Empowerment Coaching Leads to Being More Love-able

4 Ways You Can Become More Love-able

Ed Gough Jr. (Dr. Vibe) Certified Empowerment Coach

With Empowerment Coaching one of the frequent topics that clients bring into sessions is around the topic of love. Understand when we coach on empowerment we open discussions about being a leader in all aspects of our lives. Being a leader in our job, community, personal health, family, relationships, and love are all areas leaders are challenged to be authentic and state real needs or desires.

Many of us have heard that saying that "the most important need that humans have, is to be loved". However a leader knows everything starts with them. So in order to be loved, you also need to be love-able or at least motivated enough to work in that direction.

Here are some traits we might explore in the coaching process to a enhance client’s love-ability:

1. Being a leader in your life means, you want to have an open heart. You want to be generous and caring. Someone with an open heart feels comfortable saying: “Let’s try.” “We’ll find a way.” “Let’s learn something new.” An open heart is a heart that is not afraid or at the least accepts some fear; it knows how to deal with sadness. It knows how to heal and how to forgive. It is strong and loving. At its most basic, an open heart is a heart that is not afraid of the risk to love deeply.

A leader expressing love is not blind to cost, or reason, or practicality and strives to see possibilities. The open hearted leader has vision, is patient, is wise.

2. Leaders know that vulnerability is a requirement if they want to be a love-able person. One of the challenges in the empowerment coaching relationship is to be authentic and vulnerable about what we want and who we are. This does not mean it is easy; vulnerability can be a challenge at the best of times.

When you are vulnerable, there is a risk that you will be misunderstood, labeled and even rejected. The courage to be vulnerable can be challenging and it often takes courage to choose it.

When a leader steps forward and loves themselves, they are not focused on if someone else loves them in return. In fact, a sign of self-love for leaders is they become less afraid of rejection. This is also a trait of love-able people.

Remember that being vulnerable opens you to hurt, but leaders strive to believe in themselves, and their values. While challenging, the rewards are worth it.

One of the best resources that about availability is Bene Brown's video, The power of Vulnerability.  
Click here to watch it.

3. If you are love-able, you also have the ability to give and receive love.

Depending on your background and circumstances here are a few tips that have helped some of my leadership coaching clients learn to receiving love.

- Practice receiving small bursts of love, like compliments or random acts of kindness. When someone gives you a compliment, thank them and silently add on to it. And the next time someone offers to help you, say “YES! Thank you.” And receive the love.

- Start with self-love. When you love yourself, no one can take love away from you. And the more you love yourself, the more love you will naturally attract in your life.

- Smile at strangers. Make a habit of giving small bursts of love and letting in that love by smiling at strangers. When they smile back, feel your heart open to receive the love. But even when someone doesn’t smile back, stay with your smile, in your heart, and redirect the love to yourself.

- Create close, healthy connections with people of your same gender. Many people lack the love they crave because they don’t have intimate connections with other people of their same gender.

If you have challenges giving love, here are some suggestions:

- Let someone tell you a story without trying to one-up them with your own story or telling your own.

- Let someone vent, even if you can't offer a solution.

- Forgive someone who wronged you because you care about them not because not because you know they'll owe you.

- Go with someone to an appointment or an interview when they need support to help them feel strong.

One of thing that I do to show love is that each week I call or email three to five people and ask them, "How are you doing?" It is something simple to do. There are a number of times when I have asked someone this and they have told me how happy that I asked them this.

4. Have habits that make you love-able.

Some love-able characteristics are:

- Be light. People who are light attract others to them. A person with a light heart shows happiness and brightness to others and is uplifting to be around. If you bring positive energy to others, the world will be drawn to you.

- Love yourself. If you don't love yourself, here is a suggestion. Write down all the possible reasons that you could love and respect yourself. Make sure that you focus on your positive qualities and successes. Strive to not give into negative thinking. If you don't love yourself in a particular situation admit it!

- Strive to show kindness to everyone regardless of their situation in life or behavior to you. A kind person is hard not to love.

I am grateful to work in the field of Empowerment Coaching.   I spend my days working with people that have made a stand to improve themselves in so many areas of life. One of the first things we all come to understand is that as leaders we have to first be honest with ourselves.

Being love-able is a process and doesn't happen overnight. It takes time just like all good things.

Author: Ed Gough Jr. is a Certified Empowerment Coach and broadcaster with over 1000 shows to his credit. He is referred to as Dr. Vibe from his show “The Dr. Vibe Radio Show”   www.ExpressYourVibe.com