Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Love is an Inside Job

Do you ever find yourself sitting alone, waiting to be recognized and acknowledged? We want to be recognized for being enthusiastic, caring, and attractive and acknowledged for being motivated, a hard worker and a good provider.

We think being loved and appreciated has to come from someone else. So we go looking for love in all the wrong places. We search for someone to validate the fact that we deserve to be loved. We hunt for someone to toss us a small morsel of appreciation.

Years ago I worked in an office and I completed a difficult project in record time. My supervisor reviewed it, made some corrections and shipped it off. After lunch she handed me the next project without a word of appreciation. I resented her for the longest time.

The biggest obstacle that keeps us from love is hanging on to resentments from the past. It’s like wanting to buy new shoes but the closet if full of old shoes we don’t like anymore or they don’t fit or they are out of style. There’s no room for anything new. We have to purge the old shoes out in order to bring the new shoes in. And so it is with love. As we let go of old hurts and resentments we clear the way for love to come in.

Love is an inside job. It starts with letting go of the pain from the past. Then there is an opening to express love. As we acknowledge and appreciate others, we begin to receive it ourselves. And it is contagious! Try it and see for yourself. Blessings for an extraordinary month of Love!