Ultimately we all want to feel connected and loved and sometimes in our pursuit of these very things, we get a little lost. Indifference or rejection is like catnip to us. I’m not sure if it’s the perceived challenge or the wanting to prove our worth to others and likely to ourselves that we end up giving chase.
Most of us will have tried in our lives to endear ourselves to others, trying to give them exactly what they’re after, bending and contorting ourselves, ignoring our own desires, pausing our values, generously giving all we have in exchange for a like, a love or a moment of connection to warm ourselves by. Fed and fuelled ready to go again. This is ultimately a zero-sum game.
John Lydgate famously asserted, “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”.
Even if we know this to be true, the temptation to woo won’t necessarily dissipate.
Our meditation practice helps support our inner growth, as we begin to strengthen and see the world and ourselves from the inside out, we recognise that there is always more going on than what we can ever realise and more seeing ourselves, our value, our worth, our lovability through the eyes of someone else does not get us the love, connection, and recognition we’re after.
What we get to recognise is that it is through our own eyes of love, connection, compassion and recognition that we are genuinely rewarded, how we see the world is the world. The grip on external validation loosens and whilst nice, it’s not essential – we can be our own source of value and recognition. Reminding ourselves of this can help shift us as we experience the ups and downs of our day to day lives.
Love,
Jo x