Are you trading your love and authenticity for approval?
It is so easy to lose yourself in the alluring whirlwind of life that often times you forget about the most important aspect of life which is being true to yourself. When you compromise the most authentic part of who you are to please other people, to seek approval or to avoid confrontation, you burry your magnificence and inner beauty. Slowly but surely, this act of compromising your authenticity erodes your self-worth and the inner light of your truth diminishes to an almost imperceptible spec in the background. When we put our own authenticity last, we pay the ultimate price, we lose the capacity to love ourselves. Without self-love we cannot love others and we cannot feel loved by others because at a deep level we are not honouring and loving ourselves. To change this we have to take down the for sale sign on our self-worth and stop trading our authenticity and love for approval from others. We need to reclaim our sense of self-love and worthiness that we have been so willingly giving away for so long.
Letting go of your need for approval and reclaiming your sense of love and worthiness
The amount of love and approval that we get from others often determines how much we love and approve of ourselves. This fundamental belief that we are only worthy of love when other people give us love is one of the primary causes of our emotional pain and suffering as human beings. This belief is flawed because our sense of love and worthiness as a human being rests on someone else’s opinion of whether they feel we are worthy and loveable. As long as we behave and act in a way that they approve of they will love us and feel that we are worthy, but the moment we behave in a way that they don’t approve of we are deemed unworthy an un-lovable as a human being. This form of love is conditional and can only be experienced on the very rare occasion that we live up to someone else’s expectations of who we should be. As long as we rely on other people to make us feel loveable and worthy we will continue to suffer and feel like our emotional cup is empty.
To break this cycle of emotional pain and suffering we have to redefine our fundamental beliefs about being loveable and worthy. We have to recognise that we are solely responsible for the degree of love and worthiness that we feel for ourselves. We are responsible for creating the parameters, conditions and beliefs that allow us to feel loved and worthy or not. We have to start giving our self permission to be worthy of love regardless of rigid conditions and rules that we impose on ourselves or that others impose on us. True unconditional love requires no conditions for it to be so, it is unconditional. When we let go of the rigid conditions, rules, beliefs and expectations about what it means to be worthy of love we give ourselves permission to experience true unconditional love.
When we truly love ourselves unconditionally for who we are flaws and all, we automatically give permission to other people to do the same. We will feel loved by others only to the degree that we are able to love ourselves. If we want to truly love ourselves we have to stop trading our love and authenticity for approval. We have to put our ability to love who we are on a deeper level above all else.
If you would like to experience Bens amazing work first hand you can book your spot at the next Journey to Authenticity workshop here!
If you would like to take your personal growth to the next level you can book your spot in the Heart of Emotional Courage advanced workshop here!
