An Inspirational Interview with Vironika Tugaleva, Author of “The Love Mindset”

Today, I’m pleased to interview Vironika Tegeleva, author of “The Love Mindset; An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness”.

In this interview, Vironika shares her transformational journey about how she discovered the love that we all so desperately need to survive. Vironika is a people lover, inspirational speaker, and reformed cynic. She helps people suffering from mental distress heal themselves and discover their inner strength.

What was the biggest challenge for you as you went on your journey to find love? How did you know that love would be the answer?

My greatest challenge in finding love was my definition of love.

When I was a kid, my father told me: “The best emotion you’ll ever experience will be love and the worst will be hate.” So, as I continued to experience more negative states, I’d label them as “hate” and as I experienced positive states, I’d label them as “love”.

The poverty of experience led me to believe that love was this addictive, painful, scarce, only-for-the-special-ones accident. Needless to say, my first romantic relationship was co-dependent, mutually abusive, and destructive. We were trying to take love from each other, never knowing what we were really looking for.

As I spiraled deeply into mental distress, addiction, and self-destruction, I rejected love.

“Love,” I used to say, “is not real. It’s a cheap excuse for dependence and abuse.”

After I had a mental breakdown, I began to face myself in the mirror. No makeup, no lies, no shield. I felt pure hatred. I continued to face her. One day, about three weeks later, I looked up into the eyes of the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I went outside and everyone looked so beautiful, so whole, so transcendent.

I thought — “Well, this must be love!”

Even then, I had no idea what I was looking for. I thought I was looking for a feeling. I became obsessed with this idea of “love.” What was happening to me? What was this amazing bliss that I would access some times and not other times?

Truly, the biggest obstacle in my way was my definition. The very moment that I realized what love really is, my life changed. Then, I could find it whenever I wanted. Then, I let myself into the secrets of my own soul.

Tell us about your book, The Love Mindset. Why did you write it and what is the message for the reader?

As I was flailing about, trying to heal myself and trying to understand this “love” thing that seemed to do a great job, I wrote. I’ve been writing since I was about four. It’s how the world makes sense to me.

I honestly think I wrote about seven different books in six months. I was trying so hard to find the answers, becoming hopeful when I found them and disappointed when they fell through.

For the sake of brevity, I will spare you the story of exactly how this happened (though you can find a detailed account within the pages of The Love Mindset). Basically, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one looking for love. I realized that love is a basic need, that we’re all looking for it, that those who hurt themselves and others are just hungry for this thing they don’t know they need.

Love, I’ve found, is the interconnected nature of everything. We feel what we call “love” when we are aware of that nature. When we aren’t aware of it, we die slowly. Sometimes, those death symptoms are called anxiety, sometimes depression, sometimes addiction.

When I realized that there was nothing wrong with me, that I wasn’t broken — I was so relieved! I was just hungry. I began to feast on love, enjoying the bliss of finally, after all those years, existing without suffering.

After I fed myself, I looked around, and I wasn’t so relieved anymore. People all around me were suffering and dying, all from the same thing. People in our culture suffer every day from a simple lack of love — which, at the core, is a simple lack of self-awareness.

I couldn’t help. I can’t really explain it any better than that. When you find something so universal, so potent, so beautiful, so misunderstood — you have to share. In the choice between helping people and letting them suffer, there is no way to be self-aware and make the latter choice. I had to do this. I had to bring this message to our world.

What would be your advice for someone searching to find the love that is missing in their life?

I would say — great job! You are halfway there!

There are two great big hurdles to overcome on this journey: 1) Understanding love as a basic need and 2) Understanding what love is and how to get it.

People who are already searching for love (and calling it love) are like a breath of fresh air to me. You’re already halfway there! It may not feel like it, but it’s the closest you can get to the path of happiness without actually being on it.

To move into step two, the essential thing is to begin thinking about thinking. We think about eating. We think about breathing. We think about drinking water. Now, the time has come to think about thinking.

Like eating and breathing, we need to think. Like eating and breathing, there is a certain type of thought that is good for us and a certain type that is toxic. Some thoughts, like some foods, make us sick, while others nourish us.

The feeling of love is accessible at any time by thinking a certain quality of thought, just like the feeling of a clear, full lungs is accessible at any time by taking a breath.

Realize that the quality of your thought, like the quality of your diet, decides the quality of your life. What you eat dictates your physical health. What you think dictates your mental health.

If you want love, really want it, then abandon all fronts of searching for it with other people. Realize that those people can only ever trigger an awareness within you that is always possible, already possible, and you can access it on your own.

Take responsibility for learning how to feel loved in an empty room. Then, when the room is full, you can have fun in your relationships. You don’t have to starve. You can feed yourself. You never have to starve from a lack of love again.

You mention in your book that there is no limit on love. Why do you think so many struggle to find love in their life and instead turn to substances to heal their pain?

Imagine a society full of people who have never heard of fruit, vegetables, or water. From the time that they are young, they are given hamburgers, potato chips, and soda pop. This constitutes their diet.

What can they do?

Of course, they will not stop eating the junk, because they have drives within them to eat and to drink. The drive says: “eat!” Society says: “This is food!” So, they eat this “food.” They get sick. They wonder why.

We’re like this with love.

Many of the people who work with me have made it into their 40s or even 50s never having been exposed, even for one second, to the idea that we need to feel connected to live and that this experience of connection is available to anyone, anytime.

Why do you think so many people who go through the 12 step program end up addicted to God? Their drive to experience connection is strong and religion provides that.

We will all, always, do the best we can to fulfill our drives for our basic needs.

If the most connected we’ve ever felt with other people is when we pop some MDMA, we’ll do MDMA. If the most self-aware we’ve felt is on psilocybin mushrooms, we’ll do mushrooms. If the most liberated we’ve felt from the confines of our own repressed emotions is when we’re drunk, we’ll drink our livers away.

The answer to addiction is not in stopping the addiction. If someone comes along and teaches you to stop eating nails, your stomach may feel at ease for a while, but what about when you get hungry? If nails are all you have in the cupboard, you’ll eat nails. If self-pity and self-destruction are all you have, you’ll eat that.

The answer to addiction is realizing that you can never be addicted to what you really need and you can’t get enough of what you don’t need. You can’t be addicted to water, air, or apples. By the same token, you can’t be addicted to love. If you’re addicted, it’s not love.

When you learn to take care of your mind like this — to nourish it with the thoughts it needs — the addictive impulses will naturally fall away, just like hunger pains naturally fall away when you eat.

What role does love have in recovery? How can having the Love Mindset help a person stay in long-term recovery?

I honestly think it might be the only way. Those who stay clean for a lifetime might not call it a “love mindset,” but they definitely have one.

The love mindset teaches that there is no good or bad in human nature, there is only hunger and health. There’s no such thing as an addictive personality or a predisposition to addiction. There is only a person who isn’t getting their basic needs met.

Have you ever heard of a marathon runner addicted to cocaine?

There’s a reason why you haven’t.

When we find a painless, self-administered, healthy way to get a certain feeling, we will never buy that feeling again. We’re built for change. We’re built for healing.

I think the word “recovery” itself can be dangerous. I think the safest way out of addiction is to realize that we were just trying to fill a love-sized hole with drugs and to find a way to fill that hole in a way that nurtures, supports and honours us.

There is no chance of relapse if we are accessing all of the feelings we want in our daily lives without substances.

People only relapse because they stop the drug and they don’t ever meet the need. That is a ticking time bomb. Your natural drives to feel interconnected will overtake you. If you do not find some other way to meet them, you’ll run back to your dark passenger.

The love mindset provides a method of self-healing that is long-term. Then, even when the addictive impulses have passed and something else surfaces (something like, perhaps, trauma or anger), the love mindset can help us with that too.

The power of the love mindset is the power of knowing how to breathe in a world of people who are suffocating with their fingers plugging their noses.

When you realize that you can just stop blocking up your perception, stand tall, and breathe in love as easily as you breathe in oxygen, you will never need to destroy yourself again.

That is a promise from me to that part of you that already knows this and has always known this. This is to that part that searched for magic when you were young and that always had a sneaking suspicion that there was a better way, an easier way, a way to live without struggling. There is. There really is.

Vironika is a people lover, inspirational speaker, reformed cynic, and bestselling author of The Love Mindset. She helps people suffering from mental distress heal themselves and discover their inner strength. She is a new breed of people-helper who won’t call herself an expert or a guru. She’ll help you become the expert on yourself. You’re invited to read more about Vironika and get a free sneak preview of The Love Mindset.