The Essentials
By Jeanine Austin, Ph.D.
Click here to contact Jeanine and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
Sometimes the women I coach come to me as a last ditch effort in attempt to create a happy life. Many times they say, “I’ve tried everything and nothing worked, or at least nothing worked permanently.” Many of them have lost the weight, but gained it back. They attracted who seemed to be Mr. or Ms. Right, but the relationship went sour. They made the money but blew it. They had or have “it all”, but they still feel unhappy.
At this time in our culture we have a great deal of attention on creating the life we want. I am all for this. I for one would much rather have a beautiful home to live in than one that doesn’t inspire me. I would rather have a healthy and fit body than an unhealthy body. I would rather have peaceful and loving relationships rather than conflict-ridden ones. I try to put attention on each of the areas of my life by creating career, fitness, and spiritual development goals, and intellectual, relationship, parenting, financial and fun goals. Attention to each of these areas over our lifespan is important if we want to show up fully in our lives. Neglecting any important dimension of our life is bound to have negative or unpleasant results.
However, if we don’t address our fundamentals, essentials or foundational challenges, none of these other things matters. It is as if many of us are spending our time changing around the deck chairs on the Titanic. Does it really matter if the externals have manifested and you have done everything on your to do list, if you are not essentially happy? If we spend most of our day feeling like we aren’t worth the trouble and say unkind things about ourselves to ourselves and others, when the perfect career or relationship for us is manifested, we will be able to really show up for the experience anyway? Our external experiences will begin to realign with what we internally believe to be true. If we think we aren’t worth it, we won’t be able to enjoy what we create because we think we don’t deserve it anyway.
What we might acknowledge is that we have a responsibility to show up for ourselves, so that we might show up for others as well. We can show up for ourselves by asking ourselves before we eat, purchase something or enter into relationship with someone, “Am I coming from self-love or self-hate in this decision?” Even small ongoing shifts will change our foundation so much that we might build our house on solid ground. Many of us are putting the cart before the horse. Ironically, if we really commit to loving ourselves, the weight falls off, the career manifests and we start to hear, “Where have you been all my life?” on a regular basis. The truth is we haven’t been there for them before because we weren’t there for ourselves.
If you suspect that some self love is missing in your life, get back to basics. How might you have kinder thoughts? You deserve kindness just because you are. Many of are ravenous for intimacy and romance because we aren’t loving ourselves. We are mad at our partners for not supporting us completely; meanwhile we are not supportive of ourselves at all!
We may have to work to change our self-loathing habits and be deliberate about not buying into believing we have to “be” any certain way in order to be kind and loving to ourselves. Being deliberate may include finding loving supportive friends, listening to positive CDs, watching positive movies or hiring a coach to help keep you on track. We must be vigilant with our thoughts and words so that we don’t get off track. Like any relationship, self love takes commitment and dedication.
©Copyright 2008 by Jeanine Austin. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry.
Click here to contact Jeanine and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile