The middle. That’s where I begin. Or maybe it’s the end of something and the beginning of a new chapter, a new life. Somewhere in all the mess of love. Loving myself. Loving others. Feeling rejected. I came to understand how I had put pieces of my happiness in the hands of others. My thoughts used to say if someone didn’t like me, I couldn’t be happy or found lovable. How often do we let the world around us influence our being, our self-love? How many people won’t allow themselves to be happy until the next something – promotion, lose 20 pounds, do everything on the to-do list, meet a great partner, get married, and on and on?
The book Awareness put this perfectly – “I’m ready to be happy provided I have this and that and the other thing. But this is really to say to our friend or to our Gad or to anyone, ‘You are my happiness. If I don’t get you, I refuse to be happy.’…We’ve been taught to place our happiness in them.” By Anthony De Millo.
Instead of buying into society’s definition of fulfillment in love, what about the love that comes from the core of you? The love you feel when you don’t think about material things or people external to you. When you look back and see those moments of joy when you weren’t caught up in the material and external world, but purely the moment. There is no comparing. Often these moments are when you’re alone. No phones, only you and nature or you and the peace of feeling your heart. You believe in possibilities again. You believe in you. It doesn’t matter if the man (or woman) you want to see has texted, because he (she) isn’t even important to the core of who you are. They have no impact on that moment. Your genuine happiness isn’t being dictated by whether you received a text or not, or if you will. You know the love in your life isn’t reflected in those around you, it’s reflected from you.
Can you imagine letting go of holding onto familiarity, letting go of hoping for someone who isn’t making any investment in you, letting go of hoping your job will get better? If we could, when we do…imagine it…you no longer live in the state of fear. Then, we move into the world of forward motion and take risks that bring us joy. We risk the known for the unknown. Risking now, risking a sure job, a sure man, a sure today for a more fulfilling tomorrow because in doing that you may be moving toward your dream and not some societal definition of dreams or love or success. Your definition. Your heart’s desire.
Rejection brought me to see me, to love me. Without rejection I wouldn’t be in this place. I wouldn’t have gone to a Tony Robbins conference to break through old thinking habits a year and a half ago. I wouldn’t have come across the book my coach recommended that just upended my life again on this journey. I was rejected and ghosted and back again a small number of times in a couple of months. At one point, I stopped asking what I had done wrong. At one point, I crumbled to the fear of being alone forever because I thought I shouldn’t be. At one point, I was done creating the emotional pain I was experiencing in dating and relationships because I hit a pain threshold and decided that’s enough. I could see how so much of the pain was created by my thoughts. I used to hear an incessant string of you are not enough because someone ghosted you or kept seeing others, or how could I have a relationship if I didn’t 100% love myself first, or didn’t meet some perfect image of myself or be all things to all people and then I would be enough. What an impossible task. So many people have figured this out in life, and it makes my heart smile because to get to this point of knowing you are enough exactly as you are right now, is freedom. You stop listening to the voice telling you, you are not enough. That voice is wrong. You are exactly enough. Every smile, every hug, every handshake, every tear, every outburst, every punch, everything you think is less is you-is exactly enough.
Leave a Reply