I’ve been listening to self-help gurus for years telling me that the way to get more of what I want is to appreciate.
Appreciate what I have and more that matches it will come.
And I’ve been doing my darndest to appreciate.
I’ve approached it from lots of different directions.
I’ve tried lots of different “techniques”, most of them very good.
And my life has slowly gotten better, but it’s been hard work, and I know it’s supposed to be effortless.
And frankly, every time I appreciated something, there was always a little niggle, of something.
And until yesterday, I didn’t know what it was, or that it didn’t belong.
But yesterday, I appreciated something – quite a few things actually – and noticed something different.
It felt pure, harmonious, aligned, untainted. Simpler, somehow.
I’ve been shifting some BIG stuff in the last few weeks, and this weekend was amazingly intense yet low-key.
And during that time, I made a conscious decision to let go of this idea I’ve been dragging around for as long as I can remember.
This idea that there’s something wrong with me.
Looking back, I can see that I’ve been trying to prove myself in every way I could.
Firstly, to the outside world, but that didn’t work. No matter how good my grades, or magnificent my creation, it still wasn’t good enough.
And then to me. Searching, hunting, seeking for those things in me that were holding me back, stopping me from being all I know I can be. And of course I kept finding them.
But I was still never good enough.
And I didn’t get it until I was having a conversation in my head last weekend with my abuser.
I realised that I could forgive him all I wanted, but the only person that could set him free was him. I can’t do it for him.
I could forgive him a million times over, but if he still didn’t love himself, he would never be free.
And so the same thing applies to me. I can search all I want for external validation, or for things in me to “fix”, but until I truly, deeply, madly love and accept myself exactly as I am, with all of my “flaws” and secrets and failings, I will never be free.
And so I decided to lay that burden down. The one that was stuck like a splinter in the back of my mind that said “I’m not enough”.
I’m still exactly the same person I was yesterday, and the day before that. My history hasn’t changed and neither has my present.
I still have my “flaws” and my secrets and my failings, but my perspective has changed.
And as a result, I realised that my old perspective had me believing that no matter how much good I received, I didn’t deserve it.
“That’s nice, but it was a fluke” or “OK, sure, I like that, but what’s to say there’ll be another?”.
Because once I released the perspective, I found myself able to appreciate things, without muddying my vibration with doubt or disbelief.
It was pure, simple appreciation, and I was OK with receiving.
I’m OK with receiving!
I don’t have to justify any of it, and no longer do I have to wonder if it will ever happen again.
Because at the core of my being I know that it’s OK. That I’m OK.
Just the way I am.
