Needs

I just used this to illustrate a point at the bottom of my daily prompt blog. I thought it was worth expanding on.

The great place-holder

The past does have an effect and we know it. Yet one of the most disempowering things we can to do is to continue to live a hurtful upbringing, rather than realising that adults, friends, and teachers, can be a terrible warning not a life long template.

If you allow yourself to change then you can undo everything that hurt and affected you, and live your own life on your own terms.

Being loved

We sacrifice a lot to feel loved, to find and stay in a relationship that may not make us happy. Tolerating bad treatment from friends and family because…well why?

If you start off by loving yourself and treating yourself with respect then you will automatically either nip bad treatment in the bud, or walk away.

You need to know how to love in order to be loved, if you don’t you won’t recognise love when it’s right in front of you, but if you don’t love yourself how can you genuinely love someone else? Especially if you don’t know what love is, inside, you will accept any treatment providing the person says they love or like you. However, the most important point is:

How can you give something you can’t feel for yourself?

Being interesting

Which is more than not boring people to death, it’s about engaging each other in conversations that are powerful in their positivity, support, and encouragement. To achieve that we all need to be interested in each other, and life, and be able to discuss things like politics without resorting to verbal abuse. How else can we learn why others think as they do and stop thinking of them as idiots because we weren’t interested enough to ask?

If we could communicate without fear, conversations would lead to great things: friendships, romance, success, equality for all, positive change. Wonderful new learning and experiences!

Wouldn’t that be interesting?

Finding beauty in others

If you don’t feel the beauty within then it’s also likely that you don’t find beauty in others. Again, it’s one of those things you either won’t recognise, or it could hit a jarring note making you think that they think too much of themselves. Thinking you know what. you don’t know is the cause of many a misunderstanding – or war.

“They want our territory – let’s invade them and teach them a lesson?”
“Excuse us! We want your what? And Why? Who are you anyway?”

If you struggle to find the beauty in you then you will struggle to meet beautiful people, so don’t dismiss your friends and family when they say you’re a wonderful person. Don’t judge yourself harshly for mistakes. Definitely do not look in the mirror and think ‘ugh’, criticise your face, figure, outfit, smile.

Be realistic about yourself, acknowledge your strengths, deal with your weaknesses, and develop yourself into a person that you feel you can admire. I did that; I undid my childhood programming and decided who I wanted to be.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – look within first to find beauty without.

Having and being/being and having

We’ve all been in those one-sided friendships where you feel that you do all the giving, they’re most uncomfortable aren’t they?

This happens when you’re not a friend to yourself, when you don’t treat yourself the way you wish others would treat you. So the secret to being a friend, is to treat yourself like a friend. With honesty, integrity, self-respect, authenticity, and love – be the friend you want to meet.

Then not only will you have friends, you’ll know how to be a friend, and that’s what true friendship is. What it’s not is: I want friends to make me feel better, to call on when I need them, and forget about them when I don’t.

It takes two friends to have a friendship.

Tying this in a neat bow

Ultimately this whole meme reminds us that what is not within us cannot be given, shared, or expressed. In other words, if you want to be loving, interesting, have beautiful friends, you’ll need to be those things yourself.

Like attracts like.

Best love as always

Amorah – Deb