Let Yourself Be Surprised

You are not as hemmed in as you believe. You are not a tiger roaming a tight cage. You are not required to perform for anyone. You have a great wide field to roam. You have plains and mountains and oceans to explore. You have more than you ever dreamed possible. The world is now new. Don't bring your old habits and feelings and patterns into this new place. Decide to check them at the door and then step out into the sunny field, ready to be surprised by what appears to dance before you and beckon you forward.

Let yourself be surprised. Let yourself love and be loved. Let new experiences find you. Meet it all with the excitement of a caged lion freed or a sailor meeting new horizons.

Everything is waiting for you.

What To Do When You're Cranky

Be cranky. Don't desperately try to snatch at some feeling you think you should have instead. Allow yourself to be cranky. Maybe you need an hour of being cranky. Maybe you need to kvetch to a friend for twenty minutes. Maybe you need a whole day. Whatever you need, take it. Don't try to wrench yourself into some state of being that you think is better or more appropriate or not so inconvenient. Be inconvenient. This is not to say that you should wallow. You know if you're prone to wallowing or if you're more inclined to soldier through. If you're a soldier, ready for action at a moment's notice and never offbeat: give yourself some space. Take an hour off from your life to feel, to take care of yourself, to do something that brings you joy. If you're a wallower, take some action: write an angry letter and rip it up, stomp around for awhile, take a walk. Search for the feeling below the cranky. Your crankiness is probably hiding something deeper. Maybe anger, maybe jealousy, maybe sadness. Allow that emotion to float to the surface and just feel it for awhile. If your emotions take you to a real place, take care of yourself once they're done whipping you around. Take a bath, take a walk, go see a movie. Do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself. Feelings can be hard work, but they're some of the best work you can ever do.

What to do when you're cranky? Be cranky. Until you aren't cranky any more. But recognize that crankiness is no greater or lesser state of being than any other. It simply is. When you can simply be with the cranky, you may find that it dissipates that much faster.

Quest for Romantic Love

Sometimes I write letters for my friends, addressing whatever issue they're currently dealing with. The information comes from the same place as these blog posts, the voice in my head that's often much wiser than I am. A friend asked me to address his difficulty in finding a romantic partner. After I sent it off, I asked if I could share the letter I wrote him, because, while it is specific to him and his situation, it might also apply to something you're seeking or going through right now. So if you're in search of love, see if any of this resonates!     xo Amber

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There is an illusion of control operating on you now. We cannot control when we meet our partner because too many decisions and the self-determination of too many people are also operating.

"When" is italicized because you can control - or, more accurately, choose - to experience that sort of relationship. You can ask for that relationship and decide that you would like to have that experience in your lifetime. But part of the choosing is to express your desire and release your attachment to the outcome. The outcome of what that relationship looks like, who it is with, and when it appears. Your desire to have it yesterday is operating as internal resistance within you that only slows the process down.

Your work now is to go into the shadows of this love that you seek and unhook the resistance, unhook anything that is slowing your flow.

Your work is to access that state of pure love and acceptance and delight that you hope to find in a relationship and create it for yourself now, independent of that relationship. You cannot receive the relationship - the one you truly want, that is - without doing this work. Because to receive it before would put your relationship at the mercy of your need. If you know how to fulfill your needs outside of any relationship than it will be healthier and stronger and full of the pure unconditional love you long for.

This is not to say that people can’t learn that unconditional love within a relationship, but that doesn’t seem to be the path you’ve chosen, that was chosen by you before your birth.

So find a space of feeling where you are already experiencing the emotions you long to feel in a relationship. That in and of itself will magnetize what you want.

Respect

Our job as humans is to respect the other humans around us. Respect where they are, respect their choices, respect who they want to be. It is not for us to judge, even though we do, because we're human. It's not for us to make them wrong, for any reason. Though we will, because we're human. Being human means fighting the lizard brain, the one that prompts us to filter and categorize based on what we see as helpful and safe. Our survival instincts our strong. But now that it is no longer a matter of survival for most of us, we need to rise above our quick decisions of who is worth our time and who isn't. Who is worthy and who isn't. Who is capable and who isn't.

We need to trust that what is on the surface isn't all their is. We need to trust that everyone truly is fighting their own battle, and that battle is probably remarkably similar to our own.

We all crave love and connection and security. We all want to reach our potential, we all want to survive this place, we all want to find what we're looking for. We all want to, eventually, stop looking.

We do what we need to do to decide who we want in our life and who we don't, but under each decision must be a deep, fundamental respect, no matter what their life circumstances, their bank account, or the measure of worldly power they can claim.

What we judge in others is often what we are judging in ourselves. How we measure the worth of another is often how we're measuring ourselves.

Everyone here has the same light you do. And it's the responsibility of each one of us to uncover that light.

When You Feel Like You Have To Hustle For Worthiness

Allow yourself to stop hustling. Allow it to be okay to step away from that ceaseless, soul-sucking grind of proving yourself to others. Your own view of your worthiness is all that matters. Since the mantra of "worthiness comes from within!" is less than helpful, here's how you can truly feel the worth that you were born with. Removing the numbing layers and piercing wounds around your self-worth will show you that you are every bit as valuable today as you were when you arrived.

Step into yourself and ask when you first felt unworthy. Were you a child? Is some memory or age called up? Go with whatever pops to mind and travel back to that moment in time. Ask the parts of yourself that know how to do this to heal that wound. Ask that healing to travel from the moment the belief was formed all the way to the present, where you stand now. Feel this as it happens. When it reaches you here in the present, extend it into your future, a future where you truly feel your full, intrinsic worth.

Ask if there are any other spots in your life or childhood where you felt like you weren't enough, weren't worthy, weren't whole. Go back in and allow the parts of yourself that know how to do this to heal each one and extend it up the line of your life to the present and into the future.

Give yourself time to integrate. Give yourself time to notice that you are worth everything and there is nothing that can be held from you if you choose to reach for it.

Let yourself see that when you radiate worthiness from within, the outside world can't help but reflect it back to you. This is when the hustle becomes either obsolete or so joyful that you're eager to dive in.