The Elements of Love

The most foundational practices in Love First are the Elements of Love, corresponding to the classical elements of Earth, Fire, Water, Air, and Spirit.

More than almost any other part of Love First, the Elements are the most important foundational activities. Much of the philosophy and framework builds on these five core activities, which is why they are in Codex 🌀 1 and among the first things being taught in Love First.

Practicing the Elements will bring you into greater alignment with Love, fostering deeper connection to yourself and others, and also benefit your relationships with others.

For each of these, consider them an invitation to practice as often as is appropriate, as well as a way to recognize the structure of Love in the world around you.

Share Your Story

The Earth element is the practice to Share Your Story. Like Earth, sharing your story is a grounding experience, rooting you in your sense of self while allowing yourself to be seen by others. Storytelling is in our DNA; we’ve built human civilization on the backs of stories and our brains literally synchronize with each other through the medium of stories.

As Jonathan Gottschall argues in The Storytelling Animal, “stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems.” They allow us to absorb and learn from the life experiences of others, without having to live many entire lifetimes.

When you Share Your Story, you benefit yourself—it builds confidence, self-image, and emotional stability—while also benefiting others. The lessons and perspectives in your story can be understood, at a visceral level, by people who just hear your story, without having to experience the same thing.

Sharing life lessons from your lived experiences with others is akin to sharing soul nutrients, with our human bonds forming the mycelial network of our social graph.

💖 I love sharing my life story!
Great! Do it with even more joyous abandon; go forth and share your life, you Bard of Love! Want to take your storytelling to the next level? Start writing down your most fun, insightful, or remarkable stories and give them a title.

💜 I feel intimidated by this…
That’s okay! If you think you’re not a good storyteller, or feel daunted by the performative aspect of it, know that deep in your core, you are natively and inherently a storyteller. But it is a skill, yes; and like with any skill, if we don’t hone or practice it we can become rusty. If you feel intimidated by this invitation, look up some storytelling classes or workshops in your area, or online. There are many that are very low-barrier-to-entry, where you don’t have to worry about your skill level, the quality of your story, or what to do and not do.

💙 I don’t want to share my story with people
That is okay, too. In this case, your invitation is to go to some storytelling events, listen to storytelling podcasts, or still, yes, attend a storytelling workshop. And reflect for yourself what makes you reluctant or hesitant to share your story. There is no shame in this—public speaking is one of our biggest fears!—so don’t feel bad, but you might learn some things about yourself through these reflections, which can help you grow and move forward.

30-day Earth Element Challenge

If you’re All In with Going Love First, consider doing this challenge:

Share a story from your life for 30 days, to at least one person every day.

Rules:

• It can be the same person, or a different person, or a group of people, whatever is most convenient.
• It does not need to be the same story, it can be a different story each day or you can practice a handful of stories in rotation (just make sure you don’t repeat the same story to the same people 😉)
• It does not count to share a story with an AI assistant. You can use those to practice and refine your stories, but you must share it with one or more human beings for this challenge.
• It does count if you publish your story to social media (written, or as audio or video post), or share it live with people online.
• It is highly recommended you do this live, so that you can feel and respond to the energy of of your audience members. Also, they may have questions or comments, and interesting discussions are likely to emerge.

Tips:

• You can use this challenge as an opportunity to reconnect with some friends or family members you’ve been meaning to reach out to. You could call and say “I just want to know how things are going for you, and additionally, I was wondering if I could share a story from my life with you.”
• Sometimes, it can be very effective (and fun!) to tell someone or a small group of people that you’re doing the Love First 30-day Earth Element challenge, and need to share a story. People love hearing stories, especially if done with enthusiasm.

Embrace Vulnerability

The Fire Element is the practice to Embrace Vulnerability. It is not “practice” vulnerability, it’s not “occasionally step into” vulnerability, no, it is an active invitation to lean into the discomfort. Embrace it like you would a beloved. Hold it close, because your vulnerability is your greatest asset: like Fire, it can be the source of your power and strength, but, again like Fire, we must learn to wield it with care.

As Brené Brown says, Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. In other words, it’s where you will find the power to change yourself, and your life, for the better.

To Embrace Vulnerability means to practice becoming aware of when you feel discomfort, and where that discomfort is coming from. What makes you hesitant? Why? And then, it is an encouragement to do the thing that feels scary. Vulnerability is where courage meets fear, and the more you practice this, the more you develop your courage.

💖 I’m so down with this!
Wonderful! If you already feel thoroughly comfortable being vulnerable, doing vulnerable things, and leaning into the discomfort in life, consider some advanced levels: do serious shadow work (retreats can be great for this), explore decolonization (especially decolonizing • the • mind), and research topics and theory that go against the grain, such as Degrowth and Moneyless Society.

💜 I feel super uncomfortable with this…
Great! I mean, I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable against your will, but sit with this discomfort. Understand that this is likely your ego and/or nervous system just trying to keep you safe by wanting you to avoid things that feel ‘dangerous’, but recognize that you are safe. There is no danger here. This is an invitation for you to lean into such discomforts, and part of the purpose of this activity is for you to train your body, your nervous system, and your ego, that being uncomfortable can be safe. It’s not the threat to your life that it may feel like.

💙 I don’t want to do this
You don’t have to! These are invitations for practices that will cultivate greater Love. There are many paths to Love, you don’t have to walk all of them, all the time. Just know that what feels vulnerable to you, is seen as courageous by others. Eventually, you will be ready to dip your toe outside of your current comfort zone, and each time you do, you expand that comfort zone and get closer to where the magic happens. Be kind and patient with yourself as you explore these practices.

Fire Element Challenge

Interested in Going Love First and wanting to practice Fire Element? Then Go All In. As Brené Brown says: Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.

Be Truthful

The Water Element asks us to Be Truthful. Water flows with no opinion, no agenda; it just accepts reality for what it is, and so too must we. We are made mostly of water. When water encounters an obstacle, it doesn’t try to fight it or argue with it; it moves around it. Be like water.

To Be Truthful is to practice honesty, transparency, and openness with yourself and others. Understand that we are driven by narratives that we have created in our own minds using the information we consumed—our reality is not anyone else’s. What is Truthful is not necessarily the story you have about anything, but how you feel about something is.

Do assessments to discover what your personal values are; which ones matter most to you, and why? What is the current state of your life across various domains? Dive deeply into your core truths, core beliefs, and core values, to learn who you really are.

Become aware of your stories about others, and share them as such instead of as fact. Recognize that honesty is subjective, and truth is objective, and you being honest does not mean you’re being truthful. Truthfulness is recognizing that you live in a subjective reality (as do we all); it’s accepting that what is “true” is often a matter of perspective, and that multiple (seemingly conflicting) perspectives can simultaneously be true.

Understand that Love is not just sweet and romantic; Love is also confrontational, because it invites us to grow and become better. Love encourages change, not stagnation. To Be Truthful means becoming emotionally resilient enough to handle the truth, including—and especially—any uncomfortable truths.

Just remember: the truth will set you free (but first it will piss you off).

💖 I’m always in the pursuit of truth!
Fantastic! Are you also ready and willing to own when you’ve been wrong? When you’ve let bias or prejudice color your thinking, words, or actions? Have you gone back to people or published retrospectives acknowledging times when you were wrong? Owning your actions is a big part of Being Truthful, which is why science updates itself when new information comes to light, and why newspapers are only trustworthy to the extent that they rectify when they’ve misreported on something.

💜 Being truthful seems difficult, especially these days…
Absolutely it is and can be challenging. A great way to mitigate the daunting reality of misinformation, propaganda, and duplicitous people is to be curious, not judgmental. Don’t automatically trust information just because it ‘feels good’ based on your current beliefs. Also, don’t take AI “knowledge” as factual without verifying it—the frequency with which AI hallucinates information is staggering. Research and verify information, even if just to give yourself the comfort that you’re not blindly being led into a belief system by someone or something else—whether erroneously or intentional.

💙 I don’t really bother with the truth
That’s fair. Consider asking yourself why not. Is it a coping mechanism learned from childhood? Are you benefitting from this at the cost of others? What do you have it mean about yourself if you were to be more truthful? Note that what you have it mean about yourself is different from “what it means” objectively. You don’t really know the latter, but you might gain some self-knowledge reflecting on the former.

Water Element Challenge

Read a self-help book that comes with personal development challenges. Publish each of the activities you do online, and tag them with #GoingLoveFirst for others to learn and grow through (and with) you.

Believe In Possibility

The Air Element is to Believe In Possibility. Like Air, we take a sense of possibility for granted in life: we don’t think much about breathing, and we assume we’ll always have the freedom of possibilities. But, as with Air, when we are deprived of it, things quickly become existential: without air we cannot breathe, and without a sense of possibility we may lose hope, optimism, or even the will to live.

Taking a breath is the first thing we do when we come into this world, and it’s the last thing we do before we leave it. Air is our closest connection to life force itself. It’s why conscious breathing practices are so effective in helping us deal with anxiety, depression, stress, even fear and pain.

As Viktor Frankl writes in Man’s Search For Meaning, Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Through his harrowing experiences surviving Auschwitz and other concentration camps, Frankl observed that the those who retained a belief in the possibility of life and meaning after their suffering were more likely to survive, and those who lost such a belief were guaranteed to soon die thereafter.

When times are challenging, remember that hope is the one thing that no one can ever take away from you. You choose whether to have it or not.

But Believing In Possibility is not just about having and maintaining hope. It’s also what unlocks our potential.

For decades, people believed it was impossible for man to run a sub-4-minute mile. Many had tried, all had failed. “It’s impossible,” they said. But Roger Bannister believed it was possible, and when he came fourth place at the 1500 meters in the 1952 Olympics it strengthened his resolve that it was possible to run a sub-4-minute mile. Two years later he became the first person in history to succeed.

In research by Brendon Burchard and others, a distinct aspect that gold medal-winning athletes all report as key to their success is that they must firmly believe in their ability to succeed. They train their mind to possess iron-clad conviction as much as they train their bodies. Put differently: self-doubters don’t win.

Believe in the possibility of you achieving all of your dreams, succeeding in your goals, and having the most amazing life that you want. It’s a necessary step towards it becoming reality.

💖 I’m all about Believing In Possibility! Wonderful! How often do you help your fellow humans to also believe? This is not about always seeing the silver lining in everything, but a fundamental understanding that there can be meaning and purpose to suffering and pain, even when it’s hard to see (or believe). Practice developing a deeply rooted, grounded optimism that even calms the people around you, and gives them hope when they need it.

💜 This sounds nice, but… It’s reasonable and valid to have skepticism, or to struggle having hope or optimism. While we’re all in the same storm together, none of us are in the same boat. Your situation may be uniquely challenging in ways others never have had to deal with. Intersectionality gives us a framework for understanding our unique struggles, but Believing In Possibility is a reminder to hold firm to your inner life force, your soul energy that is endlessly convinced that you can do this. Whatever it is.

💙 Sometimes hope is naive and useless Depression and anxiety are real struggles, and they can often drain the hope from our lives. When color seems to fade from the world, find joy in the little things that still bring you joy. Reflect on what your intake is, in food, drink, and media/news/information. Numbing pain is a common form of escapism, but we cannot selectively numb; if we numb pain, anxiety, or depression, we also numb our ability to feel joy, connection, and love. As a first tiny step, just believe that it is possible for you to feel tremendous joy, hope, and excitement in your future. And in fact, I believe that Love can help you find it.

Air Element Challenge

Practice doing conscious breathwork exercises for 21 days in a row, and reflect on how your nervous system feels differently.

Post online about your changes and use the hashtag #GoingLoveFirst, or share them with us using the Love First Progress form.

Love

The Spirit Element is the practice of Love, as a verb. Love Universally, meaning to start with love for yourself, then extending that love to encompass all the people you love most, then extending that love even further to all the people around the world, all the plants and animals, the planet itself, and finally, the whole of the Universe. Love everything.

Love is who you are, at the most fundamental core. You are a soul, a being of light, connected to the larger field of cosmic consciousness, having a 3-dimensional human experience. While your heart beats, your soul flows Love energy from your Spirit into your body, carried through your veins along with the blood. Your spirit is pure Love energy, and it wants to Love everything openly, wantonly, excitedly. That’s why babies and toddlers are so excited about life: EVERYTHING IS WORTHY OF LOVE!

To Love Universally, beginning with yourself, it is imperative that you love all of yourself. Not just the parts of you you’re proud of; you must also love your mistakes (for they are opportunities for growth, learning, and improvement), love your flaws (for they give you a chance to accept them), and love the things you are ashamed of (for loving them gives you a chance to heal and overcome that shame).

To begin with loving yourself universally, you could start with an affirmation like this:

I Love myself
    All of myself
    All my parts
    All of the body that I have
    And all of my mistakes
I Love my faults, my flaws, my imperfections
    Because it is through love that I can accept all of who I am
    And through that acceptance
I will feel whole.

Viktor Frankl also observed important lessons about love:

Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. The salvation of man is through love and in love.

Brené Brown also found that:

We can only love others as much as we love ourselves.

And if you struggle with loving yourself—first of all, you are not alone!—or thinking you are worthy of love, then I invite you to read this wonderful quote:

There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story. —Mary Lou Kownacki

And begin reading this page again from the top.

You are worthy of love and belonging. You are made of love. And this universe loves you!

Lastly, remember this:

YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE.

A tiny, beautiful cosmic speck of it, and an essential, wondrous, magical part of it all the same.

💖 I am all about love!
Fantastic! How about you Go All In on Love First and spread the Love even more? Let’s co-create a world made with Love at every level!

💜 Loving myself is much harder than loving others…
That’s a common sentiment! It’s a wonderful thing that you have an easy time seeing the beauty and the brilliance in other people. But you deserve to see the same in yourself, and not just focus on all the ways you feel inadequate, not enough or too much. There is no shame in being so hard on yourself, but please remember: most of us caring people are much harder on ourselves than we are on others. Give yourself a break. Be kind, patient, and understanding with yourself. You’ve come a long way, you’ve overcome many hardships, you’ve made it through!

You didn’t come this far to only come this far. So keep going, and remember to be grateful for all the hardships you’ve already overcome.

💙 I don’t even like myself…
Oof. I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve been there. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, I’ve been ashamed of my actions, I’ve had low self-esteem, and I’ve had basically a negative self-image. In my case it was depression, and it continued until I started taking my mental health and my wellbeing seriously, for the first time in my life. Whatever is the case for you, I want you to know that you are worthy of love and belonging, and there are many likable qualities to who you are. I may not even know you at all, but I know that much is true. These are matters of perspective, and we have countless human tendencies to get in our own way when it comes to self-image and self-love. This is good news though: it means you can move past this, beyond this, and come to a place of self-like, self-love, even ecstatic joy someday.

I believe in you. 💖

Spirit Element Challenge

Write down one thing you love about yourself, about life, about the people in your life, or about the universe, every day for one hundred days.

Reflect every 25 days on what you’ve learned from your entries.

If you write these entries on social media, tag them with #GoingLoveFirst. And if not, share your ‘quarterly’ reflections using the Love First Progress form.