Nothing positive can begin to happen in your life until you realize your own value and self-worth. Otherwise, you will continue to feel like a victim of unhappiness.
The reason you may not be happy, I mean truly happy in your heart and your soul is that you haven’t yet learned the value of making YOUR needs a priority in your life! In other words, making the relationship you have with yourself the most important investment of your time and energy!
The common female response to this is, “But I would feel guilty and selfish if I put myself before the needs of my children, husband, and family!” As loyal and admirable as that sounds, it’s also the reason why many women continue to feel emotionally stuck, resentful, and even jealous when they reflect upon their lives. This often happens when a healthy balance between meeting your needs and the needs of your family and friends is not met!
As a healer, many of my women clients share that even though they have a lot of positive things to be grateful for in their lives – a loving partner, supportive family, well-behaved children, a good-paying job, their health, etc., they still don’t feel happy and it frustrates them because they can’t understand why! They then ask me if I know why and what they are doing wrong.
The common mistake unhappy women always make is…
They often confuse self-love with being selfish. In order to feel genuine happiness, you need to make a conscious effort to nurture a healthy relationship with yourself as well as meeting the needs of others! Otherwise, how can you possibly make someone else happy if you’re not happy yourself?
Factoring in the time it takes to develop and maintain a healthy relationship with yourself will require both your time and energy to effectively satisfy your needs, and inspire creativity in order to accomplish your goals and dreams. Therefore, this cannot be an option or something you get around to doing only if you have time left over in your day!
You’ll need to make the time and energy a priority each day along with every other priority!
Making oneself a priority might sound like an easy thing to do, however, it’s not for most women! Unfortunately, many women are hard-wired to believe meeting their needs before others as being selfish due to their cultural or religious upbringing. Others, like me, inherited this belief from our mothers, our first female role models. I was only allowed to meet my daily needs after my family’s needs were met first.
Unfortunately, that strategy left me with little or no time, motivation or energy to pursue my own passion. Hence the lack of joy in my life! As a result, each day became very predictable and lacked any sense of fun or adventure. It didn’t take long before I became bored with myself! With nothing exciting to look forward to each day, I began enjoying other people’s drama and soon found myself losing energy to anger and jealousy towards women I believed had everything I thought would make me happy…an attentive husband, extra money to pamper myself, respectful children and the perfect body! I didn’t know then but I was beginning to lose myself to negative fear-based feelings such as anger, resentment, and envy towards any woman who had the life I envisioned for myself. I believed that being me meant having no fun – until I met her.
Each day I would wake up and prepare both my husband and children for their day before beginning my “wifely” chores and duties. And each morning I would stare outside my front window and watch my neighbor sitting comfortably in her lawn chair reading a book and enjoying a nice cup of hot coffee while her son played happily beside her. “How does she have time to do this every morning?” I wondered. Wow, I wish I had the time to sit and drink coffee too, but I don’t!
My sarcastic, judgmental thoughts about this woman I didn’t even know would awaken the victim in me and before long I felt totally justified feeling jealous and angry towards her for no apparent reason. “Doesn’t she have better things to do with her time than sit there every morning and drink coffee all day? It must be nice to be her!”
One day, I just couldn’t take watching her enjoy herself any longer so I walked over to her, and shared a few common pleasantries until I landed the opportune moment to ask her, “So how do you find the time each morning to sit and enjoy a hot cup of coffee while being a busy mom? You must have a hundred things to do as I do!” She just smiled and said, “Yes, I do have a hundred things to do. But, the reason I have time for coffee every day and you don’t is because I believe I deserve it. Don’t you feel you deserve it too?” she asked.
You make the positive happen!
Nothing positive can begin to happen in your life until you realize your own value and self-worth. Otherwise, you will continue to feel like a victim of unhappiness. You will feel frustratingly stuck and develop negative feelings of anger and resentment towards yourself and others. Especially, when it “seems” like other women are happier than you are and living more fulfilling lives. However, the lack you are truly experiencing is the lack of a healthy relationship with yourself!
In order to be “happy” and content in your life you have to like, dare I say “love” the relationship you have with yourself. This is what self-love is; which ultimately leads to self-happiness. Self-love enables you to make your needs a priority in your life which leads to experiencing true, authentic happiness. So remember, the key to being happy – guilt free – is to strike a healthy balance of both giving to yourself and giving to others. This will satisfy your natural desire to want to nurture others without neglecting to nurture yourself too!
Oh, and by the way. My answer to my neighbor’s offer for coffee was, “A DEFINITE YES!” Today, we still make time to have a coffee together since our first coffee experience over 20 years ago! Who would have thought that that simple question started my journey into developing and nurturing a healthy relationship with myself and experiencing what true authentic self-happiness really is?
So now I pose the same question to you, my friend…”Will you take the time for a coffee break today?” I sure hope so because you definitely deserve it!