We have often heard of intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ) and are probably comfortable with these concepts since they are known entities, but what about love quotient or LQ? What if I told you that LQ is here to shake things up and in that way to push us to grow beyond IQ and even EQ?

Emotional intelligence (EQ) has shined a light on the subject of emotions. It has recognized that we are driven by our emotions either consciously or subconsciously. It has also removed some of the stigma around the “touchy-feely” aspects of emotion and has helped us recognize the need to acknowledge our own emotions as well as the emotions of others.

Knowing our emotional state and being able to gauge the emotional state of others can be helpful in a wide variety of settings. EQ has been successfully used to improve interpersonal communication in businesses, schools, universities and personal relationships.

“I believe if a person wants to be successful, they should have a high EQ; if you don’t want to lose quickly you should have a high IQ, and if you want to be respected, you should have high LQ – the IQ of love.” – Jack Ma, Billionaire, Founder of Alibaba

One of the biggest differences between LQ and EQ is that LQ is much more experiential. EQ is largely an intellectual pursuit that has helped create an awareness around emotions and particularly how our feelings influence our communications. Love Quotient is all about improving our ability to express love to ourselves and others.

While there is an intellectual component to increasing our LQ which aids our ability to improve how we express love, how effective we are at expressing love to ourselves and others is impacted by how well we actually embody love.

You can study love and understand love and still not be a very loving person.

LQ guides us to understand love on a mental level so that we can apply it on a practical level and to really embody the frequency of love so that we can then live life from a more loving place.

Developing our Love Quotient (LQ)

Love Quotient is developed in two ways. The first way is to expand our understanding about love and its very nature. The second way is to learn more effective ways to be loving toward ourselves and others.

The following core principles of LQ will guide you to better understand love and how to actually live as a more loving individual.

Love Yourself First

We all learn to love from a young age. The ability to give and receive love is innate, however so often our parental and social environments suffocate our ability and desire to express love.

In our society most of us are taught the importance of being loving and kind towards others but we are not always taught how to effectively love ourselves. Thus many of us find ourselves attempting to love others but are doing so from a place of depletion or lack of love that we ourselves experience. Loving others from a place of depletion or lack is not the most loving way to love.

The key is to learn how to effectively love ourselves first so that we can love others from a place of already being loved. We can’t give others what we don’t have. An active self-love practice increases, deepens and expands our ability to give love to others.

By taking the time for personal love and self-care we increase our love quotient.

Self-love Can Take Many Forms

Part of increasing our LQ is shifting our perspective on things we might already be doing but beginning to see them as acts of love. Let’s discuss two aspects of loving ourselves, taking care of the physical body and taking care of our inner world.

The things we do to take care of our bodies are forms of self-care and therefore a way of loving ourselves. Self-care can be as simple as going to the gym, eating well, having a massage or even an act as simple as brushing our teeth.

Loving our inner selves is doing those things that feed our inner being AKA inner child such as meditation, reading, listening to music, or having an active self love practice.

Loving Yourself Is Not Selfish

When the concept of self-love is proposed one of the objections that can come up is that it is seen to be selfish or egocentric. Increasing your LQ is not about feeding your ego. Loving yourself is about replenishing your love supply and fueling your inner self AKA inner child.

You always deserve more love not less.

Embrace All Parts of Yourself

A person with a high LQ has learned how to and developed the ability to embrace all aspects of themselves, even the parts that one may normally judge or deny. Even the ugly parts. Especially the ugly parts. In fact, the darkness or the ugly parts are the parts that are calling out to be loved. These undesirable or unliked aspects of ourselves actually need the most love.

One of the benefits of loving these aspects of ourselves is that the judgement that we hold for ourselves and others will lessen and eventually dissipate. When there are aspects of ourselves we haven’t loved and embraced, we tend to judge those aspects in ourselves and thus naturally in others. We tend to treat others the same way we treat ourselves.

Being more kind and loving toward ourselves and having the willingness to embrace all aspects of ourselves will help to end the cycle of judgment that may have plagued us our entire lives. In this way we become more kind and compassionate to ourselves and as a result to others.

Feeling Safe in Your Own Body

Loving yourself allows you to feel safe in your own body. Often, to avoid feeling negative emotions, such as loneliness, anxiety, fear or boredom, we seek out external “cures” or distractions. Whether it is food, sex, social media, video games, alcohol or drugs, there are infinite ways someone can find to avoid, escape or numb out from feeling the emotions that arise in our bodies.

An active self-love practice helps us feel safe in our own bodies. As we begin to feel safe in our own bodies, we are able to fully feel these negative emotions. As we begin to feel these negative emotions, they are able to be acknowledged and felt so that they can be released from being held in the body.

This is one of the key LQ principles that empowers EQ. Even if we have a high EQ, we may not feel safe enough to feel the emotions that we may have awareness of. Increasing our LQ enables us to actually feel, process and release the emotions we have gained an awareness of through EQ.

The more we love ourselves, the safer we feel in our own bodies and thus the more effectively we are able to embrace all of our emotions without the need to escape, bury or avoid them.

It is clear that the world could use more love and less conflict, more compassion and less judgement, more kindness and less distance. In order for us to move forward, as a happier, more evolved species we will need to re-examine our understanding of love and how best to approach our interactions with others in a more loving way.

This change in behaviour can only be manifested externally if it is rooted internally, in the hearts and minds of the individual. Improving your LQ is one of the most effective ways in-which to turn your love inwards and in that way to create a more loving and harmonious existence, for yourself and those around you.

We would love to hear from you. Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.

Watch this space for regular articles about LQ and its many applications.