I’ve noticed quite a bit in my journey through this life that a lot of people are constantly in a search to find someone that loves them but they actually don’t know what they even want in a relationship because they don’t take any time in life to introspectively look to themselves to love themselves first.
People tend to do everything possible to avoid having to look to themselves first to figure out who they are and what makes them tick. The further you delve into the journey of self-discovery the easier it eventually becomes to determine what you like and what you don’t like. I also believe that once you find out the things you like about yourself, you’ll be better equipped to evaluate a potential partner because you’ve developed somewhat of security in yourself.
Then, when/if you get into a relationship you can spend more time getting to know your partner and helping them grow because you’ve already taken time outside of your relationship to get to know YOU. Now, this may sound a bit easier said than done because part of the journey of self-love is also evaluating the aspects of your self that are….shall we say problematic. Problematic may not be the best way to describe what I mean, but there are always areas of opportunity to learn about yourself and grow. That’s the real lesson anyway! The lesson is to be able to constantly learn and grow to the point that you love your true self with confidence. Self-love is not something that happens overnight and sometimes the discovery takes people an entire lifetime to gain a level of love for themselves that allows them to be free to then attempt to decipher their own meaning or purpose in life.
Falling in love with yourself is a constantly evolving process of evaluation as you journey through life. A friend asked me once, why I’m so happy. I admitted to her that I am not ALWAYS happy. I did a lot of my “self” work when I was in college. That was the first time that I was truly on my own and the time I spent to myself was used to work through the file cabinets of my mind to figure out who I was and what I like. Hold on to your horses with this geometry reference, but I see happiness and the love of one’s self as a kind of sine wave on a graph.
There will be highs and there will be lows but in general, most people should be able to maintain a somewhat constant level of happiness that is closer to the middle line if you were looking at a graph.
I told my friend that I just consciously choose to not stay in the realm of non-positivity for long so that I can return to a level normalcy on the wave of happiness. There are times of flux but once you let go of whatever is causing you malstress or whatever is having a not so positive impact on your life, you can return more quickly to the middle line or the norm.
Yes! That’s right, you have to let go!
Of course you’ll have a lot of emotions wrapped around that stressor and that usually will block you from just letting go. Once you remove your emotions from the equation and think about the situation from a place of logic or facts and focus more on a solution-type mindset, you won’t spend as much time letting go. Again, this type of thinking takes time to develop because a lot of people like to get caught up in their emotions. Emotions, even if they are on the darker side of the sine wave, sometimes feel like a warm blanket that many people just don’t want to unwrap from. We like to hold onto the blanket of emotions and keep replaying situations over and over in our minds.
How many people like to just sit and pout in anger after a heated argument? How many times do you go over the situation over and over in your head and what you would have said to try to get the best of the other person or what mean thing you would have said to hurt them in return? In actuality, that warm blanket is metaphorically covered in dirt, mold, shards of glass, gasoline and basically everything and anything that could cause you more harm if you don’t let go of your emotions during the process of letting go.
I’m not saying it’s not okay to have emotions by any means, but over time you will hopefully notice that you expend less energy and not feel so worn out crying over spilled milk and can focus on absorbing positivity so that you can share positivity with the world instead of angst. It’s okay to feel emotions, but it’s about how long you fester on emotions that are not productive in coming to a solution or moving your self forward. It’s about how quickly you return to a level of love and happiness with yourself and not allowing yourself to fester in what could be labelled as “negative” space.
Whenever you are yearning for someone to love you, learn to love yourself first. Then, when/if the love of your life comes along…..you’ll be ready! You have to remind yourself though that you will be just fine if a relationship doesn’t happy since you will hopefully have succeeded in the journey to love yourself. #selflove #loveyourselffirst #loveyourself #bekind #ItStartsHere
FYI: Once you fall in love with yourself and being positive, the next challenge is giving all the positive energy back to the world. If you my #thoughtfulthursdays, feel free to see what other challenges you can rise to by reading a few other Thoughtful Thursdays!
