I think we underestimate how hard we try for others. It’s time to quit working for someone else’s love and start working for your own love.
In 2000 I received my first journal as a gift. I had never used a journal before but I surely had a lot to say. I talked a lot and still do; writing helped me to clear my mind of random thoughts and express the emotions I could never share out loud.
In my first journal and everyone since 2000, I wrote about love. I wanted love and I wanted to be loved and feel lovable. I think singles don’t want to date, that’s useless, we want to feel loved.
But we go about it the wrong way.
We try so hard to convince the people who appeal to us to love us. Does that work? Has it ever? In dating, we get so nervous, anxious and self-conscious that we find it difficult to be ourselves. We worry about what our date will think of us. We want to be perceived as smart, interesting and sexy. We want to be chosen and given the opportunity to be loved so we shuck and jive. Play the game and do a dance that is downright exhausting.
I’m not telling you not to care what other people think of you. Of course you should but you should have the last say of what you think about yourself.
I dated men that made me feel terrible about myself. Yet, I tried so hard for their approval.
Why?
What I’ve found is we lack self-esteem and self-confidence. Instead of working so hard on someone else’s approval, ask yourself what you need to do to accept you?
It’s easy to focus on someone else liking us, when we don’t like ourselves.
So what will it take to like you more? I’m not trying to sound kumbaya-ish, hippy dippy, or Barney-esque but let’s be real, sometimes we do what we do because we don’t like ourselves very much. We let others’ dictate our emotions and our value because we want to be accepted.
You don’t want to be lonely, no one does and it feels really good to have someone complimenting you and caring about you and telling you how awesome you are and how much they love you.
That’s f*cking amazing.
But for some of us, it’s not happening now. We don’t have that person in our life so as cheesy as it sounds we have to be that person to ourselves.
It’s often asked, would you date you? Not someone like you but if you were of the opposite sex would you date you?
The way we treat ourselves, talk to ourselves, and how unhappy we are to be us, says that you wouldn’t.
The reason you’re trying so hard to get someone to like you is because you think that liking you is hard. Stop it.
It isn’t easy to admit that we don’t like ourselves as much as we should and many people find relationships never doing so. Good for them. If you’re single its better that you like you.
That’s what I think.
Thoughts?