Finding Love and Happiness

Finding Love and Happiness I’ve been on a personal search and assisting clients and friends to find love and happiness for a long time now, and last month I believe I finally found the key. We have all heard the old adage that happiness comes from within and that you have to love yourself before you can expect anyone else to love you. We all know that you have to have love and happiness on the inside in order to gain love and happiness on the outside. For a long time now I have been being happy and I have been doing things to love myself. For example to be happy, I have put a smile on my face, focused on the up-sides, kept my body language positive. To love myself I have been doing things like acknowledging myself for my achievements. The key to love and happiness is to turn these things around! Instead of being happy and doing things in order to love yourself – you BE in love with yourself and you DO things that make you happy! Last month I did something that made me realize that I did love myself, that I did respect myself and that I was proud of who I am. I attended the Anthony Robbins Unleash the Power Within seminar and I walked bare foot across hot coals. Please don’t go to the extreme that I went to in order to discover this – because I can assure you that all these things were already within me. They were resources that I could have tapped into at any chosen moment. It wasn’t walking over hot coals that made me realize that I loved who I was. Instead walking over hot coals made me wake up and take stock of myself. Why had I had to wait until I had walked over hot coals to realize that I was everything I wanted to be? The tears were not tears of joy of the achievement, rather they were tears of letting go. Letting go of the person who had tried so hard for so many years to prove to herself and to others that she was worthy, that she was good enough. You and I are so much better than that. We are not worthy, we are entitled. We are not good enough – we are outstanding human beings. You are the most important and special person in your life. Do not measure yourself by your achievements – measure yourself by your wonderful smile and the sunshine that you bring to others. Do not measure yourself by how far you feel you have yet to travel – instead acknowledge yourself as a person on a path of continuous improvement, a person who reads this type of article and seeks the path of excellence. Do not reflect on how hard the path has been – reward yourself for being the outstanding person you are that has got yourself this far. You made it. Do not measure yourself against others. I see so many clients that think that because they are better than ___ (insert the name of the person who is not as good as you in your eyes) they are ok. Or worse, that they could never be a good as ___ (enter your hero) so they have given up trying. Go to the mirror. Look long and hard at the beautiful person in the reflection. Then lift your chin two inches higher and take a better look. Decide today that the person in that mirror is a person you love. Disregard achievements, qualities, qualifications, criteria and anything else that you have used as a measure in the past. It’s time now to love you just for being you. As soon as you do this, you start to do things that make you happy. How hard have you worked in the past to make other people that you love happy? Now put the same dedication into your own happiness. Dedicate 2 hours to yourself this week. Go and do something for your own happiness. Not for anyone else but yourself. Maybe a massage, a facial, a day out at a gallery, a picnic for one with a book you have been meaning to read for months, a class or activity. Anything that is all about selfish pleasure and pure indulgence for yourself. After you have done this notice how you cant help but love yourself even more and feel even happier. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised to hear you say that the more often you do this for yourself, the more you respect yourself and the happier you feel everyday!