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By Lissa Rankin

But I ask you. What would Love do?

We’re all at risk of falling into one of three patterns in an unhealthy triad of victim, perpetrator, and martyr. Sometimes we play the helpless victim at the mercy of bad people and a hostile universe. Sometimes we cast ourselves or let others cast us in the role of the villainous perpetrator. Other times, we play the self-sacrificing but resentful martyr. None of these roles are healthy. All of them stem from the Small Self’s story of separation. Every one of these patterns arises from fear.

But we can disrupt these patterns with one simple question gifted to me by my spiritual counselor and transpersonal psychologist Ted Esser, PhD.

What would Love do?

I dare not suggest I ever know the answer to such a question. But I pose it to myself often these days, and more often than not, I find myself choosing to do the kind thing when I ask myself this question.

What Love Does

Sometimes Love forgives what feels unforgivable.

Sometimes Love questions everything from a place of curiosity and humility.

Sometimes Love sets boundaries.

Sometimes Love prays for help.

Sometimes Love opens the heart even further than you ever thought possible.

Sometimes Love confesses an unspeakable truth.

Sometimes Love leaves you bare and vulnerable, a turtle without a shell in a briar patch.

Sometimes Love leaves.

But always, Love makes choices that unlock the soul cage and help you and those you love grow. Always, even when dosing up tough love, Love is kind. And always, just as you can always recognize the ocean because it tastes like salt, you’ll recognize Love because it tastes like freedom.

Yes, it takes courage to do what Love would do. But as Sara Bareilles dares you in her song “Brave,”¯ “Maybe there’s a way out of the cage where you live. Maybe one of these days, you can let the light in. Show me how big your brave is.”¯

With love,

Lissa Rankin

Lissa Rankin, MD is a mind-body medicine physician on a grass roots mission to heal healthcare, while empowering you to heal yourself. She is the founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute training program for physicians and healthcare providers, and the New York Times bestselling author of the books Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself (2013), The Fear Cure (2014), and The Anatomy of a Calling (2015).

Lissa blogs at LissaRankin.com and created the online community HealHealthCareNow.com. She is also the author of several other books, a speaker, a professional artist, an amateur ski bum, and an avid hiker. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Connect with Lissa on Facebook and Twitter, or visit LissaRankin.com.