The Greatest Gifts of All: Love and Happiness | Jack Canfield

You know, I once heard that the greatest gift you can give anyone is the gift of love. And we all crave. We crave to be loved. We crave to be included. We crave to be noticed. We crave to be. To belong to a group, to a tribe, to a family, and to experience the love. You know, I used to teach self esteem as my major focus in life. Teach it to teachers, teach it to corporations, self esteem and peak performance. And the definition of self esteem is commonly used, is the feeling that you're lovable, capable and significant. And so every time you communicate your love to someone, you are helping them have high self esteem. You're helping them to feel good about themselves. And love is the most powerful energy of all. We hear all the great mystics and teachers, spiritual teachers around the world saying love is the highest form of energy and that the world is made up of energy, and the highest vibration of the energy is. Is love. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about how to express more love to the people in your life. So I'll begin by asking you the question, do you feel that you are expressing enough love to the people that you care about? Because sometimes we start taking the people we care about for granted. Our wives and husbands, our lovers, our children, our employees, our boss, our colleagues, our. Our friends and so forth, and other extended family members, and we forget to do it. And so I want to ask you to become more intentional. What if you were to have a checklist, and every day you would say, you know, did I express love today? My wife and I once took a workshop in Berkeley, California at the. It was a couples training. And what happened was they said, we all know about acts of kindness. You know, we do acts of kindness like you pay for the person behind you in the toll booth, or you put money in the meter of someone whose meter has expired. So we do these acts of kindness. We help the old lady across the street and so forth. Buy a cup of coffee for someone at Starbucks. But what about an act of loverness? And so he said, I want you every day to intentionally do something to express to your partner that you love them. Now, these can be simple things like simply calling the person from work and saying, I was just thinking about you. Now, the first time I did that, my wife said, did you wreck the car? What's going on here? Because you never call in the middle of the day. I said, no, I just wanted to call and tell you I loved you. And she was kind of blown away by that. The other Thing is to start thinking about what are the things that make them feel loved. Well, my wife loves flowers. So I started doing things to let her know how much I love flowers and how much I love the fact that she brought cut flowers and fresh flowers into the house. And so. So one day I saw in an airline magazine there were these gold plated roses you could buy. So I bought six of those and put them in a vase and put them on her dresser. So every day she'd see that and know that I appreciated that. I also bought her a flower arranging course. I found out who was a major flower arranger at the local luxury hotel Four Seasons. And I said, would you do a flower arranging class for my wife? And he agreed to do that. Of course, I paid him for it. What are some of the other kind of things you can do? One person I know his wife came home from work and he had made her a bath and he put rose petals on the top of it. And when he came home, she came home. He said, I want to take you up to the room and there was a bath. And he said, I've done this for you. I'm going to go down and cook the dinner. Little acts of loverness like that. One person really went nuts with it. He literally had a string that went to about 12 different stations from the front door. And at each station there was a picture of something, some memory in their past where he said, this was an amazing memory. I'm so in love with you. So appreciative that we have these memories. And that led up to a bath as well. Another person, I know this is a little bit expensive, but she had the money to do it. She found out that her husband, his favorite football team was Notre Dame. He would always watch the Notre Dame games. And so for his birthday, she called up Lou Holtz, who was the coach of Notre Dame at the time, and said, lou, I know you do public speaking. What is your fee for a day? And. And he said, $10,000. And she said, I want to hire you. And he said, well, who's the audience? She says, my husband said, what do you mean? I want you to knock on the door around 10 o' clock and my husband's going to answer and he's going to flip out when it's you and you're going to say, my wife has given you a birthday present. We're going to go play 18 holes of golf, have lunch and then we're going to take. You're going to take me to the airport? Well, that Was a day that he'll. He'll never forget. It was an act of love, simple thing to do. So all those kind of things are things you can do. One of my friends, Harville Hendricks, I took a workshop with him again, couples workshop. And he talked about some people love gifts. And so his wife liked gifts. So he bought her some roses one day. And he was. He said, I came home expecting my reward. You know, a hug, a thank you, no reward. He said, honey, I bought you these flowers. Why no reward? Why don't you. Why don't you appreciate it? So I don't like flowers. I like cards. He said, well, okay. So he went out, he bought this big foot tall Snoopy card. And he brought that home and put it out there. And she saw it and opened it up. No reward. So I thought, you like cards. I don't like funny cards. I like cards that have, like, you know, paintings from, you know, Rembrandt or something like that on the front, or Chagall or, you know, Moreau, whatever. And then there's a really nice quote inside. So now he goes to the museum and he buys one of those cars and he gives it to her. He comes home and she jumps all over him and loves him and hugs him and kisses him. So sometimes you have to do a little work to find out who's that, exactly what it is. But the point is, you're doing that. Now. There's something called the five love languages. You know, I'm going to talk about those real quickly. You may have heard of them, but ask yourself, are you doing it so some people know they're loved when you spend quality time with them. That's my wife. If I spend quality time, go for a walk, listen to her say, as John Gray taught me, just tell me more, dear, and keep listening. She feels loved. Now, Words of Affirmation is one of my love languages. Also, Lisa, who's on my staff. And so if I tell her, or someone tells me, thank you, you're great, I love you, sends me a card saying, it was a great workshop, you made a difference in my life. I feel loved. Then there's acts of service. So for some people, it's acts of service. I'm Jessie on my staff. If I take something that she's supposed to do and do it for her. If I have another friend, acts of service for her, washing the dishes, taking the garbage out without being told, babysitting the kids, whatever it might be, she feels loved. Then there's nurturing touch, which is another one of my primary love languages. You hug me, you sit and hold my hand, we go for a walk, holding hands, we snuggle, making love. Those are things that let me know that I'm loved. And finally, gifts. Patty on my staff, my business partner, Patty Aubrey, one of her dominant love languages, gifts. And so every Christmas, I never know what to get her. So I take her shopping and she buys a pair of boots or a, you know, expensive sweater, whatever I be, and I pay for that. And she feels loved. So the idea is, find out your children, what's their love language, your spouse, your employees, etc. And so some people, it's a high five. Someone else, they need a card or they need to be told they're loved and that they're appreciated. And someone else, it might be a gift, maybe tickets to a baseball game or something like that that lets them know. And so last thing I'll do is ask you this. At the end of the day, do an exercise called the Evening Review. All you do is at the end of the day, I would recommend you do this for a month. Ask yourself, where could have I been more loving today? How could have I been loving? Simply close your eyes, maybe around seven, eight, or nine at night and simply say, where could have I been more loving? And then wait for some image to come, some memory from the day. And then when it comes and you notice that you maybe weren't as loving as you could have been, or it was an opportunity to say something or do something, you didn't do it. Replay that in your mind with your eyes closed. See yourself doing the thing that you didn't do. So the next time you're in that situation and you've laid down a blueprint for how to be more loving. So focus on this. Love, the greatest gift you can give, and start giving more of that. Hey, thanks for watching today. And if you like what you saw, make sure to like it. Share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel. If you'd like to receive more videos like this, and if you'd like more information about the topic we talked about today, go to my website@jackcampfield.com for some resources that you can use to apply even more of what you learned today. Thanks again for watching.