Love Is a Great Investment
Love as a Strategy
It took me many years of retraining my highly trained brain to learn to notice where I wasn’t showing up with love.
It took even longer to learn to show up with love—consistently.
And I still practice.
I know of no better investment than to embrace love as a strategy.
Not soft, sentimental love.
But steady, honest love.
Love that tells the truth, does no harm, and doesn’t require you to abandon yourself to prove you care.
Love that can be present in the hard moments—not just the easy ones.
Love in Every Nook and Cranny
To choose love as a strategy is to decide—again and again—to infuse love into every nook and cranny of your life:
with patients
with spouses
with teenagers
with parents
with colleagues
with yourself
and yes, even with healthcare systems that don’t always make it easy
That last one matters.
Because many women physicians have been trained to excel at endurance.
Love doesn’t require endurance as proof. Love requires intention.
The Question That Changes Everything
I know of no better way to practice this than asking, at every turn: What would love do?
What would love do for you?
What would love do for them?
What would love do for the world?
It sounds simple.
It isn’t.
Answering honestly asks you to slow down long enough to notice what’s true.
To notice your nervous system.
To notice your patterns.
To notice the stories you’re telling.
And then to choose—on purpose—how you want to show up.
Why This Takes Practice
Many of us were trained to lead with:
urgency
control
efficiency
fixing
proving
perfectionism
responsibility that quietly turns into over-responsibility
Love is a different operating system.
A more humane one.
And like any operating system, it takes practice—and often guidance—to learn how to run it when you’re tired, triggered, disappointed, or scared.
Learning how to ask and answer these questions authentically and honestly is one of the best investments I know.
If you’re a woman physician and you want support applying love as a strategy in your relationships—especially if resentment, overfunctioning, or neurodiverse dynamics are part of the picture—I created Mindful Love for exactly this work:
https://www.jessiemahoneymd.com/mindfulrelationshipcoaching
If what you want is broader support—relationships, leadership, identity, boundaries, and sustainable success—1:1 coaching may be the right next step.