Are you ready to LOVE yourself - no matter what?

2011-01-25T10:06:00.000-08:00

Good Morning!
I am Susan Price, a Certified Life Coach, who loves inspiring myself and others in living a life you love!

Throughout my life experiences, I began recognizing that my happiness was related to what I was feeling and thinking about myself, WITHIN, when life was happening, rather than what was actually happening OUTSIDE of me. I noticed when I would looked outside of me for love, approval, recognition, and/or security, life would feel unsure and took more effort.

How did I come to experience, YES, truly we CAN be happy no matter what is happening around us?

Through noticing my own feelings and thinking in life experiences, and questioning the validity of them.

Were my feelings and thinking really the whole truth or was there more?

Today I am 57 years old. However, my journey of what I am, where love is found, began many years ago. After graduating from University of CA in Santa Barbara, landing a teaching job in Santa Barbara, and marrying the man of my dreams, I settled in to a wonderful life.   He and I eventually decided to start a family. We both wanted kids, so we had 3 all totaled. It was upon having 3 kids that I realized that maybe I wasn't as loving as I always thought I was! For the first time I was not as able to juggle all the balls of life: relationship, home-life, family, community and part-time work - while caring for 3 kids. Although I had noticed the connection to happiness coming from how I viewed myself living life, as early as high school, I had never had so many demands upon myself, or so it appeared at the time. That said, I broke. I decided to take a deeper look at life, questioning -

What am I, really?

Why am I here?

Where does approval and life really come from?

Having given up my full-time teaching job, I realized for the first time that without outside appreciation I didn't appreciate myself as much as I thought I did. I yearned to go back to full-time teaching because teaching was easier than facing myself daily in the mirror of the faces of my 3 beautiful children, home life, etc., etc. - without a lot of appreciation coming my way. In the 70's and early 80's, being a mother was not exactly viewed as worth one's time, unless a mother also worked full-time. Or, at least that is what I perceived. So, that was the beginning of my quest - to discover where appreciation really comes from. More than anything I wanted to love my kids and husband. Well, how does one do that if one is looking outside herself for love and approval?! I have since realized we only can give what we first have given ourself.

Now jump ahead 20 years and the children are 12, 15 and 17. At this time in my life, my now former husband decided to leave town, giving me the full physical, emotional, etc. care of the household.   I was in a position where all the responsibility of the children was in my lap, without any physical or financial help from extended family. I was teaching part-time and luckily another teaching job came my way that helped with the finances and my ex-husband did help till the youngest was 18, financially, what the courts mandated - thank goodness. All 3 kids lived with me at some point beyond the high school, rent free in order to help them through the expensive college years. Despite all these challenges, today all 3 kids are through college and happily living their lives. I also bought a home, love where I live and my expressions in life to this day. If I had listen to an inaccurate view of myself, I would have panicked, and not have realized what I am continuing to realize to this day - what is within, is without.

Why am I sharing with you about all of this? Because when life appeared its worst my greatest triumphs occurred. If I can realize that reality, SO CAN YOU! I proved to myself that no matter what is happening outside of me, I can experience a profound sense of happiness and peace. Somehow life comes in and supports us, from unexpected places. Are you open for that? Are you willing to trust your self that much and receive? :)

No matter how afraid, how uncertain, how overwhelmed you feel in response to life events, something in YOU IS BIGGER!   Through asking myself what I was feeling about what was happening, welcoming my feelings and thoughts, somehow life started feeling and looking different, lighter, freer, more possible.

My question today is, where are we looking for love?

Would you be willing to give your self love and approval for NO reason at all?

No matter how you look, what you earn, own, what you or another is saying or not saying, feeling or not feeling, thinking or not thinking? No matter what, can you give your self love and approval for no reason at all?

If you can't say yes.

No worries - allow yourself to say yes to saying no to not giving yourself love and approval, no matter what, and watch the magic begin. :)

If you don't give yourself love and approval, who will?

Decide today to say YES to you. :))

Begin Within Now

Are you ready to LOVE yourself - no matter what?