Last, but not least - love yourself always and continue to love strong and with confidence. I say last but not least since I feel I have saved the best for last since love is the foundation for all things. A lot of times we blame love for the best and worst of things which happen in life. Sometimes it is warranted and other times, not so much.
With love being the foundation, I thought it very appropriate to have love round out our Inspiring Creative Passion writing challenge! Yes, a week late but we are still here or should I say I am still here. You may be ahead of me since I had a slight setback falling ill leading up to the last week in December 2017. Imagine that - all the excitement and me getting sick. I think it was time for me to slow down and show myself a little love.
When I think about love, I think about it as the foundation to everything in life. Without love, we would not be here and I could not do what I love to do - helping others, writing, inspiring myself and others to be their very best. There was a point in my life where love escaped me, disappointed me - so I thought. I blamed love for everything that was going on in my life a few years ago. I loved too hard, too strong, too weak - I said all of those things to myself. The mistakes I made I blamed them on love and me not facing and seeing things as they were. I learned to stop discounting love; running from it and I realized that love was not always pretty. We have to sometimes do things out of love which may not be popular in everyone else's eyes. This is the strong part of love - sticking with your stance when it comes to deciding what is best for you.
Loving with confidence comes from within and takes time to build especially when you feel afraid to make decisions which benefit you the most. I know all too well about this. How did I overcome this? Well, it is still a work in progress - loving with confidence but it started with loving myself.
You can love strong and love with confidence but if you do not love yourself, you will not get very far. I know first hand and the first thing I had to do was to dig deep to see what made me happy first. Did I want to continue in a relationship where I was not being loved? What about a job or a career which felt overwhelming or unfulfilled? I had more questions than answers when it came to loving myself. One thing I knew for sure was that change was needed and it needed to come quickly.
Here are three things I did to make sure love remained as the foundation in my life:
Take care of myself and invest in my mental health
Letting go of past hurt and pain - although not easy, I prayed and asked for help when feeling down
Showing love and loving others how I wanted to be loved
Number 3 was very hard at first. The interesting thing is once I started showing love and putting the positive vibes out there with love as the forefront, I saw my life change in positive ways. I no longer felt sorry for myself and bad about situations which did not work out. Maybe it wasn't meant to be and that is ok. I have enjoyed loving strong and more confidently and most of all, loving myself.
I talk more about love as a foundation which keeps you whole in my book, Inspiring Creative Passion. Learn more about the Inspiring Creative Passion movement and click the button below to purchase.
