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