Forgiving me for small things

For me in general I have a few general things that I have to forgive in other people. I am not in a romantic relationship so, things I have to forgive are the general type. Nothing major. 

Today though, I had an interesting experience. There is this old colleague that I sort of had a crush on. Nothing major. I remember once we had an interaction and …. Well.. I definitely made a fool of myself, because I was acting out on the crush and he brushed me off. Whenever I remember the interaction it always me feel bad, uncomfortable, kind of ashamed of myself… for behaving the way I did. I have always wanted to have behaved differently in general. 

Today the memory came back to me and the old feelings flooded over me. The old discomforts came back and the shame and feeling like I had made a fool of myself and that regret. It was really quick. 

Then the memory of my exercises also came back. I did them and in a few moments the feelings were not there anymore. I feel this ease, this not caring about that old memory at all. It feels OK now. 

I am just grateful that God brought the exercises to me so that dealing with these discomforts becomes easy and not anything that I keep having to carry it for the rest of my life. 

Healing a Relationship

Dancing me

What does this mean to me? 

When I think about healing a relationship I think about repairing broken or fractured relationships. I think about the ability to remake a relationship that had become difficult and making this relationship easy again. I think about returning to the space of loving relationship. I think about moving past hurts and disagreement and moving toward forgiveness and understanding. 

I think about forgiveness; real forgiveness. Which means to me being able to look at a situation or a thing that previously made us hurt and not feel the hurt anymore.

 I think about difficult relationships, especially those ones that one cannot get away from, and I think about making these relationships easier, even better and happier. And I also think about I think about harmony and congruence inside of the relationship.  I think about returning to a space of love without condition a space of love and joy.

 It is wanting to be happy more than wanting to be right. 

I have had instances when I have had to heal relationships. Situations where I have been hurt by someone I care about. I go through the process of working through my feelings and coming to a space where I had forgiven completely, where I could look at them and not feel even the smallest twinge of hurt or discomfort. Being able to resume a relationship without feeling like a victim. Being able to see things from the other person’s point of view. Being able to be empathetic when necessary. Being able to be clear when communicating and being able to understand what is being said or communicated without colouring it with our own complexes, causing new misunderstandings and new hurts. 

To me, healing a relationship is becoming free, it is getting freedom to be happy to experience joy and love again. To me that is what healing a relationship is. Much love!

HATE

 

I like to call myself “The Love Expert”. I have spent a whole lot of time studying love.  I am against anything hate and usually have a difficult time understanding why even how, one person can hate another person. Especially when the hate is based on something that the person was born with, something that has nothing to do with the personality of a person. E.G. if the person is gay, or dark skinned or based on the sex of the person. Nothing really to do with them.  That hate I have never understood. I try not to engage in this because it is useless and it is not possible to change the mind of the hater anyway. 

Why do I post this, because me, a connoisseur of love, had a person I hated.  HATED!  This man was such a sexist and a misogynist, he looked down upon everyone, he lorded over everyone and felt only his needs were important and fuck everyone else’s needs. He didn’t respect boundaries, (I don’t think he knows what those are.) He would test people he would be as big an asshole to everyone and if you complained about it, you were the asshole. We knocked heads often (especially in the beginning) cause I would not put up with his bullshit. 

It soon became evident that I had moved from initial feelings onto creation. I believed he was an asshole and now I was just creating assholicness in my life. I also knew, (KNEW!) that if I would not resolve him then I would stay in this bullshit space where I am creating bullshit vibe and reality in my life and very soon someone for whom, I felt the exact same way would show up in my life. 

It  was hard, and I made a huge effort at resolving him (or rather my feeling, my hate feelings for him). On the daily, I wished him good things, I wrote lists of things that liked about him, (which were few) I would come to a space where mentally I could stand him…. Then I would go and sit right next to him to wake any latent hate I felt for him so that I could clean up on that, too.  

I managed mostly. The feelings changed, I stopped the hate, I got to a space where I could stand him and I would stop spewing bile whenever he opened his mouth. We stopped being in contact after a while, but I really believe that given the opportunity I would have managed love for him. 

Something else I noticed is that he changed.. well at least regarding his interaction with me, he stopped being such a fucking asshole!!! He became normal. He even became a little vulnerable, an actual human being. I believe that it would be possible to achieve real love for him. A space where I loved him without  condition. 

He taught me that it is possible to move how I feel for someone from one space to another. I can stop hating someone and move that feeling to love. 

Why did I do it, though? It wasn’t for him for sure, it was for me. I didn’t want to live in world where all I felt was hate, I wanted to feel LOVE in my life. I wanted my world to be FILLED WITH LOVE and this couldn’t be achieved while at the same time feeling hate. 

The added advantage was the changed behavior in him.  That wasn’t the intention but it was nice to experience anyway. 

LOVE WORKS! 

The Gift of PAIN

 

I fall for people easily. That is that my thing. I can fall for a man on the drop of a hat. I can fall after a sentence or a look. A few months ago I fell or a guy because he was kind to a cat. That was it… he was kind to a cat and that was it for me. 

On this backdrop, I encountered a beautiful man sometime back. We just clicked naturally. It was very easy to talk to him. He made me laugh. It was like he had a cheat sheet to my heart. He said all the right things in the right ways. It felt good. 

Right now, as I keep telling anyone who will listen, I cannot get into a relationship because of a program that I am following. And he was one of those people that I told. That should have ended that. It started up again when I was going through some emotional thing, and talking to him really helped me cope.   And he was nice, he was the right amount support not too much, not too little. Just the right amount. He was, to me, pretty perfect. He is also good looking, and financially stable.  

I fell for him very easily and very hard. Really hard. 

One day he asked to meet up. Up to this point he hadn’t seen me.  He also shortly after asked for a photo. And I sent it….. and the rejection was INSTANT!. He made an excuse and to finish with me and that was that

The pain was visceral. It was undeniable. I went through all these emotions. I felt, inadequate, unloved and unloveable. I wanted to make all these changes, change me in order that I could be someone that he could love. I felt angry at God for bringing this situation to me.., “we are friends, why would You let that happen to me?!!!” I felt stupid, and silly for falling for someone over a chat. I was angry at me, for putting me in this situation, cause I felt it was so unnecessary. I blamed me, I blamed God. It just hurt so much. It just really hurt so much. 

Now, I am an Emotional Journey specialist, meaning, I pride myself in being able to move my emotions from one state to another quickly, easily and permanently. And I remembered that. I put ALL my tools to work. ALL. Everything; including the kitchen sink! And I went hard. Sometime into the work I really felt that this would not work that I wouldn’t manage that this case was too hard that the hurt was too deep for this to work. I had never tried these methods for this kind of pain. I felt this doubt that these processes would work. But I kept going because I didn’t really have a choice; it was either the work or the pain and the pain I couldn’t... so I kept going.

Sometime later, it began to feel lighter, then a short while later, it was just fine.  Just really OK. The pain was gone. I felt for him and there was nothing there. The pain was just GONE! My appreciation for me rekindled. I remembered how I feel about me. Who I am to me. 

I also started feeling a new feeling. A gratitude. This intense gratitude to God that I went through this experience. That I fell for this guy and that he rejected me, and that it was painful and that the processes that I knew WORKED! That they worked and that now I knew something new. Something that is useful, something that I KNOW. Something of I knew all the parts. Something that  I could impart to someone else. (Something that I can post here in this forum  ). 

It also taught me (re-taught me) to be grateful for all the bad things in my life. They are a blessing. They truly are a blessing from God. 

Thank you for letting me share. 

How to get people to like you

So are you brave enough to give this a try and make the effort to see if this is something that could work for you. 

It is really simple; to get people to like you better you have to like you better. That is all. The more you like you, the more they will like you.  That is it!

One thing that you could do is make lists and lists of things that you like about you. Make a long list of things that you like about you. Especially if you can do it to the point that you start to feel nice, warm feelings about you. When you have sustained nice feelings about yourself, other people will start to feel the same. 

If there is a person that you want to  have positive feelings toward you, then make long lists of things you like about them. Very long lists. Now I am not sure  why it works but it does. 

The trick  is to only make lists of what you like about you… don’t say things like …. I like that I am slim but I don’t like that I am too tall. OR… I like that I am funny but people don’t like it.. No “buts” don’t negate the good things in your list. Just keep it positive. Then read the list. It will still feel as good as it did when you wrote it. 

Also, don’t do it in order that they like you better… that cannot be your primary reason. It is an idea to do it just to feel good. (cause it really feels good to feel good about yourself) 

Are you brave enough, are you daring enough to give it a go?

Let me know 

The Kenyan man.. (..according to a Kenyan man)

Today, I got the opportunity to talk to a man. A real Kenyan man. The interaction was interesting, very insightful. He is someone that I have recently been acquainted with,  though  he is someone that I don’t know very well.  We had an honest conversation. A real conversation where we both got to be honest and open.

When he spoke about what men want in a woman, honestly I found it a little scary and depressing. Apparently (because he claimed to speak for all men) all men want a subservient woman for a wife. Someone whose only role in the marriage is to cater for all the needs and wants and expectations of her man. Her needs and wants would not feature at all in the relationship. He said that the relationship should center on the man. That he should be THE MOST important thing in that woman’s life. 

When I asked about her happiness, he responded with a long, loud, extended belly laugh! He said this subservience was the only way a woman can have a long lasting and successful marriage. He said “love” was for women and children and the only thing that men wanted was “respect.”  Respect he defined as total and complete obedience. No question of the man’s behavior. She should not to expect to have an opinion or say in anything happening in the marriage or their lives together. Her only reason for being in that marriage is to be in service for the man.

Even after she has all of these things, it will not even make him happy. Not really. But men, REAL men from Kenya do not want happiness, they want respect and continuity.

This conversation that made me feel very powerless, very alone and very defeated. It made me feel invisible. It made me feel like I was nothing.  I almost gave up my life’s work; my “raison d’être”. I wanted to give up on my search. My belief that “someday my prince will come.”

After a bit, though, I remembered that, I do have a “super power”.  My “super power” is mending relationships. My knowledge sits squarely on being someone who can maintain a relationship with someone who is completely different; who thinks, believes and sees life completely differently and being able to maintain a loving relationship with them, without having “DO” specific things, behave in particular specific ways to “make them happy”. I am able to live in close proximity with someone whose requirements is for me to be different, and me to be me, without changing and for both of us to be happy.

I also remembered God. I remembered that God exists and He is still here and that it is possible to hand things over to Him for resolution.

I remembered that I know how to love someone without condition. That I DO KNOW how to love someone and enable them live their lives happily without, without changing them or changing me.

I resolved that all this is really quite all right. All this really is very well.

 

 

Telling me nice things about me

A few weeks ago, well a few months ago got a coach. A person who would guide me out of my emotional mess, who is also quite knowledgeable on the subject matter and who has gone through what I am going through, who has gone through it and come out on the other side.

She gave me an exercise; each day to look myself in the mirror and tell myself 3 things;

a) I love you,

b) I accept you,

c) I forgive you. 

This was my first step to saying things to myself that are nice. I have sort of known about this. I have always known that telling myself nice things is a good idea but I have never used it. Not really. I am not even sure that I listened when it was said... 

Anyway, that is how all of this started. Sometime back my sister got me doing this exercise where I write and say out loud things that I like about me. 5 things. After a while, my coach said the same thing. Write 5 things about me that I like, every day. 

Recently a friend gave me a secret. He told me to just say nice things to myself. Simple things actually. Things like I am kind, I am loving, I try. It is amazing how easily and quickly and effectively this works. 

Before one starts, it is hard to even remember to say nice things to oneself because we are so used to calling ourselves all of these vile things. We usually spend a lot of time really insulting ourselves. Calling ourselves knowing names, that if someone else called us, we would cut them off, beat them up, and do all sorts of nasty things to them. 

I recently learnt this concept called "Self Compassion". I found it quite compelling especially because it is really quite simple. It is nice to be nice to oneself. It is nice when  I  am nice to myself. It is nice when I am nice to myself. One way I can be nice to myself is to say to myself nice things.