Finding your YOU that leads to TWO
Where is this elusive soul? Where does he hide? Where does he spend his time?
What places call to him, and who are the people he spends his time with?
I know this is what you're really asking.
Where is he? And where do I find him?
If there was one question I asked myself a thousand times, it was this one. There was no one who understood just how elusive he could be more than me.Continue Reading
I'll be the first to agree that sometimes our "aha" moments come to us in the most unusual of places.
Like recently, when I was sitting in the audience at our local high school annual holiday concert. Listening to the beautiful music being played and sung by these talented young students in the band, the choir, and the orchestra, I realized I had lived my own student years in all the wrong places.
Here in this place where the music touched my soul and made me feel like everything was all right in the world (and especially with me!) it all suddenly became so clear.
With a clarity I never had before, I realized exactly what happened during those formative years that now seem so long ago.
You see, without even knowing it, the words from my older, popular sister (who I secretly aspired to be like) had influenced where I went, where I didn't go, who I was friends with, and who I wasn't friends with.
Five years before me, when my older sister entered high school and had the option to choose band and choir or art and drama, I had overheard her and her friends referring to all the kids who took art and drama as cool and popular, while the ones taking band and choir were described as the opposite.
I never forgot their words.Continue Reading
Today’s post has been contributed by Alexis Meads, a lifestyle and wellness coach.
When I was in my early 20's, I moved to a new city, broke out of my comfy relationship and started a financial career in search of my dreams.
I went on dates, spent my newly earned money and partied. My life seemed good from the outside and it was exciting and fun…for a while.
A few years into this new lifestyle I realized that I hated my job, I never got over my first love, I had gained 20 pounds and racked up some hefty credit card debt.
I didn’t know who I was, what I wanted or how to get there.
I thought that if I just met the “perfect” guy, than I would be happy and all would be well. So I spent all my time searching hopelessly. I went out with my friends, tried internet dating, met guys at work. But in every single relationship I either found myself bored and unhappy, or seriously hung up on unemotionally available men.
I was keeping myself busy to avoid being alone. Sitting still and being alone meant that I had to face my own demons. I was scared that I’d realize how lonely I was. The voice on Friday night that said, “you’re tired, do something for yourself, just stay in” would be silenced in fear of feeling like a failure.
After receiving my M.A. at Harvard University and still not having any luck in the dating world, plus feeling dissatisfied with my life all around, I did what any normal person would do…up and moved to Hawaii.
I spent the next four months in what I now look back as my “self-love discovery.” Although I didn’t know it at the time, that is exactly what it was.
For the first time, on my own, I learned what it was that I really wanted. I found that I loved to dance and did it daily, I spent time meditating, shed that 20 pounds by treating my body right and learned how to say no. I began accepting myself, and from that acceptance, began dreaming up my ideal life.
I no longer felt lonely when I was alone.
When I moved back to the mainland as Hawaiians call it, excited about my new life and focusing on myself for the first time, an unexpected thing happened.
I met someone.
And he didn't check off my previous boxes. I had always gone for a certain “type” of guy that I was attracted to, but that also never worked out. I was made to believe that “the one” would just show up and sweep me off my feet and it would all be happily ever after. Plus the timing with this new guy seemed all wrong.
Luckily the universe had grander plans than our own. Even though I wasn't out looking for a relationship, now that I had fully embraced myself, it was looking for me.
I kept him in the friend zone for a while, convinced that this wasn't the guy for me and not the right time. However, I couldn't deny that I enjoyed spending time with him. That I felt comfortable talking to him and that when he hugged me it felt like home.
One fated day on the beach, after a really fun time with him, I made a final attempt to keep him at arms length. Even with growing feelings, I told him that I just wanted to be friends. To my total shock and awe, he said “okay”.
Like it was nothing! I figured for sure he’d be angry, or controlling, or never speak to me again. Like every other guy in my past. But he just said “okay”, completely willing to let me go, and then even had the audacity to see if I wanted to hang out again as friends the next day!
I’m pretty sure I fell in love with him at that moment.
Here was the first man who had come into my life who would allow me to be in a relationship while also allowing me to be free.
We are now engaged to be married in Greece this May. While it’s not always perfect, its perfect for me. I have grown so much within this relationship and feel blessed to have found it. But it would have never happened if I hadn't first found myself.
Alexis Meads received her M.A. at Harvard University. She is a Certified Wellness Coach and Self-Love Expert. She helps women to fall madly in love, feel sexy and confident every day and create a life full of adventure.
Who am I? When I look back at some of my toughest single days – the days when I really questioned whether I was ever going to get it right in the relationship department, I realize that so much of the heartbreak and fear of abandonment that I felt stemmed from not really knowing who I was.
Oh, I thought I did.
But I didn’t understand that in order to connect with another person in a real relationship, you have to first connect with yourself, to understand who you really are, what makes you tick, what you’re all about, and all things related. Not just who you’ve been brought up to be.
Not who your parents told you you were by the things they said and the way they treated you. Not who your friends and past boyfriends tell you you are by the ways they treat you. Not who your coworkers and bosses tell you you are by the way they interact with you and judge you.Continue Reading
One of the most difficult and frustrating parts of my journey was always the fact that no matter how much I worked on certain areas of my life, there were some things that I just couldn't seem to change no matter how much I tried. Namely, it was how personally I took everything, how deeply I would let the realities of my relationships affect me, how much I would let other people's expectations of me affect my mood, my happiness, my life. I used to beat myself up mercilessly over these, wondering why I couldn't change this part of me. I tried all the suggestions I read over and over, but nothing seemed to work. These issues ran so deep.
And then I just felt worse, because in being so hard on myself, I had now created a situation where not only was I still taking things so personally, but I was also creating the emotions of anger and frustration at myself for being this way. No wonder I just wanted to bury myself under the covers and stay there until the world went away. Or at least until I finally got it right.
But since then I've come to realize that everything, in fact, comes together in our lives based on who we are, and that includes those parts of ourselves that are so resistant to change because they are so ingrained. Our programming, our core personality traits, those messages we did receive. Even if we would have preferred things to have been different. It wasn't about what we didn't get, what we weren't like, what we hadn't been able to overcome. The way our lives have worked out, and the route our journeys have taken on the road to finding ourselves and the love in our lives, is all part of the life that we are meant to live and are living now. And with those words, we can accept all those imperfections about ourselves. Because it might not have been the way we would have chosen to have our lives go, but the end result is exactly the way our lives are meant to be. As imperfect and difficult as it sometimes feels.
And so for you, my beautiful friend who forgets your own worth all too often and focuses too much on what you don't have and what you think you need someone's permission to do and become, I invite you to stop blaming yourself, stop beating yourself up so harshly, stop being so hard on yourself. You don't deserve this kind of treatment. Not from yourself or anyone else.
Don't let anyone into your life who doesn't get this, and don't let yourself do this to you for a second more! Whatever it is you can't seem to accept about yourself, whatever it is you keep beating yourself up about it. Stop. Your life will come out the way it's meant to not just in spite of you and these imperfections you can't seem to rid yourself of, but because of these parts of you that make you the person you are.
The very beautiful person that you are.
If it seems to you like everyone else has it all together, knowing just what to do to have a healthy relationship and making it look so easy in the process, while you're struggling along, feeling like there's something wrong with you, well, you're not alone.
I used to feel that way, too. There always seemed to be someone who did relationships better than I did.
While I was constantly trying to figure someone out, trying to be the perfect girlfriend, figuring out whether I should try to give him some more space or show him just how excited I was about him, there was always someone I knew who had that amazing confidence about them and their particular relationship.
Just confidently being in it, seeing where it went and not putting all their focus and time and energy in it, just being normal about it.
And oh how I would envy her. I wanted to be that nonchalant, too.Continue Reading
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