Real Love

Often when we’ve been hurt in the past or if we’ve experienced rejection we become insecure, we worry, and we self-reject. Next time you find yourself thinking, “oh he probably won’t want to go out with me anyway!” or “what am I thinking she is too good of a person to want to date me” stop and take a deep breath.  Recognize that under your self-rejection there is an old fear that hasn’t fully expressed itself.

Everyone has been rejected or has fears of rejection – you are not alone! To stop self-rejection, start a loving relationship with yourself.

There are different ways to be in loving relationship with yourself.

One way that I, and many of my clients, have found helpful is to start by noticing what messages are playing over and over in our heads. In many Buddhist traditions and in Psychology, the wandering, unsettled and restless mind is referred to as “monkey mind”. Pay attention to the messages you are telling yourself. They may be negative messages such as, “I’m not good enough. I’m never going to be in a loving relationship. I can’t have what I truly want.”

Or, they may be positive messages such as, “I live in loving relationship all the time. I enjoy and celebrate my life that is filled with love and joy.”

If you notice that the majority of your “monkey mind” thoughts are preoccupied with self-rejection, put yourself on a “negative thoughts diet.”

You have to be the catalyst behind changing these thought patterns. Your mind is not going to stop these messages that have been playing for years without your conscious intervention. You have to replace these negative messages with new positive ones that you get to create. They can be any message you want them to be. Be creative. Allow yourself to be positive.

One way you can do this is to take the negative message and turn it into a positive one. For example, “I’m not good enough” can be transformed into the positive message “I am whole and complete.”

Always make sure that your new message is in the present tense, so that you can start embodying your new message right away. Now add a verb that evokes positive feelings such as “celebrate” “savior” “enjoy” “delight” in front of your sentence. For example “I celebrate myself for being whole and complete.”

You can have one new positive message that you say to yourself every time you catch yourself falling back into the old negative “monkey mind” thought patterns. Or you can create a whole list of positive new messages and then choose a different one every time you catch yourself in the old ”monkey mind” pattern.

A client of mine wrote her new positive messages on sticky notes and posted them all over her house and on her car’s dashboard, so that she had constant reminders of the new message that she was programming into her being.

Remember Every Relationship Starts with You. Ask yourself “What relationship do I want to create with myself and others?”

So next time you find yourself caught in your self-rejection talk – recall one of your new positive messages, say it a few times to yourself to replace the negative one. Take a deep breath and then decide if you want to approach someone or introduce yourself to someone new.