I will begin this one by requesting you to reflect on all your definitions and experiences of love. Process the feelings encountered each time you had a rendezvous with love. Recollect, was it an expectation which turned out to be other than love? Does it have a root in the rose-coloured oozy floozy narrative woven by the movies? Do you recon the undercurrents of lust, care, judgment, presumption, submission, powerlessness, sentimentality and so on, beneath the flaky mask of love. Do not get me wrong here. As much as I love romcoms, flowers, sky full of stars, candles, rain, comfortable silences in between eye contact, we all know that daylight kisses the stars goodbye, candle blows off and someone has to organise the groceries.
What I am getting at is the underlying emotion at the core of love because it is long that it has been used loosely or is grossly misunderstood. Psychology has it that the primary emotion of ‘Love’ is nothing but a combination of ‘Joy’ and ‘Trust’.
Let’s begin with trust. It is a characteristic we are born with and over a period of time with lose it, regain it and the cycle continues. As children we naturally trust our parents and caretakers. A child is not born with fear, it’s created by the adults for whatever reasons. For example, do you remember being instructed not to run around otherwise you may fall. And God forbid you did, someone had predicted that and there was no stone left unturned to repeat that you were forewarned. That’s when you lost trust in yourself. What if you were never forewarned hence falling never occurred to your positive mind and hence you never fell? It was joy to do things free of fear and you would have believed in yourself more.
Trust is the bedrock of love which, according to me, is over-sold. Why is trust not promoted? When an environment of trust is created, behaviour in action and fear free words are said, world automatically turns joyful and there is bound to be love around.
The dictionary definition of trust is “firm belief in the reliability, or truth and ability of someone or something”. We are talking about reliability, truth and ability hence trust demands these conditions. When love fails, it’s the betrayal of trust either in the situation or the person was not reliable, truthful or not able. We slither in blaming self or the person.
According to an analysis published in MIT Sloan Management review, researchers say employee turnover is driven not by higher paying jobs but toxic work culture which encompasses lack of appreciation and insecurity. Mostly, it starts and ends with the ‘Boss’. Paul J Zak in ‘Neuroscience of trust’, HBR talks about his findings; ‘Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high trust companies report 74% less stress, 106% energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 40% less burnout’.
According to Zak’s studies, relationships and situations built on trust enable the body to release oxytocin. What is this hormone responsible for? This is off the net- In the brain, oxytocin acts as a chemical messenger and has an important role in many human behaviours including recognition, trust, romantic attachment and mother–infant bonding. As a result, oxytocin has been called the ‘love hormone’ or ‘cuddle chemical’. If this chemical is held back, it may be one of the causes in stress, depression and anxiety.
Work is joyful when there is trust in the system and its people.
All this for what? To up the quotient of trust beginning with self. As you establish trust in your own gut feelings and intuitions greater are the chances of others’ putting trust in you. To further enhance this skill, you can look at ways to strengthen being more reliable, for example keeping up with commitments or better still, thinking before promising and of course a timely follow through adds. Investing in being honest saves time and effort to keep up with the drama dishonesty comes with. It makes you more transparent and further adds to the validation. At any given point you are not able to deliver something be truthful, it helps create healthy boundaries and saves you from an imminent perception of betrayal.
The courage it takes to trust someone or something brings the joy along the process and this combination of emotions is the alchemy of love.
The intention of this piece is to lift the veil of love and introduce trust and joy at its root. Going to the core strengthens the characteristic within. There is light of knowledge, love of the divine and power of self to find the true love.