Love, What Makes Our World Go Round

Love is a funny thing, you can be in love with someone, a thing, a place, yourself, anything really. We are all taught that we should choose love in all possible situations over any other feelings. We are taught  to love not judge, to love, not hate, to show love not anger, and so on and so forth. What we tend to forget is that what we ultimately need to do is love ourselves, know ourselves, and love the universe , so that that love can manifest and set forth into the world and come even more into our lives. After watching many people relationships end over the last 2 months and hearing them and others asking over and over again "what happened they loved each other?", "why would he stay with her when she cannot even trust that it will be okay" or "I do not understand why he would treat her like that?"  I began to take a deeper look into love and relationships in general and came up with what I believe makes relationships successful.

When I first started looking deeper into love and relationship's I took a look at my own; past and present. I looked at how successful, full of love, trust, and all those good things my current relationship is and compared it to ones in my past that had ended or that had not been so great. I looked at what had been different between all of them and thought long and hard about it. The one thing that was different was ME! I could not believe it, it was so simple, I was different. How might you ask? Well I will explain. See through out this journey I have learned, and still am learning, a few things I could not do or wouldn't do before hand; I learned to love and accept myself, I learned to be able to bask in silence, and I learned that no matter what everything will always be okay. Now let me explain what I mean by these and how they have impacted my relationships.

Until the past year I never realized just how much of an introvert I am, I for my entire life thought that I was an extrovert and could not understand why it was that when I was around people for a long period of time without a beak I would get irritated. Now I love to do a lot of solo activities and actually enjoy spending time by myself, or in silence with others. In fact this is one of the very first things my boyfriend told me he loved about me,he said he loved that I did not always need to be out and talking, that there was a comfort in my silence. Now I will be honest I used to be a chatty kathy but only because I was scared that if I did not talk it would get weird and awkward for everyone; and I also used to be the person that always had to be surrounded by people because the silence of being alone scared me. It was not until I got comfortable with just being in the moment and recognizing that silence was not scary at all that I over came both of these and started to learn who I truly am. Knowing myself better than ever has helped in so many ways, I look at the relationships that I used to have when I did not know myself well enough and I can se how it affected them. For example when I would fight or argue with someone it would end up being so heated even if it was something small, this was because at the time I did not realize that what I truly needed was to take 20 minutes to myself to process what was going on in silence, now that I know this I use this frequently. By being able to just be I have also learned that I do not need someone around all the time because being alone at times, minus when you have just watched a scary movie home alone in the dark, is not a scary thing. I look back to one particular relationship where we were together all the time and how horrible it ended up being because of this, I did not have my own relationships, interests or life and nor did he. Now in my current relationship I have a healthy balance of me time, our time, and our lives together and separate. It was me taking the time and challenge to learn about who I was that has made my relationships since successful.

The universe has always always always got our backs no matter what happens, and we just need to trust and believe in this. I know on a crappy day or when something bad happens it does not always seem like it but the universe will never let anything happen in our lives that does not teach us a lesson or help us to grow into a more fruitful life. I did not always have this out look on life; I used to be scared of a lot of things in life, I used to think that if something bad happened it was the end of the world, and I used to think that no one and I mean no one truly had my back. I am not going to lie sometimes at my worst moments these thoughts will creep in but I now know myself and the universe well enough to know that they are not true. Viewing my life through fear took a toll on my relationships, I viewed them as something to fix the things I was scared of, I would look to my partners to fix any and all problems and tell me it was going to be okay. By thinking this way I glorified my partners by thinking that they were the ones that could fix me and everything around me, this took all the power away from me and placed it in someone else's hands making them seem more capable or better than me. By changing my outlook to everything will be okay no matter what I took not only my power back, but also showed that I was responsible for myself and very capable at facing whatever life threw at me. All to often we look to others to fix our problems and to support us, this disempowers our inner self and even though we are not saying it intentionally we are telling our self "I cannot do this, I am incapable of doing it at all but someone else can do it for me because they are better than me". Now do not get me wrong it is okay to ask for help when you need it and it is nice to hear that "everything will be okay" and so on and so forth but we should not be dependant on these things from others to make ourselves feel like it will all work out. We all have all the tools in our back pockets to fix any problem that the universe throws at us, this is why the universe always has our back, and by asking someone else to step in and fix it you are doubting yourself and the universe's capabilities. And you do not need to think or believe that it is the universe that has your back, that is just how and what I believe, it could be God, Buddha, Ganesh, destiny, fate or whatever you believe in, just trust in something bigger.

Everyone has heard the saying "we accept the love we think we deserve", this is incredibly true and I never used to think so. I have had moments in my past that I have hated myself, loved myself, and half assed liked myself. When I look at the relationships that I had in any other time than when I fully loved myself I will be the first to admit they were crap! When you do not fully love and accept who you are you not only view yourself as a lesser person than what you are, but you also project that outwards which attracts people who will treat you the same. We cannot let something enter our life unless we accept it, and if we accept that it is okay to call ourself ugly, fat, worthless, dumb, etc then what makes it not okay for others to do the same. Now I will be the first to admit there are things about myself I would like to change but I have learned to accept them because without them I would not have all the things that I love about myself, and maybe one day the things I am not as fond of will change but if not I will love and accept myself anyway.

Learning to accept and love yourself is an amazing thing because then we are not looking to others to fulfill our needs, and we are already fulfilling them on our own then if someone does something for us that helps to meet our physical, spiritual, or emotional needs, that's awesome, but then if they do not then thats awesome too because the need was already met. But I guarantee you that if you start taking care of yourself, loving, and accepting yourself then you will see others step up to the plate as well. I recently watched a vlog from Gabrielle Bernstein where she explains that she wanted to feel more supported so what she initially did was start supporting herself more and in turn got more support, and its soo true; if you want something in your life start by loving/accepting and doing it yourself then this will project and you will attract it in to your life. Loving yourself and accepting who you are is the biggest make or brake in any relationship.

All too often we look to others to fulfill our needs, fix our problems and teach us about who we are. I often see so many couples who lose who they are as individuals and become just a couple that are so dependant on one another. I see girls who hate themselves, or half ass like themselves, and wonder why they are with a guy that treats them like they are dirt. I see relationships fail because one or both of the people do not know who they are, and are unwilling to learn by themselves about themselves. Last but not least, I see couple's and individuals that look to others to make themselves feel good about life instead of trusting the universe and the tools that we have to do so ourselves. I truly believe that the key to a successful relationship whether it be business, friendship, love, or family is to know yourself, trust in the universe that everything will always be okay no matter what, and love and accept yourself the way you are. Our inside world matches that of our outside world, be love and attract love.


If you would like to check out Gabby's vlog about how she got more support here is the link:
http://gabbyb.tv/vlogging/how-to-feel-more-supported