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I know how it feels to have people I care about (family and friends) choose to stay in abusive relationships.  From the outside looking in the view for those of us who appreciate that love does not abuse, use, control or prevent someone from interacting with his/her family and other people is so clear.  Yet if we have ever been on the inside looking out then we also appreciate what a challenge it is to step away from a situation when we believe the person hurting us loves us and someday will change. We know what it is like to lack self-respect, self-worth, and self-love.

No matter how much we want to help someone see the truth of his or her situation we cannot. No matter how much we love them our love is not powerful enough to cause other people to wake up to how they are allowing themselves to be treated. The only love powerful enough to cause someone to walk away from abuse is self-love.

While we cannot make other people love themselves we sure can show them what it looks like.  We can be examples that what they truly want, deep within their heart and beyond the fear, is really possible for them too.

A big misconception we have is that it is possible, and often our duty, to love someone more than we love ourselves.  I was raised to believe this.  I was supposed to love a religious savior, or God, or another person more than myself. So I spent much of my life attempting to do this and I failed miserably.

Why? Because love is more than affection or caring for someone or something; love is behavior.  To love is to be kind, patient, forgiving, loyal, honest, etc.

It is only possible to be forgiving with another when I forgive myself first.  It is only possible to be honest with another if I am honest with myself first.  It is only possible to give patience, loyalty, and kindness to someone else when those qualities are first within me to give.

Loving ourselves first is NOT selfish as some of us are taught to believe.  Giving the behaviors of love to ourselves, making them a real and consistent part of our everyday interactions, is the only way we can give love to another.

Often I am contacted by people who have been left in relationship and they are desperate to get the person back.  Why? If someone does not want to be with me why would I want to force them to?

Love is not about coercing someone into something they do not want to do.  Love is setting someone free if that is what he or she wants even if they did make a promise to stay.

Just because we are left does not mean we are not good enough. It simply means he or she was not the right person for us. Our self-love and respect depends on accepting that when someone leaves, even if that is for another person, it is for the best, even if we cannot in the present moment see how that can be true. One day we will.

For twenty two years I was a slave to cigarettes. Some days I smoked two packs. Back then it was like setting a $5 bill a day on fire. Not to mention the constant coughing, bad breath, horrible smelling clothing, reoccurring bronchitis, and inability to walk up a flight of stairs without having to rest. I was only in my early forties and I was terrified of dying. Yet, day after day, year after year, I continued to justify smoking. Just like any addiction, smoking was my way of stuffing emotional pain so with each inhale I sucked in more self-hatred, denial, and disappointment.

While I hated being under the control of a tiny white tube of tobacco, I believed I was too weak-willed to quit. Until one day it hit me. I was NOT weak at all. I was strong for having successfully survived all of the crap life had thrown at me. No, I was just scared of what life would be like and who I would be without the emotional crutch I’d used for over two decades.

Accepting the fact I was using cigarettes to avoid opening up to loving and respecting myself, was the game-changing “aha.”  The truth was that no matter how painful my life had been, intentionally continuing to hurt myself was even more painful and disappointing. A little over ten years ago, at 9 p.m. on a Sunday evening, I put cigarettes down for good.

When we finally decided to love ourselves enough to do whatever it takes to accomplish a goal we will succeed.  It begins with an intentional choice to stop allowing something to control us and we start controlling ourselves.

 

One day I witnessed a full blown ego-battle between two staff people at my gym. It began when I overhead the sales director arguing with someone on the phone. Suddenly he slammed the receiver down, hanging up on the caller. The person immediately called back to complain to the general manager.

Then without regard to other employees or to the members of the gym the general manager proceeded to scream at the sales director from across the room.  He screamed back.  Everyone in the gym overheard the bitter exchange that included steady streams of profanity from both sides.

At one time I too believed ego-boxing with someone would result in either getting my way or the other person would admit they were wrong. However, I do not remember even one time I allowed my ego to engage another person when I actually got the response my ego said I would.

No matter how other people behave it is always our choice to fall victim to our impulsive ego’s demands to be defended, or to be proven right, or to get someone to fall in line.  We also have the choice to take a deep breath, count to five and lead with our responsible heart to find a better, gentler, more responsible way to settle our differences.

RYS 44: Do Better Because You Know Better (podcast) http://romancingyoursoul.com/rys-44/

Do you acknowledge the person in the mirror? [Video]

I enjoy cooking, so last Thanksgiving I wanted to prepare everything for the meal. My mother-in-law has been cooking for about eighty-two and I thought it would be a great gift for her to have a break. So last week when she asked what she could bring I said, “How about you just come and enjoy the day.” From the look on her face I immediately knew she was disappointed. But in that moment I was only focused on my desire to give her the gift of not having to cook.

Later that day it hit me. While I thought I was giving her a gift I was actually refusing her the pleasure she gets from cooking. I called her and said, “Elsa, what do you want to bring.” I heard her light up when she replied, “I’d like to make the dressing and Brussels sprouts with mushrooms, onion and garlic too,” she said with joy in her voice. “That will be wonderful,” I told her.

Thanksgiving is about gratitude and I am grateful to have honored her desire to contribute.  In the end I really did give her the best gift and it gave me so much more joy than the happiness I thought she would get from not having to cook.

Be open to receiving as much as you give.  Other people’s joy comes from giving just as your’s does too.  Let them have that joy.  Happy Thanksgiving!

I was downsized from an executive position right before 9-11. Without any prospect of a job in the city where I’d lived for twenty years I had to move away. I was forced to sell the new home I’d moved into only two years before. I had to leave the beautiful English cottage garden I’d built stone by stone and plant by plant. I lost my relationship. It seemed overnight I was involuntarily removed from the familiar, from friends, from the life I knew.

In the end I lost almost everything. But in the process I found myself. That is why I can promise you from experience that when you look at the challenges of life as opportunities to grow, you will blossom.

No matter what you are going through, no matter how much you have lost, there is a very good reason.  Look for the silver lining, the light at the end of the tunnel.  Determine what about your life was not going well that caused this upset in your plans.  Be open to the fact that the universe (life) is asking you to grow, change, and move forward.

I live in Los Angeles, California, the second largest city in the United States. My neighbors are a cross-section of humanity from around the world that represents almost every religion, race, and culture on earth.  They are kind, respectful, responsible, and cooperative and are working each day to move our planet in the right direction.

I do not believe I am the only person blessed to be surrounded by caring and loving folks who are being the change we want to see.  I believe each of us is. We simply keep our mind and heart open to notice.

This week notice how many acts of kindness you witness by the good people in your community.  Look for the positive and be grateful for all the wonderful good that is being created.  Be part of that movement.

We cannot prevent someone we love from experiencing pain. Sometimes the very thing another person needs to change and grow is to be left on their own to face the challenges of life. We are not abandoning them. Rather we are allowing them the opportunity to stand on their own two feet because if someone is always there to pick up the pieces or make the decisions or pay the bills they cannot learn to depend on themselves.

No matter how hard it is to witness, in my experience, it is often when we are at our lowest that we rise up and grab the rope to save ourselves. Having the courage to let someone do this for themselves is a part of loving them. In fact, one of the greatest ways we can love someone is to let them go because codependency is not love. It is ego’s desire to control, or fix, or change disguised as love.

I have been deeply hurt in my life. Betrayed, ridiculed, bullied, slandered, abused. For a time I carried past pain into each new day. It was so exhausting. One day I just could not carry the anger bags any longer. I set them down by making a list of everyone and everything that hurt me. Then I forgave. Regardless what other people did to me it was the act of my forgiving them that set me free.

Focusing on how you have been wronged does not allow you to appreciate how much better you can be for having been through the experience.  It is the hard lessons in life that give you the opportunity to learn the skills necessary to avoid the same or similar hard problems in the future.

No matter if it is a job, relationship, interaction with a child or parent, or just an encounter with a driver it pays to pay attention to what life is asking you to learn from the experience. Sometimes that is learning how to forgive so you can move on.