We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve

For most of my life I thought I was unlovable. I didn’t love myself, I didn’t even like myself, and so I never trusted that anyone who said they did. And, if someone did seem genuine it made me uncomfortable, and fearful that they were going to find out the ugly truth sooner or later, so I would always plan my exit strategy in anticipation of what I thought was going to happen. I also, even when I learned to love myself, accepted love that was below what I knew I deserved, because there was still a part of me that didn’t believe I could ever have the love I wanted. As a result, I allowed myself to stay in a relationship that was not loving, and certainly not loving to myself. But it was a pure love, a mutual love and a love built on mutual respect and connection that finally lead me to the place I am now and a love that I know I deserve today.

It is very hard to find true love when we don’t love ourselves. I can happen, where we learn to love ourselves through someone else’s eyes, but often we sabotage love that we don’t feel deserving of. In order to let love in, love has to live inside of us, we can’t harbor hate or fear in the place of love and believe that love can live there, or, that it even belongs there. Love starts with us, from within, of loving ourselves and who we are, and when we are able to live in that place that love radiates from us attracting more love. Love also becomes a filter we put everything through, if what we are doing and saying isn’t loving it has to go, it has no place in our lives and will only damage the love we have found for ourselves. When we love ourselves we can love others, with compassion and understanding, it changes our thinking and takes us away from our own wants and needs to that of wanting to be of service to those around us, those actions bring us more love. And when we feel full of love and we want to share it, love comes and finds us, and, when we are full of love we can accept it, truly for what it is and what it is meant to be.

There are many roads to love, within ourselves and around us, sometimes it takes hitting a bottom to start us on a path of love and sometimes we get inspired by love we see in others, but the more love we are able to find and share the more our love grows and the more we are able to harness the power of it to walk us through dark days and light up the path for someone else who may be standing in the dark. The power of love beats out fear, hate and anything that is meant to hurt or damage us. If we have love in our heart we can do anything and overcome anything, and when we join our love with another it becomes even stronger and can support us when ours may be depleted.

Don’t accept anything less than the love you deserve, and know that you deserve the best love, true love, unconditional love because you, at your core, are love, we just let things get in the way of it sometimes. Find the love at your center, feed it with more love and share that love with those who may need it today. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you love yourself? If yes, what do you love about yourself? Have you always loved yourself? If not, what changed? If you don’t love yourself today, why not? What do you think makes you so unlovable? Think of one reason you are lovable, hold that reason in your heart, and work on building on that one reason every day, at the start of each day think of one more reason until your heart is full.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you