This, right here, is the crux of the whole self love path.
Learning to live from a place of believing that we are already good enough, already worthy of love, already worthy of care, already worthy of support and protection is the literal game-changer that can take our lives from being an experience of perpetually feeling like we are failing, falling short and not getting where we want to go, to one where we finally feel like our lives have ‘started’ and we are living them NOW.
This is also one of the most challenging things to do - especially in our culture today that is so obsessed with letting us know just how inadequate, incomplete, imperfect and less than desirable we are.
Our current culture is all about keeping us in a state of perpetual self hate.
Religion convinces us that we’re inherently sinful and need to be saved from ourselves.
The world of work tells us that no matter what we are achieving in our careers we could be doing more - earning more, levelling up our skills, performing better, going for the next promotion or rung on the ladder.
Popular culture teaches us that no matter what we’re doing we can never be on trend enough, can never be ‘in’ enough, can never be popular enough and that no matter what we do we are always going to be lacking something - the next ‘it’ thing.
Self help and spirituality teach us that no matter how much work we do on ourselves, no matter how much we process, no matter how much we dig into our past and trauma - there’s always more work to be done. That we are never pure enough, never aware enough, never conscious enough, never grounded enough, never embodied enough.
We live in a culture where we have little social ties that are actually strong - rather we have a culture that teaches us to hide ourselves, to judge ourselves and others and to be in a perpetual state of pretending, leaving most of us feeling that no matter what we do we never get the connection we need.
We live in a culture that provides little to no safetynet in terms of provision for when we’re sick, down, struggling or not in a place where we have access to the things that make life livable - and in these states where we genuinely don’t have enough and aren’t secure, rather than there being social programs and structure to help us, we are instead blamed and told that all of our suffering is our fault and that we just need to work harder and do more.
Everywhere we turn we’re inundated with the message that who and what we are is insufficient and that the reason we don’t feel good in life is a direct reflection of this insufficiency.
And so many of us live from a place of perpetually feeling unworthy, unloved, unsafe and insecure - and this drives us to live in ways that oftentimes are harmful for ourselves and for others around us.
We need to shift away from this mindset and way of life.
We need to shift away from this belief that we are fundamentally lacking and flawed and that THIS is what’s creating all of our pain if we want to one day have a life that actually feels nourishing and supportive.
Learning to live from a place of inherent worthiness is the answer - and it’s what all of this work around here has always been about.
The Harm
From here, from this place of feeling so deeply not good enough, insecure, unsafe and unsupported, most of us are going to come to see that we then have developed all sorts of coping strategies to try to get away from these painful feelings and painful circumstances.
Many of us are going to be able to see that rather than living lives that feel expansive, that feel free, that feel authentic to us and that allow us to express ourselves in the ways that feel genuine to us - we’re instead living lives where we feel like we ride perpetual rollercoasters of being ‘on track’ with our goals, working to improve and make our lives better, and falling ‘off track’, winding up in periods of burnout, feeling like we have to give up and like life isn’t worth the effort.
We’re going to find that we have many ways that we numb and stimulate ourselves - turning to entertainment, food, risky behaviors and other self-destructive methods of creating a feeling of escape in order to make it through our days.
We’re going to notice that we have negative relationship patterns where we aren’t able to communicate effectively, aren’t able to be honest, aren’t able to be open and vulnerable, where we people-please and bend over backwards to try to earn love or where we perpetually move in the direction of hyper independence as a way of protecting ourselves.
We’re going to notice that we’re in a cycle of self sabotage where on the one hand we’re able to move towards the things we want only to find that we always end up breaking down, losing willpower, losing momentum and needing to quit for some reason.
We’re going to notice that we fall into periods of burnout in a cyclical nature - being able to sustain a way of life where we feel like we’re ‘on track’ for a while only to eventually fall ‘off track’ because our minds, bodies or spirits just give out and stop supporting us.
We’re going to find that when we take a step back we notice that a lot of our habits are actually harmful to ourselves and the world around us. That we participate in a lot of things that require exploitation of others and the planet in order that we can have the things we want.
We’re going to find that enough is never enough and that we are at once feeling like we constantly need more while also having more than enough but not being able to recognize when this is the case.
This underlying feeling of insecurity is what’s at the ROOT of most of our issues - and for many of us we aren’t making that connection. We truly feel that it is just objectively true that we are bad and that all the things we’re trying to do to improve are required and we don’t see how this leads us to that burnout, self sabotage and perpetual self fixing that never leads anywhere OR we can’t connect how our ‘bad habits’ are rooted in this feeling of perpetual shame - but rather we think these bad habits and ways of life are just a reflection of our poor willpower, bad choices and inability to ‘get our lives together’ the way we SHOULD be able to.
We aren’t seeing that so much of the chaos on this planet and in our personal lives is deeply rooted in this belief that we are inherently not enough - and we aren’t seeing where this root came from.
Pulling Out The Problem At The Root
These roots of feeling perpetually inadequate, insufficient and like we are the cause of all of our own suffering are roots that none of us chose.
None of us chose to feel perpetually like we’re failing, like we’re coming up short or like we need to be in a constant state of self improvement.
Rather, these roots were born in our childhoods.
These roots come from a long line of a humanity that has been living under this belief system - a line of humanity that has passed this belief system down through the generations.
Most of us grew up in households where we weren’t provided with a secure attachment.
We weren’t provided with a safe space in which to slowly learn how to identify and meet our own needs at age appropriate time via the loving support of caregivers who were there to meet our needs for us when we couldn’t do it.
We weren’t provided with the emotional support we needed to learn how to be with big emotions, how to process them, how to get their messages and how to live a life where we don’t fear our emotions but rather can use them as guides and messengers on our path.
We weren’t provided with a space in which to learn how to authentically communicate - where we learned how to really understand what WE are feeling and needing to say, and where we learned how to really listen to and empathize with others and their needs. Where we learned to connect in an honest way.
We weren’t taught how to make it safe to be who we were, and how to find a way to make a life that worked for our specific blueprint.
Rather, in that delicate, codependent time when we depended upon our caregivers for all of the above, we instead experienced times of rejection, abandonment, abuse, neglect or we were in situations where our caregivers simply couldn’t meet our needs for some other reason, that left us feeling like there was something deeply wrong with US that was causing this to happen.
Because from our childhood perspective we couldn’t understand that our caregivers could be flawed, nor could we comprehend that sometimes we were treated how we were for reasons that had nothing to do with us.
All we knew was that we were fully dependent upon these people for everything, and them pulling away from us, getting upset with us, not taking our pain away or telling us that who and what we were wasn’t right or acceptable meant that we were NOT going to be ok, we were NOT going to be safe and that we needed to figure out what we needed to change about OURSELVES in order to get back to that safety, love and provision.
We were taught that our safety was dependent upon living up to expectations. That our survival was based on needing to be what those around us expected us to be. We learned that love went away when we weren’t what those around us wanted us to be. We learned that there were ‘acceptable and unacceptable’ emotions. We learned that there we safe ways to express and unsafe ways to express. We were forced into boxes of expectation that went deeply against what felt good and true for us.
We were taught that if someone didn’t come rescue us or give us the answers that we were then fully stuck in our suffering leading to feelings of hopelessness when we find ourselves in pain.
We learned to shame, blame and guilt ourselves in an attempt to try to get back to safety - believing that if we could just perfect ourselves, our behavior and our way of being so that our caregivers and the world at large approved of us, that in this we would then get that perfect love, safety and security that we deeply wanted.
From there, we took this mindset and we projected it out onto the world. This mindset told us that the ONLY reason we could be in pain was because we were doing something wrong or because we were failing to meet expectations, and we started to see it everywhere.
We started to feel like if we weren’t able to make friends this was a fundamental flaw in us. If we weren’t able to be what our culture wanted us to be that this was a flaw in us. If we couldn’t make enough money this was a flaw. If we couldn’t perfect our bodies this was a flaw. If we couldn’t get ourselves to be totally spirituality enlightened this was a flaw.
We started to see a million ways in which we could improve ourselves to earn that worthiness and love that we so deeply wanted - but that we weren’t conscious was the thing we were actually chasing.
Many of us don’t see that at the ROOT of all of our self hate, all of our shame, all of our self judgment, all of our feelings of being hopeless and helpless when we don’t know how to solve our own problems, is a sense that we are struggling, in pain or otherwise feeling abandoned and alone - and rather than being able to identify the actual pain we’re in and where it’s coming from, being able to identify what are needs are and where they’re not being met, being able to identify when we’re in toxic situations we need to leave or being able to adequate problem solve - we immediately feel like we are not enough, that we don’t have enough and aren’t doing enough when we’re in pain - because there’s such a deep connection in us that tells us if we were to perfect ourselves that THIS would mean perfect deliverance from all pain and a transcendence into a life where we are finally taken care of, loved and seen how we want to be loved and seen.
We’re constantly striving because we never evolved into an adult view of the world - we’re stuck in the mindset that pain = I am not doing something right/am shameful/I’m stuck in this forever - rather than being able to see that now, in our adulthood it’s not a matter of living up to expectation that’s going to take our pain away and give us the freedom to feel how we want to feel.
Now it’s up to US to get to know ourselves, to reparent ourselves, to figure out what we want and need and it’s our job to learn how to get our needs met - and in THIS we’re going to find actual happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction in life - to the degree that that’s possible within the circumstances we don’t have perfect control over.
Shifting Out Of Striving To Actual Clear Perception
When we’re able to shift out of this perception that we are fundamentally flawed, we’re going to find that slowly over time, we’re able to process a LOT of the false ideas and beliefs we have about ourselves, our lives and the world in general, and we’re able to come into an awareness of what we actually want, what we actually need, what’s going to work for us, what doesn’t and what kind of changes we actually need to make to our lives in order to feel better.
This work is not going to be fast.
It’s not going to be something we get done in a day, a week or even a few months.
This path of learning to shift into a state of assuming that we are fundamentally worthy vs. needing to earn our worth will ignite a whole new life trajectory that will alter our entire reality - eventually.
At first, it won’t feel like much.
At first, it will actually feel quite dangerous, out of alignment and like we’re doing something wrong.
At first it’s likely that we will feel that if we were to accept ourselves how we are, that this will mean giving ourselves permission to be the WORST versions of ourselves.
At first we will fear that we will lose all those that we love, or that we will never become who we are supposed to be.
This is normal.
Then, we will start to notice that our ability to be with our emotions, our ability to understand ourselves, our ability to see WHY we’re doing the things we are is actually quite limited.
We’re going to go on a journey of having to learn how to support ourselves, be kind to ourselves and be on our own side rather than defaulting to the never ending self improvement - and on this journey we’re going to discover SO much about ourselves, what we need, what we want, what works for us, what was dysfunctional in our past and what we can actually do to create a better world - not only for ourselves but for others.
When we start to move from the fundamental assumption that we’re good enough, that we have a good reason for doing everything we’re doing and from the assumption that the BEST way forward is always to figure out how we can SUPPORT ourselves rather than trying to FIX ourselves - in THIS we’re going to go on a lifelong journey of fulfillment rather than being stuck in the hamster wheel of self improvement that tends to go nowhere.
This path will change how we interact with ourselves, and that is then going to change how we see and interact with the world.
This path is going to shift the way we see ourselves and in this it’s going to help us break out of the cultural narratives that keep us trapped in stories that were never true, and trapped in SYSTEMS that are never going to work for us as a humanity.
When we start to love ourselves for who and what we are right here, right now, we’re going to find our actual power. We’re going to find steps forward that help us make permanent, positive shifts in our lives. We’re going to discover what’s wrong with CULTURE - and we’re going to then be part of the SOLUTION to culture.
This path is about us, and then it’s also about SO MUCH MORE than us.
So I want to invite you to start walking this path.
To start making space for the idea that you may be worthy of love, just as you are, right here right now.
To start to make room for the idea that you don’t need to be fixed, changed or improved upon - but rather that you simply need to be understood and supported.
And I want you to see how this one small shift, starts to change everything.
Remember, there are LOTS of other resources for you here to help you walk this path. This blog, the youtube channel, the mystery school and coaching.
Don’t stop here.
Let this be a seed for you.
Let yourself go on a journey here.
Make room for the transformation of this path.
How would your life change, if you were to assume you were already worthy of love?
I bet it will change in ways you never even dreamed possible.
Take that first step, and let the path take you from there.
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Are you sick of the self help roller coaster that leaves you constantly striving and never arriving?
Are you ready for a true spiritual path that connects you to yourself and reality so you can feel good about your life?
Then come check out the Mystery School
