Love is helping those who need help

Love is caring and doing our best for others.

Every single person has one or more particular situations which make that person feel sad, hurt, stressed, or worried.
Every single person crossing our paths through life needs something we could and should give to that person, that something can be an honest smile, a hug, words of encouragement, or just to be heard.

Whenever we can let's give that something, that smile, that hug, those words of encouragement, that listening. These little acts have the power to change and save lives.

I myself am very reserved with my personal situations and tend to share them only with people with whom I have grown fond and also tend to ask for help when I find no way to solve a particular situation by myself, that many times has two costs:

1. You keep the annoying emotions longer that you should.
2. You skip helping a person who may be needing to hear that is not the only person living a particular situation.

I am very optimistic, and I know every single situation has a solution, and that everything that happens in life has a purpose, however, I'm human, I have feelings and emotions, of course in my life I have experienced moments where I have been extremely sad, moments where I have felt hopeless, moments where I have questioned if some situations may not have a solution, but I also have felt the amazing power love has, many years ago I met a great friend who needed no words to make my life better for a few moments, her hugs always made me feel better and calmed me down, 'cause she had so much love in her heart.

On high school I met one of by best friends in life, who always saw through me, she used to ask me what was wrong, she knew when I was feeling sad even when I wasn't showing my mood, the fact of just being asked that, always made me feel better.

In december 2016, I was living one of those extremely sad moments which had no immediate solution, and a situation which was totally out of my hands. I knew the solution, however it required waiting and planning, the longer I had to wait, the worse I felt, I did ask for advice, most of them were "everything is going to be ok" (a phrase I hate 'cause I know that, and I was looking for solutions not just words).

Back then I had the liberty to work from anywhere I wanted, anytime I wanted, so the temporary solution was to go work to places where I could clear my mind and find little things to make me feel better, when you are feeling sad, it is very important to go and find things that you like and that make you feel better( for me nature and especially waterfalls and kids usually do the trick ).

That's when I made of Starbucks my office, their service was something that I liked, they always smiled at me, one person in there always shortened my name the way I love people call me, that usually makes me feel cherished.

When you work from a coffee shop for a time, you see a lot of persons who you can offer some help to, or just talk to them to make them feel better or at least forget their problems for a moment, people living on depression, others in the process of divorce, others who lost a child, others who lost their job and need to sustain a family, people whose relatives have died, others who feel lonely, a lot of situations that we may not know unless we talk to them.

Why is it important to talk to those persons we do not know, to show them we care, to make them feel loved?

1. First, that's something we all want and deserve, to be cherished, loved, to know there are persons who care for us, and that there is always hope no matter the particular situation we may be living in.
2. Second, people have different levels of resilience, some persons are optimistic, others are realistic, other pessimist, and there is only so much we can endure by ourselves.

Many persons feel their issues are so big that there are no solutions, and there is no exit, and then take wrong decisions such as temporarily escaping from their problems by using drugs, constantly getting drunk and even suiciding.
All of these sad situations can be prevented by showing those persons we care about them.

Remember, love is a strong feeling of deep affection towards everyone, love is caring, understanding, and doing our best for the well-being of others.

Attributes of Love: Empathy

One of the main attributes of love is empathy, according to Oxford Online Dictionary, it is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Empathy allows you to put yourself in someone else's shoes, in fact, empathy allows you experience others feelings as if they were yours, as if you were the same person living the actual experience.
Empathy is placing yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling.
Empathy is actually one of the main factors in the development of kindness.

According to Daniel Goleman, empathy is composed of five key elements:

1. Understanding Others
1. Persons who have developed empathy have learned to listen well, to pay attention to non-verbal communication, they also show sensitivity and understand others perspectives, these empathic persons have gained the ability to sense others emotions. Empathic people are actually able to sense see beyond the walls and masks commonly used to hide emotions. They also understand that there is more than meets the eye, meaning, that not everything is what it seems, that it is not ok to judge persons, and much less under a first impression. Empathic people understand that behavior is tightly linked to the lived experiences and that each of those affects us all positively or negatively. Empathic people also tend to see the best in everyone.
2. Empaths are able to help other people based on their understanding of those people needs and feelings.
3. Persons who have sharpened their empathy skills tend to be able to identify others emotions even when they are being hidden.
2. Developing Others
1. People who have developed empathy tend to see the best in others, and do their best to help those others become the best version of themselves. 
3. Having a Service Orientation
1. People who have developed empathy stop focusing only on themselves, they give up their egos, and instead focus on ways to help others persons, especially persons in need.
4. Leveraging Diversity
1. Every person is unique, each individual has specific experiences, abilities, beliefs and opinions, that makes every person different from each other.
   People who have developed empathy understand that the differences do not make you weak, and instead makes you stronger, differences in beliefs and opinions when handled correctly create healthy arguments that bring the best results, different music skills for example, allows you to create a band with many different instruments that when working together create the most beautiful melodies. 
2. Leveraging diversity is basically understand the differences and take advantage of them in order to bring the best results possible.
5. Political Awareness
1. It is about understanding the currents or hidden agendas in an organisation, and in power relationships. This skill is the one which allows to understand the world around you, it also allows you to understand the world inside yourself, help you acts wisely, create opportunities for everyone, looking for win-win solutions.

Please answer in the comments: Which other elements you would say are part of empathy?

What love really means

According to Oxford dictionary, the word love has the following definitions:

1. A strong feeling of deep affection
2. A great interest and pleasure in something

In general, when people talk about love, it is usually misunderstood as romance, however, love does not necessarily need romance, love is something way bigger than that.
As seen from the definitions given before, love is basically having strong affection and interest, here we will talk about the love to other human beings.

As we grow up and start understanding life, and enjoying experiences, we also become affectionate to many of our acquaintances, we start to care they are ok, we begin to miss them when they are away, especially when away for long, some people say that those persons become part of us, and in certain way they are, since we have shared many experience and have had precious moments and memories with them, a huge part of our lives is shared with them.

Love, however, is still more than caring for people we share moments with.
One of the main components of love, is empathy, which is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, and this component is the one which gives us the ability to deeply care for people who we may not even know at all, it is also one of the many factors which cause a mother to love their children, long before they are even born.

Empathy makes you care for all people, and especially for those in very difficult situations, such as addiction, homelessness, poverty, aggression and similar.
Empathy makes you do what is within your power to make their lives a little better, to give them hope, to make them smile, and help them become the best version of themselves.

Love is something that we all know, actually we all have an innate ability to love, we are born loving and being loved.

Below you will find a list of the many of the attributes love is composed of:

1. Empathy
2. Kindness
3. Respect
4. Interest
5. Hope
6. Mercy
7. Togetherness
8. Forgiveness
9. Humility
10. Compassion
11. Tenderness
12. Sweetness

Answer in the comments: Which other attributes you would say love is composed of?

Keep checking the blog, for the next set of post named Attributes of Love, where we will describe and show examples of each of these attributes, starting with Attributes of Love: Empathy.