We find ourselves in unprecedented times where the world needs a little more kindness, love and understanding. Where we have to believe that we come from that same process of conception and are brought into a world that isn’t the same for everyone. While teaching and learning are important to understanding how to experience the basic primal function of love, the ability to love and be loved really starts within ourselves.

People who don’t love themselves and are miserable in who they are find it difficult to be able to pass that love on to another person. Think about it. When you spend every one of your 1,440 minutes that you are awake wanting to be someone different because you don’t like the person you are or have become, it is impossible to have any emotional energy within you to pass that love on to someone else. At the same time, it is almost nearly impossible to let love in from other people.

Most of my life I was involved in bad relationships. Because I didn’t feel worthy, I allowed myself to be in relationships where I was mentally and sometimes physically abused. I went from one person to the next who had the same traits because it is was all I knew, it was in my comfort zone, and it was all that I believed I deserved. Despite all the love that surrounded me growing up, my life as an adult was quite different, because I didn’t love myself enough to let someone else in. I tried to take care of others to fill the void, but it was never enough.

When I finally met someone who truly loved me, I didn’t know how to accept it. It was foreign to me and my immediate reaction was to run. That was exactly what I did. A month later I stood in front of them and explained why love was so difficult for me. I told them that I couldn’t promise a day, a year, or a month, but just one day at a time. The response I got was that it was worth the wait. At that very moment, the ability to let love in started to change the very person that I would become and almost twenty one years later it has changed my life.

Once I began to talk to myself as I would someone I loved, my ability to share that love grew exponentially. Once I discovered my own value and what I could offer the world, I experienced opportunities that would not only change my life but others as well. Love and compassion starts within our own hearts. Once we get to that place where we can allow that self love to be real, we then have the power to make a difference in the world as a whole.

#morningswithron