This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Power" by Rhonda Byrne. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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How can you understand love and relationships? How do you build a loving relationship?
The state of your relationships today is because of the love or lack thereof you have been giving. You build loving relationships by showing love and support to others and getting it in return.
Read more to discover what you need to know about love and relationships.
Understanding Love and Relationships
Love rules all relationships, and your interactions with people are the gold standard of the force of love. That is not to say that you love everyone you know or strangers on the street. It means the choice to show love to people is present every time you encounter someone. The law of attraction can’t differentiate between friend, family, or foe. It simply recognizes that you are harnessing the power of love and relationships.
Show and give love to others through support, friendliness, encouragement, benevolence, understanding, and gratitude. That force of love will come back to you, and when it does, it can touch all other aspects of your life. The opposite is also true, of course. Give anger, hate, or any other negative feeling to others, and expect the same to return to you.
Your Relationship Is What You Make of It
Look at your close relationships. Are they good, strong, and loving? Are they in jeopardy, struggling, or negative? Whatever state your relationships are in today is the result of the love or a lack thereof you’ve been giving.
When it comes to love and relationships, Intimate relationships are often your downfall in bringing love to your life. It’s easy to take your frustrations out on those you care about or are close to because you trust that the relationship will continue regardless of what you do. And although the negativity you show that person might not harm the existence of the relationship, it will harm your life by returning to you as negativity.
It’s Not Them, It’s You
There’s a tactic promoted in couple’s therapy to avoid “you” statements when attempting to resolve a conflict. The idea is that “you” statements make the other person feel threatened and defensive. Regarding the power of love, “you” statements also place the responsibility of your happiness on another, and that’s simply not how love and relationships work.
Remember, there is no one but you for the law of attraction. The law is not a referee or mediator. It only picks up your frequency, and you can’t receive what you don’t give. If you place blame on your partner for your unhappiness, that blame is going to manifest in your life, not theirs. And you can’t tell the law of attraction that you can’t show love to someone because they don’t show it back. Even if your partner, parent, child, sibling, or friend has done something to upset you, your reaction is the only thing that counts.
If you’re in a bad place with a relationship, change it by changing how you feel. Seek out the things you love about the person, even when angry, and feel that love and show gratitude for those things. As that gratitude multiplies, the relationship will get better. You may not understand what’s happening, but the other person will miraculously change and provide more positivity for you to love and be grateful for.
Don’t Choose What You Don’t Love
Within the giant catalog of life, you will be presented with many options that involve people. You can either choose to love them, not love them, or love part of them. You always have the choice to turn away from someone entirely. But if you choose to love someone, love the parts of them you say yes to and turn away from the parts you don’t without judgment.
You are under no obligation to love every part of someone. But when you fixate on what you don’t love or rally against it, you create a negative frequency. In contrast, when you only engage with the parts you love, you are able to give love, and it will be returned as more to love about that person. The parts you turn away from might disappear or remain, but they will definitely become outnumbered by the parts you love.
Stay on the love frequency to draw people on similar frequencies to you. The law of attraction won’t bring a negative person as a response to a positive frequency. If you are always on a positive frequency, you can trust that the people you meet are the right people for your life.
Everyone has good and bad days, and when you feel frustrated or unhappy, you likely interact with other frustrated or unhappy people. If you want to experience the happy version of others, be the happy version of yourself first.
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Here's what you'll find in our full The Power summary :
- How you can have whatever you want in life simply by feeling love for it
- How to form a lasting and powerful relationship with the universe
- Tips for harnessing the power of the force of love
