Dating Tips and Advice 29: I Dare You to Try This!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I Dare You to Try This! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Want to try something? Think about this for a minute. Imagine there was someone you did not like all that much. Would you go really out of your way to make something good happen in that person's life? You probably would not.
I mean you might not go out of your way to harm them, but you probably also would not go out of your way to do something to make them happy either. Yes?
Well the problem with that is that most of us don't really like ourselves very much. That means most of us don't go out of our way to make good things happen to ourselves.
Some of us get into trying all sorts of positive thinking and stuff like that and find that our lives just end up more or less back the way they were before we started.
That's what happens when we don't like ourselves. It creates a climate where good stuff can't grow easily. We can try our best to make 'exotic blooms' grow, but if the climate is not right it is just not going to happen. If we don't create enough warmth through liking ourselves then our relationships can get stunted and malformed no matter how hard we try to grow them right.
You ever felt that you were in a relationship that was stunted and malformed, but kept telling yourself it had 'great potential'! Well, that comes out of how we feel about ourselves. It is really us that has great potential - especially when we finally give ourselves a chance.
If we don't like who we are it is much harder to create a life that we feel good about. And, we don't create a life we feel good about it is harder to like ourselves. It's a self-perpetuating situation - that's what it is. And, it stays that way till we do the right things about it.
Its really annoying at times, but it is just a mirror. What goes on outside is often a mirror of what is going on inside us. Change the inside stuff and the outside stuff changes too. Sometimes it works to change the outside stuff, but if it does not mirror a change in inside stuff then the changes won't tend to last long.
Want to try something a bit scary? Try saying 'I like myself' ten times. It feels scary, but somehow good too - yeah? Are you feeling really brave? Try saying it while looking in the mirror! Yeah, that's really wild isn't it! I am telling you trying that would rock the world of even the toughest ones out there.
Of course, many of us don't like to do that kind of thing. But, does it feel so bad that we want to avoid it and stay stuck in the same old rut for the rest of our lives? In fact, after a while it starts to feel kind of good. Besides, we don't have to tell anyone we are doing it - right! :)
The thing is that we have all the negative opinions about ourselves that we picked up from others when we were kids. Back then; people didn't even have to say a thing to us. We just picked up (or assumed) what they thought about us from how they behaved. Shame we too often decided they were right about us when instead they might have been drunk, depressed, stupid or ignorant.
Anyway, when we do this kind of affirmation we meet those opinions head on. We begin to become a really good friend to ourselves.
After a while of this kind of thing I noticed that there were people that I was not comfortable around for the oddest reason. I was not comfortable around them because they liked me more than I did! I thought there must be something wrong with them, because they did not seem to think there was something wrong with me! I started to hang out with that kind of person a bit more and have never looked back.
What has this to do with dating and relating? It has everything to do with dating and relating. When we get liking ourselves sorted we stop creating relationships with those who are only willing to have dramas, crises and all sorts of weird stuff happen with us. We start to create more relationships with people who genuinely like us - and we get to really know that is what we deserve.
May you get to know that is what you truly deserve.
