loving the people in my life !

At the end of life, our questions are very simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?” ~Jack Kornfield

We all grow up with some healthy stories about love and some unhealthy ones. I learned some beautiful, life-giving ideas about love, ideas like these:

• Loving people means believing in their potential.
• Love means treating people with kindness and gentleness.
• Loving the people in your life means celebrating their successes and cheering them on.

But I also grew up with some stories about love that I came to see weren’t so helpful. Those ideas about love bred problems in my relationships.

One of those stories was: Loving someone means always being available to them. (Turns out, it’s not true, and living as if it is breeds resentment.)

Another was: Loving someone means always having space for what they want to talk to you about. (Turns out, not true either!)

Another myth about love: If you love someone, you do what they are asking you to do, out of love, even if it feels difficult. (I can tell you, that doesn’t work so well.)

I’ve developed my own guidelines for loving the people in my life, guidelines that express how I want to relate to the people around me.

These are some of my guidelines for loving:

1. Tell them about their brilliance. They likely can’t see it and they don’t know its immensity, but you can see it, and you can illuminate it for them.

2. Be authentic, and give others the gift of the real you and a real relationship. Ask your real questions. Share your real beliefs. Go for your real dreams. Tell your truth.

3. Don’t confuse “authenticity” with sharing every complaint, resentment, or petty reaction in the name of “being yourself.” Meditate, write, or do yoga to work through anxiety, resentment, and stress on your own so you don’t hand off those negative moods to everyone around you. Sure, share sadness, honest dilemmas, and fears, but be mindful: don’t pollute.

4. Listen, listen, listen. Don’t listen to determine if you agree or disagree. Listen to get to know what is true for the person in front of you. Get to know an inner landscape that is different from your own, and enjoy the journey. Remember that if, in any conversation, nothing piqued your curiosity and nothing surprised you, you weren’t really listening.

5. Don’t waste your time or energy thinking about how they need to be different.  Really. Chuck that whole thing. Their habits are their habits. Their personalities are their personalities. Let them be, and work on what you want to change about you—not what you think would be good to change about them.

6. Remember that you don’t have to understand their choices to respect or accept them.

7. Don’t conflate accepting with being a doormat or betraying yourself. Let them be who they are, entirely. Then, you decide what you need, in light of who they are. Do you need to make a direct request that they change their behavior in some way? Do you need to take care of yourself better? Do you need to set a boundary or to change the relationship? Take care of yourself well, without holding anyone else in contempt.

8. Give of yourself, but never sacrifice or compromise yourself. Stop if resentment is building and retool. Don’t do the martyr thing. It helps no one and nothing.

9. Remember that everyone you encounter was created by divine intelligence and has an important role to play in the universe. Treat them as such.

10. If you want to keep growing emotionally and spiritually for the rest of your life, accept this as your mantra and try to live as if it were true: Everything that I experience from another human being is either love, or a call for love.

What are your guidelines for loving the people in your life?

No second chance !

Mama always told me, “The first time people show you who they are, believe them.”

What she meant by this worldly advice was that when someone does you dirty, when someone betrays you, you must understand what evil that person is capable of and how that capability reflects on his or her character.

The old adage is, “Forgive and forget.” But I have to wonder why you should have to forgive and forget. Why should you feel the need to keep someone in your life who f*cked you over?

There are venomous people on this earth. Most people are out for themselves, they play to their own agenda. Having these people in your life will only be detrimental to you.

It’s like Hillary Clinton said, “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them to only bite your neighbors.” Eventually, those snakes are going to bite you, poison you and destroy you.

With me, you have one chance to come at me straight. I’m a trusting person and I believe the things you tell me are the truth and you have my best interests at heart. But there’s another thing you should know about me: I do not give second chances.

If you mess up with me, we are done.

I’m not talking about ditching out on dinner plans or neglecting to return my phone calls one week — that’s just life and we are all guilty of being negligent in the friendship department from time to time.

What I’m talking about is the real sh*t: backstabbing, lying, cheating — the major types of betrayal that only someone who has a mean, dark streak could do to someone he or she claims to care about. My trust is nearly impossible to earn back. Once lost, it is essentially lost forever.

If you betray me, we are done.

Nothing dramatic, no epic fight, no screaming, no crying. You’re just not going to be in my life anymore and that’s the end of it. Plain and simple.

It’s been a rough commute from adolescence, through college and into adult life. I’ve lost a lot of friends; I’ve had to say goodbye to people I thought would be in my life forever, people I thought I could trust beyond the shadow of a doubt.

It’s honestly a personal tragedy when I realize I have to leave someone behind.

I so desperately want to hold on, to undo what’s been done, to stop this person from breaking my heart. But then again, if it hadn’t happened now, it would certainly happen another time because that friend is not a friend, that boyfriend is not a boyfriend — that person is selfish and never loved me like I thought he or she did. That’s been made abundantly clear.

I still think about those friends from time to time. Sometimes I regret losing them. But I always say to myself, “Are these people I want in my life? People who could lie, cheat and damage me?”

I remind myself I didn’t lose anything. I remind myself the biggest loss was for them — the fallen friends or lovers — they lost me because they didn’t respect the bonds of friendship or love.

I may miss their company periodically; I may see something on the street I know they would find hilarious and detect a pang in my heart, aware of the empty space they used to fill.

But that momentary pain is worth it because these people aren’t in my life anymore and that was decision I had to make; it was self-preservation. They’re only going to do it again, after all.

Real talk: I’m not going to give you a second chance. And I never, ever will.

Because if you f*ck up again, it’s my fault, not yours.

F*ck me over once, shame on you. F*ck me over twice? Shame on me. The first time a person stabs you in the back, you couldn’t have seen it coming… the second time leaves you no excuse. If you forgive someone for a harsh deception, you’re only inviting that person to do it again.

I won’t allow that in my life. I won’t be made a fool of because you’re a piece of sh*t. I can live with the burning sting that comes with being lied to or cheated on, but I cannot live with those same wounds being reopened because I decided to forgive you.

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Because I know what you’re capable of.

You’ve proven you’re capable of doing really terrible things to someone you supposedly care about; you’ve proven you’re capable of doing some seriously f*cked up sh*t to the people closest to you. I won’t stand for that type lethal toxicity.

I won’t have someone in my life who could even fathom destroying my trust. Once I know you could — and you would — our relationship is toast.

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Because when you break someone’s heart, it never really heals.

A broken heart can be mended. With time (and tears), eventually, the pieces can be welded back together and the cracks will begin to fade. But that heart will never be whole again, not completely.

It will always have scars left behind by the wrong it was dealt. If you cause my heartbreak, if you are a person who adds to those scars… I will never give you another opportunity to do so again.

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Because you’re not worth it.

If you break my trust, you were never worthy of that trust in the first place. Honestly, it’s really not that f*cking hard to be a good friend. If you act like a dirtbag, you’re not worth the time. You are not worth forgiving.

Our friendship or relationship is not worth putting effort into anymore. I want to fill my life with people I love and people who care about me enough to treat me with the respect I deserve. You are not f*cking worth it.

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Because there’s no point in forgiving when I won’t forget.

Like most women, I have an excellent memory. A woman doesn’t forget things — especially when those things involve being slandered or double-crossed. They say forgive and forget. F*ck that. I’m never going to forget what you did and, therefore, I’m not going to forgive you.

I’m not going to waste my precious time trying to push your atrocious behavior into the back of my mind so we can go on with our relationship.

I’m not going to give you a second chance. Don’t let the door smack you in the ass on the way out.

Finally It Hit me !!!

Somehow, someway it finally hit me: love isn't what someone can give you or how they can make you feel. Love is YOU. You yourself are the love that you are looking for. 

At the end of the day, it's simple: we all want love. 

We want to fall in love with someone who loves us with every fiber in their being. We want to be swept off of our feet. We want to build a forever with someone, BUT, first comes loving ourselves with every fiber inour being. First comes sweeping ourselves off of our feet by treating ourselves well and doing the things we want to do. First comes building a life for ourselves that we can be proud of because it is our own.

Single, taken, looking, engaged, married, or somewhere in between - regardless of your relationship status, you are the only love that you need. 

However, sometimes, it's hard to find the love within yourself. It's easier to give your love away, even to those who are not deserving of it. Self-love falls by the wayside because it's work, and who wants to do work?

Well, if you want to find love you have to put in the work, and here's how:

Get up, go look in the mirror, and take a long, hard look at the person staring back at you. Do you like who you see? Do you love the person in front of you?

Be honest . . . 

If you want love in your life, you have to be happy with yourself first!

#LifeLessonLearned: You can't expect to find the person you love if you don't love yourself first: deeply, truly, fully.

 You may meet the person you're meant to be with. You may find someone who you love deeply + truly yet your relationship will never fully manifest itself if you don't love yourself deeply + truly first. 

Love your life. Love yourself. Love everything that you do. Find love every time you look in the mirror. Find love by cooking yourself a yummy meal, by taking yourself out shopping, by celebrating your daily victories, by blasting your favorite song and dancing in your room, by doing something you've always wanted to do, by working hard to make a better future for yourself. 

This is exactly what I'm doing. No more teary mornings using up my vacation time and stealing my joy. I may not have been chosen by someone else (yet), but that it is more than okay because:

I am choosing me.

I am loving myself my authentic self with everything that I have. I'm doing what I need to do to make myself happy, because I'll never be happy with someone else if I'm not happy with myself first. 

I'm treating myself to the joys of life - dressing well, eating well, living well. I'm putting in the time to create + build something for MYSELF. And you know what, I've never felt better. I needed that breakdown. I needed the transition from taken and incomplete to single and fulfilled. At the end of the day, I needed me.

Love is you - all day, every day. You are more than enough. Make yourself happy and watch as the love in your life grows.

let Go !

Letting people go is a hard life hack to master, purely because we’re a society of clingers. We try so desperately to hold on to things even when they’ve served us beyond their purpose.

Losing people is a natural part of growing up, but when we’re encompassed in a society that is constantly changing, we’re led to believe that everyone we lose is a loss.

Society brainwashes us into thinking that nothing positive can amount from losing someone who meant everything to us. Every friendship and relationship is a learning curve, so instead of mourning the people who aren’t present, we should celebrate filtering people out who no longer serve as support.

Loss can be one of the most painful feelings to endure but over time, the pain lessens and our eyes are opened to the fact that we don’t actually need that person anymore.

It might not seem like it at the time, but good things end so great things can happen.

We, as individuals, have the mental capacity to judge who has a positive impact on our lives, meaning someone can only be defined as a loss if we choose to define them as one.

Regardless of the circumstances, everything happens for a reason. Even though it might not seem like it at the time, there’s an explanation as to why that person isn’t in our lives anymore.

It might bring sadness, heartache and regret, but each loss takes us on a journey which makes us stronger.

Picking up the pieces, planting a smile on our faces and finding comfort in the fact that things will get better is the first step toward learning to be truly happy on our own. Because, what’s the point in wasting our time and energy on people who remain standstill?

If someone enriches our experiences and shapes our memories, they might be worthy of our time. And if not? So be it. We need to stop trying to force things because we’re scared to be without someone. We need to stop clinging on to things just because we don’t remember ourselves without them.

And we need to stop worrying, and believe that things will be okay in the end. If things aren’t okay, it’s not the end.

If someone doesn’t treat us how we deserve, we shouldn’t accept their behavior just because it’s what we think we deserve. We don’t have to settle.

People have an unhealthy habit of hurting the ones closest to them, but we can choose not to fall victim to that. We don’t have to deal with being in a constant state of angst or worry because we should never discredit our instincts.

Our bodies pick up vibrations, and if something deep inside us says something isn’t right about a situation or a person, we need to trust it. Acting on gut feeling and intuition instead of emotion and persuasion is the best way to decide who can stay and who needs to go.

While it’s hard to accept that not everyone who enters our life is meant to stay, we as human beings are built to encounter new people. We’re designed to explore, discover and grow, and not be held back by people who don’t have the same capacity as us.

So when we feel like we’re falling apart, we need to remind ourselves how that person made us feel. Not when we were naively content, but when we were achingly sad and bitterly confused.

Life is too short to be anything but happy, so we need to learn to surround ourselves with people who matter. We either grow with, or grow apart from people, and if it doesn’t feel right, it might be best to let it go.

People will become strangers and distant memories, but we don’t ever have to feel guilty about removing toxic people from our lives.

Nobody has the right to infect us with negativity and doubt. There will come a point in life when we’ll get tired of having to prove ourselves and we’ll get bored of trying to fix things.

It’s not giving up; it’s realizing we deserve more. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with putting ourselves first for once, and the sooner we do that, the better.

Because, after all, our broken moments don’t define us. It’s how we deal with them that does.