
What I Need.
As I meditate on what I need most in order to curate a deliciously joyful life; I understand that the single greatest gear that I can equip myself with is love. The best path to love is to embark on a journey within.
Broken!

I grew up with a mom whose love for me was immense. She gave me all she had to give but some how I still did not feel lovable. There was a sadness that I carried like a backpack full of books that I didn’t want to read, and I couldn’t put it down, or at least I didn’t know that I could at the time.
I traveled through my experiences trying to look like I had it all together, not wanting others to see that I was broken. I mean I must have been if my own father didn’t love me. Yes mom was there but my dad, not so much, and it stung. I longed for my dad but he’d left my mom for a much younger model, (a whole other story). I remember questioning why I wasn’t good enough for him to love.
Was it Just Me?
I became an inauthentic version of myself, a people pleasing nicey nice; so not the real me. Kind yes, generous but not nice. It took years and some therapy to see what I was doing, to understand that I was trying to be what I thought was needed in order to deserve to be liked and eventually loved.
I was so weird, awkward, peering into people trying to figure out what they wanted me to do, be, say, so that they’d like me. It never crossed my mind to question what I liked in a person. I just assumed that most everyone else were confidently thriving, unbothered by insecurities. It took me experiencing someone who I thought was perfect screwing up royally for me to look more closely and see that almost no one had it all together and that I wasn’t as flawed as I’d thought.
Proceed with caution.

When we truly love ourselves enough to care about how we feel, we will carefully choose the people we allow into our lives. Even being cautious about family members. Love them yes, but not giving them power over our state of being. Setting boundaries will become a priority because we understand that in this life, we only have a certain amount of time and we want to spend as much of that time as we choose to be in a good feeling state.
When we feel good, we emanate good energy and what we emanate comes back to us. When we love ourselves, we pay attention to how we feel about the places that we spend our time. Everything from our places of employment, to where we live. If it doesn’t feel good, we should devise a plan to make it feel better or seek out new environments that help us thrive.
When we really love ourselves, we pay attention to the way certain foods make us feel; of course there are some foods that nourish us and provide us with energy and a lightness, where other foods might taste good in the moment but leave us feeling drained. When we love ourselves enough to care about how we feel, we no longer allow things, people or even our own thoughts to deplete us. Have a negative thought, dump it immediately and replace it with a positive one. When we love ourselves enough to pay attention to how we feel then everything else that we need and even want will find its way to us, we will create it by living loving lives that emanate joy which will bring more joy right back to us.💞

To Love Oneself is the beginning of a Lifelong Romance
Peter McWilliams