Read this when you’re feeling unloved & unsure about yourself. (You’re not. This will help.)

You’ve noticed that you struggle with being your true self when getting to know someone in a romantic way or in your current partnership.

You don’t feel you can be vulnerable enough to show all of your true self, even the parts that aren’t as pretty.

You feel like you have it engrained in your mind that nobody will love you for who you truly are so you try and morph yourself into someone that you think a partner would like, which is maybe why you’re still single or in a relationship and struggling.

What if I told you that it’s more than possible to know that it’s safe to show someone the real you and be respected and loved for all of your flaws?

How can I be so sure, you may ask?

I remember a time in my life when I was dating my now-husband and I had a major melt down right in front of him.

I was on the floor crying and screaming, and I mean I was doing that big ugly cry. In between processing my emotions, I did wonder if I may have screwed up my chances with this relationship.

However, I was feeling so much hurt that I was more concerned about me releasing these emotions. So I allowed myself to feel and accept the fact that this is how I felt and if he didn’t like what he saw then he wasn’t for me.

For the first time, I had revealed by vulnerable side to him and he witnessed my not so pretty parts.

He sat in silence and just let me be in my pool of emotions. Once I finished, there was silence in the room. I walked up to him and put my arms around his shoulders and sobbed quietly in his lap.

He held the space for me and didn’t say a word. He cradled me and held onto me so tightly and lovingly. I will never forget the love that I felt from him during that moment of long silence.

The day after, I asked him if he was turned off at all by what he saw and his response was, “Irene, I love you even more…”

Oh, get the tissues out.

I knew right then and there that he was ‘the one’ for me.

Someone who saw the not so perfect Irene…someone who saw past the illusion of perfection and instead saw the essence of my soul…and loved even more.

I knew that the self-love work that I had done played a major role with how this all unfolded. My energy field read that I no longer desired acceptance from others. It had become exhausting and I was done with that story. Not to say that it doesn’t feel great to be accepted by others, but that is short lived happiness.

If you cannot accept yourself, then others will have a hard time accepting you. And vice versa, if we want to be accepted we have to accept others.

So why do we have such a hard time accepting ourselves?

Well, since childhood we’ve been led to believe that we’re not good enough exactly as we are and so we have to be, look, or act a certain way in order to be loved.

In other words: we shouldn’t have any “flaws.”

And so we desperately want to be loved and accepted for who we are, we spend our energy trying to get the approval, and trying to win people’s hearts because we’ve developed this obscured belief that we have to be perfect.

As a result, we might hide aspects of ourselves or put up masks to hide our true self.

Perfection is merely an illusion and something we cannot measure against our self worth. We are inherently worthy exactly as we are.

If you’re trying to measure yourself up against perfection then you’ll keep chasing your tail and waste your precious time.

To love yourself exactly as you are, you must stop wishing you were someone else, stop trying to become someone else and embrace the amazing woman who already resides with you.

If you’re having a hard time with this, I totally understand how difficult it is to accept yourself exactly as you are in this moment because like I said we’ve been trained for so many years to seek to other people for their love and approval.

But what I would like to remind you is, the events in your life, the wounds that you carry are not the sum of who you truly are. The reason why you’re having such a difficult time accepting the real you is because you’ve become more invested with the story you’re telling yourself about yourself. You’ve lost sight of the essence of who you are because you identify more with the story.

My advice? Be willing to peel your attention away from focusing on the parts of yourself that feel you aren’t good enough…and instead direct your focus on parts of yourself that make you feel good enough.

Then here comes the fear. Some people are afraid that if they accept themselves then they have to settle or accept all that is wrong and then there won’t be any progress or change in their lives.

Not the case at all. It simply means you are practising unconditional love and coming to peace with what was, what is and who you’re becoming in the process.

As I write this post, a butterfly has just landed on my window right in front of me. How fitting. A sign? Maybe. Perhaps imagine yourself as a butterfly…

This reminds me of a popular quote by my friend and mentor Cynthia Occelli –

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction”

When we’re wanting to reveal our true self we have to crack a few false masks, and this can feel uncomfortable and scary. But once the mask cracks, your true beauty is revealed. It was there from the moment you were born but along the way you picked up messages that told you false beliefs.

I hope you can dismiss the lies that were given to you along the way and see that your true self is beautiful and good enough.

If acceptance feels foreign to you, that’s completely normal. It’s a process of retraining yourself to develop a new habit, turn it into an attitude of self-acceptance and then allow yourself to spend time in what I like to call your divine temple aka your heart.

You can begin this process in the morning while sipping your coffee and before you start your day. Write these 2 sentences down and fill in the blank with something you approve of yourself:

1. “I’m now beginning to see my true self.”
2. “I am willing to accept myself and I approve of ………………………..”

For example, “I am willing to accept myself and I approve of my tenacious personality.”

Just imagine for a moment how good it would feel when you woke up in the morning and you had a loved one expressing their approval of you. However, instead of waiting for someone else to approve of you, you start and do it for yourself. Much more empowering and fulfilling.

I hope that this piece of writing will make you less afraid about showing your true self in your romantic relationship.

There is nothing wrong with you.

With love,
Irene