Do you yearn to feel really cherished, loved and adored in your relationship? And you’re kind of grumpy because your partner’s not giving that to you?
What I am going to suggest, and you may not like me saying this, (but I am going to say it anyway!) is that you cannot receive more love from another person than you are capable of giving yourself.
In a way that’s frustrating.
And when I understood this for the first time I was really grumpy because I wanted them to love me enough so I could love myself.
But I had it all the wrong way round and I suffered decades of pain before I understood this one simple truth:
You can only receive, in your outer life, the same amount of love you are able to give yourself inside.
WHAT??
Love is first and foremost an inside job.
OUCH.
No-one is going to be able to love you more than you love yourself.
OOF.
It’s not easy hearing this for the first time.
After decades of believing that someone was going to sweep into my life and rescue me from my unloved-ness, I learnt that that someone else had to be ME?!
It makes sense.
Because another person can love you until they are blue in the face, but if you are unable to RECEIVE their love, you will not feel loved.
The parts of us that prevent us from loving ourselves are the same parts that get in the way of us receiving love from others.
So, as we learn to receive love from ourselves, we are able to receive love from other people.
And I will tell you that after the initial OOF and OUCH, learning this was a completely liberating joy!!
It had become exhausting searching for something outside of me to make up for what I was lacking on the inside.
It was such a relief to find that I could give myself all the love that I needed, desired and yearned for.
It was such a relief that I didn’t need to be thinner or younger or quieter, or funnier, or sexier or any other ‘er’ to be worthy of love.
I was and I am worthy of love because I am me.
All I had to do was learn how to receive my love, first from myself. As I received love from myself the love from others would follow.
I will admit, it’s a continuing practice.
The first thing I had to do was become really conscious of the inner critic in my head. The voice that is constantly judging me, criticising me, putting me down, treating me like shit. Treating me far worse than I would ever treat anyone else; like a woodpecker, peck, peck, peck, peck….driving me completely insane.
I had to find a way to lovingly retire that voice and allow in other voices.
And essentially that was just through practice. It was about changing my blueprinting, listening to loving words, listening to myself pour love into myself and incorporating those loving words with loving touch like through breast and/or body massage.
When I moisturise my body, as I do after a shower every day, I do it with so much love, I will pour love into my body using my hands and my voice.
I have affirmations all over my mirror, so that as I look at myself in the mirror I see the words I need to say to myself. I fill my mind with those words rather than the habitual woodpecker voices in my head.
I learnt to incorporate love and gratitude for myself. I learned to turn my gratitude back on myself. Being grateful to all of my body parts and my characteristics, helped me move from being constantly judgemental and critical to feeling awe and wonder at the amazingness of my body.
Being grateful to myself helped me to love myself. The more I loved myself the more gratitude I had for myself and the more gratitude I could feel for myself the more I loved myself. It’s a glorious virtual cycle!
The more I fill the cells of my being with my own love, gratitude and self acceptance, the more I am able to show up in the world as a woman who knows she is loved. Who is filled to the brim with love exactly as she is.
And the beautiful thing is that because this became my habit a number of years ago, I am absolutely loving myself as I mature into an older, fuller, wrinkler, drier woman! It’s just a habit to love my body, my lines, my wrinkles, my belly and my bottom.
Is it always easy?
No! I still have the judgy, critical woodpecker in my head! What I have learned to do is lovingly invite my woodpecker to go and woodpecker somewhere else!
And leave me alone to fill my days with love, appreciation, awe and wonder.
Photo byDe'Andre Bush onUnsplash