This is the hardest thing you will ever have to do, but it will also be the most important: stop giving your love to those who are not ready to love you.
Stop having difficult conversations with people who don’t want to change. Stop showing yourself to people who are indifferent to your presence. Stop putting people first who make you an option. Stop loving people who are not ready to love you.
I know your instinct is to do everything in your power to earn the favor of everyone you can, but it’s also an impulse that will rob you of your time, energy, and sanity.
When you begin to show up fully and completely in your life, with joy, interest and commitment, not everyone will be ready to meet you.
This doesn’t mean you have to change who you are. This means that you have to stop loving people who are not ready to love you.
If you are left out, subtly insulted, thoughtlessly forgotten, or easily dismissed by the people you spend the most time with, you are doing yourself an incredible disservice by continuing to give them your energy and life.
The truth is that you are not for everyone and not everyone is for you. That’s what makes it so special when you find a few people with whom you share a true friendship, love or relationship: you will know how valuable it is because you have experienced what it is not.
But the longer you try to force someone to love you when they are incapable of loving you, the longer you rob yourself of that very connection. Is waiting for you. There are billions of people on this planet and many of them will meet you on your level, in the atmosphere where you are, and connect with where you are going.
… But the longer you stay small, tucked away in the connections of people who use you as a cushion, a deterrent, a therapist, and a ruse for their emotional labor, the longer you stay away from the community you crave.
Maybe if you stop showing up you’ll be less liked.
Maybe they will forget about you completely.
Maybe if you stop trying, the relationship will end.
Maybe if you stop texting, your phone will go dark for days and weeks.
Maybe if you stop loving someone, the love between you will dissolve.
This doesn’t mean you ruined the relationship. This means that the only thing that kept the relationship going was the energy that you and yourselves put into it.
It’s not love. It’s attachment.
The most valuable and important thing you have in your life is your energy. It’s not your time that is limited, it’s your energy. What you give away every day will be what you create more and more of in your life. What you spend your time on what will define your existence.
Once you realize this, you will begin to understand why you are so anxious when you spend time with people who are inappropriate for you, as well as in jobs, places or cities who are inappropriate.
You will begin to realize that the most important thing you can do for your life, yourself, and everyone you know is to protect your energy more fiercely than anything else.
Make your life a safe haven where only people who care, listen and connect are allowed into it.
You are not responsible for saving people.
You are not responsible for convincing them that they want to be saved.
It is not your job to show up to people and give them your life, step by step, moment by moment, because they feel sorry for you, because you feel bad, because you “should”, because you are obliged, because at the root of it all is the fear that you will not be liked.
Your job is to realize that you are the master of your fate and that you accept the love you think you are worthy of.
Decide that you deserve true friendship, true commitment, and complete love for people who are healthy and thriving.
Then wait in the dark, just for a moment…
… And see how quickly everything starts to change. 