Why the most important relationship is the one you have with your SELF.

“You wander from room to room, hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck”. – Rumi

Rumi was such a clever chap, and I like how this quote personifies how we so often look for love “out there” in the world, only to discover, it’s been “inside here” all along.

When we don’t fully accept our true Self (“SELFie Love”), we feel incomplete in some way, undeserving, unworthy, unfulfilled and suffer from “not enough-ness”.  The things we don’t like about ourselves are our holes that we set about filling in with relationships that make us feel better about our self-perceived flaws. Without realizing it, we blindly go out into the world bearing a “Fix Me” sign, on a quest for the missing piece that will make us feel complete.  Once found, we like to think we’ll find happiness, fulfillment, and love. The caveat is, that we inevitably attract relationships that recognize our incompleteness and present themselves as our missing puzzle piece.  In exchange, they’ll expect the same from us; that we will serve to be their means of completion.

“I can work with that”, you say to yourself.  “They fix me, I fix them, and everyone wins”!  If this scenario sounds familiar, ask yourself how it’s working out for you?  Do you have a track record of helping others to be their best, yet somehow come up short when it comes to your own fulfillment?  Is there a pattern of love relationships that start out as champagne and rapture, but end in cheap beer and heartache?  Do you travel from Wow to Woe post honeymoon phase, arriving bewildered at the destination of “what’s missing, why did he/she change, why does this always happen to me?”  And perhaps in a state of perplexed denial, you lay the blame at the feet of your partner, often making it their problem and responsibility to “fix” it again.  We get frustrated when we sense the missing piece is being withheld from us, so we deliver demands and the misery ensues until finally we, or they arrive at the conclusion that once again, we’ve misjudged, made a mistake and we call it quits.  Rinse, repeat.

I must confess, I am a former “not enough-ness” sufferer.  My story was nothing unusual.  I was raised on a healthy diet of fear and trust no one.  I often felt like I was a glass half-full, living in a glass half-empty world.  In my quest for role models, sameness and connection, I invariably missed the mark and found myself instead on the comfortable path of the devil I knew.

Dwelling in the business of pleasing others and not myself eventually got old.  I grew tired of feeling ridiculous as another rug beneath me was yanked, and the weight of being responsible for the happiness of others was suffocating my own joy.  When the lessons got harder and the pain hurt deeper I stopped asking myself “why” and started asking “WTF?”  What was it exactly I felt I lacked and sought to find in others?

With gentle compassion and warrior-esque grit, I declared “game over” and patiently retraced the breadcrumb trail of lessons all the way down to my soul, who welcomed me home with unconditional love.  Once the SELFie key unlocks your buried treasure, the epiphany is transcending.  The sparkle shines so brightly you’ll find it illuminates the entire pattern of behavior that’s been sabotaging your bliss.  Accepting the “new and improved” you is like winning the “enough-ness” lottery.  The brandished golden ticket is the discovery that you are your own missing piece to your own magnificent puzzle. You are finally enough just as you are.

Although I was a little late to this party, (incidentally – it’s never EVER too late) this epiphany changed my life.  From the moment I turned the key; that “I“ was my own missing puzzle piece, everything shifted.

When you find love within your Self, that’s when the world sees the real deal and you attract someone who lives from that same enough-ness place as yourself.  When these two souls are aligned the LOVE is cosmic.  Based on attraction, not neediness, each person complete independently, and elevated when shared together.  I call it “Blississsippi” or the “Mother Lode Love Lottery”.

Imagine the change we would see in the world if more of us believed we were enough.  To see change in the outside world, we first have to change our inside world.  You are entirely up to you.

Love you xo.