Finding your YOU that leads to TWO
Kindness.
Gentleness.
Compassion.
Empathy.
Actions.
Not shallow words that mean nothing without the behavior to accompany them.
Look around you.
Are these what you experience from your lovers, your boyfriends, your girl friends, your family, all these ones you give so much of your time, your energy, your own kindness and gentleness and compassion and empathy to?Continue Reading
The letter this week covers a topic that I hear from so many of you that I almost could have just written this as an open letter to the community!
Hi Jane,
In November, I met a wonderful guy.
After the first date, he and I agreed that we felt a strong connection and wanted to date each other exclusively. My boyfriend is truly a great guy with all the qualities I've been looking for in a potential husband and father to future children.
We've talked of getting married and having a family in the near future.
Now for the part I'm struggling with and could use some advice...but let me start off by saying we do have an age difference...I'm 28 and he's 20. My boyfriend is unemployed. He has been since before we started dating.
I expressed my concern for this situation at the very beginning. He lives with his grandparents. He's basically the only member of the family that helps them with daily needs and chores around their house.
He uses his grandmother's vehicle.Continue Reading
You look back.
You look back at what was, not what is. You retell the story of how it should have been with your memory of what you did wrong.
It’s not too late!
Throw out the convention. Throw out the desire to have it the way your mind says it has to be.
This is your choice. You get to choose what terms you’re willing to accept.
This isn’t about him, it’s about you.
I’ve been working with a woman for years now, who has been trying to change the man she loves. She's miserable without him, and so is he without her. But together, they fight.Continue Reading
You’ve got your list. You know what you want this year.
Love.
Someone special to share your life with. And everything else. But nothing quite compares to love.
And finding him. Finally.
Right?
Ok, so there’s something we have to settle first. Something that’s been holding you back more than you realize, more than any of us realize.Continue Reading
Welcome to 2015, gorgeous! I hope that you had a wonderful holiday season celebrating love, joy, and abundance in whatever method you've chosen for your life.
As you know, I love the feeling of freshness, change and the endless possibilities for positive transformation that the idea of a new year brings.
But as much as I’ll always be the eternal optimist, I've also come to see the necessity of bringing in that realist perspective as well, and so I know that this idea of making huge changes in our lives all at once can seem overwhelming and a bit daunting.
And it also sets us up for one thing, and one thing only:
So today I want to give you a few thoughts that will help you avoid failure this year by changing your mindset right from the start.
The key to any kind of lasting change is something that you've heard me talk about a lot here on the blog:Continue Reading
I may have figured out quite a bit when it comes to men, but I sometimes find that some of the same old habits that I had with dating crop up in my current life as well.
I've learned that the first step in changing habits that are just so hard to break is to recognize them. To become aware of it, to notice it casually, without giving it so much attention that allows it grows in power. To acknowledge it and let it pass without allowing it to get the best of you.
Now that I've been happily married for quite a while, and have my family with all of the chaos that comes with it, I find myself wondering if I've traded my old habit of trying to be the perfect girlfriend for trying to be the perfect wife and mother instead.
I find that I still feel like I'm supposed to defer to everyone else, to be unselfish and put others firsts, to pretend to not know something more than “they” know so that I won’t offend them.
But, just as I went through back in my dating years, I’m learning to recognize these feelings and question them. To ask myself the same questions I ask you to ask yourself when looking at the dating traps that you tend to fall into.
Is it really your own truth, your own belief? Or is it someone else’s opinion that became your truth? Is it your programming, your conditioning, your upbringing that's making you feel the way you feel? And more importantly, does it match the “you” you’re becoming? The you that’s learning how to tell the difference.
These are all the same questions I ask myself, just at a different stage in life and love. The growing doesn't stop.
I still tend to gravitate towards a certain type of person who I suddenly think is going to be my new best friend, just like I used to be drawn to a certain type of man who I was sure would be the one. But I often find that these women are actually masking their own insecurities behind this outer facade of “I don’t care what anyone else thinks about me”.
I won’t see the mask at first; I’ll think it’s the real thing and that she's truly confident and has it all together - just like I want to be. I'll think she’s the perfect friend for me because of how she makes me feel. Just being around her will give me a sense of permission that I still find myself gravitating towards.
Until I start to get to know her better and see how little we actually have in common beyond this feeling of "Wow, she's so great". And then, once again, I see the truth that it really does take time to get to know someone well enough to be sure you want them in your life, to be sure that they're truly compatible with you.
The reality that in the end it simply takes time to find out if people are really what you think, or if it's just a mask. It’s the slow, steady relationships that develop naturally over time that prove to be the ones that are truly the one for me time and time again.
Not unlike the same lessons I discovered with love in a distant time and place that’s never seems as far away as the actual measurement of time.
It’s why we can all use this reminder no matter how much we think we know. It’s why I still refer often to the truths contained in the program I designed for you. The program is about dating and attracting love into your life, but I find that the core principles apply to so much of life besides romantic love.
And I find that I still need these reminders myself, too.
Blind spots. Triggers. MO's. Our Stuff. Whatever you choose to call them.
Don’t fight them. Accept them. They’re a part of you and sometimes nearly impossible to change.
So start by simply recognizing them. Acknowledge them, but don’t allow them to play a starring role in your story. They no longer need to.
Don’t beat yourself up about them. We’re not here to punish ourselves for being as human as we are. We’re here to love every part of ourselves as we are. Yes, there’s always room for improvement, but if all we ever do is concentrate on what’s wrong with us, we miss the whole point of this life.
To love, to be loved, and most of all, to love ourselves. It's what a life worth living is all about.
What about you? What are you fighting about yourself that it’s time to love about yourself instead? Share it with us in the comments!
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