Learning How to Love Yourself
Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with a friend who was sharing an emotionally troubling experience she had with someone close to her. She shared how she felt about hearing they no longer wanted to have a relationship with her and how she hasn’t changed at all. She was devastated because she loves this person so much and has made many changes in her life. However she also is at a point in her life and journey where she just simply said okay and walked away.
This is something that happen to many of us, people who we care about put conditions on our relationships with them and sometimes we do it back. While this can be helpful to create healthy boundaries, there is also something else happening…..
Conditional Love
When someone says something like we need to change, or we haven’t changed enough, many of us feel the need to examine ourselves with a judgmental eye and ask questions like:
- What’s wrong with me?
- What could I have done different or better?
- What do I need to change to make them love me?
This also triggers our fears around abandonment/rejection, not being good enough, and unworthiness. The truth is these are the wrong questions for us to be asking because honestly we can do shit about whether or not someone loves us.
Asking ourselves what’s wrong with us implies that we are somehow responsible for what someone else thinks about us and/or that there is something wrong with us or we are damaged in some way.
However we are NOT.
- We can’t make someone else love us,
- We can’t control what people think about us including whether we have changed enough for them
- We can’t do anything differently from what we did in the past, we can only make new choices in the present
I figured out this important piece along my journey….
It’s not my Job Make You LOVE Me. No matter how hard I try, what I change, or what I action I take, you either choose to love me or not. The same goes for you, it is NOT your job to make someone love you.
It is our job however to LOVE OURSELVES first and foremost!
When we love ourselves and know that we are making changes, it doesn’t matter what someone else really thinks.
Most of the time people are blinded by their own bullshit to truly see us for ourselves anyways. They are clouded by their own perceptions, insecurities and triggers and they often find it incredibly hard to see things any other way. It talks a lot of personal work to be able to take someone else’s perspective even for a few seconds.
So as uncomfortable as it may be to hear someone else tell us they can’t have a relationship with us, we haven’t changed enough for them, they don’t believe we have changed, or whatever they say to put it all on us, It is not our job to make them love us or see what we have done and prove we’ve changed.
We do not have to prove anything to anyone.
With that said I should also note that it is also our job to:
- Respect ourselves enough to set boundaries that protect our energy especially around people who are harmful to us.
- Show up for ourselves by honoring our needs
- Respect other peoples opinions and boundaries, whether we agree with them or not. It is NOT our job to change their minds about anything.
This may seem a little blunt or even harsh but I truly mean it in the most empowering way. Too often we get wrapped up in trying to change and be better for someone else and in that we lose sight of ourselves. I know because this happened to me in my relationship with my first husband, Richard, I was so busy trying to be good enough for him, I almost lost the essence of who I was. (Read More about it in my Book You’re Brave Enough)
So instead of trying to prove to someone else you’ve change or why they should love you, do what my friend did and walk away. Say thank you, I respect your boundary and walk away. Then go talk to a friend or someone you can trust who can listen empathically and support you in feeling validated and understood. Its not about bashing the other people for what they said or did, its about being respectful to ourselves enough we look at what our truth is and allow them to see things the way they do.
If you've found yourself in this situation ask yourself these three questions:
- How have I been giving away my power by trying to be what someone else wants me to be
- What are 3 changes, I have noticed about myself that I am happy about?
- What are 3 things you love about yourself?
The more clarity we have about who we are, what we need and our truth, the easier it is to attract people who love us because we are who we are, not who they want us to be.
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