It seems to me that to love your neighbor as you love yourself should require no effort.

Maybe in the sense that it is God who works through us. And if we truly believe, everything flows naturally - which requires faith in the first place. I also agree with what you said that belief will eventually evolve into faith if one is consistently obeying God's will. Merely saying that you believe God (belief) without doing anything about it means nothing. Faith without works is dead.

But I also believe that love is an action word whether towards God or neighbors. So it still requires effort because, realistically speaking, nobody can always have devout feelings, although feelings are not what God principally cares about. I don’t mean we have to force the feelings - what I’m trying to say is, it’s about the everyday stuff. Like when you don’t feel like going to church or praying, but you still do it anyway. You get my point :-))

From a nonbeliever's point of view, the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself can be a difficult - perhaps even impossible - task, especially when that neighbor often does you wrong or is clearly acting with malice. Loving your neighbors clearly doesn't mean thinking they're good fellows when it is quite plain that they are not. But this leads to another topic which is forgiveness. :-))