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Do You Know How to Love and Value Yourself?

We are strong believers that your ability to attract love in your life is tied to your ability to love and value yourself.  These practices are at the root of creating intentional love.  When you embrace the idea that your experience in the outer world is nothing more than a reflection of your inner world, then it seems obvious that in order to attract and receive the love you desire you need to create that relationship with yourself first.

I can hear you thinking how great that sounds however, what does that look like in practice?  What actions can I take that teach me to love and value myself?  We’re going to start looking at those practices and how to implement them in the next series of blog posts.

The place to start is to begin to examine your relationship with yourself and ask yourself some key questions:

1.  Do I feel that others are always draining my energy?

2.  Do I have a list of actions or activities that I do regularly to replenish myself?

3.  Do I feel any resentment towards important people at home or at work?

4.  Do I set and enforce my personal boundaries?

5.  Do I know what my ideal day would look like?

6.  Do I speak to myself in a harsh or critical tone?

7.  Do I dwell on past mistakes?

8.  Do I focus on what I haven’t yet accomplished?

9.  Am I holding onto unresolved issues from  the past?

10.  Is there anything that I am unwilling to change or let go of in order to get what I want?

11.  Do I take time for myself away from friends and family?

12.  Do I focus on the present and reward myself for how far I’ve come on my journey?

If you answered yes to #’s 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 then that is a great place to start making changes.  Pick one of these and add it to your New Year’s Resolution list.  In order to avoid becoming overwhelmed, work only on one at a time and be compassionate towards yourself.  There is no time limit for how long it should take to make these changes, its all a process.

If you answered yes to #’s 2, 4, 5, 11, or 12 then you already have some great practices in place.  If you answered no, then these are great actions to add into your daily life.  Once again it is best to take them one at a time.

So today’s tip is to spend time with this list, notice where you are not honoring your needs or hanging onto the past, notice which practices you would like to develop and pick one to focus on for the next 30-60 days.

Let us know how you’re doing.  We’ve set up a forum topic so that you can support one another and keep track of your progress.  Click HERE to post on the forum.

Love and Abundance,

Orna and Matthew

Are you hoping on a wing and a prayer?

 

Hope is a great emotion.  It often brings light into the darkest of places.  There is absolutely no logic in HOPE.  For this reason hoping is a good thing, although sometimes many of us simply hope, and do nothing else.

 

This is often the case when it comes to LOVE.  At my wedding last Saturday a dear friend said several times: “You give me hope!”  I knew what she meant.  I’d been there myself, many times, not just once.  At a lovely wedding, no boyfriend, no date, and feeling so happy for the couple and yet that green-eyed monster of jealousy was lurking over my shoulder.  Hope was all I could muster.

 

Hoping is a great place to start.  You’ll get a lot more mileage out of taking action – even a small action.  Setting an intention is how to begin the process of manifesting what you desire.  Be clear on what you want.  The more details and the more you incorporate your five senses the better.  When you have love in your life what will it FEEL like?  Answer that SPECIFICALLY and then find ways to bring that feeling to life in your day right now!

 

If you are serious about wanting love in your life – real love – life long lasting love, then its time to get serious.  How do you want your lover to treat you?  Once again, be specific.  Are you treating yourself this way already? 

 

Here’s an example from my own life.  I knew I wanted the real deal, real love with a spiritual connection and every time a relationship did not work out I would dissect it to discover the lesson.  I’d ask myself, “What did I learn?”  In the year 2000 a clear piece of my love puzzle came into focus – RESPECT. 

 

I realized that in my family of origin “I love you,” meant I don’t respect you because there were no boundaries.  In order to have respect there must be boundaries.  That boyfriend I had in the year 2000 had a family that loved respectfully.  Certainly every family has their issues, and they had their share, but in this arena they truly excelled. 

 

I did not know how to LOVE RESPECTFULLY.  I set the intention to have respectful love and set myself on a course to learn HOW to love respectfully myself. 

 

Setting an intention that is in alignment with what you truly desire is an action that you must take to create change.  Who do you have to BE to have what you desire?  In what ways can you shift from where you are now to where you want to be?  Again, how you FEEL is everything!

 

So the next time you find yourself HOPING for something – Love, Money, Health – allow that to be the SPARK that ignites action and set a clear intention of what you want.

 

Self-Acceptance is the Key to Feeling Loved

 

Which one of these scenarios best describes your experience in relationships?

 

1.  You always find yourself needing to please your partner.  Constantly putting their needs ahead of yours, you find that at times you feel resentful wondering when all of your selfless action will be recognized and reciprocated.  You wish your partner would be able to anticipate your needs as well as you anticipate theirs.  Ultimately, all of this leads to you constantly twisting into a pretzel to receive love.

 

2.  You feel like you’ve been duped in your relationship.  You thought you knew who your partner was until you made that deeper commitment and everything changed.  Suddenly your partner has different opinions than you and begins to express them.  This person is no longer  interested in doing the things that you did during your courtship.  In fact it may seem like you’ve married or moved in with a completely different person.

 

3.  You are extremely attracted to people who reject you.  It seems that the more you are told that you are not right for that person, the more you want to prove them wrong.  You may even begin a process of changing who you are in order to become more like what you think that person wants.  When you meet someone who is attracted to you and likes you for who you are, you are not interested in that person.  You may even feel that person is not worthy of being with you as it would be too easy to start a relationship with them.  You prefer a challenge and like the chase, but lose interest when you get the prize.

 

These may seem like completely different scenarios, but they all point to a common problem – a lack of self-acceptance.  In the first scenario the person lacks an ability to see their needs as valuable.  When we seek approval outside of ourselves we find ourselves twisting into pretzels.  We often think “What shape can I assume that will make me attractive to you?”  This is a game of rejecting who we are and hoping that the new shape we assume will be loveable.  When what we really need to do is to learn to accept all of our qualities, both good and bad, and by finding that acceptance then we can be authentic in relationship with others.

 

In the second scenario the partner in the relationship isn’t purposefully deceiving their partner.  Instead, this is caused by someone thinking that it is not okay or safe to be themselves until they get that deeper commitment from you.  They finally relax and allow their true self to be revealed to you.  This is not usually a conscious choice to deceive you.  It happens because that person does not believe that you would love them for who they really are.  That person lacks a sense of self-acceptance.

 

In the last scenario the problem lies with a sense of worthiness and an inability to receive.  This person seeks that rejection because that is what they feel inside.  Often times when they are in relationship with the person who does love them for who they are, they will sabotage the relationship to prove that they were not worthy of receiving love and acceptance.  The desire to prove themselves worthy to the person who rejects them is really a desire to prove to themselves that they are worthy.

 

Why is self-acceptance so important in your relationships?  Because how you see yourself, how you feel about yourself - self-judgment, self-criticism, etc - effects your ability to be authentic in relationship.  The belief is that if you show your true self you will not be loved.  The problem is if you don’t ever show your true self, then you can never be loved for who you really are.

 

Another problem that arises in relationship that comes from a lack of self-acceptance is that we begin to judge our partner’s behavior and become critical of them.  If it is true that all judgment is self-judgment, then when we are so annoyed by our partner’s behavior we can ask ourselves “Is this a reflection of a fault within my character?”

 

Only by knowing what we truly need to be happy, what we truly need in order to nurture ourselves, can we feel comfortable asking our partners to love us in the way we truly can receive love.  It is in the search for self-acceptance, that all parts of us are worthy of being loved, that we begin to learn to love ourselves.  When we love ourselves it becomes easy to ask for what we want, it becomes easy to enforce our boundaries, and it becomes easy to receive the love we most desire.  That love is what “true love” is all about.

 

 

Spa Luce Presents

Orna Banarie & Matthew Walters, C.Ht.

 

They will show You HOW to Create Love On Purpose!

Tuesday, August 18th 7:00pm
$10.00 (all monies donated to Sojourn Shelter for Battered Women)

Orna Banarie and Matthew Walters, C.Ht. and are known as THE Power Couple.  Why?  Orna is a manifestation coach and the GPS for Your Soul.  Matthew is a transformational spiritual teacher and the co-founder of DownloadsForChange.com.  Together they have created a soul partnership and want to share that process with You.

It took Orna and Matthew over 20 years to find each other and they want to share the journey with You so You can create harmonious relationships.  Orna and Matthew are willing to share their stories with you because if it is possible for them, then it is possible for anyone.  And that means it is possible for YOU!

**This is for anyone who is seeking to create the relationship they most desire.  Whether you are in a relationship, have been in a relationship, or want to be in a relationship you will benefit greatly from this work.**

•    Understand why you get the results you get in relationships now
•    Discover the system for breaking your negative patterns
•    Know the one thing you must have in relationship that you must not sacrifice
•    The most important key element in any successful partnership
•    Find out how you can transform your relationship with yourself so that you can undeniably feel loved.

Spa Luce
Renaissance Hollywood Hotel at Hollywood and Highland Center
1755 N Highland Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90028-4403
(323) 491-1376