidence and self-esteem in the face of rejection, and how to communicate openly, honestly, and effectively with a wide range of people so that you can build long-term relationships that garner long-term trust.

When you truly believe in your idea, or your business, or yourself, then you don’t need to have an enormous ego or an overly extroverted personality. You don’t need to “sell” in the traditional sense. You just need to communicate your point of view clearly, cordially, and confidently.

That last sentence makes it sound so simple, yet being clear, cordial, and confident in every relationship situation is a challenging endeavor.

It turns out there’s a treasure trove of enlightenment to be found in the study of introversion vs. extroversion, but I’ll stick to sharing an excerpt from Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (quoting Jon Berghoff below):

“A lot of people believe that selling requires being a fast talker, or knowing how to use charisma to persuade. Those things do require an extroverted way of communicating. But in sales there’s a truism that ‘we have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionately.’ I believe that’s what makes someone really good at selling or consulting - the number-one thing is they’ve got to really listen well. When I look at the top salespeople in my organization, none of those extroverted qualities are the key to their success.”

It was encouraging to realize that selling anything breaks down to a lot of behaviors and skills that we (hopefully) do all the time without much thought. Like listening, being open and honest, sorting out what people really need, coming up with ways to work through or around roadblocks together… and you don’t have to be an extrovert to be a pro at it =)