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    10 Universal Rules of Love Plus One: Guiding Principles to Understanding the Fundamentals of Love
    10 Universal Rules of Love Plus One: Guiding Principles to Understanding the Fundamentals of Love
    10 Universal Rules of Love Plus One: Guiding Principles to Understanding the Fundamentals of Love
    Ebook138 pages9 hours

    10 Universal Rules of Love Plus One: Guiding Principles to Understanding the Fundamentals of Love

    By Stephanie Gray

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    About this ebook

    10 Universal Rules of Love - Plus One gives a fresh perspective on the journey to self-love. Through real life and comedic examples, this book provides guiding principles that will help you to navigate through self-defeating habits to a sustained healthy self-love; and ultimately to love with others. 10 Universal Rules of Love - Plus One will guide you through your process of support system selection, coping with past hurts, expectations you have of yourself and others, as well as other important components of your love habits; then shine a light on unhealthy love habits, and give you actionable steps to eliminate unhealthy habits, and replace them with healthy ways of thinking and acting in love.

    At the end of the journey in 10 Universal Rules of Love - Plus One, you will understand and be well on your way to completing the work necessary to make your journey through love and life a healthier and happier one.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateSep 15, 2017
    ISBN9781543910971
    10 Universal Rules of Love Plus One: Guiding Principles to Understanding the Fundamentals of Love
    Author

    Stephanie Gray

    Stephanie Gray is a former international professional athlete turned author, love coach, and inspirational speaker. During her 20-year award winning corporate career as a consultant, relationship builder and sales coach, Gray perfected her skills in Adult Learning. To make a broader impact through teaching lessons in love, she transferred those skills to embark on the journey of becoming a love coach, author and speaker. Gray seeks to serve people who want to build, grow and sustain healthy relationships. Through a multi-media platform, she is creating a global community that supports the personal and emotional growth of its members. By teaching her audience to identify and repair emotional wounds, and nurture healthy relationships, Gray helps love seekers unearth the highest and best version of love that they've ever experienced.

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      Book preview

      10 Universal Rules of Love Plus One - Stephanie Gray

      References

      Introduction

      Opinions are like assholes, everybody has them, right? But not everybody with an opinion is an asshole. However, even if that were the case, what would happen if your asshole stopped working? I mean, think about it. What if the sphincter muscles that surround the opening to your colon, which allows solid waste to pass out of your body, decided one day to permanently close down? What if it just didn’t open anymore, what would then happen to you? Naturally, you would be full of feces, many horrific, painful things would happen in your internal organs that would ultimately lead to your death. The moral of the story is that even assholes have value. Or to put it more eloquently: a wise man seeks wisdom even in whom many would consider the most ignorant fool.

      What I am going to offer here may challenge your belief systems. It may challenge what many of you have been taught or socialized to believe about relationships, pain, self-love, self-loathing, and, most especially, self-truth. It will ask you, what is your truth, and are you living in it? It may make you uncomfortable, start conversation, and perhaps make you call me, well, an asshole. (Refer to the above paragraph for the value of an asshole.) But if you learn one thing, if you open your mind to new thoughts and possibilities, if you have a conversation with yourself in a way you would have never before, if you are compelled to have more self-reflective thoughts, even if your curiosity is piqued, progress is being made.

      My curiosity, travels, and studies have led me to connect with individuals from various backgrounds, geographies, beliefs, lifestyles, abilities, and motivations. I have taken time to research the CsD (Doctors of Common Sense) holders as well as the PhD holders. I have become a student of people and relationships through twenty years and thousands of conversations with people from all walks of life. My past partners have become objects of my study—not just my affections. My friends and their friends and our families have all presented learning opportunities for me. Even strangers that I have interviewed, intentionally and unintentionally, have allowed me to compile my research and develop the assertions I will present to you in this book.

      The common thread in all of these people is that they are all searching for love. The rules seek to demonstrate there are principles in love that apply to everyone no matter the race, gender, age, sexual orientation, level of education or professional success, relationship status, or even geography. Although these labels separate us, the inherent desire for love is the common denominator for all of us. Therefore, these guiding principles can be useful no matter which label(s) you wear. These rules are universal because love is universal; and no matter how much wealth, career success or education you’ve acquired, no matter how many friends or family surround you, no matter how much you are the life of the party, and no matter how much you try to deny it, at the end of it all we are all searching for true love.

      The goal of this writing is to challenge your intellect and some of things you have accepted as social norms. It is to give you fresh perspectives on universal topics that will reactivate dormant neurotransmitters that have been anesthetized by artificial stimulants in our technology-dependent world. Through this challenge, it is my sincere hope that we learn more about the subject matter and ourselves. I hope that these rules help you see your own truths, engage in enlightening conversation, disagree without arguing, and finally begin to have healthier relationships with yourself and with others.

      If you don’t complete this book, it may be because you’re too busy, or because you think you have all the answers, or maybe because you can’t imagine the self-examination and exploration that it will offer you. It may even be that the book doesn’t interest you; in which case thank you for buying it anyway. But, if read and acted upon, this book could reshape your thoughts and actions about love. This book is ultimately about you and your journey. It is an earnest effort to help you in ways that I have been helped, and in ways I wish I were helped. But it only works if YOU take accountability and action—for yourself, by yourself.

      If you’re ready, let’s embark on this journey together, at the end of which, it is my sincere prayer, that you are forever changed.

      Rule 1:

      The Tape Don’t Lie

      Failure is the best teacher; any wealthy person will tell you that. But there is a caveat. Failure is the best teacher if you take the time to be self-reflective. As they say in basketball, Go back and watch the tape, and then set a course to correct the harmful, unhealthy, unproductive, or dysfunctional actions.

      When I was an amateur and professional athlete, any time my team lost or played a horrible game, we would be made to go back and watch the game film so that we could see our mistakes. We could lie to our teammates, and even lie to our coaches about what we did or didn’t do in a game. We could even try to lie to ourselves or convince ourselves that we had other intentions. Maybe we had the correct intentions, but those intentions didn’t translate into actions. None of that mattered while watching the tape because, as the saying goes, The tape don’t lie!

      Sometimes watching the tape meant that we would be momentarily embarrassed in front of our teammates. Sometimes it meant that we would get cursed out by our coaches for blatantly disobeying the game plan. Sometimes it meant that our teammates would tease and ridicule us for weeks to come. But it always meant that we had an opportunity to correct the mistake(s). It also meant that we could see the mistake(s), discuss them, and have our coaches design a correction practice plan that would kick our collective asses as a reminder to not those mistakes again. Without the tape, how would we even know what our mistakes were?

      During the game, or while life is happening, adrenaline and emotions are so high that sometimes you don’t even remember when you’ve had a great game, not to mention a bad one. You cannot watch the game while playing it, so the best way to get honest feedback after a poor performance is to go back and watch it in truth. Without honesty, there is no truth. Without truth, there can be no correction. And life, much like my basketball coaches, has a way of kicking your ass to make you aware of a mistake; only the stakes in life tend to be higher than those in a basketball game. I have applied this concept to my life in general. The tape is the truth I try desperately to tell myself when in relationships—whether I was right or wrong. It’s the time I take to be mindful and honestly self-reflect—after the blowout argument, after the breakup, or even after the success.

      To take it a step further, I choose to surround myself with others who can be my tape, or my truth, when I’m so caught up in the game that my adrenaline and emotions are too high for me to see myself in truth. When dealing in relationships, the cardinal rule is to be true to oneself. Be honest with yourself. If you can’t be honest with yourself, how can you be honest with someone else? Or as my favorite drag queen, RuPaul, would say at the close of every RuPaul’s Drag Race show, If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell you gon’ love someone else? If you can’t be honest with yourself, how can you correct your self-defeating behaviors? This is the first step in any twelve-step abuse recovery program. It’s the bottom addicts must reach to have the moment of clarity (truth) that allows them to finally make the decision to change their lives. Until they are able to be honest with themselves about their addiction, they will not be able to recover.

      So here is your first opportunity in this book to shine a light of truth on your life. Between

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