Love The One You’re With

And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey

Love the one you’re with –Crosby, Stills & Nash

There’s only one person you’re always with…YOURSELF.

If you have a difficult time loving someone, consider whether it reflects something you don’t love about yourself. When we love ourselves, shadows and all, it becomes possible to love everyone, no matter how much we disagree with their thoughts or actions.

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Exercise:

Choose the scenario below that most resonates with you:

1. You support efforts for change, but you cannot tolerate looting. Looting overshadows all the good efforts.
2. You try your best, but no one appreciates your efforts. Your work is taken for granted.
3. You want to help others, but ultimately they need to help themselves. You can’t do it for them.

What word best describes the thoughts or behavior of the people who upset you?

• Disrespectful
• Destructive
• Unlawful
• Ungrateful
• Lazy

You have just identified something about yourself that needs your attention. Not something about the situation, something about YOU. The situation is only there to serve as a mirror.

Okay, so it needs your attention. How do you do it?

Let’s look at the words…

• Ungrateful. This might be a call to let more gratitude into your life. Start with gratitude for yourself. Do you appreciate all the things your body does? Are you grateful for this moment (right now) of breath? Where can you invite gratitude?
• Disrespectful. Do you respect yourself? Your body? Your rights? How can you show yourself higher regard?
• Destructive. This might be a call to healing. Do you harm yourself? Do you nurture yourself?
• Unlawful. Do you have healthy boundaries? Do you allow other people to break your personal rules? Do you respect other people’s boundaries? Are you keeping part of yourself locked up?
• Lazy. Where do you expend your energy? Do you give yourself credit for what you do? Do you respect other people’s efforts? Could it be time to ask for help?

Trust what comes up for you—your word and your analysis. Your body will tell you what you need to know if you listen.

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What difference does it make? Expand the examples…

Let’s say the looting makes you angry.

• If you don’t think about the looting, will the looting stop? Unlikely.
• If you stay focused on the looting, will the looting stop? Unlikely.
• BUT, if you let go of your energy around the looting, it will be available to use on something else. Something you can choose. Where do you want to spend your energy?

Let’s say no one appreciates your efforts.

• Whether you continue or stop thinking about others’ lack of gratitude, will they become grateful? You can’t know, just as you really don’t know whether or not they are grateful in the first place.
• BUT if you let go of the energy it takes to sustain your insulted state, you can use it somewhere else that can make a positive difference in your life.

Let’s say you are tired of people who don’t take the steps you think they need to take to help themselves.

• If you focus on their lack of initiative, will it make them help themselves? If they can, they will.
• If you stop thinking you have the answers about what they should do, will they help themselves? If they can, they will.
• BUT, if you shift your energy from what they should do, to what you should do, where does it lead you? What do YOU want to do?

We all have a shadow.

We are light and dark.

We are perfect in our imperfection.

We are mirrors for each other.

We are here to work together to evolve.

Love every single part of yourself, not just what you think is good or respectable.

You are enough. You are perfect.

Be inspired. Go forth. Create your day.