Unsplash | Dan Freeman
"We have made our happiness conditional."
I went to a yoga class not too long ago and they started off our session with this.
This made my brain wake up a little bit as I was trying to get it to relax.
We have made our happiness conditional in so many ways.
We make it depend on our jobs, our significant others, what we look like, how much money we have, and so many other things that we seek happiness from.
They went on with the session to say how we need to start making it unconditional.
My mind starting exploring how one might do that. How do we make our happiness unconditional, not changing based on the external world?
I have actually explored this for a long time, but hadn't really had this specific question asked before.
My answer?
We love ourselves for who we are. We love ourselves before bringing anything else into the mix.
I look at loving yourself as growing the roots of a tree. We need to grow strong roots, a strong us, so once our trunks grow and flowers bloom, we can weather the storm no matter what comes our way. We work on building ourselves so we can build our life.
Even when things are going well, the storms come. They always do.
Work gets frustrating, you go on some bad first dates, you gain a few pounds, you feel like you don't always have the money to do the things you want to do, you get some unexpected bad news.
How does one love themselves and make their happiness unconditional when the storms hit?
We always hear the answer "love yourself, love who you are, love every strength and flaw." I almost get frustrated or confused sometimes when I hear this because if it was that easy, we would all be doing it, right?
There are so many books, podcasts, and social media accounts promoting self love, and I've read, listened, and followed a lot of them. You can't help but think that self love must be something people are struggling with if this many people are talking about and people, like me, are consuming it.
Maybe it feels confusing and we continue to talk about it because self love looks different for everyone. We are all just trying to figure it out how it looks for us.
I have experimented with a lot of different ways I can love myself more, but this is what self love looks like this to me.
I am complete, everything else is extra.
It took me some time, but I realized that we are complete on our own and everything else just adds or doesn't add value to our lives.
When we see ourselves as complete, we can let go of things we are holding onto that aren't adding value to our lives.
When we see ourselves as complete, we can stop feeling the need to seek out things that are going to complete us.
When we see ourselves as complete, we can have reassurance that we are capable of weathering the storm.
You, me, us are already complete, everything else is just extra.
And those extra things can be absolutely wonderful and enhance our lives. A significant other, a big house, or an impressive job title.
They can make our lives greater, but they also could not.
It’s up to us to decide if they're adding value. Hold on tight and don't take for granted the parts that are adding value, and let go of the things that are not.
It all comes back to knowing that we are complete. It all comes back to loving ourselves. It all comes back to making our happiness unconditional.