This month we celebrate love, leaving some with mixed emotions or painful feelings depending on past experiences, current circumstances and desires. Rather than focusing on relationships with others, I want to instead say a little about your relationship with yourself. It is only when we have a strong and healthy relationship with ourselves that we can endure whatever life may present us.
It’s easy to primarily focus on the external; other people’s behavior, if we can’t meet the right partner, or maybe we are even unhappy with our current significant other. When we focus on what is wrong or missing, it is easy to feel out of control and helpless in our own lives. Feelings of discontentment and dissatisfaction only grow as we look to others to fulfill our needs.
This month, I challenge you to think about the relationship that you have with yourself. How do you treat yourself? How do you speak to yourself? What do you expect of yourself and what do you expect from others? What would make you feel supported and nurtured? If you had the love that you want, how would you be feeling right now and what would be different? How can you create that for yourself?
See how it feels to you to shift the focus from external, which leaves you with little to no control, to internal, which gives you full potential to create a healthy and loving relationship with yourself. This movement will strengthen your confidence and self-esteem, it will encourage you to have healthier relationships because you will be less likely to settle for mistreatment, and it increases the chances that you will have a life that you genuinely love because it will be authentically yours.
Here’s to love.
Avery
