How Much Love Can You Lift?

How Much Love Can You Lift?

By: Steven Andrew Schultz

Almost all pleasure and almost all pain in your life comes from the people in your life. Your biggest disappointments will come from expecting other people to give you the same love you give them. That’s tantamount to expecting everyone to be able to lift as much weight as you when you have bigger muscles. It’s just not possible.

Picture this! You’re in the gym lifting weights and your partner can’t lift as much weight as you can. Would you blame yourself because they aren’t as strong as you are? Would you be angry with them or hurt by them because they can’t lift as much as you can? Of course not! But isn’t that exactly what we do when someone doesn’t lift us up in love the way we carried and elevated them? When we feel the love we give is unrequited and our generosity not reciprocated, we wonder what is wrong with us and why aren’t I worthy? We wallow in not being enough.

My friend Mitch, who is a professional personal trainer and quite buff and substantially stronger than me, invited me over to lift weights with him and I felt inadequate and kept apologizing because he kept having to remove weights to a level I could lift and then add more weight when it was his turn, and he said to me, “I can’t be mad at someone who isn’t as strong as me. It’s not your fault.”

Right there and then, in that garage of his, I had an epiphany about the physical pain the weight room causes and how it relates to the emotional pain when someone isn’t as strong as you and can’t give you the love you deserve and need.

Someone’s ability or inability to love you has nothing to do with you, but is tied to their ability or inability to love.

Just as someone’s ability to lift a certain amount of weight in the gym has nothing to do with how strong you are, but how strong they are.

Someone’s ability or inability to love you has nothing to do with you, but is tied to their ability or inability to love.

When you lift weights, what happens to your muscles? The tear and rip. But if you put the right protean in your body, your muscles grow back bigger. The process repeats! To get strong, you will have to consistently push, pull, press, curl, and lift weight that is a struggle and will leave you feeling sore…but in time, stronger than you were before.

Just like in the weight room where you need to increase reps and weights to keep increasing your strength, you will have to lift “heavy people” repeatedly to grow your heart muscle. And by “heavy” people I don’t mean obese, but those who don’t love you back or are unkind, rude, selfish, mean, inconsiderate, annoying, unfriendly, dastardly in every way. People who tear you down are like the weights that tear your muscles. Showing them love anyway is the protein that makes your heart grow back bigger.  The mean people who rip you leave your love muscles looking ripped.

If you can bench press 200 pounds but your partner can only bench press 100, you wouldn’t leave your plates on the bar and expect them to just be able to lift it, that would be impossible and dangerous. Nor would you feel there was something wrong with you because they are weaker than you are. One can only lift what they’ve trained their muscles to lift…and one can only love the weight they’ve trained themselves to love.

No matter how much you love that person, no matter what you give, there is no way they will be able to quickly increase their ability to love you. Just as, no matter what my friend Mitch did, he could inject me with steroids and pre-workout and give me motivational speeches belonging in movies, I am not going to be able to move as much weight as him. Not today, not in a week, not even a month. It takes a long time to gain emotional and spiritual muscle too.

So, the next time someone lets you down or hurts you by failing to show you the love you showed, remember what my friend Mitch said, “I can’t be mad at someone who isn’t as strong as me. It’s not your fault!” Just like the weight room analogy, their weakness isn’t your wrongness. There is nothing wrong with you, they just don’t have the capacity to love you the way you deserve yet…and, maybe, they never will.

Look at it this way: many of my female students used carry those huge gallon-sized Stanley cups. One day a student came to me crying telling a story of how much she gives to her boyfriend and how he doesn’t give as much in return. I told her that her heart is like her huge water bottle and her boyfriend’s is like this mini water bottle. I told her she could pour a little of her water into his bottle and fill him up completely, but he could pour his entire container into her and her giant Stanley water bottle would still feel empty. I did a demonstration on love capacity. Someone may be giving you all they have but if you have a giant heart, their love can’t quinch your thirst, but leaves you parched.

The stronger you are in the gym, the more people you can spot. Like having a giant water bottle, however, the stronger you get the fewer people can spot you. Which makes growing large love muscles means you have the strength to lift people with ease, but almost everyone you meet will never be able to fill you up and make you feel loved. The most loving people are often the most lonely. They spot everyone else, but have no one to spot them, so they have to lift alone, which makes their pursuit of gains even more a selfless act of love.

If you want to start healing, you must start kneeling and washing the feet of the offenders who failed to give you to boost of love you granted them. By replacing your anger for what they are with compassion for what they aren’t able to be, you become more loving.

Here’s how:

If you are lifting weights with a friend who isn’t as strong as you are, you would remove some of your plates before it was their time for reps, and you being the stronger individual, would probably spot them and help them as they lift.

Just because you can spot them doesn’t mean they will be able to effectively spot you because you are stronger than them. Their weight is easy for you while your weight may be undoable for them.

They may continue to get stronger and eventually lift more weight over time, but it will take months of daily discipline and intentional practice for that person to make a significant increase in the amount of weight they can lift.   The same is true with lifting love. A parent, friend, boyfriend or girlfriend, sibling, coworker, or anyone in your life whose lack of love has hurt you, will take a long time before they can increase their strength to show you the love you want. And many never will. There are millions of people with gym memberships who never go to the gym. Just as there will be people who will always treat you badly no matter how good you are to them. But for all those jealous of the shadow your light casts, there will be more who will want to know how they can get fit too because they witness your strength.

My friend Pepe, pictured above, isn’t just physical fit, but spiritually. Every time I see him or speak to him he tells me he loves me. Men need to make saying “I LOVE YOU” common speech.

Just like fitness influencers on social media get people in the comment section trying to bring them down, there are others in the DM’s asking them for their routines and meal plans and wanting to be trained by them. Most people only read the negative comments but aren’t privy to the DM’s thanking you for sharing your light.

Just like the fitness influencers inspire others to get in better shape, you modeling love will elevate others to be more loving. You having bigger love muscles will inspire others to want to increase how much love they can lift too. Love given is always a double tap impact. When you add more love to someone, they are able to love someone else more. That’s your impact too. The love compounds and becomes abound and more people get healed. Becoming strong in loving will make the weak jealous of your spiritual fitness. 

Like I mentioned, on every fitness influencers post on Instagram are an amalgamation of two types of comments, what I call the Knock Downs and the Kneel Downs. Those trying to knock down probably make some comment about steroids or put a shirt on. You have to learn to love the haters too by keeping your focus on all those in your DMs who give thanks to you and who are getting stronger in love because of you, increasing all those double tap impacts.

To lift a lot of love, you must respond with love to both the Knock Downs are the Kneel Downs. You can’t hate someone into loving, but you can love someone out of hating. Love doesn’t always work but love is the only thing that does. The guys posting the shirtless photos will remind the mean people how they don’t look and will remake the loving people how they want to look. Invoking inspiration also brings mockery.

Today I posted a poem I wrote on my Facebook about how much I’m going to miss my students when they graduate. A woman I’ve never met commented how she was a loyal fan reading the magazine column I used to write for eleven years and how much my words inspired her, and she hopes her son gets in my class next year. Those same articles she thanked me for, some used to mock me for…including some of my coworkers. But them attacking me has nothing to do with me, but a lack of love inside themselves.

Someone can’t give you a hundred dollars if they only have a twenty-dollar bill. It’s not their fault. My former student Peter reminded me that when building your body, rest is one of the most important aspects. Peter said he trains a different muscle every day. If you keep working out the same muscle every day, you’re not going to get big, and you might actually hurt yourself. You need to rest for those muscles to grow back bigger. The same is true for lifting the difficult people in your life, lift a different person each day. Stop giving your attention to the same person day after day, give them love and then let them rest so you can focus on loving all the rest of the people in your life.

You might spend an hour of your day in the gym and then you’re done. Be done with the difficult people and love them from afar.

Loving people who are loving, nice, and kind, is easy, it’s like only ever benching the bar. Nothing easy makes you better. The only way to increase your strength in the gym is more weight and more reps and putting the right protein in your body. The only way to increase your strength to love, is loving more mean people, more often. Just like the literal weights rip up your muscles, learning patience from impatient people, learning kindness from unkind people, learning listening from the loud, learning generosity from the greedy, learning forgiveness from the revenge seekers, learning truth from liars, is like adding more weight and God being your spotter shouting: come on, two more reps!!! You said you wanted to be strong…you said you wanted to lift the amount of love I can, so let me send you a bunch of unloving people so you can lift them up in love.

Far too often, we see a physically fit person and tell them we want our bodies to look like theirs until we see the workouts they do and the foods they don’t eat. Far too often we say we want to be a love like God loves until we realize that means loving the unloving person. Like the weights, their job is to rip your heart so it can grow back bigger. The cross around your neck can’t be mere decoration, but moral direction.

The only way to love God is to love like God and God had the biggest love muscles you’ll ever see. Talk to anyone with muscles and they will tell you a major part of that is not just the pump out, but the poisonous food they no longer put in.

You want to lift more love, you must stop putting in the excuses of why it’s okay not to love someone. All that “junk food” of they did this to me or that to them or they are mean or nasty or whatever derogatory term, because being spiritually fit requires you to love at first sight regardless of what you see and to love even more even after someone fails to love thee.

If you want to becoming spiritually fit, the best kind of workout is learning how to lift up the people who let you down. Only those who feel lower than you want to lower you. Only those who don’t feel good about themselves want you to feel bad about being yourself.  They who wish to bring you down are the unloving people God has blessed you with to lift up…and some will become more loving because of you, and some will hate you no matter what you do. Giving love doesn’t always improve the receiver but love always elevates the giver.

You cannot control how someone treats you, but you can ensure they don’t control how you treat them. Being kind to cruel people might not make them kind but will prevent them from making you cruel. Don’t let those who don’t love you keep you from experiencing the love of those that do. And someone not loving you is not an excuse to not love them.

Love isn’t about where it’s going but where it’s coming from.

We have a sick society. Most people are overweight and spiritually deficient. But you can change that one rep at a time. If you want to see God’s love from someone you have to be someone that shows God’s love to everyone. Which means loving those who don’t love you. Love isn’t about where it’s going but where it’s coming from. Unlike a bank account where the more money you take out the less you have, in a love account, the more love you give away today, the more love you can give tomorrow. Increasing the weight increases the strength and increasing the giving increases the ability to give.

Too many people are speaking about Jesus but not talking like Jesus. You cannot change someone by only talking about your love for Jesus, you must also show them the love Jesus talked about.

Look at top-shelf comedian Matt Rife. His career mimics his physical transformation. When he was in high school, he was bullied for being skinny. He started lifting weights and doing kickboxing and watching what he eats and now has sculpted a Greek god looking physique. Ironically, he is now mocked for being too good looking, as most people in his profession aren’t. The very activity he did to escape the ridicule just brought him ridicule. And yet, Matt doesn’t allow unloving people to make him and unloving person.

Matt is still nice and kind to them all, not because of who they are, but because of who he is…and his Papa would be proud of how much love he lifts. Matt and I suffer from extreme insomnia. I might get 1-3 hours a night and many nights none. I’ve gone a whole week with zero sleep. Doctors have told me they have no idea how I’m alive or even functioning, let alone get up on stage in front of a live audience every day teaching with enthusiasm.

I think my answer is the same for Matt: love lifts us because we can lift a lot of love.

Often, people need to see someone else do it first to know they can do it too.
Just as in the gym it will take months before you notice any changes in your body, it will take months before you notice the changes in your soul, but once you do, you will want more of it…and knowing the more love muscles you gain, the more love you’ll have to give and the less love you will feel in return…but the ROI is knowing for every troll commenting about roids, there is a beautiful soul searching for something greater, and only after seeing your example, did they believe they could be beautiful too.

My neighbor, Blake Trgo, in the above photo was so loving to me and made me feel welcomed into the neighbor. Blake was what Mister Rogers teaches us to be. He didn’t even know me when I moved in, but showed me love. You don’t have to know anything about someone to love them, you just have to know you are someone who loves. When you encounter those “heavy people” who are hard to lift, shift your thought from: “Oh my God!” to “Oh my, God!” Rather than exacerbation, celebration, because you see God in the difficult and He’s spotting you and this “heavy person” is also God building your heart muscle.

From: “Oh my God!” (Dread) to “Oh my, God!” (Delight). That one little comma changes the entire emotional meaning of those same three words just like changing one little thought changes what we experience. The comma makes us pause and can now give applause to the place where pain used to reside. If God still loves you when you behave wrongly, then God gives you people who wrong you so you can learn to love them like God loves you. The unloving person is there for you to lift up so you can be a more loving person. Strength is not about how loved you are but how loving you are.

My friend Finn Bradshaw added, “Just like the gym, personal trainers are sometimes needed to guide you and help you make incremental progress. Working out how to love someone and practice patience is hard work. Never be afraid to ask for help.”

Here is what lifting love weights feels like: Think of someone who has wounded you. When thoughts of anger or revenge come up, recognize them and then replace them with forgiveness and compassion. The power to heal yourself is already inside of you. The best thing you can ever do for spiritual development (lifting love weights) is to think of the worst things that have happened to you and then privately send love to the people who did it. Replace anger for what they did with compassion for the strength they lacked to do better.

When you hold onto hurt, you hurt. When you let it go, you are set free. It’s like those bamboo Chinese finger traps, the more you resist and try to move away from the other finger, the more you’re trapped to them. Only by pushing your finger towards the other person do you escape the trap and free yourself of them. Anytime someone says “F-You!” and you respond with “Bless you!” and mean it, you’ve found the deepest meaning of life: letting Love lead it.

So, get in the gym, let your muscles be ripped, for that’s how you get ripped. Heavier weights shred your fat and leave you looking shredded. Heavier people (harder to love) leave you proving that it’s possible for man to love like God by lowering himself to the bottom of the teeter-totter, elevating up the heaviest of people so they get a closer view of what Heaven looks like…doing so is the greatest strength of all.