How Do You Know If It's Love?

Welcome! I began this piece several weeks ago when I realised I was experiencing a love I had never felt before. I was spurred on to continue it when I posted a little comment on Oprah’s ‘lifeclass’ Facebook page directed to a woman who was in an abusive relationship. It received quite a response and I realised that I tapped into a nerve that may be common for many.

Look familiar?

When I talk about ‘relationship’ throughout this piece, I am primarily referring to a romantic love. However, the same principals can apply to other close relationships in your life and even the relationship you have with yourself, because if that relationship isn’t right, none of your others will be either. So as you read, certain people or relationships may pop into your head. This is your core alerting you to pay attention to them.

Many of us have skewed ideas on romantic love. And it isn’t our fault! Think about it! Happy endings sell more tickets, so the vast majority of the pop culture we are exposed to espouses tales of ‘happily ever after.’ Over thirty percent of young adults trying to forge their own relationships are doing so having experienced a ‘broken home’ (don’t you love that term?!) as a child. Love songs over generations detail either great and passionate love or heartbreaking endings. I have never heard of a song called ‘this is lovely and comfortable.’ Have you?

In fact, we’re told that the opposite is true! Unless our relationships falls into one of the above dramatic categories, we can be brainwashed into thinking that we’ve ‘settled.’ Or perhaps that we are ‘stuck in a rut.’

I speak to people regularly who are unhappy in their relationship but justify it by one means or another. Chances are, if you aren’t happy, your mate isn’t either. Often we ‘hang in there’ for what our love once was or could be even though the present circumstance doesn’t reflect what we hoped it would. Often, we hold on to the fantasy of what things ‘could be’ so fiercely, that we repeatedly ignore the signs that things aren’t ever going to be that way. Many of us have put up with stuff, ignored stuff, hung in there, given someone one more go (or fifty), and put ourselves through countless other things to ‘make it work.’

I have news for you: STOP!!!! It’s not meant to be that hard and we put ourselves through all of this nonsense because what we believe love is, does, feels like, looks like, tastes like and should be is all messed up! We have inadvertently formed beliefs about love that aren’t doing us any service, particularly if we were not brought up with good, solid examples of functional, loving relationships.

In our daily lives we are bombarded with nonsense through our modern culture, embroiled with baggage from broken homes, perceiving rubbish through thinking others’ ‘have it all’ and eating baloney from dating websites. These thwarted images form our beliefs. I write in detail about how beliefs are formed in detail in "Believing in the Yellow Brick Road".

As we aren’t encouraged to speak about or unpack our core beliefs about love, they can plague, destroy and undermine every relationship we have in our lives, without us even knowing it! Having suffered through what I swore was my last episode starring in ‘love’s gorgeous dysfunction’, I went through the process outlined in “Healing Love’s Hangover” to examine why I wasn’t getting out of my relationships what I thought I wanted. The truth was I had some seriously detrimental underlying beliefs about men and love that deeply affected the success rate I was experiencing in relationships and causing me to gravitate towards a certain genre of man. It wasn’t until I unpacked all that, that I uncovered my own diseased thinking.

If you have been mis-wired about what love is and isn't, start from a place of personal forgiveness and go from there...

I had love connected to pain, drama and some forms of abuse. I had seen it growing up and repeated the patterns in my adult life. If my relationship was dramatic, with break-ups and make-ups it felt normal to me. If it was emotionally tormenting, it felt normal. If I had to fight to ‘make it work’ and continually compromise and work harder and harder, it felt normal. My wiring was so completely out of whack and until I sorted this out, I was going to keep attracting the same kind of man and relationship into my life.

If any of this sounds familiar to you at all, please take the time to catalogue your previous relationships and relationship patterns. It will show you very clearly what is mis-wired in your love beliefs.

What love ISN’T!

If someone loves you they don’t hurt or abuse you physically or emotionally. Often, we don’t really understand what physical or emotional abuse looks like so we put up with more than we should and rationalize it. I am going to break these two forms abuse down in detail because I come across people, almost on a daily basis undergoing some form of abuse and they don’t even recognise it as abuse!

Physical abuse:

• Hit, slap, punch, pinch, kick
• Not help you if you are sick or injured
• Not allow you to have the rest you need if you are sick or injured
• Expect that their needs will be filled as per usual if you are sick or injured
• Deny finances for proper food, shelter and amenities
• Force sexual demands (through physical or emotional force, such as manipulation)
• Cheat (why? Because diseases from other men or woman can easily be passed onto you, affecting your health in serious ways)
• Threaten to hit, punch, slap, etc
• Use an item to cause or threaten physical damage
• Put poisons or toxins in your food or drink, this includes laxatives, alcohol, tranquilizers, etc
• Deny you proper comfort such as a bed or blankets
• Humiliate you through physical means, such as pouring ice cold or extremely hot water on any part of you, etc
• Lock you or restrict you in one part of a house, shed or other
• Keep medicine from you when you need it
• Keeping, hiding or replacing your oral birth control pills
• 'Feeding' you to keep you vulnerable or enabling any destructive behaviour or over consumption

Emotional abuse:

• Ignore you
• Talk negatively about you in front of others, whether you are present or not
• Lie
• Put you down
• Make up stories about you
• Name-call
• Misuse or lie about money
• Leave you to fend for yourself when you are sick
• Hide your relationship from others
• Demand that you fulfill certain needs
• Manipulate you to do what you won’t want to do
• Control friendships or contact with others. This includes monitoring face book, email, mail, phone calls and texts
• Flirt with other people
• Continue an action which is obviously causing you pain
• Repeatedly bring up past events
• Ignore your needs if you have a situation in your life where you clearly require TLC such as a death, injury, issue at work, etc
• Threaten, blackmail or intimidate

You will observe that often emotional and physical abuse overlap and that abuse doesn’t simply mean having bruises to show for it. There are many more subtle ways in which we can suffer abuse at the hands of those we love. And vice versa.

What Love Is!

Having recently fixed up the mis-wired beliefs in my head, I have come to define romantic love as functional, fulfilling and stable. The experience of love is different for each of us and therefore cannot be defined with lists like ‘he brings you flowers’ or ‘she cooks me delicious food.’

Flowers and gifts are lovely, but if they don't come with honesty, integrity and reliability they mean nothing!

But, as a newby to what I would call functional (as opposed to dysfunctional) romantic love, I now have a deeper, living understanding of why Corinthians 13:1-13 is recited at most weddings. It poetically encapsulates functional, fulfilling and stable: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Love is:

• Giving each other the benefit of the doubt when someone has irritated, annoyed or let you down
• Sharing who you are and being honest about yourself
• Being open about your needs
• Respecting your partner's needs
• Giving each other space
• Talking positively about your partner to friends and family
• Displaying affection- whatever that may be for each of you
• Respecting your partners friends and family
• Laughter
• Building each other up and supporting each other to be the best you both can be
• Being there for one another through illness and emotional rough patches
• Knowing your partner can ‘take the driver’s seat’ if you are not able to for whatever reason
• Consistent, reliable and gives you stable footing
• Love is, eventually, creating a shared vision of what your lives together will be (and for God's sake, please do this before you get engaged or married and then find out you want totally different things! Sounds obvious but is the cause of so many issues down the track in relationships)

As a staunch humanist and because love is patient and forgiving, I believe that regardless of what has gone on previously in a relationship, IF BOTH PEOPLE ARE FREELY WILLING to help to fix it, miracles can be achieved. I do not believe that one person can ever do it on their own, even though they may fight with all their might to save a relationship. Unless both parties put up their hands, it can’t be achieved.

If you are in a relationship that is not giving you what you want, it is time to take some time to figure out what it is you do want and approach your partner about how they are feeling and what they want. Then decide if you are both willing to do the work to get there. Be prepared that the answer may be no. But don’t fear. As I said in The Yellow Brick Road, this one doesn’t have to be the one and won’t be the last one. If you both decide to work on things and make the changes, there are ample therapists and books and dvd’s to help the process.

If you are still on your search for the one, take the time to really define what it is you want and what you would have to believe to make it reality. Without intending to sound corny, when we concentrate on being the love we want from others in our own lives, something miraculous changes within ourselves and our appeal to the opposite sex increases exponentially. Try reading "The Just Because Clause in Life’s Little Rule Book" for some tips on being the one in your own life. And also, may I make the point here which I will discuss in a future blog, you have to get used to how your new definition of love will feel! Because if you don't get prepared, you will want to push it away when you find it! The attributes you think you want in another such as kindness or loving attention will feel so foreign, in spite of your self you won't feel comfortable in it. You'll leave the new love and return to what feels 'normal' and 'safe' even though, in reality, it's not doing you any good. Stay tuned for more on that...

Take the blame and shame away through forgiving yourself if your relationship history has been rocky. You can make the choice to change it right now providing you are willing to do the work to uncover the damaging beliefs and replace them with functional ones. The most important thing to know is that, contrary to popular culture, love doesn’t hurt. Love is the total opposite of hurt. Love encapsulates emotional freedom and supports us to be our most authentic and shiny selves in the world. Anything less than this isn’t love. It may be comfort, it may be necessity, it may habit, it may even be abuse. But it isn’t love. Get real about what you’re worth and get real about what is happening in your emotional life.

Until next time we speak, butterfly kisses

Wyld.

The Lesson That Will Free You: THEY WERE WRONG!

This piece is dedicated to someone in my life who won’t read this, won’t be interested and has never recognised my talents. To you I say, wipe your eyes and look again, I’m not who you told me I was. YOU WERE WRONG!

Did you hear me? Want me to say it again?

For those of you who have read I am Doll Eyes you will know that this year I suffered an injury serious enough to take me out of work for nearly six months. The saga continues but I remain resolute in looking for the blessings in the injury. One of these blessing has been the time to sort through an amazing amount of mental junk.

I have written, I have read, I have watched, I have reflected, I have absorbed, I have re-wired many synapses in my head that weren’t getting me what I wanted and I have come to an awesome place of peace in my heart. This entire blog is to share this learning with you. Learning that has taken 31 years of hard lessons to finally sink in. Recently though, in fact I was only able to articulate it today, I learned what I believe is the most freeing lesson yet and I am dying to share it with you. 

The most freeing lesson I have learned so far!

Let me unpack this for you. We are bombarded with messages, incidences, images, actions, etc from birth that shape who we are. Throughout our lives we are molded by the hands of the people we spend our time with. Their opinions, their expectations and the limitations they place on us, we become. If we are constantly told we are beautiful, we believe it, we create that beauty in our lives. We live ‘being beautiful’. If we are repeatedly told we’re super smart, we live ‘being super smart’ and do smart things and take on that identity. All of these messages by all of the people we come across, we assimilate into ourselves as ‘who I am’.

When I was a child in my year four class we had to do a life drawing of a vase filled with pink carnations. We had pastels to do this. While I had never been told I possessed any artistic talent, I drew my little heart out. I was sitting next to a girl, Emily, who commented on how good my drawing was and began to copy my technique. Mysteriously, my drawing went missing and Emily’s was show cased as the best in the class. I think it even won some sort of award but it ended up framed and in the Principal’s office.

Emily went on to become a graphic designer and from then on I never really got into art. Why? Because when Emily’s family found that her picture was framed and in the Principal’s office, she would have received so much praise and encouragement for her artistic talent, which would have encouraged the creation of more art and so on. Me? I didn’t and well, continued not to…Until recently…

I use this story to illustrate how the messages we receive as children actually shape who we are and who we become. It’s unfortunate in some cases but we become what we are told we are. That is why in so many cases family history repeats itself. The welfare cycle occurs in families over generations. The aristocratic cycle continues through families. The middle class cycle continues through families. Why? People rarely- not never, but rarely- step outside of what they are taught from birth that they can achieve, do and be.

These messages become the beliefs which dictate the choices and the path one takes on their life journey. As children become adults they build lives based on these structures or mental programs. Usually people who grew up in relatively stable environments will do this happily and relatively successfully in one form or another. This is because the parents or caregivers were consistent in their message to that child about who they were and their place in the world and continue to affirm this as that child begins to make their ‘own’ choices.

People who grow up in dysfunctional or neglectful homes (raise your hand and say ‘I’), rarely have this stability in their programming. They often crave affirmation or recognition for what they do well into adulthood because they didn’t receive it as a child. Unfortunately, many of this type of person’s choices are made in the hope that they will finally get this recognition and ‘be good enough’ in the eyes of the person whose attention they crave. The root cause of this is the ‘inner child’ beseeching the parent to give them some boundaries on who they think the child should be. So the adult ‘child-self’ keeps doing different things to get a reaction which will give them this answer. I have seen this repeatedly. If I do this, will you give me some indication that you think it’s good!!!?!?

We do this subconsciously because who we are is formed by those around us. Look at the impact cultural circumstances have on individual expression? If Lady Gaga had been born in Zimbabwe, do you think she would be who she is today? No! She was encouraged by her family and born into a society which supported expression and darn good public relations. If Jesus had been born a woman two thousand years ago when women were still less than second class citizens, do you think ‘she’ would have made such an impact? I am posing such extreme examples to drive home how much we are shaped by what is around us and by what people say we can and cannot achieve.

Look at it like a computer program. Over the years and countless encounters and experiences, people’s opinions and comments and the things you see played out around you are constantly writing a program in your brain called ‘Who I Am.’ This program governs how you run your life and all of the choices you make.

What people don’t tell you is that when you become an adult you can choose to re-program your brain. Or wipe out everything that’s on the “Who I Am” hard drive, reboot and reload something a whole lot better!

It takes time, dedication and a whole lot of insight, willingness and patience but it can happen. It does happen. Look at the great people in our world. Those who grew up with nothing. From nothing. But somewhere deep inside they knew they were meant for more. Look at Oprah Winfrey! She came from absolutely nothing and created something wonderful for her life because she kept searching, kept healing, kept questing to know better, to do better. For the record, she does tell a story of when she was four and she stood up in church to make a speech, how everybody commented on her speaking ability and she was encourage to do this from then on. This is social conditioning at work!

When we accept the opinions of others as the basis of who we are, we limit ourselves. There are therapists all over the Western world making good money out of trying to help people to solve their childhood wounds. The Self Help section is big business as people on their quest to personal fulfillment or inner peace devour countless books, CDs and DVDs.

Well save your money people! Here is the solution! THEY WERE WRONG!

Therapeutic shouting really works! Picture that person in your mind clearly when you do it!

As an adult, if you are still living for someone else’s approval, living in someone else’s limitations of you or suffering from self-esteem issues, they will stem from some form of childhood trauma, abuse or neglect, no matter how big or how small.

 So take a moment and go through some of things that your fellow school students told you that hurt your feelings. Bring up anything and damn well everything that mum or dad or sis or bro or aunt or uncle or teacher or stranger ever did or said and repeat after me “THEY WERE WRONG!”


Bring these issues up individually. Picture the perpetrator standing in front of you and yell “YOU WERE WRONG!” Just keep doing it until you feel the anger or hurt or emotional responses in you begin to fade.

 You no longer have to accept responsibility for the things those people said or did. You no longer have to live a life that gives any credence at all to them! I’m not talking about hate or getting rid of these people from your lives (unless it helps), I am talking about realizing that they were-simply-WRONG! When people give birth they aren’t suddenly cured of all their own issues and dramas. They are still broken. And their brokenness impacts the children they raise.

BUT! There comes a point in our lives when we can give ourselves permission to re-write the codes and programs in our brains in order to live the life we want to live. Most of us don’t try and be great because we weren’t trained by those around us to think we could be. Well, THEY WERE WRONG.

Having basically raised myself without parental guidance, I had no idea who I was for many years. I searched and made countless mistakes all through my teens and twenties. I longed for validation and therefore chose love partners who were no good for me. I had no moral compass and went on a search to find spiritual truths to guide my choices. I thought that gaining degrees and career stature would heal the emptiness inside, but three degrees and countless awards and scholarships and career success later I still found that gaping wound present!

If you are an adult carrying around a wound, it’s time to do some shouting: THEY WERE WRONG! If you aren’t carrying around any gaping wounds, get really honest with yourself, I know that somewhere, on at least one level, you’ll be living your life for someone else. To fulfill their belief of who you are. It’s time to stop. It’s time to get clear about what you want, for your life. You see, those people who helped to form your opinion of yourself, be that good, bad or indifferent, aren’t climbing into your head, in your bed with you at night. That’s just you. You have to be accountable, as of right now, to yourself and start living your life for you, under your rules and under what you say is possible for you.

These opinions and beliefs from other people, they are just like invisible chains around us. And the only person keeping them there is ourselves. Shake them off. Get shouting: THEY WERE WRONG!

Even if you don’t know what you want your life to be just yet, just knowing that you have made choices or are living in a way that is because someone else formed that ‘program’ in you is a good enough start! Now get busy shouting and get busy asking yourself what you want for you. What is your BEST POSSIBLE life? Get started on it. (Check out Yellow Brick Road for extra help with this). The only person who needs to believe it’s possible is you. Because no one else matters. They aren’t in the driver’s seat of your life. You are. Always have faith. Believe in your dreams even if those closest to you don't. It's not until after they were dead that many geniuses were actually called that! When they were alive, they were considered mad, hallucinatory, eccentric... Artists, scientists, doctors, writers, explorers! They made a contribution that changed our world because they never gave up! Don't you give up!!!

So much that we do, even down to the clothes we wear is because of either our training or our fear of other peoples opinions! Some is due to our subconscious, like our mental programming, and other stuff is completely conscious: I can’t wear that! What will my friends think? It’s just so limiting! Unless we explore why we are living the life we are living and whose ideals we are living out, we will keep living a life that to a varying extent has been written for us by those around us.

Even if it’s just one little thing at a time, take the steps to find out what you want for yourself. Try a new look, or go back to study something, or read a new book or watch a new type of film! Explore who you are without the judgments and programming of others. You will find a whole new world and a whole new realm of possibilities will open up for you. If you are wounded, get shouting! Add in any sentences that help you, but I promise it’s better than any therapy! When that person said or did those things, THEY WERE WRONG! When you were neglected or told negative things, THEY WERE WRONG! When you were a child and broken people raised you with their own wounds, THEY WERE WRONG!

Having the courage and conviction to stick to our own truth and live our lives authentically is no simple task. But like all things that take effort, the payoff is extraordinary! Your reflection in the mirror is something you create and renew every single day. You don’t have to carry the opinions of others, the judgments of others. Live the life that is the ideal life for you! I dare you!

Til next we speak, butterfly kisses.

Wyld.

PS, for extra tips on unpacking beliefs that might be (mis)guiding you, try Believing in the Yellow Brick Road.

Believing in the Yellow Brick Road

My previous piece, The Yellow Brick Road, detailed the importance of sticking to your own path at particular times in your life and not getting side-tracked. But what if you are on your journey and still not getting what you want? Chances are, your Yellow Brick Road could benefit from a little construction work... A little fine tuning or even a major overhaul of the beliefs that form the pavement of your path.

Here’s some brain maths for you: what we believe = what we get. In order to get what we want, we have to get clear about what we believe.

I’m not talking about the ‘manifestation’ principal spruiked by new age philosophy in which we attract the things we want in our lives by believing them into existence. Rather, I am referring to the unconscious beliefs that steer our life choices.


Our beliefs about life, love, marriage, what we are capable of, how much we are valued, who we are, how people function in the world and myriad other examples are all developed throughout our childhood and reinforced by all subsequent experiences. As these beliefs are formed unconsciously as our brains make patterns, connections and assumptions, we function under many beliefs we don’t even consciously know we have. How many times have you heard the reply to a question about why someone considers something wrong, right or black or white: “I don’t know why. It just is.”

We rarely question our beliefs. Why would we? They just seem ‘right’ and ‘natural’ to us. The problem is they can often be based on situations and connections that are not founded or serve no functional purpose. And yet our beliefs govern the direction we take our lives and are continually reaffirmed in the choices we make.

 

While consciously we might make certain choices, our deep unconscious beliefs dictate how successful we are at those choices. If we believe we will fail, we will. If we believe no-one will love us, they won’t. If we believe relationships always end, our relationships will always end!  Have you ever thought about buying a new car and suddenly noticed that type of car everywhere you go? Or longed for a relationship and all of a sudden you see couples everywhere? Or babies? Or an iPad? It is because our consciousness has been alerted to look for these things. Having a belief functions in a similar way! No matter what, we will- consciously or unconsciously- gravitate towards situations, places and people that confirm our beliefs.

It is so important to drill down into our belief system, especially when it comes to the two main channels in our world that can bring us the most joy: who we are and what we can achieve; and relationships.

It's so simple yet it took me 31 years to develop my little theory that in order to have successful lives and achieve something functional and positive, what we do, what we say and what we believe have to be as closely aligned as possible!

Being a ‘picture thinker’ I love graphs and images. Whatever type of graph that is used to illustrate this point, they all demonstrate the same outcome!




What we believe, what we say and what we do have to be pointing in the same direction for us to experience success!  

 



Success lies in the centre where beliefs, words and actions overlap.

 




A straight walk along the Yellow Brick Road!



If what we believe, do and say do not align, we end up stuck in a tug of war with our energy going all over the place. There are no winners in this situation, least of all ourselves! In Healing Love’s Hangover I touched on the fact that the choice I made to get engaged to Mr Country did not link to what I said or what I believed. This example from my own life illustrates how, because of my underlying beliefs, what I was trying to do was always going to fail.


When I met Mr Country, I spoke about men with negativity. I ranted at the TV when there were happy endings. On one level I wanted desperately to have a relationship with this man and on the other my beliefs were not allowing me to. There was a continual value conflict going on which meant that my actions were inconsistent. How can a woman who devalues men have a functional, trusting relationship with a man? How can a woman who lacks faith in relationships get engaged with any hope to achieve a successful marriage? Or in my case after a string of engagements, even a successful bloody wedding! The short answer is- she can’t! There was no alignment.  

Try using one of the illustrations above to ‘map out’ a situation in your own life. We will see in the diagrams what we see in our lives: when something is going well the diagrams are pointing in one direction. Conversely, the more disparate the directions, the more torment we are likely experiencing.




Follow what path???






Energy is going everywhere and leading nowhere!






There is very little overlap here!



If you are finding yourself in a situation where you aren’t getting what you want, take a good hard look at why. I absolutely, 100% promise you that if things are continually not going right in an area of your life, it is because your words, actions and beliefs aren’t aligned.

When working through the Mr Country saga, I had to go deep and unpack the beliefs I had about relationships in order to create a stable relationship future from my unstable relationship past. This was no easy task but if I hadn’t realised that my action (getting engaged) was in stark contrast to my beliefs (relationships are doomed to fail and men are out to hurt you) and my words (bloody men, typical males), I would have continued to repeat the same patterns.

Give yourself permission to take the time and unpack the situation for yourself using whatever means works for you. This may include quiet time, reading, journaling, talking to a friend, using diagrams-anything! Just stay conscious! Ask your friends to nudge you if you speak about the topic to help you pay attention to your words. Keep a list of all the actions you’re taking (or not taking) regarding something you want. Pay attention to your body and your thoughts to find out what your beliefs are. Is something feeling right or making you squirm? A word of caution here, as I have already mentioned, our beliefs are unconscious and can be difficult to uncover. So if you don’t know straight away, don’t panic. Try saying some things out loud and you will quickly know if you believe them or if they make you shudder. You will feel it in your body.

If it helps, work backwards! Ask yourself ‘In order to achieve this, what do I need to believe’? This is a great process to find out what your real beliefs are because you will be able to recognise if the beliefs you have differ from what you would need to believe in order to make something work! Stay conscious in this process and keep asking yourself questions!


Words: what are you saying? What language are you using? Is it constructive or destructive?

Actions: are you taking any? If so, in what direction?

Beliefs: what are your underlying, deep beliefs about this? Do they serve you anymore?


Take the time to do this and you will be back on your Yellow Brick Road, taking strong and confident steps in the direction that will lead you to your ‘Emerald City.’ No more forks in the road, u-turns or construction zones for you!

Tile next we speak, butterfly kisses,

Wyld.