Spirit has been talking to me about reminding people about their joy. So … let’s talk about JOY.

First off, in whatever time frame you are reading this … Have you at this point today, laughed yet? Laughed. Have you laughed yet today? Have you done something today that has gotten you excited, made you kind of giddy, have a big smile on your face, and feel joyful from the inside out?

How many of you know, feel, recognize, understand that you need more of that? You need more laughter. You need more joy. You need more play. You need more fun … that you desire happiness, light-heartedness, connectedness.

Do you recognize that? Even if you’ve had it, do you invite more joy, more play, more fun into your life?

It is the highest expression of love there is.

I want you to think about the ways we were taught to express love and the way that you experienced joy as a child. You might not have been allowed to have joy. A lot of people didn’t.

Self-Love is the hot topic in the personal growth movement these days and when it comes to finding soulmate love, there are a lot of myths that until you love yourself first, you won’t be able to get anyone else to love you. Can this really be true?

My experience has been that most women and some men (at least in the Northern hemisphere) live with a negative, critical voice in their heads that is often filled with ugly, shaming thoughts, self doubt, and brings with it feelings of never being “good enough.”

And, I began to wonder, do you really have to eliminate that persistent voice in order to find true love? Do we really need to be 100% in love with ourselves to experience Big Love?

I don’t think so.

Did you know that when you judge someone else your unconscious mind applies that same judgment to you?

So the more you judge others, the more you are really judging yourself.

And by constantly seeing the bad, you actually train your mind to see more of the bad.

Wow! How stressful is that?

This increase in stress weakens your immune system, causes high blood pressure, fatigue depression and anxiety. 

It’s easy to find fault in yourself and others, but it often takes real effort to find the good. 

Can you go a whole week without judging yourself and others?

In a healthy, loving relationship, partners ask each other for what they need, and generally receive a caring response. But sometimes this can get tricky – depending on whether it is your loving adult asking, or your wounded self. This dilemma is expressed by Julie in the following question:

“How can I express to my partner that sometimes I need the time and attention he gives to other people without sounding jealous or selfish.”

While this might seem like a simple question, it has many subtle aspects to it.

Julie, the first question I would suggest you ask of yourself is, “Why do I need the time and attention that my partner gives other people?”

I can’t tell you how often I hear from my clients that “I should be further along in my healing process,” especially when it comes to relationships.

Sophia is struggling with this:

“I’m finding my new relationship extremely challenging. After three years of being single, I thought I’d be further along with self-esteem challenges, but no! I can so easily find myself feeling needy with my partner AND abandoning myself – behavior that feels frightening and shameful. Suggestions on how to soothe myself in the moment? I do EFT and Heartmath exercises that help, but am still really struggling. Thanks!”

Sophia may have done much inner work during the three years she was single, but being in a relationship triggers old fears of rejection that likely never got triggered in the three single years. You can do a ton of work on yourself – learning how to take loving care of yourself in many different ways, but taking care of yourself in a relationship is a whole other thing.

One of the major human lessons today is learning to take our power back and reposition ourselves above the bullying and abuse that exists in the world.

Bullies and psychopaths are not just in the movies, they are real personality types. Manipulation and control are as addictive as heroin to these people. While they make horrible spouses and BFF’s, they are amazing spiritual teachers!

If a person has low self-worth or is lacking in self-respect they will attract these types of people and will probably get into a close relationship with them. They will keep these people close until they have learned the lessons they need to be more self-loving and self-respecting.

“I have had to parent my whole life, never really able to be a kid from my childlike mother to my son-like husband. Everything seems to depend on me doing the right thing and staying on the straight and narrow. My husband is saying he is going to leave for many years and I know it is the right thing, but I’m scared of facing ME, I don’t even know Loretta. What is one thing I can do to let go? After 18 years with my mother and 21 with my husband, dysfunctional relationships are all I know, despite my years of therapy and self-help books.”

If you were brought up in a codependent family system and learned to be a caretaker, it is likely that you do not know yourself. Despite years of therapy, this is the position I was in when our guidance brought us Inner Bonding, and this is the position Loretta is in:

When you first fell in love with your partner, the future was bright. You dreamt of doing everything together and creating memories for decades. In the months or years since, life threw challenges at you that made you reassess your future.

If your relationship doesn’t seem to have a path forward or you don’t feel fulfilled, the next step will be difficult, but not impossible. Read about when to say enough is enough so you can face potential heartbreak and exchange it for more happiness.

1. Frustration Replaces Joy

Everything’s easier when relationships begin, so it’s normal for that bliss to fade when your new love becomes your new normal. Even when you’ve been with your partner for years, your relationship should still bring you joy. When things aren’t going right, frustration could become a daily occurence.

Frustration often comes from a communication breakdown. Think about how you connect with your partner and look for healthy communication characteristics, like curiosity about each other and strong teamwork skills. What you find could point out why you feel frustrated with your relationship and current place in life.

The following 7 Golden Rules of True Self-Fulfillment are not the same as the laws that govern this world; nor are they what govern the lives of the vast majority of the men and women who crawl upon it. As is true of all creatures, these individuals have the life they serve; by law, their nature is their experience. 

These 7 rules are for those who wish to know, to be one with the Divine Life that is the unseen source of all that exists—so that by choosing, consciously to align with its immutable laws, and making whatever sacrifices that obedience calls for, they not only fulfill the needs of this Living Goodness but, by agreeing to do so, also fulfill their own highest possibilities at the same time. 

Every day, we are challenged to love what we’re given as much as what we want. We don’t have to like the things we’re given, but we need to find a way to accept them. And love is the surest way to deepen our acceptance. And so, we must stay devoted to getting up one more time than we fall down. To waking up one more time than we fall asleep. To being sensitive one more time than we are blunt and cumbersome. To listen one more time than we speak. To hold one more time than we drop what we’re holding. To aspire to be clear one more time than we are confused. To open one more than we close. And to lean into life one more time than we are pushed away. We may not always land in the open, but when we do, the tenderness we find is the earned fragrance of peace.

The more we are here everyday, the more I know how divinely orchestrated all of this really is. I may sound like a broken record because I am continually reinforcing certain messages that have not been heard or have not been allowed to land. 

I love you. I don’t just love the parts of you that you put on display. I love the parts that you have an aversion to or that you resist. My loving you, at some point, has to translate into your ability to cultivate an inclusive relationship with yourself. 

You have been falsely led to believe that there are certain aspects of you that are wrong or bad. And, as a result, you have invalidated yourself from receiving. When I wrote the book You Are Enough, I didn’t write it purely as a self-help book, I wrote it as a way for humanity to get itself out of every impending challenging scenario and situation that I knew we were about to face. 

Former president Theodore Roosevelt once said “Comparison is the thief of joy.” What I say is, “Comparison is the fast track to misery.” I want you to take a minute and think about this. Have you ever compared yourself to someone else and came out exactly even? I doubt it. It never or rarely happens.

Today I’d like to teach you how to stop comparing yourself to others so you end up feeling great about yourself and what you do have in your life, instead of bad about what others have and you don’t. 

Comparison is Natural

We almost always compare ourselves to someone that we think is better, smarter, thinner, taller, shorter, more attractive, better dressed, more popular, more famous, wealthier, or more successful.

One of our greatest challenges in relationships is to not get triggered into self-abandonment when others are unloving – to stay connected with ourselves rather than getting triggered into our wounded self.

Lila asks:

“When I find myself in an unfriendly situation, I find it a challenge to take loving action towards myself. Even if I know the other person has a wound they are living out, I still become hurt and instead of tending to myself I demand an apology or cry or get angry. It’s difficult to search my mind for the loving action towards myself in the heat of the moment. How do I stay with myself in these moments?”

This is about becoming conscious of your intent and healing some underlying false beliefs. You demand an apology or cry or get angry because your intent is to control the other person rather than to be loving to yourself. You have not come to terms with your big false belief that you can control how others feel. And you have not defined your own worth through your spiritual connection. You are handing to the other person the responsibility of making you okay – they have to apologize in order for you to be okay.

It can be so hard when you see someone you love and care for stuck in patterns that aren’t working or are not healthy.

From the outside, it’s easy to clearly see what they are doing wrong or need to change. It can be even more frustrating especially if they are someone you are very close to like a family member.

Realize this: You don’t have the power to make another person change. People don’t change unless they really want to change. You only have the power to share your perspective, wisdom, and invite them to consider a different way of doing things.

When someone changes simply to make you happy, rest assured, it doesn’t last.

When the sun shines upon you
You are adored

When you breathe
You are adored

The Divine, God, Infinite Intelligence, Infinite Light and Love, cannot wait to be fully manifest in human form. You are that human. You are that being. We are here at this moment in human history to finally allow ourselves to end the opposition to ourselves at the level of our emotions, at the level of our body, at the level of our mind, and at the level of life and living. 

The more we are able to come into profound acceptance and love of self, the more we open up to this universal love that we have come here to share. 

You see, you’re not the problem. You never have been. It’s just that you’ve been looking for validation and approval outside of you. And, for the most part, you’ve been looking for validation, love and approval, from people who don’t validate themselves, love themselves, or approve of themselves. And herein lies the rub; in your showing up, as the totality of who you are, the message that gets reinforced externally all around you is that you are not enough, that there’s something wrong with you, that you need to be healed, that you’re broken in some way. 

After almost seventy years, I confess that though I have struggled I have never been lost and have never stopped loving—everything. And this has enabled me to inhabit life authentically. In the beginning, there were goals I was taught to work toward and these longings for worth were honed in time into personal ambitions, which all fell away. For staying true to the love of everything as our teacher has turned out to be the most enduring ambition of all. This love has made me get up when I have fallen, and has given me the strength to enter the breaks in my heart where I have retrieved my gifts. And so, I have very little to offer beyond the confirmation that unending love without preference will lead us to drink from the Mystery without leaving the world. Unending love without intent will fill every contour of existence the way light fills every hole. So, there is very little to teach. Just that love awakens everything. And care erases the walls we build between us.

There is nothing wrong with you. You don’t need to be fixed, healed or changed. You are love itself. At some point, we have to begin to question the conditioning that has been superimposed over the pristine love that we have come here to be. 

You’re not here to get rid of everything. You’re here to love everything. And in loving everything, you are here to reveal the divinity that lives inside of you so powerfully that your presence alone serves as a reminder to every human being that they too are a divinity personified. 

For far too long, we have lived in this false notion of God being separate, apart, and different than us. We have been conditioned to believe that we are unworthy, that there is something wrong with us, that we are broken, that we need to be healed and improved. All of that has served as a mechanism through which humanity has been disempowered.