You Are Worthy of Love

someone.

I’m certainly not saying that there’s anything wrong with wearing makeup and shapewear or passing up ordering barbeque ribs on a first date, but if you’re taking so much effort to pretend you’re someone other than you, who is it exactly this other person is supposed to fall in love with?

This includes the internal lies—these are the lies that we try to convince others of that aren’t true of who we really are personality and lifestyle-wise. It’s the introvert pretending to be an extrovert, the anxious person pretending to beam with confidence, the anti-PDA (public display of affection) person pretending to be touchy-feely, or that insensitive person pretending they’re an empath.

When you present these external and internal lies to your world, one of two things happens: 1) You succeed in attracting someone, but they are only into the person you falsely presented yourself to be. After a short time, you won’t be able to keep up your alter ego, and the person who was interested in you will feel deceived and wander off. 2) You succeed in attracting people who only come so close before exiting the scene because they intuitively sense that something is off about you—they may not understand what it is, but it feels uncomfortable like they are noticing a glitch in the matrix, and they don’t want any part of it.

As I state in the very first lesson of My Little Book of Wisdom: 52 Lessons I’ve Learned from Living Life, by Torri L. Griffin, Ph.D., LPC,

No one is as good at being you as you are. You only fail if you are trying to be someone you are not.

People spend far too much time longing to somehow be different from who they genuinely are. The truth is, who you are is exactly who you are supposed to be. Who you are is uniquely different from any other person on the planet and you cannot be duplicated. You are the original, and you are enough—more than enough, just the way you are, right now. This doesn’t mean that you can’t improve the way you show up in life, but who you are at the core is just as you should be—and you are both perfect and enough.

This is why you must begin with self-love and authenticity. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being introverted, a little anxious, anti-PDA, or a bit insensitive and brash. There are plenty of people in the world who love these qualities, and they’ll love any of your unique qualities for that matter, but you need to give them an opportunity to find you by being your whole self. You need to spend time in spaces and with people who enjoy who you are, doing the things you love to do. You can take the first step towards

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this by being honest with yourself and loving all of yourself.

If we could make it a daily habit to spend a little more time with people who love, recognize and accept who we are, who find us in our most happy and fulfilled spaces, they would see us showing immense courage and freedom in life. When we arrive in our zone of authenticity, we find others who are loving themselves in their most authentic ways as well, and we begin to vibe together. It’s being in this zone at the same time with others that frees us to be real with the people there; they, in turn, are excited to understand, recognize, and enjoy the authentic us that far too often we’ve kept hidden.

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