Wouldn’t it be easier if it was other people’s responsibility to accept us and love us?
We just coast through life being loved and appreciated by someone else.
It would be nice but not very realistic. More importantly, it would be putting the work of loving and accepting you in other people’s hands.
Watch more to learn Kajal’s take in this follow up video.
Kajal Pandey is a transformational life coach and truth teacher. She has an excellent meditation class you can pick up here. Learn more about her work on her website at www.kajalpandey.com and follow her on Instagram here.
“I think the problem is that we depend on our loves to love us the way we should love ourselves.” Unknown
You blame your ex.
You believe your ex may have been the devil incarnate.
You believe your ex ruined your life and treated you worse than the worst person you’ve met today.
Why couldn’t they have loved you the way you wanted to be loved!?!
Isn’t that a partner’s job?
To love you unconditionally, without judgment and without hurting you?
Is that so much to ask?
Not really, except it wasn’t your ex who did you like this for you to blame your ex.
It wasn’t your ex who treated you badly first.
It wasn’t your ex who loved you badly first.
It’s easy to blame everything on your ex and consider him to be the bogeyman.
However, more likely than not, it wasn’t your ex who did you wrong.
Let’s go back in time.
When I was growing up, the people who mistreated me more than I could have imagined were my parents.
I doubt they did this maliciously or intentionally but without question, the way my parents spoke to me, punished me and disciplined me had a lot to do with how I turned out.
Now, before you jump ahead here, the point of this story isn’t to blame our parents, as much as we’d like to do that.
Our parents and families set the standard of what love looks like but…they royally screwed it up for many of us.
Your parents create the terrible soil for you to grow in:
Your parents likely spoke badly to you.
They criticized you unfairly and held you to impossible standards.
They likely insulted your intelligence
Made you feel unworthy
They must have sinned in a previous life to have given life to you (hey Indian parents!).
If it wasn’t your parents, it was your family.
If it wasn’t your family, other influences in your life made you treat yourself badly.
So, you inherited this problem that showed up later in your marriage and your spouse didn’t help with it.
How do we forgive the people who hurt us and forgive the people who didn’t love us like we were supposed to have been loved?
How do we then learn to love ourselves the way we want to be loved?
Blaming your ex and others for not loving us correctly is easy. Taking responsibility for our healing and our loving is hard.
Yet this is without question the hardest work that we have to do, especially coming back from a breakup or divorce.
The greatest factor in changing the way we look at ourselves, treat ourselves and deal with ourselves is how much we care for and love ourselves.
I’ve discovered that all our interpersonal successes, all our emotional and physical successes, all our achievements and worldly successes come down to this one thing.
So, let’s stop putting the responsibility squarely on our exes.
Don’t blame your ex. Let’s not blame your family either. They carried their own wounds and hurts from generations before.
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?” Rumi
It was the holidays.
It was the New Year.
It was just Valentine’s day.
When do we ever start the diet?
I think of myself as relatively healthy and swim a couple times a week.
Unfortunately it’s the carbs (&*$%#@@!* Indian food) and sweets (pies, cakes and candy bars) that are my downfall.
No matter how much I tried to avoid these things, I feel they are a constant and comfortable presence in my life. They constantly contribute to the additional 10 pounds of weight that I can do without.
Now, how many of us survive the holidays and stuff ourselves with all delicacies and then find ourselves in the new year resolving to eat less and be healthier?
How many times do you look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself in a dramatic tone, “why ….why did you do this? Why did you indulge and wallop those savory gulab jamuns and sweet potato pies !!!”
How many times do you avoid looking at the mirror when you walk into the bathroom ?
How many times have you thought to yourself that you only want to look at yourself after you’re back to your ideal weight?
Maybe I’m oversharing here but the additional 10 pounds of weight – the “comfort pounds” as I’ll now start referring to them as are visibly more apparent when I look at myself in the mirror.
I wouldn’t usually notice this weight (trick here is to regularly buy oversized pants and shirts J so you’ll never notice when your weight creeps up by a few pounds here and there).
Anyway, where were we?
Oh yeah, looking at mirrors.
I wouldn’t notice this weight…except…
when looking at myself shaving or brushing my teeth, looking into the mirror.
I would notice my eating habits, my love for that cocaine like substance, sugar, and the additional comfort pounds that are now part of my life.
The Notorious B.I.G used to say “Mo money, mo problems” but let me venture to say…
More mirror, more problems.
Which now brings me to a topic that I touched on last week.
How to recognize our past blame at our ex’s and start shifting of responsibilities back to ourselves.
I talked about how to stop blaming our ex’s and taking responsibility for our lives if we wanted to move on.
While we do need to end the blame game, your ex was helpful in one way.
Your ex was the mirror to yourself.
Your ex helped show where the flaws and spider webs were.
Your ex helped show you what needed a fix-up, a touch-up or a complete make-over.
You likely hated every minute that you were shown these flaws because this space is uncomfortable and unpleasant.
Yet instead of looking at this as something to work on or improve, you likely got angry and frustrated with your ex.
You likely demonized them and wondered what was wrong with them.
You likely told all your friends and family that you were being tortured and couldn’t handle the nastiness of the relationship.
It was our flaws but we made the person in the mirror responsible, not realizing that we were ultimately the ones in the mirror.
No point beating up ourselves about this now.
You can’t change the past.
You can reflect on it.
You can inquire about what were the things you missed looking in the mirror.
You can take responsibility for it.
You can get to work on improving those things.
I’m going to share what one of the biggest shortcomings/flaws that our ex’s mirrored back to us next week.
In the meantime, what did your ex show you about yourself?
What did you need to work on?
What are your skeletons?
What did you see in the mirror?
Hit reply and let me know.
And of course, if you’re not on the V-team email list, get on it please 🙂
Hi, I’m Vishnu
I help people overcome their devastating breakups and divorces and find love again. Instead of visiting the Himalayas, sign up below and join me. I am taking a writing break but will be back soon.
This guide is free. A ticket to the Himalayas is $2000. Your move.
