All emotions are valid. There's no such thing as good or bad. They are just emotions, and they're all part of being human. So, sit for a minute and decide whether you want to stay in that emotion, or if you want to choose a different emotion. And then, you get to choose what that is. Say you're sitting in loneliness, you're sad because you're lonely. Well, how do you choose an emotion of love when you're sitting in a situation that's causing you to have thoughts that are creating that emotion?

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast that encourages you to become your best virtuosa self. Each week, Dr. Susan Crockett goes where the scalpel can't reach, exploring conversations about how to be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune.

For the first time ever, she's bringing the personal one-on-one teaching that she shares with individual patients to you on this broader platform. A weekly source of inspiration and encouragement designed to empower you. By evolving ourselves as individuals, we influence and transform the world around us.

Please, help me welcome board-certified OB/GYN, specializing in minimally invasive GYN surgery, and internationally in the top 1% of all GYN robotic surgeons, a certified life coach, and U.S. News top doctor, your host, Susan A. Crockett, MD.

Welcome back to the Dr. Crockett Show. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Crockett. I'm a board certified OB/GYN in San Antonio, Texas. I practice, specifically, minimally invasive GYN surgery or MIGS surgery. If you haven't seen our prior episode, that's talking about what a MIGS is and why it's important for you to know, I really encourage you to check that out. Because it's really awesome and you need to know.

But today on our show, actually all the time on our show, or most of the time on our show, we're not talking about surgery. The tagline for our show is “We're going where the scalpel doesn't reach.” And today, I'm really excited. I've procrastinated about this one for a bit, because it's a big, big topic.

Today, we are doing the third seed. So, if you're new to joining us, these colors up here on my logo represent the seven seeds of the soul. And they are what we teach and train to help you get along better in life and feel better, and live happier and healthier.

The seeds go, “Be” which is about self-care and heal, which is about healing. Those two episodes have already aired, so we'll put those links down below too. Today, we’re talking about love. Oh, my gosh, who am I to talk about love? What hasn't been said or written about it? Crazy, huge topic.

So, when I'm trying to prepare for this, I was talking to my coach friend, Paige and she said, “Wait a minute, you are exceptionally qualified to talk about it. Because only you have experienced it from your point of view, and the world needs to hear that.”

And the other thing is, no matter how many times we read things about love and see things about love, somebody out there, one of you that I'm talking to today, needs to hear this. You need to be reminded. And so, we're going to do this episode, and it's a tough one. It's a wonderful one, too.

Maybe I should finish the seeds. I'm going to tell you the rest of the seeds. So, we go: Be, Heal, Love, Give, Grow, Pray, and Attune. I'm looking at my monitor… it worked. Attunement is the last one. There's a book coming out later this year, called The Seven Seeds of the Soul. It's currently under production, so stay tuned for that. We'll be looking forward to that.

So, this thing about love is really interesting. We have a saying that I've had as a personal mantra for, oh, probably almost 20 years, probably 15 years or so. And it's one of our sayings here at the Dr. Crockett Show. We say, “Love draws a bigger circle.”

I have my blue circle here; I don't know if you can see it. But on that circle, it says “Love” in the middle. And then, all the way around it again and again and again, it says, “Love draws a bigger circle.” Love draws a bigger circle.

I came up with that at a time when I was expanding my circle of friends. It was kind of when the Internet chat rooms and forums were new. I started using that as my signature line underneath my name; Love draws a bigger circle. So, there are a couple of meanings behind that. One is, it is open to others. It's inclusionary. And it draws a bigger circle of inclusion around people that are not like us.

But there's a double entendre here… I love those… That means a double meaning. “Love also draws a bigger circle.” So, if you're looking to be somebody who is increasing the number of relationships and connections that you have in the world, a great way to do that is through love because it draws people to you. It makes them want to be around you more.

And so, today we're going to talk about, a little bit about, what love is, and philosophy. But then, we're also going to talk about how to increase your emotion, or your feeling of love in your life. It's a big topic. One quote that I really, really love actually comes from First Corinthians. It’s the whole Bible verse about “Love is patient. Love is kind.”

And last week, I keep having this verse, the beginning of it, come back to me again and again and again, but a little differently. It is, “Love is exceedingly patient and abundantly kind.” I just had that going through my head again and again. Love is exceedingly patient and abundantly kind.

When we think about what love is and how we move in this world, you can talk about it from a romantic perspective. You can talk about it from a parent-child perspective. You can talk about loving the room you're in, or the work that you do. You can talk about loving God. You can love your neighbor. You can talk about God is love. There's a Bible verse that says God is love.

In fact, it’s kind of my belief that Jesus was love incarnate come to earth, come to the world. That's kind of what he was, the whole metaphor of love. So, when people are saying, “What would Jesus do?” I'm really thinking, “What would love do? How should I respond in that way?”

One of the ways that this becomes really helpful in my practice, and in helping people be well, is to realize that love is the opposite of fear. A lot of people think that the opposite of love is hate, but that's not true. Fear is the opposite of love. And love, by replacing feelings of fear with love, we can choose to move in a more productive way in our world. We can choose that.

It's also the antidote to grief and angst. Grief and angst. A common thing that happens in the operating room almost every day is when I go to meet my patients and pre-op before surgery, they're almost always anxious. Rarely angsty or angry, almost never. But they are very anxious. And they're afraid, as they should be, because I'm about to go do surgery on them. That's kind of a scary thing.

I always joke that they're going to go to sleep, and I'm going to take good care of them. And the main thing is that I'm not anxious. But beyond that, we have conversations in my office, when people are talking about wanting to have surgery, and when we are making decisions about their health care and surgery, often, people get in the lane of it being fear driven. They're afraid to do something, or they're afraid of the pain, or they're afraid of what's going to happen to them afterwards.

It's really important to talk with your doctor, especially if you're having surgery, about risks and possible complications. That's certainly important. But one thing that's super, super important, is that in medicine, we try to never make decisions based on fear. We make them out of love, and what is best for the patient. We do that in a collaborative conversation in the office.

So, when I see a patient that's moving too far into the range of angst and anxiety, I bring them back and I say, “Hey, why don't we think about this in terms of loving your body and loving yourself, what would be the best outcome for you, and helping you mitigate the risks.” It’s really, really helpful.

Love is not just this mushy, gushy emotion that people talk about. When we talk about it being an “antidote”, that's a medical term. That means it's the medicine that helps heal grief and angst. Some of my biggest growth lessons in love have come through some of the worst situations that I've had in my life.

It's in times of grief, and in times of suffering, and in times of angst, where, if we can clue into that thought of ‘love is exceedingly patient, and abundantly kind,’ and reassure ourselves of those things, it doesn't mean we don't grieve, or we don't have the emotion of angst. It's not avoiding it; it's going through it and having the medicine along with you to heal.

So, a lot of you will ask me, “Well, how do I do that? How do I take myself in a situation where we're dealing with loss and grief… How do I help my child who is hurting, by being exceedingly patient and abundantly kind? How do I help my elderly parent? How do I deal with a coworker who is narcissistic and getting on everybody's nerves, including mine? How do I deal with circumstances in life not going how I want them to go, in a way that is productive and helpful and loving?”

Because kind and patient and loving do not mean not having a boundary. You have to have healthy, loving boundaries for yourself. It means moving with those boundaries in a place of exceeding patience. Exceedingly patient and abundantly kindness… I’m messing up the quote. Y'all can say it for me by now. Love is exceedingly patient and abundantly kind.

How do you move into love when you're not in it? The first thing is to recognize when you are not in the state that you want to be in. Our emotions, whether they are happy or sad or disappointed or frustrated or loving and kind and sweet and patient, our emotions are caused by our thoughts. And they are vibrations within our body. They’re energy moving through our body.

If you've never thought of it this way, I want you to just to take a second, maybe pause the podcast for a second. If you're driving, don't do this. If you're watching from home, pause the podcast and close your eyes, and just pay attention to your body.

Where do you feel energy in your body? Do you feel a pit in your stomach? Do you have a heartache in your chest? Do you have a vibration in your hands that’s warm and tingly? These are those hallmarks of emotion.

So, the first thing you need to do is be present. Get out of your head about what you're thinking about all of this stuff, the spinning that's going on in your brain, and be present with your body, and identify the emotions that are working through your body. This takes some practice. And if you've never done this before, this is a great way to lean into learning how to manage your thoughts and emotions.

This is what we teach in life coaching. And for those of you that don't realize I'm not just a surgeon, I'm also a certified life coach. So, you get both.

The second thing is, after you have identified your emotions in your body, and you're present with them, then you need to think to yourself, “Do I want to be in this emotion right now? Or do I want to choose a different one? Do I want to choose a higher vibrational energy?” The highest vibrational energy, of course, being pure love.

Sometimes we want to sit in our grief and in our anger. All emotions are valid; there's no such thing as good or bad. They are just emotions, and they're all part of being human. So, sit for a minute and decide whether you want to stay in that emotion, or if you want to choose a different emotion. And then, you get to choose what that is.

So, say you're sitting in loneliness. You're sad because you're lonely. Well, how do you choose an emotion of love when you're sitting in a situation that's causing you to have thoughts that are creating that emotion? There are two ways you can do this, and I'm going to tell you right now.

One way is to look internally at sources of love. You can look at your memories and your thoughts of loving circumstances and situations that you've had in your life. Maybe you remember the love of your spouse, or your child, or your parent. Or the beauty of a flower or the loving thing that happened the other day with you and a friend.

You can think about examples of love that you've seen outside of you. Like, what have you read in a book that is an example of love? Or seen on a television program? Or how is love been extended to you in the past?

The second way you can do this is to reach even further externally, which would be to reach for a higher power. Some people would call that God. Whatever you like to identify as a spiritual power… You can tap into our surroundings, our universe, the energy in the world… and you can tap into that feeling of love. It's a vibrational energy that exists all around us.

By doing that, you can actually bring that into your body. You can imagine it coming in through your head if you want. I find that helpful. I like to think of myself, at times, as a conduit of God's love coming through me and extending out to others.

So, when I'm in that mode, and I'm thinking that mode, even when I'm in difficult circumstances, it allows me to look at people through that eye of love. Of that exceedingly patient love, that abundantly kind nature. It changes my feelings within the same circumstance and gives me healing and peace and joy.

I want to leave you with this, dear friends, today. My favorite Bible quote about love is this one, of course, “Love never fails. Love is stronger than everything. Love is even stronger than death.”

So many times, when we're dealing with loss and things don't go the way we want, whether it's the loss of a relationship or the loss of a loved one, we think that it is the end of love. And one thing that I was taught at a very young age is that's not true.

The love that you have for that person, the love that you're grieving, is still in you. That love is still there. It doesn't go away just because they're not there. Love never fails.

Have a wonderful week, my friends. I'll see you next time on the Dr. Crockett Show.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at DrCrockett.com. Or find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show. If you found this episode helpful, or think it might help someone else, please like, subscribe, and share. This is how we grow together. Thanks, and I'll see you next week. Love always, Sue.