Especially with Valentine’s Day around the corner, the focus on finding the perfect significant other in your life, if you are single, is forefront and center, or having a deeper, connected relationship with your partner, if you are taken.
The romantic idea of love and what it brings into your life and it being everlasting is a wonderful goal to achieve. However, be-ing in a relationship takes a lot of work, effort, and the willingness to be open, vulnerable, and transparent. It takes a lot of courage and trust to put yourself out there and ask for what you need, not knowing whether or not it will get a positive response.
What I have noticed and observed is that you need to take the time to create a solid relationship with yourself and understand that being in a relationship is not to find someone to complete you, but for you to embrace your whole truth and self without reservation. If your partner doesn’t allow you to be the fullness of who you are, then before getting upset with them, look at yourself first to see if you accept all of who you are.
The truth of the matter is that until you take ownership and responsibility for how you choose to interact with others, being a direct reflection of how you treat yourself, you will keep finding yourself in similar relationships dealing with the same core issues. If you do not feel worthy enough to be loved or don’t fully believe in how amazing of a soul you are, how can anyone else see the same? If what I share resonates, then it behooves you to take time to build a special relationship with yourself.
It is so important to realize how you choose to connect with yourself ultimately will help you to have relationships of substance and in sync with you and your life. Life is what you make of it so why not live it to the fullest?
One of the curses of our minds is that it has 80% more negative thoughts than positive ones. The reason for this phenomenon is that our physiology is linked to negative feedback and it was crucial to our survival. Hence, we tend to judge ourselves more harshly than another. When judging what we do or have done, we in essence, lower the value of ourselves and have less self-love.
So, the first step is to start loving yourself, and to achieve this, you can make a list of all the moments in your life that you are ashamed of and feel guilty about. Once you have your list, you want to rank them from the most to the least in your perception. Next, you want to pick the one with the moderate charge and make another list of how this moment benefitted you when you felt ashamed. For the person you feel guilty for, how did he or she benefit from what you did or didn’t do?
The purpose of creating these lists is to get you and your mind to see that instead of feeling shame or guilt, ultimately your actions or inactions were both positive and negative. If you still feel shame or guilt for what you did or didn’t do, keep on adding to the list of benefits until you take a deep breath and feel balanced about the experience.
Another way to create a more solid relationship with yourself is to connect with your body. The more time you take to feel the subtle nuances and signals of your body when you are under stress, feel loved, feel uncertain, or self-judge harshly, will give you a greater sense and awareness, allowing you to then have the power to choose how you want to navigate the experience.
I will always focus on connecting with your body, because your body never lies to you. Period. It may create some weird health conditions, pains, and internal instability, but your body is an expression of your mental and emotional state. The hardest task is to recognize that your body creates pain and other weird sensations to get you to pause and reassess what’s going on in your life. The moment you are aligned in your heart, mind, and soul, your body shifts back into ease. The trickiest part is to know and understand that change – good or bad – will create symptoms. That is why the more connected you are to your body, the more you will trust when debilitating pain shows up, that it’s your body’s way of confirming that a good change you are making is just uncomfortable because it’s new and foreign, or the choices you are making are causing you more harm than good.
In conclusion, we are entering unprecedented times and the more you cultivate a deeper connection with your body, no matter what happens, you will have your body to confirm that your intuition and inner knowing is right on. The way you choose to perceive and live your life is ultimately your responsibility. So knowing your truth and owning who you are without any reservation will be your safeguard during these uncertain times.
