LOVE
THE ULTIMATE FUEL FOR MISSION-DRIVEN LEADERS
3-Minute Read
You can lead without love, but you’ll struggle.
Money, strategy, and grit are all limited resources. Love isn’t. It’s renewable, scalable, and impossible to counterfeit. When you lead from love, you generate energy others can feel and follow. Ignore it, and you’ll work twice as hard for half the impact. Harness it, and you’ll move mountains.
This week in The Grip, we lay out why love isn’t sentimentality. It’s not “soft skills.” It’s fuel: quiet, unshakable power. And most importantly, love is your foundation. Now. Not someday after you’ve “earned it.” Leaders who live as love — who see themselves not as striving for it but being it — create teams that trust, cultures that innovate, and results that last…without the strain.
Let’s dive in.
love is great for your mission
When intentionally cultivated, love is a performance enhancer for leaders. Strong romantic, friendship, and family bonds don’t distract high performers, they stabilize physiology, widen perspective, and fuel bolder, more creative endeavors.
Romantic love – A secure, low-conflict partnership frees mental bandwidth, boosting emotional regulation, strategic thinking, and high-quality risk-taking at work.
Friendship love – Trusted friendships buffer chronic stress, spark idea flow, and create the psychological safety that drives innovation and team performance.
Family love – Supportive family bonds strengthen resilience, sustain entrepreneurial commitment, and protect against burnout during periods of high stress.
Close, caring relationships trigger feel-good brain chemistry like oxytocin and help your nervous system stay calm and steady. This lowers the brain’s threat alarms and brings your best thinking, judgment, and creativity back online.
When you infuse that same love into your leadership culture, the benefits multiply; defensiveness drops, experimentation thrives, and innovation accelerates.
So why do so many successful leaders struggle to nurture loving relationships? One big reason: they’ve forgotten who they are.
Love As Your Identity
An excerpt from my book, Intentional:
You don’t deserve love.
And you will never deserve love,
because love is not something to be deserved;
love is something for which you are designed.
You probably don’t impose a requirement
of deservedness for other things you’re designed for,
such as air and water. How silly would this be:
“I don’t deserve air. I haven’t earned it.”
“I don’t deserve water. I’m not worthy of it.”
You are designed for air; you are designed for water.
And you are designed for love.
Love is; you are made of it, from it, and for it.
You are surrounded by it.
You are designed to love and be loved.
All attempts to deserve love serve only to prevent you
from experiencing that you are love.
You can either experience love or shut yourself off to it,
but deserving love is something you will never, ever do.
I hope that lands for you as something to celebrate.
When leaders cut themselves off from love, they don’t just suffer personally; they compromise their ability to lead.
Innovation slows.
Relationships weaken.
Resilience erodes.
Harvard Business Review research shows leaders who demonstrate genuine care and connection create teams with higher trust, stronger collaboration, and greater adaptability; exactly what’s needed in high-stakes environments. And it starts by not waiting until you “deserve” love to live from it.
When you realize love is who you are, you stop chasing or rejecting it. You lead from it. And that changes everything—from the creativity you bring to the boardroom to the courage you carry into the unknown.
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A Demonstration In Being Love
From one of the greatest innovative minds of the 20th century:
At age 24, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman married his high school sweetheart, Arline, knowing she was dying of tuberculosis. They were married three years when she passed away. Sixteen months later, he wrote her this letter:
October 17, 1946
D’Arline,
I adore you, sweetheart.
I know how much you like to hear that—but I don’t only write it because you like it—I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.
…I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead—but I still want to comfort and take care of you—and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you—I want to do little projects with you… I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.
…you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else—but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.
…I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone—but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.
My darling wife, I do adore you.
I love my wife. My wife is dead.
Rich.
PS Please excuse my not mailing this—but I don’t know your new address.
To read more about Feynman’s love story, and the full letter, visit: The Marginalian
“All attempts to deserve love serve only to prevent you from experiencing that you are love.”
Love makes the world go round.
You and I are made of it, by it, and for it.
When love is your native design, you don’t have to earn it; you only have to open to it. Imagine showing up to your next strategy meeting grounded in the unshakable reality that you are love. Imagine negotiating, innovating, or making high-stakes calls from a place already whole, not scrambling to prove yourself worthy.
That’s when vision expands.
That’s when relationships deepen.
That’s when the work stops being a grind and starts being a gift.
Reflect this week:
In what ways do I welcome or shut myself off from love?
Do I intentionally love those I lead?
How would cultivating love in our mission change our company culture?
When I see myself as love, how does that change my everyday experience?
You were designed for love. Stop waiting to deserve it. Start leading from it.
Keep creating!
key takeaways
Why is love a leadership advantage?
Because it stabilizes your mind under pressure, builds trust, and fuels innovation; turning strain into sustainable results.How does leading from love impact performance?
It strengthens teams, sparks creativity, and sustains energy without the grind, leading to more enduring impact.Do leaders need to earn love before leading from it?
No, love isn’t earned; it’s lived. The most effective leaders see themselves as being love, not striving for it.
May you prosper in every way!
Becky & TPL Team
52 Maxims of Conscious Choosing To Create the Deeply Satisfying Life You Desire.