How Vitamin Love can affect your longevity and sanity

Love beyond Valentine’s day.

A lot of people think love is sex, receiving flowers, or sending red emojis. All these may be expressions of love. But love is a character. One that you continually develop to become the best version of yourself and bring out the best in others.

Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, reputable researchers in positive psychology created a psychological assessment measure designed to identify an individual’s profile of character strengths. They discovered a universal character strengths across cultures and nations.  Everyone possesses all 24 character strengths in different degrees, each person has a a unique character strengths profile. Love is among the character strengths. And with this discovery it proves that anyone has the capacity to love. 

To love is a hard work. I have been married for five years, two years ago, I used to say happily married, five years later I say I’m very married. Meaning I am open to explore all the sides of marriage, not just the happy side.I am not sad, but marriage or relationships dont always feel like christmas. There are days it feels like you dont know each other, some days you hate your spouse. Lisa Bevere, the famous author of Girls with Swords once said in one of  her speaking engagement, ‘when you’re in your 20’s and 30’s you’d wish to kill your husband but wait, youll love him more when you are in your 40’s. I am not sure why she said this, but i can relate with her. 

Don’t you think people who love they are just natural? what they do, any one can do but not everyone is willing to do it. Even in a relationship, sometime you know what you need to do to show love to your partner, but you wont do it, its like someone is holding your throat to silence any kind words from coming out. When we speak of love, often times we take it 

Love is hard because it demands a dormant version of yourself. A version of yourself that is kind, patient, understanding, forgiving, and with good intentions. A lot of people are used to the evil side, it’s like we celebrate evil more than we celebrate love. You’ll hear people say ” you don’t know me” trust me when somebody says that in an African accent, most of the time they don’t mean well.

Or words like ” I’m the devil herself, don’t play with me”  ” I’ll kill you”, “ I’ll finish you”

This is the side we see every now and then, it’s the easy side, the easy response. 

What about love, love  forces you to displine your mouth because your words can hurt someone, love forces you to listen and not judge people . Love forces you to be silent when you’re not sure what is the right response. Love forces you to forgive people because if you don’t, you hate them. You can’t hate and love at once. Nelson Mandela understood this principle and said “Forgiveness liberates the soul, it removes fear. That’s why it’s such a powerful weapon.”

Love has a way of flourishing souls. People with good relationships have proven to live longer than people with poor relationships. According to a meta-analysis of 148 studies on mortality risk by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Ph.D., of Brigham Young University, and colleagues, strong social relationships increase the likelihood of survival by 50 percent regardless of age, sex, or health status. 

 Healthy relationships decrease stress and improve your immunity. For example, one study found signs of reduced immunity in couples during especially hostile marital spats. A Swedish study of people ages 75 and over concluded that dementia risk was lowest in those with a variety of satisfying contacts with friends and relatives. What are you waiting for? 

Cultivate the character of love within you , by developing a capacity to be patient, understanding, forgiving, kind and then give  it to others.