Love doesn't run out

My friend Clare Norman, MCC (who's written several wonderful coaching books, including The Transformational Coach, which I highly recommend) has offered a guest blog for the Awaken community this week. The two of us have been having a joyful collaboration, sharing our thoughts on love and coaching. What a kindred spirit!

Clare writes: 

Love Doesn't Run Out

The word “uninhibited” keeps coming up for me in therapy. We were talking about how I show up in my marriage when my therapist asked about being more uninhibited in the kindness that I offer. That question connected with something deeply buried inside of me. I’d already grown so much more loving in my coaching over the past year through therapy, but this conversation unleashed something even deeper—a new level of care I didn’t know I was still holding back.

The coaching and supervision sessions I describe as most alive, most effective, are the ones where I have stopped limiting how much care I show; where I loved the thinkers and supervisees with whom I work, without rationing that agape love.

That got me thinking. Love doesn’t run out.

So why do we ration it? 

We’ve Been Taught Scarcity

I keep thinking about wartime rationing. Careful distribution of scarce resources. Make it last. Don’t waste a crumb.

We don’t ration food anymore, but we do seem to ration love. As if kindness and love might run out if we’re too generous with it.

But love isn’t money. Nor food.

We absorb messages about emotional restraint. Be professional. Stay composed. Don’t get too attached. Keep some distance.

I’ve written before about how we’re taught not to bring emotions into the workplace. As though care diminishes competence. As though loving those we work with somehow makes us less effective. (At Awaken, we also believe emotions belong in the coaching space. They are vast, powerful, and transformative - see our reflections in How Big Are Emotions?)

Women get told they’re “too emotional” when they care openly. Men get told that caring diminishes their authority. Both messages create the same result—we learn to ration what should and could flow freely.

Why We Hold Back

We worry about how it looks to put people before profit. Will we seem soft? Unprofessional? Naive in a profit-driven world? Less committed to results? This, even though, as I saw Edna Murdoch write, “love is the precondition for performance”.  So it’s not either/or.  It’s both/and.  And it doesn’t cost us anything at all to be more loving.

But perhaps it has cost us non-financially in the past? Most of us have stories of times we offered care and got burned. These experiences teach us to pull back. To offer less. To protect ourselves through withholding. I recognise this for myself. And yet, when I have untethered myself from fear, I have been so pleasantly surprised at the response.

If you grew up where love felt conditional—based on good behaviour or achievement—you may have learned to make your own love conditional too. You ration it the way it was (seemingly) rationed to you.

Maybe there’s something else…a feeling of “who am I to love this person so much?” Like we need qualifications to care. Like our love isn’t good enough or wanted. Poppycock!! 

What I’ve Discovered

Everything we believe about love’s scarcity is wrong.

The more I care for my clients, the more capacity I have to care. Each genuine interaction expands something in me rather than depleting it.

When I’m being authentically loving in a session—really present, genuinely affected by them—I feel energised. It’s the holding back, the calculating how much care to show, that exhausts me.

Here’s the strange bit. When we ration love, we create exactly what we’re afraid of. Environments where care feels scarce. People mirror back the emotional caution we project.

Love replenishes itself. Not like a battery that needs recharging, but like a muscle that gets stronger with use. (This is why we teach coaching at the MCC level from day one at Awaken. Presence, depth, and love are not extras — they are the essence of what makes MCC-level coaching unique.)

What Uninhibited Love Looks Like

In my coaching and supervision now, I don’t calculate how much attention to give. I express genuine delight when clients have insights. I allow myself to be moved by their courage. I care about their well-being without needing to control.

It’s spreading to other professional relationships too. Celebrating successes without worrying I seem too keen. Offering support without keeping score. Speaking up for what matters without dampening my enthusiasm.

The ripple effects are interesting. When people experience genuine care, they risk more. They bring more of themselves. They carry that experience elsewhere.  That’s what I think Edna means by love being the precondition for performance. 

A Different Kind Of Return

I’ve written before about Return on Humanity versus Return on Investment. How we’ve become obsessed with measuring everything in numbers, profits, and efficiency. But what about the returns that can’t be quantified?

My colleague Allard De Jong captured this beautifully in his writing about Return on Soul. As he puts it, if ROI asks “What did I get?”, ROS asks “Did I grow? Did I become more whole? Did I love well?”

This feels connected to why we ration love. We’ve been conditioned to think in ROI terms. What’s the return on caring this much? What if I invest emotional energy and don’t get measurable results?

But love operates on ROS principles. As Allard writes, “It’s less about accumulation and more about alignment. Less about gain and more about grace.”

When I stop rationing love in my coaching and supervision (and in life), I’m not optimising for ROI. I’m investing in something that can’t be measured but can be felt. The transformation in me. The ripple effects in my clients. The shift from transactional to transformational.

What I’m Committing To

My therapy work has led me here: I’m going to stop rationing love in my relationships.

Boundaries matter enormously. And within those boundaries, there’s no reason to hold back appropriate professional care.

Love works differently from money or time. The more you use it, the more you have. An investment in Return on Soul rather than Return on Investment.

The question isn’t whether we can afford to love fully in our professional relationships. It’s whether we can afford not to.

I’m curious what would change if more of us stopped rationing something that never runs out. If we choose ROS over ROI. Love at the helm instead of money at the helm.

Awaken’s Point of View

THANK YOU, Clare!! We couldn't agree more about unlimited love at the helm. At Awaken, we share Clare’s conviction: love doesn’t run out. We believe that coaching at its best is a spiritual practice of love — not sentimental, not soft, but fierce, freeing, and transformative.

Love in coaching looks like seeing the whole person, even when they cannot yet see their own beauty. It looks like listening until the invisible thread of connection becomes undeniable. It looks like allowing both truth and dissent to belong, because real love doesn’t silence discomfort.

We hold that love is the precondition for transformation. It is not an optional extra, but the very ground on which coaching stands.

This belief is what animates our community, our retreats, and our daily practice. When you join us in Spain, you will find yourself in a circle where love is not rationed but received and given freely, where difference is cherished, and where you can practice the spacious, courageous presence Clare describes.

About the Author
Clare Norman, MCC, is a Master Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, a Mentor Coach, and a Certified Coach Supervisor. With a Masters in Training and more than 25 years of experience in leadership development, Clare has dedicated her career to maximising individual, team, and organisational effectiveness. Her purpose is to enable people to express their needs in service of a more caring world. She is also the author of three books: The Transformational Coach (2022), Mentor Coaching: A Practical Guide (2020), and Cultivating Coachability (2024).