By Books Writer Denise Turney

Aim for love that goes deep with friends, family, and yourself. This single goal can enrich your relationships and improve your overall well-being. Why?

When you aim for love that goes deep, you intentionally engage in conversations and behavior that have impact below the surface. Merely calling someone on a holiday won’t be your goal unless you haven’t spoken with the person in years. Regardless of what you’ve done in the past, you’ll keep looking for ways to show the people in your life that they are priceless.

How Deeply You Love and Care

You’ll also continue to seek ways to demonstrate to them how deeply you love and care for them. Examples of this include:

• Calling a friend and asking them what day and time is good to enjoy a meal together. While dining, discuss a disagreement that you and the friend recently had, something that has created a wedge in your relationship.
• Inviting a relative to a local, regional, or national event that you were offered free entrance tickets to. Spend the day with the relative and appreciate their presence.
• Walking to a meeting with a colleague and discussing a fun event the colleague attended over the weekend.

Although these actions sound simple, they pack a punch when it comes to showing someone how much they mean to you. When you consider how many of us struggle with self-esteem, confidence and inner love issues, seemingly small words and actions can help release people from the fear that they aren’t enough.

Aim for Love That Goes Deep

Therefore, when you aim for love that goes deep, you help people to gain freedom from fear. And you help others to get comfortable with being loved. Considering that we flee what we fear, this love-based work that you do could help those in your life to stop running from love.

It’s good work with far reach.

More reasons why you should aim for love that goes deep include avoiding being perceived as someone who pursues “surface” relationships and only doing the minimal to keep relationships going. That’s not all. Other reasons to aim for love that goes deep are:

• Pursuing deep love may be the best way to “really” get to know a person.
• The closer you get to others, the more open to love you may become.
• Efforts that you make to enrich your relationships can instill trust.

Even more, you’ll be teaching others how to improve their relationships. This happened for me at a corporate office. A colleague, a talented sales professional, was skilled at relationship building. Patience was one of her hallmarks.

See How Love Works

When we went to a team lunch, she suggested that I sit next to her. As we prepared to travel back to the office, she asked me to ride with her. Not once did she gossip or attack another person in any way.

Instead of simply offering a good morning and good evening greeting, she looked for ways to deepen our relationship. Her only motive was to aim for love that goes deep. It has been impactful.

For you, it might have been a parent or a grandparent who aimed for love that goes deep. Or maybe it was a childhood friend. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that you remember this person with clarity. Should you count the people who have had the deepest impact on your life, this person would be in that number.

Include Yourself

Aim for love that goes deep to have lasting impact on others. Also, the love you give to others circles back. That love comes back to you in ways that might surprise you. For starters, not only will you feel good about yourself, respect that you hold for yourself might soar. Hence, don’t exclude yourself when it comes to aiming for love that goes deep. To include yourself in the circle of love:

• Ensure you get enough quality sleep each night.
• Treat yourself to entertainment, organic meals, and outdoor activities that you enjoy.
• Spend time alone, appreciating your own company one or more times a week.
• Exercise regularly, keeping your physical fitness at optimum levels.
• Hang out with friends regularly, definitely one or more times a month. Times when you can’t hang out with friends, do a video call with your friends.
• Venture to new places, having loads of fun whether you’re on a weeklong vacation or doing something different over the weekend.
• Practice patience with yourself. Just like everyone else, you’re learning. Because you’re learning, you’ll make mistakes. Forgive yourself and be patient as you continue to learn and awaken.

Pay Attention to What Love Yields

Whether you’re demonstrating love to yourself or someone else, pay attention. Pay attention to what you choose to do to demonstrate your love for yourself or another person. In time, you’ll notice what works. For instance, a relative you’ve been at odds with might tell you how much your weekly telephone call means to him. The aim has additional implications, such as:

• Increases the likelihood that people whose lives you have touched will spot other people who are committed to love
• Demonstrates to you that you are loving
• Shows you the influence that you have when you operate with integrity and with the aim to love, not to get something but simply to love
• Helps you to notice when someone is being honest, transparent and trying to love you with good intentions
• Lets your whole-self realize how much you care about you. This alone could make it easier for you to trust yourself as you take new, smart risks, trying new things.

Watch Hearts Open

Another benefit of paying attention is how your heart opens. Let one person tell you how much your patience, persistence and love blessed their life and any doubt you have about the power of love might evaporate.

This is important because part of the journey here is to remember love, to remember what you truly are. Remember, should you choose to aim for love that goes deep, make sure that you include yourself in your efforts to demonstrate love.

After all, love isn’t complete without you.