Relearning how to love

[Applause]

in our society

we have one really big problem

we’re terrible lovers and i’m not

talking about what happens or

what doesn’t happen in german bedrooms

i’m talking

about real and true love

i mean you just have to look at the

number of divorces

last year there have been 150 000

divorces in germany according to the

statistical office

or which is an easier option to

make sure that we are kind of terrible

lovers

you just go into a random kind of

bookstore

and look at the exploding numbers of

self-help books concerning love and

relationships

or you just swipe through tinder

you get the point i guess we are

terrible lovers

but but we’re also great dreamers

unbelievers i mean you just have to look

at the number of

marriages last year there have been over

400 000

marriages so sounds like there is hope

or again you just go into a random kind

of bookstore look at the exploding

numbers of self-help books concerning

love and

relationships that are actually bought

by people

who are indeed interested in improving

their love lives

or you just swipe through tinder until

you find someone who actually wrote more

than one

emoji in his description

if you get the point i guess people want

to believe in love at least that’s what

i

want to and let me

let me just assume that you want to even

if it’s just for the next few minutes

so i hope you’re all with me when i dare

to make a claim

we want to love

we want to find that one person that

makes

everything fall into place

but we tend to believe that we need help

to find that person

and i mean help in the form of destiny

help in the form of luck or for the not

so

romantic people help in the form of

coincidence maybe

help in the form of that one prince on

the white horse

or that glittering shoe on the stairs

which will magically lead us to the love

of our lives

so what do we do we wait

we wait and wait and wait maybe we fall

in love sometime but then

we start to struggle with relationships

problems

which we try to explain by him or her

just not being the one

it’s like oh you know i should have seen

that coming

he didn’t even have a horse

and then we start to wait again and we

wait and wait and wait for destiny

finally doing its damn job

the only thing that doesn’t come into

our minds is that one

taking action to make a dream come true

like we would do for any other kind of

dream

when i was a student i once sat down

with my friends it was

right before a party and we drank some

beer and talked about our future

and we went like oh you know i want to

be an international business consultant

at

mckinsey and then someone else said you

know i want to travel the world and

launch this kind of online business so

i can work everywhere i want to people

were sharing their dreams and when it

was my turn

i sat down and said you know

i just want to experience this kind of

life-changing deeply romantic perfectly

imperfect

true love you know it’s a feeling that

is written about in

books and poems

i looked into my friends faces and they

looked at me

with the same look you give a bunch of

big eye pitiful kittens and an animal

shelter

and they were like don’t you have a real

goal

i mean something you can actually work

for

something you can achieve something you

can measure

you know studied at the business

department

and one of my friends went back to bsn

parity

i could not stop thinking about the fact

that we all seem to divide our dreams in

two different sections

the one hand there are dreams that we

can work for like a career or a vacation

or a house or car on the other hand

there are dreams that happen by destiny

or lack

or maybe coincidence like living and

finding love

at this day i started to ask myself

what would happen if i started for my

dream of true love

just as my friends did for their dream

of having a career or traveling the

world

what if i would be able to turn the

pages of my life

start a new chapter and finally write

the love story

i always wished for

there are thousands of theories and

books and ideas

on how to make a dream come true but

they all have one thing in common

to make a dream come true it takes time

it takes energy it takes dedication

but most of all it takes our own

personal

investment so for example if you

want to be an international business

consultant

you better start by learning how to be a

business consultant

and if you want to launch an online

business

you better start by learning how to

launch an online business

so if i want a true love

i better start it by learning how to

love sounds easy right

the problem was the idea that i had to

learn

love felt kind of ridiculous because

because

i used to think that loving is an

ability we all naturally have

today i know that loving is an ability

we all naturally

had we all come into this life

by being able to fully love

someone else without conditions

but then life happens and most of us

experience how this love can create

pain the psychologist john bradshaw was

the first to develop a theory of the

so-called inner child

and his theory says that we all burn as

an authentic self

which means as a baby we are all

naturally able to

feel and to express all of our feelings

and all of our needs and all of our

desires

but as we grow older we experience also

that these feelings these needs

and these desires are rejected by the

people we love the most

i myself experienced that i would be

left alone

when i dared to express my true desires

i experienced that my longing for love

would

only be fulfilled when i behaved the way

i was expected

as a result i unconsciously

started to push away those feelings and

those needs

and those desires because i thought they

were wrong

and without even knowing i stopped

living the truth of my authentic self

and started to live the truth of my

so-called

false self

and this is how i unlearned how to love

this is how we all unlearn how to love

so

in fact the process of learning how to

love

is actually a process of relearning

i myself dived into this process really

drastically

which meant i cancelled every single

plan i had for my life

i quit my job i quit my studies

i quit my apartment in a big city it was

this love sorry

and i moved back to my small hometown on

the country

and i remember the day i packed all of

my stuff from my apartment into the car

that would bring me to my parents house

and i felt kind of adventurous

because i thought wow maybe this could

be the beginning

of my biggest dream well finally i had

enough space and enough time to invest

everything i had into this learning how

to love thing

and i thought wow you made the best

decision of your life

and then i remember the next day when i

woke up in my chest room and i looked at

the light

pink wall with a dirty dancing poster on

it

and patrick swayze was staring at me

and i thought wow you’ve just made the

worst decision of your life

but there i was so while my friends

went to parodies or trips around the

world or were launching businesses and

making careers

i sat in my child’s room and held

conversation with the girl that used to

live here

and now kind of lived on inside of

myself

and it was like hey what’s up

well i think maybe we could try to fall

in love sometime

really like living our dream sharing our

life

open our heart to this handsome guy

we’re definitely going to meet

and she was like are you crazy

did you forget how painful it is to open

our heart

anyway you should love us we are totally

not worthy of love

well obviously i could stop wondering

why my dream of true love didn’t come

true

there was a part of me sabotaging

my biggest wish and it did that not

because it was me but because it was

afraid

because as a child i had experienced how

love

created pain and now this little girl

inside of me desperately

tried to avoid feeling this pain again

and i mean like ever

again said two options

option one except that this was the end

of my dream

or option two convinced this in a child

of mine of deeply and truly starting to

love again

so which option do you think i took any

guesses

two well if i took one i just could

go down the stairs it was not the first

one

i decided now more than ever to go for

it

i decided to finally get back to my

authentic self

and i did this by developing three

questions

three questions that savagely forced me

to be honest with myself to make sure

that i was acting

on behalf of my authentic self and

and i think this is kind of the most

important point

to make sure that i would take

uncompromising

self-responsibility for my true feelings

and my true needs and my true desires

until today i’m permanently every day

asking myself those questions and to

make it a little easier

i came up with only three options to

answer them

and maybe you can also guess which those

options are

i found little inspiration in my teenage

love letters

my options were yes no

or maybe right

so if i tell you now those questions

that define how i live my life

i want to encourage you to answer them

not for everybody but just for you

and just with those three options yes

no or maybe

okay let’s start question one

do you think you are able to

trust someone else blindly

and without conditions like you did as a

child

yes no or maybe

for me it’s a maybe

second question do you think

you can give your love just for the pure

and simple sake of loving

yes no or maybe

for me it’s yes but it took me years

question three do you think

you are totally worthy of being

unconditionally

loved just because

you are you

yes no or maybe

for me it’s a no but i’m working on it

right now actually i’ll tell you

something

if one of your answers has been a no or

even it may be

you like me need to re-learn how to love

i did and i still do

for every no and every may be i get

i ask myself why not

why the hell do i not think i’m totally

worthy of being unconditionally loved

just because i am me why

and with this simple question i start

the process of digging deep into the

black hole of my mind

my thoughts my feelings my needs

and my desires and so much more i still

need to find out

it took me years to convince this inner

child of mine of deeply and truly

starting to laugh again and as you see

i’m still not done

even though i actually managed to

fulfill my dream

i have a little spoiler for you today

i’m married to a very handsome man and

he’s sitting

right there you can maybe you’ve seen

him

and he’s the most unromantic person i

know and i’ve never seen him on a white

horse

but in fact he’s the love of my life

the process of relearning how to love is

the process

of getting back to my authentic self

it’s a process of exploring my false

self

and the process of healing my inner

child

today i’ve moved out of my child’s room

thank god

and into life that is now centered

around that dream

i want that to go for

today i would describe me as a not so

terrible lover

but i’m still learning and i’m still the

one that buys

those self-help books

i started to invest all of my time and

all of my energy

and all of my dedication into my dream

of true love

and it paid off because it always does

because the ability to love

is the greatest superpower a human can

have

i am absolutely convinced that we all

are able to turn the pages of our lives

start a new chapter and finally write

the love story

we always wished for we just have to

take the pen

and i mean not by quitting our job and

moving back into our parents house as i

did

but by investing time and energy

and dedication into our own individual

process of relearning how to love

so that we can one day say in our

society we have one

one really great ability we are really

great lovers thank you