1. Disenergizing people are avoided. People spreading negative emotions are avoided by all others. Those leaders are inefficient who spread negative feelings around themselves. If I exude positive emotions, empathy and satisfaction around myself then I become the central point of my social network. On the contrary, if I spread negative feelings, I get to the very periphery of the social network. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)
2. Our love networks. How can we create love around ourselves? We are very lucky. Love can be spread. We are very unlucky. Hate can be spread, too. Anger spreads five times faster (and makes five times more damage) than joy. Let us be open to the love poured upon us even if it does not come where we wanted to get it from. If we forward love to others persistently, then after a while we notice that we are reached by love, too. Let me encourage the Reader to write a kindness journal for a few days. If the ratio between our good and bad deeds is much worse than FIVE to one, then we should think about how we could change this in the future. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)
3. How can we become peace-sources? Accepting and forwarding love and thus the enrichment of the love network around us is realized in small steps. As this feeling becomes permanent in our lives, it is not love any more we experience, but peace and serenity. The one who has found the source of peace becomes peace-source himself in his surroundings, too. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)
Introduction. This post is the final part of a three-essay series. My first essay was about the strength of gratitude. The take home message was: gratitude evokes gratitude and a source of goodness opens goodness around itself. The second essay was about the best qualities of a good leader, like service. The take home message was: a good leader is the love-source of his environment because he is able to accept and forward love. The present, concluding essay is about the process of accepting and passing love on to others. The take home message is: passing love on to others creates a love network in which we can be peace-sources for our environment.
1. Disenergizing people are avoided
People spreading negative emotions are avoided by all others. As one of the important consequences, those leaders are inefficient who spread negative feelings around themselves. This kind of "depressing" person is called a "disenergizing person" in the literature. Indeed, people who continuously criticize others take away the energy of their environment. No wonder that others, if they have any chance, will not keep those people’s company. If I exude positive emotions, empathy and satisfaction around myself then I become the central point of my social network. On the contrary, if I spread negative feelings, I get to the very periphery of the social network.
2. Our love networks. How can we create love around ourselves?
We are very lucky. Love can be spread.
We are very unlucky. Hate can be spread, too.
It is up to us what kind of environment we would like to have. If we forward love to others persistently, then after a while we notice that we are reached by love, too. Of course, not from everywhere. In many cases we do not get love from where we would like to get love very much. But from unexpected places love may find us all the more. Let us be open to the love poured upon us even if it does not come where we wanted to get it from. Direction of love’s spread is not controlled by us. Let’s deal with it. But we can do two things: we may accept love poured upon us and we may forward to it to others.
A lot of scientific inquiries (see a nice summary here) have proved that happiness spreads along social relationships. Unfortunately depression also spreads along social relationships in the same way. That is, if most of someone’s friends are happy then there is a good chance that the "someone" will be also happy. Facebook friends of smiling people are most likely smiling people, too, and not depressing ones. "Spreading happiness" is so much true that the even more positive Facebook posts increase the rate of more positive comments (and on the contrary: rancor is a quite common answer to rancor). We have to be very cautious what we spread: anger spreads much faster than joy. Usually we share our joy with our close friends. But we share our anger with our more distant acquaintances, too. As more distant acquaintances are much more far away in the social network than close friends, our anger gets much further (and travels much faster) in the social network than our happiness. If we add that people are approximately five times more sensitive to negative influences than to positive ones, we realize how much we should be aware of saying and doing at least five times more good than bad each day.
Let me encourage the Reader to write a kindness journal for a few days. How many good and bad news have you forwarded on a certain day? How many encouraging and discouraging comments have you made? How many times have you praised and scolded? How many times have you shared your joy and your annoyance or anger? How many good things have you done? How many bad things have you done? How many good things could you have done? How many good things could you have prevented others to do with your behavior? If the ratio between our good and bad deeds is much worse than FIVE to one, then we should think about how we could change this in the future. It is worth thinking it over that according to scientific inquiries a substantial part of lasting relationships broke up within five years if partners did not keep the FIVE to one ratio. Stakes are not negligible on our side either!
3. How can we become peace-sources?
„I do not consider reality as a bad fate
from which I have to get rid of,
or as a problem that I have to solve.
I accept reality as I have experienced it.
I consider reality as a mystery
that I cannot understand now but I know
that it is beneficial for me on the long run.
(Everyday Ignatian spiritual exercises, week 5)”
Accepting and forwarding love and thus the enrichment of the love network around us is realized in small steps. With each and every step we become more and more sensitive to recognize, accept and intensify love. It may happen unnoticed and/or little by little, and/or by a single life-changing event when we realize that the ultimate source of love is not our environment but Totality (I will write about the many ways of this in my next blog post). the love of God poured directly upon us is unconditional, inexhaustible, total and eternal. The more of this love we forward to others, the more remains to us. As this feeling becomes permanent in our lives, it is not love any more we experience, but peace and serenity. During my 30 days’ summer spiritual retreat I was given a beautiful image of the continuous enrichment of the love-network around us. In this image people performed a wonderful dance around the source of peace. Quite often they reached out from the circle with one of their hands showing and forwarding the joy they experienced to someone else. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes don't. It also happened occasionally that a person was temporarily "pulled out" from the dance. But later he joined again. The one who has found the source of peace becomes peace-source himself in his surroundings, too. The source of peace terrifies and swallows the evil even if we think that the evil has triumphed in the life on earth. This is the big secret of the Cross – that is repeated in a small scale in every moment of each peace-source’s life. (Amen.)
