High emotions can greatly reduce happiness and intimacy, leading to pain and suffering.

Charged-up relationships feel volatile. How do we turn a triggering situation with someone into an empowering opportunity to feel abundant peace and happiness?

The short answer is to love yourself, which allows you to love others, but this is how you get there:

My relationships with close family and my life partner is highly emotional at times. We know this is part of being human in today's world. We can experience heightened emotions with loved ones.

People show a spectrum of love, and that is what we really want to remember when understanding the path to feeling more love. Our love is expressed clearer sometimes than others.

Holidays, big transitions, and differences of opinion, often shine light on the parts of us that express unclear love.

Sometimes when we choose to believe that life should be a happy, loving, comfortable experience, it can limit us from receiving everything this Universe has for us and what is most purposeful for our soul.

Deep down not a single person would consciously prefer to be uncomfortable. The issue is not about whether you would prefer to be comfortable or uncomfortable, because both will happen. The accomplishment here is being able to see an equal value in both.

By valuing both equally, we can eventually evolve into preferring them equally, without judgement, based on what is most purposeful for our soul.

Then, our inner dialogue changes from, “What makes me comfortable?” to “What is serving and supporting my soul's purpose?”

Comfort and discomfort do not define you as a good person or bad person, or an ego-based or soul-based person.

Mistrusting is our largest block in the way of true unconditional love.

We call stepping into unconditional love, the initiation of the soul, because when we dissolve the mistrust, your spiritual light floods into your body, mind and feelings, revealing in every instance the path of greatest benefit and love.

It can happen in one instant with just one choice. It's not always easy to choose unconditional love and this is why:

Unconditional love is not a space of the mind, so it can be confusing, leading to mistrust of it. Confusing by those observing you from the outside and confusing for the one that has crossed the threshold into unconditional love. The mind does not feel in control, because the mind cannot make sense of it. It is not a place of mental rationale, mostly.

It’s a soul sense and understanding, if you will, that’s led by an inner knowing from a connection to universal truth.

In soul-based living, healing is understanding, therefore a perfect healing would be perfect understanding or complete awareness of self.

When cultivating awareness, it helps for us to focus on four main energies: physical, mental, emotional and soul, and their interconnected nature. The pursuit of this self-awareness can feel overwhelming at times, and people often are discouraged thinking that achieving the type of wellness they desire is not possible. But it is possible.

I’ve always had a passion for delving into the greater understanding of myself, but there has been resistance to that pursuit, even today. Being aware of the subtle resistance is the only way to overcome it. So, I seek out my resistance. It’s become part of my journey to know myself.

This week, more than ever before, my focus is on being aware of when my body wants to get up to stretch, as I’m sitting at my desk all day. My intention is to be aware and then act on the awareness I receive. I’ve found my body wants to get up and stretch or do some tai chi about every 45-60 minutes. Admittedly, I’ve not followed that body awareness with action every time, and therefore in that moment I did not choose perfect healing. I chose to ignore my healing needs. Part of my healing this week then becomes revealing and understanding the reason for sometimes ignoring what my body needs.