Weekly messages to help you start over in life
I am happy to be able to share this interview with you, by my friend, A.G. Billig. Watch this video to find out how to find the love your’re looking for in your life. Learn now to choose love each and every day. A.G. offers some practical tips to see and feel love.
A.G. Billing is an author and self-love coach. You can learn more about her work here at www.agbillig.com. To pick up her book, I Choose Love, visit her Amazon page here.
At the end of the day, we all the same on the inside. If you get past our physical appearances, race, skin color, we are all the same yet we spend so much of our time focusing on our differences.
This is the powerful message that Rohit shares in the video above. I found it both catchy and empowering so I’m sharing it with you.
Listen. Share. Take the message to heart.
To keep up with Rohit’s music, visit his Youtube account or follow him on Instagram here.
I wish I could tell you a story about that one dramatic event that changed my life forever. You know the type – the divorce, the physical abuse, an accident, or even a near death experience. It’s not because I have some morbid desire to experience these painful things.
It’s just that sometimes I think maybe (just maybe) one of those pivotal events would have been the impetus I needed to see what was wrong in my life, and to take action to heal.
But then again, maybe not. When I look back on my 20’s, and on the long and painful list of struggles I experienced, you’d think that at least one of them would have led to my light-bulb conversion story. Unfortunately, they just kept piling up, like a car wreck on the highway.
Relationships
The first pile up came in the form of relationships. I often let my values and beliefs slip to the wayside, especially when it came to romance. I wanted “love” so badly, that any guy became better than no guy at all.
One relationship was so destructive that I developed not only depression, but also anorexia nervosa from all of the stress and anxiety that it caused me. You’d think I would have learned my lesson by then.
But I didn’t, and I settled for less time and time again. And not just in romance! I always seemed to attach myself to dominating and controlling people, rather than respectful and loving friends.
Career
I also never believed that I was worthy of a good career, and so, I always settled for jobs that never challenged me, or helped me grow. Even though I hated each one, I never believed that I was capable and worthy of something better.
During my 20’s, I used to say to myself, “I’m such a waste of time.”
It was such a bleak outlook, but that’s how I saw those years of my life. Those years that should have been full of fun, exploration, growth, and all the happy photos you see on Facebook and Instagram.
Instead, there I was, and I wasn’t proud of my life. In fact, I was fed up, and wanted to end it all. I never had the courage to commit suicide, but I wanted to, because I knew life could be better. I just didn’t know how to rise above my long history of settling and censoring, of caving in and giving up.
So, I tried to fix things: I exercised, I prayed, I questioned my beliefs, I changed beliefs, I read self-help books, I tried to stand up for myself, and I broke off many relationships. In short, I tried to address my issues as if they were isolated and disparate parts.
But the problems never really went away because there was a much deeper problem.
And it’s true – depression, self-esteem and body image issues, social anxiety, and eating disorders are all real problems that countless people deal with. But these issues were actually the symptoms of a much bigger problem for me.
I never saw this illness sneaking in, and like so many others, I never thought this could be the underlying issue, because on the outside, so many things seemed okay.
Can you relate? Do you see any of the following scenarios playing out in your own life, too?
Does no one see that your own heart is a bit broken inside?
Maybe you’re very responsible and self-sufficient? My parents used to be so proud of me and say, “You always paid your own way and held down a job.” Well, yes I did. But I basically cried on the way to most jobs; I worked myself up with to so much stress that my body stopped tolerating most foods. How many times have we endured too much for too long? All because we don’t respect ourselves enough to say no and stop?
Maybe you’re a great student, and a favorite in the classroom. But instead of celebrating your good grades and academic accomplishments, you constantly compare them to everyone else’s and criticize yourself for not being good enough.
The thing is, we look at these scenarios, and say things like, “Oh, she’s just too hard on herself.” But what we should be saying instead is: “She doesn’t love herself!” I never thought that I didn’t love myself. I just figured that my life was hard. But how many women go through the same troubles, and don’t understand why?
How many women are self-sufficient, have romantic relationships, do well academically, but deep down, don’t love themselves one bit?
This lack of self-love is insidious, much like a deadly cancer. On the outside, everything seems good, even good enough, but you know it’s not. You know you could be better, healthier and happier. Unfortunately, few of us realize that our common struggles result from our love deficit. I’m so glad I realized this, and started loving myself again.
It’s been some of the most difficult work I’ve ever done, because it’s meant changing my mindset and the long-held beliefs I had about myself. We all know that nothing good comes easily, and if you ask me, loving yourself is some of the best work you can ever do. So, it goes without saying that this work has been anything but easy.
But since it’s the most important job we have, we have to start loving ourselves again. The question is, how?
First, admit that you’re not loving yourself enough or at all. Admit that you want to fix it. Tell yourself that you want to change and be happy, and that you want to give up pain and replace it with love. It sounds easy, but it takes a lot of strength. But don’t worry – you have this strength within you.
Next, actively surround yourself with as much love and support as you can find, whether that be with friends or family. Don’t just wait until the next birthday party. Actively schedule time with supportive and loving people. Listen to positive coaches or podcasts, and start to cultivate better thoughts.
This also goes for professional support! It’s important to admit that you might need professional help. Maybe it’s a counselor. Maybe it’s alternative medicines to help clear negativity. Whatever it is, allow yourself to be helped. We all need this from time to time!
Then, we have to start identifying what our hidden acts of non-love look like, and replace them with loving actions instead. I gave a couple scenarios above, but there are also many others. The problem is, so many of them have become commonplace, and we all know that once something becomes normal, it loses the power to impress us.
So, here are some other red flags to look out for: Dating or sleeping with men just to be with “someone”; changing who you are in order to be accepted and have “friends”; putting up with any form of abuse. Harming yourself in any way; accepting a life you’re not happy with and avoiding or refusing help; ignoring your health by avoiding medical attention, a good diet, exercise, grooming, dressing well; settling with jobs and commitments you’re not happy with, because you rather please others than be happy yourself.
Once you’ve acknowledged these actions, take time to forgive yourself. It’s not the time to beat yourself up anymore. Instead, it’s time to see that you’re worthy of your own love, compassion and forgiveness.
Remember to be patient on this journey. It will take lots of determination and gumption, but never give up on yourself!
Exercises to cultivate love for yourself.
As you can see, none of these suggestions are super complicated, and that’s because loving yourself is actually very simple work. The problem is that we usually have no idea how little we love ourselves, or we truly believe that we’re not worthy of our own love.
This is the main theme of my book, The Heiress Project: Every Girl’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Worth & Creating a Life You Actually Love. So, if this is an area you struggle with in your own life, come check it out!
The bottom line is this: You are absolutely and 100% worthy of your own love, and I bet that if you begin to love yourself again, you’ll slowly begin to heal all the other areas of your life, too.
* The author work focuses on empowering women to love who they are, and to change the way they view themselves. Her own struggles with anorexia and depression are the catalyst and inspiration for her writing, which has given many women the encouragement needed to change their lives. Check out her new book here.
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” Oscar Wilde
In my twenties, I had control issues that prevented me from truly falling in love.
I had a boyfriend who genuinely loved me and we were together for over 8 years. Only, I never truly fell in love. That truth didn’t set me free as much as it scared me.
The root of that fear is what my journey of self-love has been about.
I believe it is the root and source of all emotional pain.
I mustered courage to end that long term relationship and later had a few short term romances that ended abruptly and hurt tremendously.
So, I avoided men which reduced my chances of falling in love and ultimately getting hurt. I was ambivalent about romance because of my upbringing.
Given my parent’s violent quarrels and painful exchanges, you could understand my ambivalence.
I rationalized that I needed to love myself first before I could be in a relationship.
My wise therapist suggested working on loving myself while dating.
I was reluctant, but realized that I had unsuccessfully tried loving myself even when I hadn’t been in a relationship.
I worked through some of my many issues and became adept at processing feelings but not at feeling the extent of my wounding.
Still, I inched closer to a love-affair with myself by putting effort into my relationship with a new boyfriend.
Self -love requires your willingness to be very intimate, vulnerable, honest and courageous to admit the truth about what you think and how you feel.
It requires surrender and making time to be with ourselves to listen to our whole being.
1. Intimacy is energy circulating within you in love and trust.
You become an explorer of your inner domain. Intimacy is letting your guard down and welcoming every experience. Intimacy creates sensitivity to self and others. You become aware of everything you are feeling.
It means trusting that the Universe is providing everything you need.
To be intimate, you must be vulnerable.
2. Vulnerability is willingness to experience your insecurities.
It isn’t so much about disclosing your insecurities to others as it is about being with your insecurities.
Vulnerability requires honesty and courage to yourself.
3. Honesty means you tell the truth to yourself.
It requires trust and conscious emotional awareness.
Your emotions offer important messages.
Avoiding these messages is not growth promoting nor very loving.
Honesty takes courage.
4. Courage means you are willing to experience your pain including any bodily sensations.
It requires attention to what you are feeling in your body and what you are thinking moment by moment.
It doesn’t mean examining or studying your experience or thoughts.
Self-love requires courage to surrender.
5. Surrender is letting go of controlling what is or what may or may not happen.
Embrace rather than resist your pain.
Experience your pain. Feel your pain.
Love whether of self or others becomes more graceful when you simply surrender to what is, including what you feel.
You must feel the depth of your pain which is at the root your fear that you lack value.
To feel deeply you have to make time.
6. Time with yourself is valuing yourself enough to listen to yourself.
Being aware of what you are experiencing allows you to introspect which means coming to an understanding of your experience.
The key is not getting lost in the mental aspect of introspection without first feeling your pain.
It is being emotionally aware while not being absorbed by your emotions. Your conscious awareness empowers you so you are not swept away by your emotions.
Self-love is a journey and practice of being intimate, vulnerable, honest, and courageous. These form the foundation of self-love. Other elements help you to actively love yourself like patience, good self-care, kindness, self-validation, setting boundaries, forgiveness, etc.
The beauty of your journey is that opportunities for growth and greater self-love arise continuously. What is vital to loving yourself is a firm decision and willingness to venture to live life as well as a commitment to expand your own love.
You don’t live life by thinking about it.
You live by experiencing.
If you struggle to love yourself, it is likely you don’t fall in love easily.
It points to a tendency to be caught in your mind.
Being absorbed in your thoughts means you are not fully present to live your life. If you think too much then you need to remind yourself to feel with your body.
“Like lovemaking it is a whole body experience not just a mental exercise.”
You don’t hold back but give in to the knowing of your whole being.
The universal human experience of falling in love is referred to as a ‘fall’ as it happens unexpectedly.
You don’t struggle or plan the fall, it just happens.
You don’t attempt to control your feelings for doing so compromises our freedom and happiness.
When you value yourself, you do things that fulfill you and makes you happy.
Self- love as well as love for others is real when it makes you feel open, free, and happy.
When you love, you are free.
When you are free, you love no matter what.
Being free to love is true happiness.
True happiness is priceless.
Living is about being present to each moment.
You’ll know you have started to fall in love with yourself when you feel free to be yourself anywhere and with anyone.
You know you are loving yourself more when you value yourself in situations where you had not before.
Others will be drawn to you because you invite them to be themselves.
Monica Espinoza is an artistic writer, blogger and self-love alchemist. To receive her regular posts by email, sign up for her blog here.
* Photo credit Oakley F
Growing up is difficult, especially with a single parent who only wants the best for his or her child. Yet, that comes with its own stresses. Unfortunately, parents sometimes take out these stresses on the child.
Children with this repeated experience, especially females, are prone to dating distant and emotionally manipulative individuals as adults. To many people, who look at just appearances, emotional abuse is not abuse. Yet, the weight of the negative words from these relationships is heavy. I know that I carried my own baggage for years until I read more about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) resulting from emotional abuse.
Though life continued happening to me, I was not an active participant. I’d lost the concept of what unconditional love meant. That’s where self-love became important—doing little things for myself. My radical realization about self-love was the fact that I existed and self-love resided within me. To exist means to be, and my journey to self-love focused on reinforcing that fact.
One of the biggest things that helped me was developing a yoga practice. Yoga helped me feel the power and fluidity of my body, to feel present within my body. My yoga practice reduced my anxiety and lowered my blood pressure. My mind had always seemed fixated on someone else’s problems, and in my body I felt like I was floating through life. Yoga changed that for me.
Those who recognize the powerful but sometimes subtle effects of abuse call you a survivor. While that should be a powerful word, it reflected the fact that I was letting myself barely scrape by. Where was my ambition and belief in myself?
It took time to find out what I was really interested in and to pursue those goals. Picking up hobbies and taking classes was a start. Acting classes empowered me to express myself by taking on the personalities of different characters. Yelling across a stage showed me the power of my voice. I kept track of my financial records and felt like a proper adult. The key is to stop living in survival mode. I look forward to the future, and I haven’t looked back with regret.
I decided to do whatever it took to get a good night’s sleep, as I had no real sleep schedule. I wasn’t a night owl or early riser, sleeping for a few hours at a time.
Honestly, anxiety kept me up, and conquering anxiety is going to be a lifetime, uphill battle. Fortunately, this battle only reinforces the knowledge of my inner strength—how I experience emotion so very vividly and am able to empathize with others. Yet, that empathy and anxiety still keep me awake sometimes.
Yoga and meditation before bedtime is my evening ritual. For the last few years, I have kept a consistent bedtime. It’s important for me to spend at least five minutes writing down the complaints and “gunk” in my head. I write down at least one positive thing from the day, and go to bed thinking about that.
When my sleep wasn’t restful, the dreams I had were often disturbing. Fortunately, that changed when I learned better sleep habits to ease my anxiety. Dreams of literal battles or of showing up naked to class ceased; instead, they became dreams involving long hikes and finding myself in a beautiful location that no one else appeared to have disturbed.
It’s easy to be there for others. Why is it so hard to be there for yourself? You’re told so often that love means sacrifice. Does that sacrifice have to come at the expense of your individuality?
When you are so used to questioning your own personal power and validity, self-love seems like a fairy-tale you read as a child. It’s difficult to know and remember that self-love has been with you all the while, which is truly the most radical realization. Seeing it and owning it is self-kindness and self-awareness.
Channel this seedling of self-love positively, in all the little ways at first. If it’s yoga, do it. If it’s a passion that others have always trivialized, pursue it. Live!
Kacey Mya Bradley is a lifestyle blogger for The Drifter Collective. Her love for the world around her is portrayed through her visually pleasing, culturally embracing and inspiring posts. She writes an eclectic lifestyle blog that expresses various forms of style through the influence of culture and the world around us. You can also find her on Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.
I was embarassed at how I easily became someone’s personal doormat.
I was 18 years old, and my mom’s friend had a 15 year-old daughter. My well-intentioned mom was pushing me to be this girl’s friend. I had told my mom that I didn’t have a good gut feeling about this girl. Of course, I was told that I needed more good Indian female friends. Like how some doormats may act, I ignored my intuition and felt like I had to just give in.
Little did my mom and this girl’s mom know, I was being used to help this girl see boys behind her parents’ backs.
My friend came from a strict Indian-American family. She would tell me how her parents treated her badly and how they wouldn’t let her do anything.
One of the traits of a doormat is that you start to feel guilty when you hear people’s pain. My guilt led me to give in to my friend’s eager requests. I ended up driving my friend around to go on dates with random boys. She used my cell phone to contact boys. She used my AOL screen names. She instructed me to make up lies to my parents about what we were doing. I had even gotten into a car accident, when she begged me to help her see a boy that she met online.
You might be thinking, “Why did you agree to all of that?” At 33, I’m thinking the same thing. Back then, I felt obligated to put other people’s feelings and needs above mine. When I was told what to do, there were times where I blindly did things to keep the peace.
One day, my mom and this girl’s mom found out about her secret escapades. Guess who got thrown under the bus? Me. To add insult to injury, this girl told the other Indian-American teenagers how I ruined her life. I thought, “I bended over backwards to help this girl feel happy. And, this is what I get?”
Toddlers can easily say no.
Why is it difficult for us adults to say a simple two-letter word?
Well, humans want to be liked by others and would rather avoid conflict. But, there’s one problem.
When we struggle to say no to others, we invite other people to walk all over us. If we are trying so hard to make someone else happy, our emotional well-being gets neglected. We may start to feel drained, resentful, and discarded by the person that we are bending over backwards for.
My story might help you recognize yourself in your own personal relationships. Are you more focused on the other person’s happiness, where you end up neglecting your own? Do you become involved in romantic relationships that are one-sided?
When we bend over backwards for others, we think that we’re winning. As you can see in my story, you end up losing on both ends. I didn’t get the approval that I craved. I didn’t get people to like me more. I didn’t look like a hero. The negative consequences of my story could have been avoided, if I just learned how to say NO.
If you struggle with saying no and are getting taken advantage of, here’s what to keep in mind.
Here are 5 steps to stop being a doormat in your relationships:
When you start taking care of yourself, it’s a lot easier to take care of others.
When you start valuing yourself, you will attract others in your life that value you.
* Rupali Grover is a licensed clinical professional counselor with 11 years of experience working with children, teenagers and adults. Her writing has also been featured on BrownGirl Magazine, Elephant Journal, Introvert Dear and Highly Sensitive Refuge.
