Regardless of who loves you and validates you, you can’t invite romance into your life until this happens first.
Don’t believe the Hollywood hype and pop song lyrics You are not complete and whole simply because someone else loves you. Click on the above video to watch.
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“What if pain – like love – is just a place brave people visit?” Glennon Doyle, Love Warrior
Love Warrior is a book about how to turn pain and suffering into love.
This past October 27th, in Visalia, California, I watched Glennon Doyle deliver a sermon about becoming a love warrior. Her commentary about Jesus left me awestruck.
Just to be clear, Glennon isn’t a minister and doesn’t possess religious credentials of any kind.
I found myself sitting in the auditorium of love, listening to Glennon preach the doctrine of love.
So, back to Jesus for a minute.
Jesus never avoided the crucifixion, Glennon reminded us. He knew that pain and suffering awaited Him, but He didn’t shy away from His path. It was the pain, struggle and crucifixion that led to the resurrection.
It was the crucifixion that led to the rising.
Have you noticed that most of us usually try to run from our pain?
You and I would do just about anything to avoid feeling bad for a few hours.
Glennon made me question why we run from our pain when, in fact, pain will lead to our own personal resurrection. It’s the pain that will transform us and help us rise again.
In her popular memoir, Love Warrior, Glennon takes the reader on her life journey through bulimia and alcoholism to marriage, betrayal and divorce.
She uses her life story to show us that we, too, can become the alchemists of our own lives by transforming pain to love.
Here are 7 important life lessons from Glennon’s memoir, Love Warrior, to help you become a love warrior in your life.
1. Just the next right thing.
“I will go to sleep. The sun will rise. I will make breakfast. I will take the kids to school. I will come home and rest…Just the next right thing, one thing at a time.”
When, at a therapy session, Glennon found out about her husband’s betrayal, she panicked as she watched her life spin out of control. Not knowing what to do after coming out of that session, she did the only thing she could do with her life.
When you are in situations of panic or disaster, or have hit rock bottom, your plan can be as simple as hers.
Just take the very next step.
You may not know what all the right things are and what the future holds but you can do the next right thing. Whatever feels right next, do that.
2. Doing the precise thing.
When other people blamed or scorned her for her dissolving marriage, Glennon stopped asking for advice from others and pretending that she didn’t know what to do. She stopped fretting about whether her next actions were right or wrong.
“It’s about doing the precise thing. The precise thing is always incredibly personal and often makes no sense to anyone else.”
You have to do what’s right for you. The divine is speaking to you at all times and guiding you in your life. You know what’s best for yourself. The precise thing is the right thing for you to do next.
3. Tear down the walls and face what’s underneath.
When Glennon didn’t know how to fix – or whether to save – her marriage, she realized that it wasn’t about her marriage.
“All I know is that I need to tear down my own walls and face what’s underneath.”
You have little control of the circumstances and people outside yourself.
To become who you are, you must be willing to go within. To fix the outside, you have to start with the inside.
To progress and become who you are may require going backward and unbecoming who you were.
The journey to who you are requires an internal detour.
4. Sitting in the hot loneliness.
You have a sense of loneliness within you that you may have tried to escape, just as Glennon tried to do.
“I thought I needed to hide these feelings, escape them, fix them, deliver myself from them…I didn’t know that it would pass.”
Just like a hot yoga class that Glennon found herself in, sometimes all it takes is sitting on your yoga mat, feeling pain and not running out of the hot yoga studio.
The pain may be uncomfortable and the heat intolerable, as will be the loneliness. However, if you sit tight and allow the uncomfortable feelings to pass, you’ll realize that you can get through it. The feelings of discomfort are temporary and passing.
5. You are everything you already need.
“What if I don’t need Craig to love me perfectly because I’m already loved perfectly? What if I am the warrior I need? What if I am my own damn hero?”
Your true identity is one of love. You came from love and you are love.
Yet you look for love on the outside. You’re looking for a person to love and complete you when you don’t need anyone to do that.
You just have to observe and embrace the love that’s already there.
Once you’ve embraced your true identity as a love warrior, you will become the most powerful force on Earth.
6. Be real, not perfect.
“I tell them that we can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. We must decide.”
If you choose to show up in the world as perfect, you have to be an inauthentic version of yourself.
If you choose to be real, you show up as a tender-hearted and vulnerable person. This person will likely suffer hurt more often but will be much stronger than the superficial version of yourself.
You don’t have to hide, terrified about what people think of you.
Show up as how you are with your faults and shortcomings. Your true self is your strength and your authenticity is your gift to the world.
7. Trust yourself.
“I will not betray myself. I will trust the wisdom of the still small voice…I will trust her and I will trust myself.”
It’s easy to let outside society dictate your decisions and actions.
Our intuition is strong, Glennon reminds us, and we should listen to it.
The inner voice that you usually drown out in the midst of a busy life is the voice of reason and wisdom.
The more in tune you are with that voice, the more you’ll take actions that are in your best interest.
Listen to it, trust it and know that it will guide you to what’s right for you in your life.
* Thank you to Adrianne Hillman for hosting the event. Pick up Love Warrior here in the Amazon store.
As my life swirled out of control upon the end of my marriage, house and career, I fell into a state of hopelessness and despair. “What is the point of it all?” I asked myself. “What even matters?” I wondered. “Is there life after heartbreak and loss?” I pondered.
Getting out of bed was difficult. I found myself in tears more than I had at any point in my life. The tsunami of personal, emotional and financial failure was overwhelming! It was also my life’s greatest wake-up call.
Since that time 7 years ago, I’ve done everything I can to regain a grip on my life. After reading hundreds of books; reflecting for hundreds of hours with therapists, coaches and healers; writing thousands of words and implementing dozens of life hacks, here’s what I’ve discovered.
Although it came with much pain, suffering and tears, I’ve distilled my life’s biggest learnings into these 7 lessons.
These are 7 simple personal growth lessons I’ve learned in the past 7 years.
1. The insides matter more than the outsides.
We spend almost all our younger lives focused on building our careers and providing for ourselves as adults. We are busy either making money or learning a trade to make us money. There’s nothing wrong with being able to support ourselves but this focus does ignore everything else that matters. Professional and financial success matter but how about emotional resiliency, interpersonal relationships and self-worth? The latter matter much more but we don’t spend any time developing these qualities.
I’ve learned that the insides matter more; this is your operating system that determines the quality of your life.
Learning to be in touch with your emotions, to pick yourself up after falling and to develop healthy relationships with people is what matters for long-term happiness and success.
2. Habits trump dreams.
People tell you to have dreams and follow them. You revisit your dreams during the new year and maybe a couple other times in January. You set some goals and intention for the year but all of this quickly falls away. People tell you to visualize your dreams and write them down.
None of this is effective.
If you truly want to achieve your dreams, you must focus on daily habits. Daily habits are vehicles that will move you closer to your dreams. A simple check-off of daily tasks you accomplish over a long period of time will get you much closer to your dreams than will audacious dreams.
Small, doable habits you accomplish every day beat tricky and complicated habits you have no motivation for.
3. Less is more.
We fill our lives with so much crap. We look for better housing, better jobs, better relationships, better vacations, better cars, better friends, better partners, better things.
We spend all our time bringing more into our lives.
However, I’ve found that the opposite is true for personal growth.
You must get rid of the stuff in your life. You must lower the number of people filling your life. You must let go of the career or job that is overwhelming you.
Create space to breathe.
Fill your life with what truly matters to you.
4. Busyness is over-rated.
Along the same lines, people in the West are addicted to staying busy.
You’re too busy to take care of yourself, too busy for your health, too busy for your sanity.
People take pride in filling their schedules and lives to the brim. Busyness isn’t cool.
Busyness is for people running on the treadmill of social pressures and pursuing external achievements.
Create more time for yourself so you can do what you really want to do. Don’t be a slave to time.
5. Today matters more than yesterday.
After failure and loss, we want to stay in the past.
You know why?
Because that’s where we are most comfortable.
It’s like knowing the end of a movie. You would rather watch or be in a movie whose ending you know rather than be in a movie you have no clue about.
We would rather be comfortable in the certainty of our past than venture out into an unknown future.
However, this comes at the expense of our lives today.
If you live looking backwards, you’re robbing yourself of what today holds. Live for today; appreciate what’s in front of you. Be mindful of what you’re experiencing and imagine today is the only day you have left.
Live more, reminisce less.
6. Intuition and values are your GPS.
We spend much of our lives focusing on what other people think of us.
I did this for the longest time … until my life fell apart.
When I had nothing else to lose and everyone thought I was heading down the wrong path, I gave up on what everyone thought.
As the black sheep of any community or culture, you have tools to guide you – tools that you never rely on.
Most of your life, people have used loud noises and chatter to drown out your intuition.
You’ve never learned that your values rule your life.
Spend some time getting a better understanding of your gut feeling, your intuition.
How do you listen to it? How does it speak to you?
Also, discover what your values are.
What are your life priorities? What matters to you? How do you find meaning?
Spend the rest of your days both aligning with your intuition and making decisions according to your values.
7. You don’t have to wait to be happy.
You don’t have to achieve x, y, z to be happy.
You don’t have to hit a certain career point or find that special someone to be happy.
Often, we wait our entire lives to be happy. Why not be happy today?
I’ve concluded that happy is as happy does.
You don’t have to wait some day for happiness. Start figuring out what makes you happy today and do that. To be happy, you don’t have to move, marry, get a raise, succeed in your business or get that degree.
Look for the simple pleasures in life that trigger happiness in you; a walk, a pet, a phone call, a visit with a friend, a date, a movie, giving back, cooking your favorite dish, picking up a new hobby.
Do whatever lights your soul on a daily basis.
Schedule it to get daily shots of happiness.
For more personal growth lessons and insights, check out my books at the Amazon store here.
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.
