Archives for August 2013

Dream Big

This is your life, my beautiful friend. With all of your dreams, your hopes, your desires.

You dream so big, but you ask for so little and you settle for even less.

You get so caught up in longing to begin your life with someone else, that you forget about this life you already have right here in front of you.

You falsely believe that if you just had the missing piece – him – everything else would fall perfectly in place.

But the reality is, that stage of your life will come. A time when it’s you and him. A time when “we” will replace “me” when it’s meant to be.

But right now, this is about you and your dreams and what kind of a difference in the world you can make just by being you and following your dreams and your passion.

Today, like no other time in history, you have the ability to make a difference. Right now. Right where you are.

With the internet, you can find more people like you, more community, more resources, more opportunities to connect. Which are all more outlets for making your dreams a reality.

Some of you have so graciously shared some of your ambitious, beautiful dreams with me and I've encouraged you to follow them and see where they take you.

I dare each and every one of you to take a chance on you to see where your own unique dreams may take you. Find a passion. Find your passion. It doesn't matter what it is, or what anyone else thinks about it, all that matters is that you believe that you have something to offer the world.

Because you do!

It’s your turn. It’s your life. Never again will you have this time all to yourself to choose how you want to spend every minute of it. This isn't about waiting around for your life to begin.

It’s about living the life you were born to live.

You choose.

You create it.

All you need to do is start somewhere. Anywhere.

You can do this no matter who you are. Because if I believe in you, and you believe in you, there’s no telling what you can do!

Why Do You Stay?

14 Comments

But I love him.

But I’m lonely.

But I’m getting older.

But he supports me financially.

But I’m divorced with young children.

But he takes care of me.

I hear each and every one of your reasons, my beautiful friend. And while I wish, oh how I wish with all of my heart, that I could somehow make everything all better for you, the reality is that we are all on our own journey and our own path.

You know what your priorities are.

You know what certain things are worth to you. And you know what you are willing to give up in order to get what you’re receiving in return. It's your decision.

And no one else has the right to judge you because they are not you.

And so, as much as I personally believe that once we step out of our comfort zones and step out into the unknown we find more than we could ever have asked for, you have to believe that too.

It takes courage and trust and a belief that defies all logic to go into that unknown, especially when we live in such a practical world.

So what I do say is this: find the unconventional means to getting those real needs of yours met without needing to get it from someone who gives you so little else.

If it’s love you need, find people to love who most need that beautiful love you give so freely while expecting so little in return. Look around at all the hurting people in our world and give that love to those who need it most, and you will find that the love will come back to you tenfold.

If you’re lonely, make some friends, re-connect with family, or become part of a community that fills you up so you no longer define lonely as being without a man. Look into co-housing or find a roommate situation with someone looking for someone just like you!

If you need some help with parenting your children, look into sharing housing with someone who is also in a similar situation and looking for something like this, too. In our culture we are all holed up in our individual houses far away from the villages and communities of the past, and yet we miss out on so much when we live so far away like we do. See what creative ways you can come up with to recreate the idea of a village so that the daily difficulties of raising your sweet children doesn't rest solely on your weary shoulders.

If you hear your biological clock ticking, stop settling for these men who aren't looking to commit to you and have children anytime soon. Weed those out right away by focusing solely on the real qualities you’re looking for in a husband and most importantly, a father to your children. Narrow it down to one or two of those most important qualities and don’t consider anyone who doesn't have them. There are plenty of men out there who also want to have children sooner rather than later, too.

If it’s financial security you’re looking for, look for ways to lower your living expenses. Take on a roommate, look into co-housing, move in with family or friends, move to a cheaper city or state, grow more of your own food, see what you can trade for some of your expenses. See if taking some training to get a better job might also be an option.

I know all too well how nice it is to have someone take care of us. But I also know the very high price we pay for that. When we need someone to take care of us outside of ourselves, we give so much of our own power away to them. We become indebted to them and the relationship shifts and becomes unbalanced so that we lose so much of ourselves. Ask yourself if you really need someone to take care of you, or if you might be able to take care of yourself just as well, and without the strings that come attached when we outsource our care to someone else.

My point, my wonderful friend, is that whatever your reason is for being with someone who doesn't see you the way you really are, who isn't able to give you what you’re truly looking for, sometimes there is more to that story of why we stay with someone like this if we look closer at what we really need. Try to uncover the real need that he's filling.

If you can fill those needs through other creative out-of-the-box ways, you will find your cup full enough that you don’t need to settle for less than what you deserve anymore.

Or ever again.

Am I Too Nice?

18 Comments

Some recent questions I've gotten from a few of our beautiful readers are: How can I stop being so nice? How can I stop being so emotional? I want to be the dream girl, not the doormat!

Here's my response:

You are nice! You are emotional! Not only do you not need to stop, you need to love about yourself the very fact that you have these beautiful qualities!

You have the ability to feel, to empathize, to care, to love - and to do these all so deeply. These are special gifts you have to share with someone who is worthy of you! Someone who is looking for someone just like you because these are the qualities you possess. But when you are just getting to know someone, there's no possible way to know if this is someone you want to share these qualities – essentially, your YOU – with. You don’t know him well enough yet to know if this is someone you really want to have anything to do with at all!

I know how this happens because it used to happen to me all too often. Someone would come into my life and start paying so much attention to me that I was so flattered I would immediately start going into my programming. If he was confident, attractive and had those other surface factors that piqued my interest, I was there. I was showing him just how much of a catch I was, how much I had to offer him and giving him every reason to stop looking any further because I was everything he could possibly want in a girlfriend!

But there was something I had missed in this process. I wasn't taking my time to get to know him. I wasn't slowing things down to a speed that would allow me to do this. I was too excited, too caught up in his potential and the pace he was setting that I wasn't taking the time to figure out if he was really the right guy for me.

What I didn't now then that I do know now is that if he was the right guy for me, he wouldn't think I was too nice, or too emotional, in fact he would love those qualities about me!

This isn't about pretending to be something you’re not. While much of the popular dating advice centers around how to play it cool and how to play hard to get – where it falls short is that if you’re not there, if you’re not in that place in your life where you’re so confident of your worth and what you have to offer and you have enough of a life that behaving like this comes from your real self, pretending is going to have the opposite effect. You’re going to be acting like something you’re not, and so you’ll be attracting someone who is looking for this other person you’re pretending to be and not your beautiful true self!

You see, this isn't about you being too emotional, too nice, or not playing it cool enough. This is about you being who you really are!

It's also about guarding this beautiful heart and soul of yours and not giving yourself away to someone you don’t even know yet. It’s about being your true emotional self but also bringing in that practical side that we forget to bring along all too often so that she can give us her honest assessment of whether or not he’s worthy of all you have to offer him – because you do have so much to offer!

It’s not about playing hard to get, but actually being hard to get because you know that no man is worth dropping your own life, your own interests, your own friends and family for.

No matter how tempting it is for us to rush into things, to get so caught up in being in love and letting our emotions run wild because we’re so ready to be done looking for love, it's never worth it. The reality is that the only thing this kind of reaction does is get us so caught up in our fantasies - that are the farthest thing from reality - that we can’t get bring ourselves to get out once we’re in. And that’s what takes so much time!

Going through this process of falling so hard so fast and losing ourselves in another human being only to find out too late that you weren't on the same page, only hurts us in the end. Then we spend so much time in the recovery process – letting go and getting over someone who wasn't right for us if we had just taken the time in the beginning to find this out before investing so much of ourselves. It’s no wonder it’s hard to justify ending something that we've invested so much of ourselves in!

Take that time in the beginning. Slow things down. Make him wait for you. Keep living your own beautiful life that you've created for yourself and let him be a part of all this slowly enough so you can see just how compatible he really is with you. If he’s not the one for you, you want to find this out sooner, not later, before you've invested so much of your beautiful you!

It doesn't matter who he is, what he has to offer, or how much of a catch he seems to be; you’re the catch, my beautiful friend! You save your own beautiful, feeling, loving, giving self for someone who is looking for those qualities in you.

If he’s right for you and this is meant to be, there’s nothing you ever need to be except yourself. And that's true regardless of how nice, how emotional, or how whatever else you are!

The Simple Way to Stop Feeling Rejected

48 Comments

Of all the emails I've received recently from my readers, one of the most overwhelming underlying themes centers around feeling rejected. It seems that so many of you are either in the process of feeling rejected by someone by his lack of responsiveness to you, or you are having a really hard time getting over someone because you feel rejected by him. Many of you are wondering how there could be any hope left for you since you feel you keep getting rejected regardless of who you are, what you do, or who you find yourself involved with.

A majority of you find yourselves wondering where to go from here, because you're afraid of feeling rejected again if you put yourself out there and give someone a chance. And yet the alternative, being alone, isn't any better because you really want to be in a committed relationship with someone, you’re just not sure how to go about it.

And for many of you, there is a downward spiral effect so that the more you put yourself out there, and the more you find yourself feeling rejected, the worse you feel about yourself and the more you question whether you will ever find the love you’re looking for or if there’s just too much wrong with you to attract any man who will really love you for your true self.

It's enough to crush the self-esteem of even the most confident woman.

I want you to rewind this entire recording that’s been playing on in your head for far too long. I want you to go back to the very first time you felt what you have been calling rejection from a guy. Remember as many details as you can about it, about the whole relationship regardless of how long it was, and I want you to answer the following questions as honestly as you can.

What was he like?
How did you feel when you were with him?
What were your expectations?
What were his expectations?
What were your terms?
What were his terms?
Could you both communicate honestly about your feelings?
How did he treat you?
How compatible were you really?
What was he looking for?
What were you looking for?

There’s a reason we’re starting with the first time you experienced feeling rejected. Because it set the stage for what you called rejection. So that the next time you experienced a similar lack of compatibility and it ended, you took it as a rejection again. A rejection of your beautiful you, your true self, and all that you are and had to offer someone who you thought was worth your you.

From here it wasn't much of a stretch to wonder what was wrong with you, and depending on how many times you experienced this, it’s no wonder you began to question yourself enough to wonder if there really is something wrong with you and if you’re destined to always be alone.

This is where the truth comes in. Not any more of the lies you've been buying into about this rejection you've been making into your reality. I know it plays into the emotional story where we’re not good enough for someone, we’re not beautiful enough or intelligent enough or sexy enough, or popular enough or whatever part of enough we want to call it. But this calls for a reality check of what rejection is and isn't.

You haven’t been rejected.

The truth is, you just were not compatible. If you look closely at your answers to the questions above, you'll realize that you were two different people who wanted two different things, who were not on the same page.

How do I know? Because if this wasn't the case, you wouldn't be feeling rejected because you'd still be together.

Over the story you wrote about that first time you were feeling rejected, write that out in a big bold color. You weren't rejected. Go through each of the experiences you've been calling rejection and do this same exercise for each one.

None of this has been what you thought it was!

This is what really happened. No matter what it felt like emotionally to you, he wasn’t rejecting you. He saw what you couldn’t see while you were trapped in that beautiful, emotional world you live in where love conquers all and covers a multitude of differences. Also known as the fairy tale.

The truth is, love doesn't always conquer all.

It takes the practical reality of two people who not only love each other, but who also want the same thing as the other and are both willing and ready to do what it takes to make that happen.

That’s it. That’s all there is to it.

There is no rejection.

Just differences. Incompatibility. Different pages.

Someone finally had to set you both free so you could get on with your lives and not waste any more time with something that couldn't work - no matter how much you wanted it to.

This story you've bought into, this rejection theme, the one that’s chipped away at your self-esteem, your self-confidence with each and every new occurrence with someone who simply wasn't right for you; it’s time to put it to rest. And write a new ending. The one that begins and ends with a beautiful person otherwise known as you who deserves someone who’s on the same page, who wants the same kind of commitment you want, who’s ready and willing to do what it takes to make it work with someone who wants this all, too!

Don’t call it rejection. Don’t take it personally. Don’t let its judgment rest on you for even a second! Feel yourself released from its hold. Release yourself with this knowledge. No more feeling rejected.

Who are you without this weight? Who are you without this story?

You’ve never been rejected. You’ve only been with someone who wasn’t right for you!

How to Get Over a Break Up

10 Comments

You remember the good times all too well. You can recall every wonderful moment you spent together. You can recount each and every time he told you he loved you. You can recite every loving word he ever said to you.

Of course you can. That’s the type of beautiful and sensitive soul you are!

And so it should come as no surprise that now that you are no longer together, no matter how hard you try you still believe deep down inside that you would be better off still together. No matter what anyone says. No matter how much anyone tries to convince you otherwise.

You miss him.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re missing having someone to spend your Friday night with, or whether it’s because you hate being alone, the reality is that you’re struggling to remember why it wasn’t working, why you couldn’t make it work, and why it had to end.

If only I had done this differently, you lament. If only I hadn’t said what I did, you second guess. Whatever you think you could have done to save it, or keep him happy, or keep your mouth shut, you’re convinced you’ve lost the love of your life. If only you could just have somehow been that much stronger, that less needy, that much more confident, it would have made all the difference.

And so, with these wonderful memories of the two of you living happily together, you spend your time and energy beating yourself up like this over and over again.

Why do so many of us identify with this?

I get it, because it was always what I fell into, too, after yet another relationship ended too soon for me that had shown so much potential. I didn’t know how not to go there. I had no idea how to get over a break up.

But the only thing it does when you spend your time and energy filling your mind with those happy memories is keep you stuck. It zaps your energy. Steals your strength. Keeps you down. And leaves you with nothing left to give to the one person who knows the truth – you!

It’s time to stop this.

I know all too well what it does to our beautiful hearts and souls when we leave things with the promise to leave a candle burning in the window for him – whether we say this out loud or not. It’s time to wake up. It’s time to see the relationship in the light of what really was, not just this selective memory version of those happy memories together that leave out the whole rest of the story. The reality of how we really felt much of the time when we were with him, if we’re completely honest with ourselves and come out of our own deeply embedded state of denial.

Here’s how we finally move past these old scripts that only tell a small part of the story, and move on to the real story that is waiting for us to discover.

Here's how to get over a break up:

Remember all those times you were miserable.

Remember all those tears you shed.

Remember how alone you felt so much of the time - even though you were with him.

Remember all those conversations with your best friend lamenting how he was treating you or how he just wouldn’t commit.

Remember all the ways you weren’t on the same page, didn’t have the same priorities, and didn’t want the same things.

Remember the specific times, the individual instances where it was anything but good. The times you waited, the time you wasted, the moments of the relationship where you felt anything but happy.

Remember those and write it all down.

Write out the real story.

Write it all down and repeat to yourself enough times so that those are the thoughts you remember when you start to beat yourself up for not being enough for him! You know the truth. Your beautiful heart knows the story that you deserve, and both your heart and soul know that it wasn’t that.

If it was, it would have been. You would still be together. Because two people who are meant to be together always are; but only if they’re both on the same page and want the same thing and are willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. That’s what real love is all about.

Yes, remember the good times too - there's no reason to bury those wonderful memories and you don't ever want your heart to get hardened. But this exercise will take the relationship out of the land of fairytales and into the land of reality. The reality that it just wasn't the right relationship for either of you.

And then allow yourself to be happy that you are now free to find real love with the guy that's right for you.

How about you? What do find is the best way to get over a break up? Tell us about it in the comments!

Does She Deserve This?

15 Comments

I saw her sitting there all alone today, watching all the couples laughing around her. She was still waiting for him to show … does she deserve this?

I saw her trying to hide the tears as she kept checking her phone for that message that never came … as she was silently wondering why he hasn't called...does she deserve this?

I heard her telling them he's been so busy at work lately, that's why she's there without him again, and she knew what they were thinking, even if they didn't say it out loud, because she thought it, too … does she deserve this?

I heard the door slams, the awful language, the harsh words, and then the pleading not to leave, as he left anyway … does she deserve this?

I heard her talking on the phone, telling him never to call her again, then I heard the sobs that came after she put her phone down when it all sunk in … does she deserve this?

I heard him telling her so many lies, stringing her along, for a reason that never makes any sense – but still she stays … does she deserve this?

You think it will be different this time, but you've chosen someone with the same story.

You think he will be different this time, but you've found someone who's actually the same guy as the last one, even though he's got a different name and a different look.

You think it's going to get better if you just give it a little more time.

You think he's going to come around and make a commitment to you if you just hang on a little longer.

It's time to stop believing so much in him, and start believing in someone who is worth believing in – YOU.

You choose, you decide.

The only person who can change this is you.

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Dream Big

Why Do You Stay?

Am I Too Nice?

The Simple Way to Stop Feeling Rejected

You haven’t been rejected.

There is no rejection.

How to Get Over a Break Up

You miss him.

It’s time to stop this.

Here's how to get over a break up:

Write out the real story.

Does She Deserve This?

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