The Path to Happiness: Why You Are Here
Are you unhappy but not really sure why?
Does your life check all the boxes of what it looks like to be successful?
Or is your life in shambles and you can’t seem to get a leg up no matter how many hours or jobs you work?
Do you go to bed thinking there just has to be more to life than working for a paycheck and dealing with people you don’t like?
Why You Are Here
Yeah, you’re definitely in the right place here.
I felt those things too. I felt angry, confused, lost, empty, like something was wrong with me for being unsatisfied and unfulfilled. I tried to be grateful for what I had but I was still feeling like it was never enough and I had a constant nagging void in the pit of my stomach. Like I was just going through the motions but going nowhere.
Those feelings made me drink a lot. And use drugs a lot. And seek out toxic relationships. I was trying to numb those feelings, in hopes they’d just magically go away and one day I’d wake up feeling happy and fulfilled in life.
But it never happened. And I lost a lot in my quest to numb myself. What’s even more alarming is how much I still achieved while living a double-life. During the day, I looked like an ambitious professional. I had the whole bit: the fancy job, the fancy car, the fancy place. But in the evenings after work and on the weekends, I did whatever I could to make myself stop feeling. I didn’t want to feel afraid or not good enough or unhappy. I thought this was just how successful adult life was supposed to look and feel. Nobody I knew ever talked about feelings, so I just assumed it was something wrong with me and kept quiet about it. Besides, who was I going to talk to this about? And what would I say? I didn’t want to seem weak or emotional. Those things were dangerous, personally and professionally.
I continued on this path for years. I went further into education, further up the career ladder, further into debt trying to impress my peers, further into alcoholism.
(What a bummer this all sounds like. Are you wondering if you’re really in the right place here?! Stick with me, it gets better.)
New Beginning
Eventually, I cleaned up my act in my personal life. I got out of my last abusive relationship, gave drinking a break, and started working on what I believed was self improvement.
And then I fell in love. Hard.
I knew I had found who I was meant to be with and all the garbage and pain in my life from the decade prior was overshadowed by the arrival of this phenomenal person.
I had found my unicorn.
I thought all my problems and pain were gone. The days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, and life was better than I’d ever known. Little did I know that this was just the beginning of a very messy and painful journey that would prove to be the most beautiful and most painful thing I’d yet experienced:
One fateful Monday completely out of the blue, I got my heart spectacularly broken.
Ah, heartbreak. The great catalyst for change. It’s the thing that makes you reevaluate and question everything in your life. For the first time, I looked inward instead of seeking something outside myself to numb the pain. And for the first time, I let myself feel all of it.
It was awful.
But then...it became crystal clear, and although it hurt like the dickens, I got through it and I discovered my problem:
I hated myself.
Wow! What?! How?! I was a high achieving, successful looking, functioning adult with really nothing to complain about. How could I HATE myself?! It was hard to stomach and I rejected it at first because I just didn’t want to face the fact. But it was true. When I looked back at how I treated myself over the years, it made perfect sense. And so began my quest to figure out the answer to one simple question:
What is Self Love?
Until pretty recently, I had it in my head that “self love” was this hippy dippy idea that had to do with inspirational quotes on Pinterest and smiling all the time. I was so unaware and caught in my stubborn, fearful comfort zone that it never occurred to me to even Google it to learn more. I spent a lot of time in the headspace of judgement and criticism, and despite what other people might have said about me back then, I really wasn’t very open to new things.
Why?
Because I was afraid. I was afraid of being judged and criticized, of being laughed at and mocked, of being disagreed with, of being confronted, of being disliked, of being listened to or looked at, of being perceived as poor or uneducated or ugly or incompetent.
I was afraid of someone noticing that I even existed at all.
Any of that sound familiar?
I was so afraid of everything that I lived in a very narrow comfort zone--so fearful of making a mistake or of someone having a negative opinion of me that I just didn’t do much of anything. Well, that’s not totally true. I did LOTS of things. But they were nearly all things that other people wanted me to do because they believed those were the things that I “should” be doing with my life.
And I was so scared of having (let alone voicing out loud!) my own opinion that I just did what everyone else thought I should do. That isn’t living. That is barely even existing.
I hated myself. Everything, inside and out. I said things to myself every minute of every day that no human should even think. Why? What was so terrible about me or my life that I hated myself so deeply and thoroughly, that no matter what I achieved, I still believed I was a flaming bag of shit?
I didn't know but I was determined to sort this out. I couldn't keep living in pain and emptiness. I just knew there had to be more to life than that. I had to find the opposite and do that: Self Love.
Learning as we go
So here I am, in the midst of this incredible journey of self discovery with one sole (soul!) mission of sharing with you what I have learned about Self Love. I don’t have it all figured out. I’m not here to give you any profound answers, but I can give you insight from my personal experiences in hopes that they somehow help you on your own journey. Once you come to accept that Self Love is the foundation for all success and happiness in life, things will become easier. Life becomes more beautiful and begins to really mean something to you.
I hope you can find some perspective and hope in these pages. I am so glad you are here!
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