Rejection isn’t real.
But love is.
I told a group of clients last night at the end of our call that I loved them. I said, “I love you guys, very, very much.” I recall the first time my coach said “I love you” to me. I literally said nothing. I was shocked. I actually think I said something like, “Uhhh, ooookay. ByEEE…” and hung up!
*Insert monkey emoji with his hands over his eyes*
It took me almost two months to say “I love you” back to my coach. Maybe because my coach is a man not too far off in age, and it feels strange to say that to a man other than my dad or my husband. Maybe because he is coaching me on my personal development and business. But the truth is, I do love my coach. And I love my clients. The relationships we’ve created are some of the deepest and most exposed relationships in our lives.
Truthfully, there are probably a lot of people in my life that I really love and don’t express it enough or fully. Why do we hold back in being fully expressed? We know how good it feels to be loved, but expressing it can feel pretty frightening.
One word: REJECTION.
What if you expose your true feelings for someone and they don’t feel the same way? Or what if they’re weirded out by it? What if you push them away?
Here’s the truth about rejection: it’s not real.
Think about it. You hear “no” all the time. I bet you hear the word “no” at least a few times a day and you barely think twice.
But, rejection is just “no” with a meaning attached to it.
Rejection happens when someone tells you “no” and you make it mean something about you. When you project onto yourself other people’s reactions and experiences, you risk being rejected all the time.
But when you really love yourself — like, really love yourself — “no” might still sting, but it won’t mean anything about you. When you love yourself, you’re rock solid.
But self-love is perhaps the most difficult to express.
*Note that I say “express” because deep down, we all love ourselves. Deep down, we’re all good enough. It’s in the expression that this gets so messed up.
Nearly every single woman I’ve ever worked with has shared with me that she spends a lot of time beating herself up, saying nasty things to herself, and is generally not happy with who she is, her life, and how she looks.
The belief is that if we just lose a little weight, make a little more money, dress a little better, and work out a little more, we’ll be happy enough to love ourselves.
…Enter the rabbit hole. (Spoiler alert, it’s bottomless.)
Self-love doesn’t result from self-improvement. Let me repeat that. Self-love doesn’t result from self-improvement. Please take this from the woman who has spent more than $30k on coaching in the last year and a half. Your self-love comes from practicing loving yourself. And your happiness results from that.
Consequentially, your body, life, money, and workouts tend to get better and more effective when you love yourself. So you actually get both this way. You take care of what you love, don’t you?
But it feels backwards. How can I love myself if I’m so disgusted by how I look? How can I love myself when I’m such a mess? How can I love myself when I can’t even find someone else to love me?
Because these things feel so true, there’s plenty of evidence to prove them, and they can feel like complex problems, it’s easier to put ourselves at the center. “When I am better, I will be more lovable. Even to myself.”
When we can’t control or fix the world around us, we make ourselves the problem. This is really fucking important. When we can’t control or fix the world around us, we make ourselves the problem. Because when everything else feels out of our control, making ourselves the problem becomes the only workable solution.
So let a little love in. Begin to perform little acts of love for yourself. Just the decision alone to love yourself will change more than you can ever imagine.