“It’s Groundhog Day…” Bill Murray’s character, weatherman Phill Conner says. “Again.” Every day the same. Sounds kinda familiar about now? The icon character is dead inside. After weeks of isolation and pandemic impact has turned to months, we may be feeling the same. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something to ignite your heart again?
Murray’s snarky character endured his relentless sameness through equal parts creativity and depression. But, after realizing his same old life tactics weren’t returning a different outcome, he paused, reflected and became aware of what he had to do. By evolving into a caring person, falling in love and igniting his heart with passion for love and life he found the freedom he was seeking.
Hopefully, possibly… this also sounds kind of familiar. Because people all over the world have gone through a massive sea change of sheltered-in-place, work from home, limited social outings and travel, economic crises… all with a significant other that may feel like a foreigner. Or worse, they make us feel like we’re going to lose our minds.
Speaking of Foreigner, does your current situation feel a little like that old song, “Too Much Time on Our Hands”??! We may want to change directions, evolve, and fall in love… again. Who doesn’t want to feel more connected in a time of great crisis?
This is our time… the time… a chance to use this time to ignite love and romance. Evolving, growing, and falling in love all over again is not exactly a bad plan for something positive to learn during a global pandemic.
When you see your person every day do you wonder what it will take to ignite your heart again?
The Five Archetypes help to ignite your heart
In my business, pre-COVID-19, I worked with hundreds of people to inspire dynamic changes in their lives and relationships with the Five Archetypes model.
I learned that so much of what we think about love and partnership is, well… wrong. Perhaps that’s hitting really close to home right now as the person you are paired with is really close to home. With you. In coronavirus isolation. All of a sudden the life partner you used to see three or four hours a day is a 24/7 appendage.
Confinement and the financial strains brought on by the pandemic have led to a surge in marriage challenges around the world. The festering and many times unaddressed relationship problems rushed to the surface like a flood and people felt overwhelmed.
That’s not all bad. It’s a good thing to address our challenges, but there are ways to do it well without adding even more pain to this already painful time in our lives.
Instead of giving in to the overwhelming pressure, some of you may want to use this time to make love real again. To dig deep, get to know yourself again and ignite your heart with compassion.
Use your mind to ignite your heart
Ignite your love? How? Especially when the proximity is so… proximate. How do you rekindle and find that love you once knew?
You learn. You use the power of the most powerful tool at your disposal, the most romantic tool, the most creative tool. You engage your mind to ignite your heart and turn what feels like a gridlock into a dream come true. Is it possible?
Absolutely. I’ve seen the transformation in my work. I’ve lived it in my life. You can too. Starting right now.
The power of insight and empathy to ignite your heart
With so little do “out there,” even if we get out at all, I recommend using this compulsory down time to relearn who you are and who your partner is to gain vital insight and empathy.
Understanding your path to better love with the Five Archetypes deepens communication and gets your heart pumping in new and vibrant ways. So, start learning what your archetype is and better understand what you need.
Discover your stressors and how you react (because we’re quite stressed these days anyway) and try to better understand your significant others as well.
What do I mean by your archetype? There are five basic elements that are the core forces for how we grow through challenges based in ancient Chinese medicine: Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood. We each have one element that serves as our primary, but are a delightful balance of the all five. The way we engage with our internal and external environment is led by our primary element, or what I call your archetype, but our style is also influenced by all the other types and how they relate to each other.
Throw in your partner’s mix and you start to see the potential for confusion, chaos and discord. But don’t forget –that very same combustible mix is what also ignited love, passion and joy. What once happened spontaneously can again happen with intention.
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The Five Archetypes of Love
So how does this interaction impact us in the day-to-day? In more ways than I can write in this list. But let’s start with a most basic–and appropriate–example: Fear. These are scary times because we don’t know what our new future holds. It is now quite unpredictable. Life how we knew it is not going to be the same. How you experience fear and how your partners experiences fear will be very different depending on your archetype:
Fears like:
- We won’t be loved (Fire)
- We can’t meet everyone’s needs (Earth)
- We can’t stop chaos (Metal)
- We’ll never know the truth (Water)
- We won’t achieve our goals (Wood)
In times of stress, our fears and the reaction to it grows. What often occurs is we end up feeling discomfort, both with our own feelings and how our lover fails to understand. We may lash out or turn inward, depending on our archetype. We exponentially increase the stress in our already stressful lives.
But what if our newfound insight into ourselves (and our partner) helped us to tap into courage? Courage to stay in the discomfort of not knowing what the future holds. Courage to feel all the lower emotions of anger, grief, fear, panic or worry without needing to fix the discomfort. Courage to let go of criticism of self and other. Courage to listen. Courage to see the deeper needs of our partners and ourselves. What if we welcomed vulnerability even in the face of fear of rejection?
Courage has roots in Old French – the word for heart is coeur. When we take a leap of faith, of courage to bond, listen and meet each other’s needs in love – we live from our hearts. We live from a place of compassion for ourselves and each other.
This historically terrible time gives us the chance to evolve and to love. To live differently. I believe (because I’m Fire and we love to be optimistic and joyful, which is really hard to do right now!) that post COVID-19 we will be more prepared to live differently. I know your relationship can start to change, right now, today by living from your heart… fueled by the power of insight that comes from the mind.
This is the new world I want to see. I see us sharing, joyful, open and choosing transformative experiences in love. We welcome each other with recognition and empathy.
This is love. It’s calm, courageous, lasting. It’s slow and full and deep. We are all celebrated for who we are and welcomed to explore our needs and feelings without the fear of punishment, criticism or judgement. We boldly and perpetually create potential for growth.
This is what we can do now so that we never again keep living the same tired day over and over again.