Unconditional Love and Acceptance: How do we know when we have it?

Unconditional love and acceptance is the foundation of attaining personal peace.  One of the most important underlying obstacles is if people try to understand "why" bad things happen. The need to understand "why" is not accepting.  We must master acceptance before we can move forward and align with our highest and best possibilities and potential for our lives.

An understanding of someone else's motivation may provide empathy for a person's circumstances or background.  However, the NEED to understand "why" will never bring resolution to how someone else can act without the intention of unconditional love.  It creates turmoil.  If we need to understand before we can move forward, we will never move forward because we will never fully understand someone else's motivation to be hurtful or destructive.

Judging ourselves and allowing ourselves to be affected by the judgments of other people are additional obstacles to loving ourselves unconditionally.  It is easy to say we all judge because we are human, that is true.  The measurement of success in this area becomes when we know we have begun to feel less affected by judgment.  Is the power of judgement getting better or worse in your life?  That is the question you need to ask yourself.

Here is an example:  if you make an epic mistake, do your family and/or closest friends say, "I will support your efforts to fix it and make amends.  I love you even though you made this epic mistake" or "I will punish your mistake by taking away my love because you embarrassed me and made me look bad...I may agree to love you conditionally again at a later date.  I will get back to you on that based on your future performance".

Growing up with caregivers who do not love you unconditionally creates an atmosphere of never being able to fully please them. You constantly try to measure up to unattainable goals and standards.  That sets up a pattern of never fully pleasing yourself and finding friends and life-partners who will assist you in agreeing your best is not and never will be good enough.

The "fast forward" button of healing emotional wounds is being able to magnify the power of positive words and affirmations through meditation, energy work, hypnosis and therapy.  If your mind races, begin with a guided meditation or find an energy practitioner.  Since we are all imperfect human beings, why can some of us love ourselves no matter what we look like and how many mistakes we make?

It comes from within, beginning with your family practices.  If you were not born into a family that loved and accepted you unconditionally, you can choose to reverse the negative affects now by giving yourself that love, which we all innately deserve, at the moment of your conception.  Then, continue to imagine yourself as being innately lovable and acceptable through the time of your birth, and throughout each period of your lifetime.  It is a journey, but time goes by whether or not we are ready to heal our negative emotions.

Have a great day!

xo
Conni

"What Would You Think If I Sang Out Of Tune?"*

Do you have friends that would help you move; or friends that would help you move the body? Hopefully, we all have friends that would help us cover up a felony murder charge.  That's what life is all about, right?

On your best day, for instance, when you are accepting the Academy Award for Awesomeness, you have all of the friends in the world.  "Hey, remember me?  I loaned you a piece of gum in third grade and I didn't even make you pay it back.  Can I be your 'Plus One' for the after parties?"

Do you have friends you can call when the chips are down?  My wish for you is that you not only have them, but that you have a special ringtone for them when they call!!  Friendships deserve to be nurtured.  

Cognitive dissonance comes into play here, with your mind only allowing a certain amount of variance before it's too much.  It's valid and healthy to tell someone, "look, I want to be your friend, but instead of give and take this friendship feels one-sided, with my side giving the most".  In a perfect world, friendship has equal give and take.  You help them move (bodies), they help you move (bodies); and so on; and so on; and so on.

But what if you were having a bad day, a "Defcon One Meltdown" kind of day?  Would they stand up and walk out on you?  Most of us have friends, good friends, and great friends.  Hopefully our great friends would listen to us, cheer for us, create a "sky-full of lighters" requesting an encore, even if we were singing out of tune.

If we feel like we are taking more than we give, we can sometimes vent to ourselves (use a mirror or the video option on your phone) and save our friends from the details of what happened when that mean girl was nasty.  We can write letters to vent, with no intention of sending them to the person who deserves the lambasting.  Just don't throw them away without shredding them.........recycling on the curb is public property, I learned that from a crime show.

Friendship is a gift and it's always good to appreciate the gifts in our lives.   Appreciation leads to more care given.  When we feel like something is precious, we treat it differently than when we take it for granted.

Have a wonderful day!

xo

Conni

Today's Mantra:  I intend to nurture my friendships.

Mantra for Every Day: I choose to send love to all; receiving love back multiplied in infinite proportions, creating and nurturing pathways of love.

*This blog has been edited and reposted.

Jump off Everyone Else's Bandwagon and Only be in Charge of Your Own*

I was the queen of yes. If anyone called and needed a favor, I was their person. I was on the board of the homeowners association, home and school, etc. Part of me was proud of being known as the "go to" person and this is when my ego got in my own way of success. After spending years on the homeowners association, the school board and being in charge of a lot of other volunteer activities, I finally realized that there was not enough time left for me. I was helping everyone with their goals, but not helping myself with my goals.  Does this sound familiar, ladies??

I have decided to be responsible for my own bandwagon.  If I ask someone to help me out and they can't, I'm ok with that decision.  My passions are not better or worse than their passions. My dreams and goals are not better or worse than their dreams and goals. If we stretch ourselves too thin helping others, how is that allowing us to progress in our own particular goals in life?

Choosing not to be the queen of yes doesn't make me the queen of no.  It just adds a layer of discernment in my decision-making process.  I purposefully take a moment and think about what my truth is (most of the time) and if I mess up and overcommit to other peoples' goals, I regroup and sometimes call back and opt out if it's feasible.

I adore helping people, really, I do. The difference is that I now only reserve a certain amount of time for helping my friends with their passions because there are only so many bandwagons we can ride on before we are too tired to enjoy the ride.

Have a wonderful day

Xo
Conni

Today's mantra:  I intend to become thoughtful and mindful of my commitments.

Mantra for Every Day: I choose to send love to all; receiving love back multiplied in infinite proportions, creating and nurturing pathways of love.


*This blog has been edited and reposted.

More About Living in the Moment.......

From The Power of Now, “In surrender, you no longer need ego defenses and false masks. You become very simple, very real. 'That’s dangerous,' says the ego. 'You’ll get hurt. You’ll become vulnerable.' What the ego doesn’t know, of course, is that only through the letting go of resistance, through becoming 'vulnerable,' can you discover your true and essential invulnerability.”  

The definition of "ego" includes how we view ourselves in the world: our confidence and self-esteem.  I previously wondered what people with low self-esteem and little confidence needed to "surrender".  Now, I interpret the passage as releasing how we view and compare ourselves in the world, while knowing we all must have positive self-esteem and confidence to live our best lives.

We can't judge anyone else's decisions because we haven't walked in their shoes.  However, letting go of our egos is really about unravelling the reasons why feel compelled to do things based on what we believe about ourselves.  Then (easier said that done, BTW), we can start over from a place of personal truth:  we all have potential that has not been uncovered.

If you can improve your life circumstances but have chosen to pass up positive possibilities, that is when you need to let go, regroup and choose differently next time.  Holding onto self-loathing and self-judgment (and/or feeling like a martyr) is the opposite of what letting go is all about.  The reasons why we cannot move forward (our negative self-talk) become our own limiting prisons.

When we say "I should have done that already", it's detrimental to the power of the present moment.  The ability to minimize our "shoulda/woulda/coulda" reflex releases the power of the past and future.  If you believe you are too old/young/fat/thin/tall/short/smart/lame to move toward your highest potential, that is when your ego has power over you.  

Fully accepting ourselves allows us the space to change for the better.  It sounds counter intuitive, doesn't it?  We are actually creating the SPACE for positive change.  We begin with the mantra:  "I am acceptable, exactly as I am in this moment".  

Have a great day!

xo
Conni

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It*: Allowing Personal Power

For the longest time, information about our personal POWER being in the present moment confused me.  I didn't understand why I wasn't supposed to savor good memories in the past and why I shouldn't get excited about future events...it didn't make any sense to me.

The book by Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, says “See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”

So my first thought was, "that is harsh, Sir."  Victims don't make themselves, and come on, we all complain!  We are human beings and none of us is perfect.  No one wants to be a victim and no one wants to live a life of pain.  We all need empathy.  It's impossible for most victims of abuse to move forward without help.  Most of us need assistance to "walk through" and release emotional pain.  So I respectfully (and somewhat angrily) disagreed with him.

What I have come to realize isn't that we have to repress everything and pretend everything is perfect. The choice is the perspective of knowing we can choose to heal our past negative memories so they don't affect future events.  So, the power in the present moment is about accessing our potential power by removing the attachments of the past and future.

Here is an example:  if your house was burned down as a child, you are probably not going to enjoy bonfires as much as the next guy.  Your filter (or lens) is that "fire is painful, hurtful and bad".  After a few years go by, you might pretend to enjoy a bonfire but probably not completely.  Logically, without your personal emotional trauma, we know that fire is necessary to live.  Another perspective would be to realize that fire is life-sustaining.  We have the ability to release the fear of fire so it goes back to a neutral state, without resisting and reacting.

Therapy, meditation, hypnosis and energy work all allow us to reduce emotional pain.  Knowing that victims are not at fault is key, while victims MUST reduce emotional pain to move forward.  It is never about trying to forget it because it's in the past; it's about doing the emotional healing to PROCESS trauma which allows someone to move forward.

Have a great day!!

xo
Conni

*Yes, I know the phrase is from Mission Impossible :)

Resistance to Change: Why We Impose Personal Structure to Keep Ourselves Safe

If you are feeling safe with all of your personal rules and regs; perhaps it is time to address whether or not your rules are still relevant here and now.  Because, many times, we apply our own rules like they are set in stone and they don't have to be......

I must do it this way (why?).......

I can't do it that way (why not?).......

We are sometimes locked into false paradigms, we hold the keys to opening new doors and we are our only guards.  If your self-talk lends itself to "I cannot, would not, should not do it that way", try to understand why you believe a choice is good or bad, right or wrong.

If you feel safer taking action a certain way, you may need to process memories that made you feel unsafe in the past.  That is how we unlock our own false belief systems.  Perhaps stepping on a crack won't break your momma's back ;)

What are your defining moments?  Self-awareness experts suggest taking a few hours to list the memories that you continue to resist and react to from your past.  If you were locked in a small space or if someone you know was hurt badly when you were young, you may have adjusted your own belief systems and activities to accommodate keeping yourself safe based on those memories.  In reality, your adult mind already knows that you have to be able to swim before you jump into the deep end; but your young mind might tell you it's safer to stay out of the water.

My cousin, who was about the same age as me, drowned when I was a little girl.  I have always had a fear of the water.  I was able to greatly reduce that fear by acknowledging and processing those childhood reactions of feeling unsafe.  Even though I don't think I will ever want to swim competitively, I know and understand my limits are based on current instead of past beliefs.

We create our own resistance to change when we have not processed previous emotional trauma.  It is worth the time and effort to take care of your emotional baggage, then we can have better lives in this moment.

Have a great day!

xo
Conni

Are You A "Thinker"? Sometimes it's not as rewarding as you think ;)

In school, teachers love "thinkers".  As a mom, I told my own kids and everyone else's kids that I love "thinkers".  So many of our subjects in school rely on getting to a deeper analysis to solve the problem and we are rewarded for those problem-solving skills.

As we expand our conscious awareness, we sometimes get caught up in trying to over-analyze the "why did this happen" and "how could they have done that" questions.  In these examples, over-thinking will hold us back from acceptance and acceptance is the key to moving forward with our lives.

When I used to watch those "headline grabbing" stories on TV, I couldn't stop my brain from wondering "why".  I spent hours wondering how and why people do the things they do.....it didn't help me and focusing on those questions truly made me feel worse.  I could become obsessed with every detail as I tried to wrap my mind around someone else's actions.

Acceptance means allowing ourselves to move on without needing to fully understand "why".  We will never understand evil actions.  We will never be "OK" with how evil actions are pre-meditated and carried out without regard to honoring human lives.

Being "OK" with not understanding "why" will allow us to move toward acceptance, without approving actions that have been taken against humanity.  We can then move forward in our personal path to making our world better.

Have a great day!

xo
Conni