The 3 Ls of expressing love energy

In Burn Baby Burn, my little book about unleashing your creative potential, the central theme is expressing love energy.

Though there are details galore in the bookito about forging a simple, daily creative practice, the core message is about the power of love energy. Specifically how focused bursts of this potent force in the direction of your dreams unleashes creativity beyond your known boundaries.

Though you’ll have to read Burn Baby Burn for the context — for the stories! — here’s a short primer on what expressing love energy feels like.

To be fanciful, we’ll call it . . .

The 3 Ls of Love Energy

Lift: When you express love you always feel lifted up. Others feel the lift too. There’s an immediate and soulful uptick when love energy is expressed.

Have you ever been in a tense work situation . . . where someone was able to break through the entrenched dynamic and bring about a resolution?

Whether it’s done through humor or insight or creating a bridge between opposing viewpoints, there’s some kind of compassion at the heart of it.

When I worked on Wall Street, Charlene Raytek — a woman I considered my mentor even though she was a couple years younger — would break through logjams through empathetic questioning.

It wasn’t that she found a solution necessarily, it’s that her soft questioning combined with attentive listening gradually opened a pathway.

Often that’s all you need, something new to attempt.

Her gentle queries lifted us out of circular thinking. You may not think that’s love, but it is. She didn’t come in barking commands, she came with an open heart.

(And an incisive mind. That’s a particularly good combination.)

You know good ju ju’s in the air when everyone comes away on a higher frequency.

Lightness: You know how you feel when you fly a kite? Or play with a young child? Or hear a favorite song you haven’t heard in a long time?

You feel light. You feel as though gravity has loosed its bonds.

Just this morning I drove a forever friend to the airport, so he could fly up north for an emergency operation to remove a cancerous growth on his leg. It was sudden, unscheduled. This could have felt like an imposition but you know what I felt the entire time — an enveloping lightness of being!

Laughter: Watch Angelina Jolie in a video while she’s touring a refugee camp sometime. What you’ll notice is how much laughter is going on. Smiles abound. Grins and giggles go pandemic.

My brother and his kids have spent time helping out in African and Haitian missions. It’s the same there. When I see the photos what stands out is not the misery of the situation, but the joy that’s being sparked.

Look for these things: Lift, lightness and laughter. When they are present love energy is being expressed.

When they are absent, it’s not.

When you infuse love energy into your work all heaven breaks loose.

. . . . .

What creators do