The art of receiving

Why learning to receive might be the most radical act of love you ever practice.

We talk a lot about love. How to give it. How to show up. How to be a better partner, friend, human. But there's one piece of the conversation that almost always gets left out — and I think it might be the most important one.

How to actually receive it.

Not the surface-level stuff. Not a polite "thank you" when someone holds the door open. I mean fully receiving. Letting love land. Letting it in.

Here's a tiny example that's stayed with me: compliments. For most of my life, the moment someone paid me one, I'd minimize it. Deflect it. Wave it away like a compliment was a wasp at a picnic. "Oh, this old thing?" "Really? I'm not sure about it." "You're too kind." Sound familiar?

The thing is — it wasn't that I didn't want the compliment. It just made me uncomfortable. And so I pushed it away. Which, when I finally understood it, felt a lot like being handed a gift and putting it straight in the bin.

Pushing love away — even the small, everyday kind — is practice. Just not the kind that serves you.

Because if we can't receive a kind word about our haircut, how are we going to receive the deeper love our hearts are actually longing for?

Love needs to flow in two directions

This is something I genuinely didn't know for a long time. I thought love was mostly about giving. And I was excellent at giving. Too excellent, honestly.

Over-giving was my specialty. My love language, my identity, my default setting — always the one who gave, always the one with a finger on everyone else's pulse, always the one who didn't ask for anything in return. (While secretly, of course, wanting it. That's the quiet lie at the centre of over-giving: we tell ourselves we want nothing back, but we do. We all do. And there is nothing wrong with that.)

I lived that way for over 40 years. And I can tell you with complete certainty: it doesn't work. Not for love. Not for connection. Not for the kind of relationships that nourish our souls — the ones where love actually reaches the parts of us that are most alive.

Because love that only flows one way isn't love — it's performance. And performance is exhausting.

For love to grow, to expand, to become the living, breathing thing it's meant to be — it needs to move in both directions. Giving and receiving. In balance. In flow.

This has been my practice

For the past year, one of my biggest areas of focus in my spiritual practice has been exactly this — learning to receive without immediately feeling the urge to give something back. To let a kindness just... be. To sit with someone's generosity without needing to balance the scales.

I'm not going to pretend I'm all the way there. But I'm close. And honestly? It's changed everything.

Right now, Theo and I are on our way to France — currently somewhere in Germany, watching the landscape change outside the window. And these past nine days have been a kind of living classroom. Friends and family have poured love over us at every stop. Meals cooked, beds made up, arms wide open. Pure, uncomplicated warmth everywhere we turned.

I believe that life — the universe, God, a higher power, whatever name feels true to you — is always giving us exactly the lessons we need to grow in love and expand our souls. And so I don't think it's a coincidence that just as I've been deepening this practice of receiving, life handed me nine days of nothing but that.

Instead of deflecting it, minimising it, or immediately trying to reciprocate — I practiced receiving it. With my whole heart. And it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever let myself experience.

The universe wants to give. There is an abundance of love available to us at all times. But we have to be open to it. We have to make room. We have to actually let it in.

Where to start

If any of this sounds familiar — if you recognise yourself in the over-giver, the deflector, the one who waves away compliments and quietly wonders why love never quite reaches the depth you're longing for — I want you to start here.

Not by giving less. That's not the point.

But by asking yourself, honestly: From where am I giving right now? Is it from genuine fullness and joy? Or from an old, tired pattern that says it's safer to give than to need?

And then: Am I as good at receiving as I am at giving?

If the answer is no — which, if you're like I was, it probably is — then let that be your invitation. Start small. Let the compliment land. Say thank you and mean it. Let someone do something for you without rushing to return the favour. Notice how it feels. Notice what comes up.

Because when giving and receiving find their balance, something opens. Love begins to flow in a way that feels genuinely expansive — not like something you're managing or maintaining, but something that's actually alive.

And that, I believe, is what we're all really longing for.

My invitation to you this week: put your focus on receiving. Just for a little while. And see what happens. If this touched something deeper — receiving is just one piece of the journey. The patterns that keep love small deserve more than a week of attention.

That is what Manifest — Next Level of Love is for. A 4-month journey into what blocks love and what opens it. Not as an idea. As a lived practice.

Learn more and join the journey here. 🌿 With Love Beatrice