Episode 18: The Real Cost of Trying to Make Others Happy
The core of this episode is self-love. But it's also So. Much. More. Self-love is explored as the way to remedy, to reverse, to repay, the costs we've been paying in trying to manage other people's happiness. It's about getting radically honest with ourselves about what we need. Then honoring those needs by getting responsible for meeting them on our own. It's not about a guilty responsibility but rather an empowered responsibility. It's not "you should take responsibility for yourself", but more "you get to be responsible for yourself". It's your path to the exact experience of life you want. It's freedom. And self-love is what allows you to choose that path. Because you have to love yourself in order to choose to give yourself what you need & to create what you want.
Self-love & personal responsibility are the powerhouse combo that allows thriving. That create the life you want. And isn't that what we all want?
We’re disempowered when we believe that others are responsible for our emotional state. If it's their fault that we feel a certain way, then they have all the power over how we feel. We are victims. We are powerless. The flip is also true. We believe we have power over other's feelings leading us to people please.
"We're trying to manage our emotional states by what we want someone to give us and we are attempting to manage other's emotional states by giving up our needs, our desires, our wants, our preferences in order to avoid the fallout of the uncomfortable feelings that we think we're responsible for."
Ohmygoodness. The drama we could avoid if we all just focused on our own emotional landscape. It's almost comical when we look at it like this. Except it's not. It's exhausting. It's agonizing. It's really hard & most of us don't know how.
"Trying to keep others happy is actually costing you your happiness on the inside."
The radical idea here is that we focus on meeting our own needs especially our need for love. We stop expecting others to be a certain way as a way of feeling loved. The invitation is to stop looking outward for the cause of our undesired experience. Instead, turn our focus around & ask ourselves:
"How am I creating/contributing to my current experience?
What do I need?
What can I give myself?
How can I shift so that I feel loved?
How can I show myself unconditional love so that I feel unconditional love?"
The quickest, most efficient path, EVERY TIME, to having the relationships & experiences we want is looking inward, taking responsibility & cultivating unconditional love from within.
The fact of the matter is that ultimately you are the one seeing through your eyes.
You are the only one living as you. The only one who knows what it's like to be you.
You are the projector of your reality & therefore in control of it. So if you want a different reality, if you want to see a different movie, you must change the reel. No one else can change it for you. It's your mind for crying out loud. It's under only your control, no one else's.
Loving unconditionally does not mean we don't honor our boundaries. Because that would be not loving ourselves, which we know has to come first. We must always honor ourselves first. That is how we honor the other. That is how we honor the whole.
"It is loving yourself for what you want & how you feel and not feeling guilty for it."
We are living in a paradigm that our feelings, our experiences, are controlled by external circumstances & other people. We have to radically shift that to the paradigm that we are the only ones that can actually control our experience. Even if you don't fully believe that yet, might it be possible to just try this perspective? What if were true? Doesn't it feel more empowering? Less victim-ey?
Perspective can be everything, my mama friends. Everything.
Until next time I'll leave you with another couple of quotes from the episode that I just couldn't leave out:
"Meeting your own needs means listening to yourself. Giving yourself what you so desperately want from others."
"You were born to be perfectly loved and you are completely loveable."
P.S. Let’s keep the conversation going! Join me over in the Thrive in Motherhood group