Key Insights from ‘How to Be the Love You Seek’ – Personal Growth Journey

New York Times bestselling author Dr. Nicole LePera’s How to Be the Love You Seek is filled with insights to help navigate our path to wholeness and happiness. I chose it for my March book because I find it so empowering.

Learning ‘how to be the love you seek’ offers powerful tools for personal growth. LePera’s insights involve taking a stand for your happiness and well-being rather than relying on others to fulfill those needs.

This mindset shift allows personal growth and creates healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

Here are some of my favorite quotes and concepts from the book:

Our earliest relationships lay the foundation that we need to understand.

“The truth is, when it comes to our relationships, we repeat what we experience or learn. So, if we grew up in a stressful or chaotic environment, didn’t witness healthy habits, or were emotionally neglected or ignored, we repeat the same dynamic as adults in our relationships with others.” – Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Be the Love You Seek

Lepera teaches the impact of our earliest relationships and how they create the patterns we experience throughout life if we’re unwilling to examine them closely. She also discusses trauma bonds and how we continue to attract these dynamics in our relationships.

I’ve read about this before, but I never saw these patterns more clearly than I did after reading this book.

Knowing where our patterns come from and seeing how we continue to attract them is the key to healing them and establishing new patterns.

We, alone, hold the key to healing ourselves. Other people don’t have that power.

“Contrary to the messages many of us receive in our families or through the media (hello, Disney, and rom-com movies), the perfect partner or relationship just doesn’t exist, and even if they did, they could take away our pain.” Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Be the Love You Seek

In this section, she explores why we seek out others and how often we’re only recreating the dynamics we are familiar with from childhood.

Dr. LePera discusses the concept of codependency – when one person relies heavily on another for emotional support and validation, often sacrificing their own needs and well-being.

She emphasizes the importance of understanding our patterns and behaviors before trying to change them. Recognizing the root causes of our actions and reactions is key to breaking free from negative patterns.

‘How to Be the Love You Seek’ teaches that your relationship with yourself forms the basis of all other relationships.

“For the first time in my life, I began to see how the most important relationship I have is the relationship I have with myself. I started to realize that if I wasn’t able to be honest with myself about my deepest needs and desires, I would never be able to truly or authentically connect with another person.” Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Be the Love You Seek

Fulfilling life relationships can only happen when we truly begin to understand and care for all of our needs, including physical, emotional, and spiritual.

When we listen to and connect with our inner child, we can enjoy a healthy way of being in this world. She teaches us that we can maintain healthy interdependence and can enjoy and even flourish in our relationships.

It’s possible to finally let go of dysfunctional relationship patterns once and for all.

Our soul is our unique essence.

“Finally, it dawned on me: this is my soul. My soul is my essence, what makes me special for being the individual I am. It is an energy unique to me, always swirling and shifting with the people and things around me, creating an individualized expression that no one else in the universe can possibly have.” Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Be the Love You Seek

I loved this! Nicole LePera teaches that each person has a distinctly unique essence and that honoring our authentic selves is the key to happiness and freedom.

She offers tools to see past the layers of conditioning to the essence of who we are. This is the heart of the book: the beauty we seek lies within.

Our earliest relationships create grooves in our nervous system.

“Because the thoughts, feelings, and reactions we had as children were patterned into our nervous system, where they continue to exist today, our conditioned selves are a physically and emotionally embodied part of us.” Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Be the Love You Seek

I have never heard this before so distinctly. Dr. Nicole LePera teaches that our thoughts and feelings are held in our bodies. She offers many strategies to identify the patterns we have inside and begin unraveling and understanding our relationships with ourselves and others.

As children, we absorb everything around us like sponges. Our parents, caregivers, and other influential figures shape our perceptions of ourselves and the world. These experiences become ingrained in our nervous system, creating subconscious thought patterns that dictate how we think, feel, and behave.

But as adults, we have the power to change these patterns. We can choose to let go of old conditioning and rewrite a new narrative for ourselves.

The latest scientific research states that our emotions are self-created constructs.

“Our emotions are really just mental concepts created by our bodies and driven by our past. Or, as Dr. Barrett put it, our emotions are “construction of the world, not reactions to it.” Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Be the Love You Seek

She also says, “The theory of constructed emotion gives us the opportunity to perceive our emotions as self-creations, not reality, and empowers us to change how we feel by shifting certain physical sensations.”

This was something new that I’d never heard before, and it’s big.

We aren’t stuck with the emotions we feel as a reaction to things that are happening to us. Rather, when we see that our emotions are from the past, this empowers us to rewire our pathways and have different emotional experiences.

Our heart is the seat of infinite intuition.

“To reconnect with your innate inner guidance, you’ll need to learn how to tune in to the deeper wisdom in your heart. Your heart isn’t just an organ that pumps blood throughout your body. Your physical heart—the one beating inside your chest right now—is also where your intuition lives.” Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Be the Love You Seek

I’ve never heard this explained before. Our heart’s innate capacity is vast! We can always connect within and find our inner road map.

In this section, Dr. LePera teaches you how to cultivate heart coherence.

She also offers practical tools and journal prompts for connecting with our hearts. Although it will take time and patience, we can begin to see and understand our greatest path to the truth by looking inside.

‘How to Be the Love You Seek’ teaches that our nature is to connect with one another.

“Humans are relational beings. It’s part of our evolutionary nature to relate to and connect with others. We’re part of a complex, communal ecosystem in which we’re physically, emotionally, and neurobiological reliant on one another.” Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Be the Love You Seek

I found this very interesting, too.

Sometimes, it seems like we’re becoming more and more like little islands, determined to be able to manage it all alone.

But that isn’t how we are wired. We need to connect with others. I think this is what makes this book so relevant. We can learn to relate to others in healthy, fulfilling ways.

Our emotions are contagious.

“On the simplest level, social coherence occurs because kindness is contagious—literally. When we embody core heart feelings like compassion, appreciation, acceptance, tolerance, patience, forgiveness, and love, we radiate these feelings through our visible behavior, including our words, actions, vocal tone, and facial expressions, as well as unseen signals, like the energy we emit from our nervous system and heart.

Others can pick up these signals, influencing their thoughts, feelings, and behavior.” Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Be the Love You Seek

This is why it’s important to surround ourselves with positive, uplifting people. When we are around others who embody these core heart feelings and behaviors, we are more likely to adopt and experience them ourselves.

Alternatively, being surrounded by negativity and toxic behavior can negatively impact our well-being.

But it’s not only about surrounding ourselves with positive influences. We also have the power to spread positivity through our own actions and interactions with others. By consciously practicing kindness and compassion towards others, we can create a ripple effect of positivity that can extend far beyond our immediate relationships.

‘How to Be the Love You Seek’ teaches us that our greatest wisdom can be found within our hearts.

“As I hope you now realize, your heart’s messages are worth taking time to hear, interpret, and heed. They are your source of deeper guidance. Your heart is speaking to you right now, and its wisdom is limitless.” Dr. Nicole LePera, How to Be the Love You Seek

To be the love you seek, you must connect with the infinite wisdom, love, and guidance of your heart. Inside, you are the love you seek, and the journey to discovery is worth every ounce of effort.

So, what do you think? Which quote or concept is your favorite? Let me know in the comments below.

Dr. Nicole Laperla, a holistic psychologist and New York Times bestselling author, offers teachings to help promote genuine connection, spiritual health, and a healing roadmap toward personal growth.