In my 20s, I found myself deep in a relationship that was painful to be in and, once it ended, painful to heal from.  It left me feeling lost and disoriented.  I had spent so much time conforming to be who my partner wanted me to be that I lost track of who I really was.

When I had healed enough to make drastic changes in my love life, I began to share my story and lessons with others.  We talked about the aches and pains that can come with love, and I taught them what I had learned: that not only is it possible to love someone without losing yourself, it’s crucial to do so if you want to feel deep intimacy. 

As I shared, so many people nodded their head in agreement and some let tears fall from their eyes.

So many of us move through our love lives with the following question buried underneath all of our actions:

Will Anyone Love Me if I Show Them Who I Really Am?

The answer is a clear and resounding YES.  YES.  YES!

In fact, that’s the only way deep and nourishing love happens.  When you pull back the layers and let the right person see your true self, you open yourself to a earth-shattering love.  I’ve felt it…that beautiful deep connection that comes from authenticity.  It’s like a tall drink of water when you thought that all you’d ever have was the dry desert.

I want you to have that feeling too.

I’ve created a program to help you see what your world can be like when you go through life knowing that you deserve to be loved.

Click the picture below to learn more.

With compassion,
Marsha

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, recently published a book called “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.”  It looks fascinating and I’ve just added it to my list of books to read since I’m curious about her perspective.  But the press around it reminded me of why it’s been a long time since I’ve read a book by a traditional business guru.

When I was younger, I dreamed of being the MD who discovered the cure for cancer, won a Noble Prize and sat on Oprah to talk about it all.  Now that I’m older, those dreams have fallen away.  Not because I don’t believe in my ability to reach those goals, but because as I’ve matured, I’ve realized that my childhood dreams were born out of a limited view of success.  When I was younger, I thought that the world worked by a prescribed set of rules.  I didn’t take the time to question those rules, to wonder who created them and who was served by them.  I just bought into them.  So of course, when I envisioned my “success,” my goals all fit into that preconceived framework.

These days, I don’t have any visions of reaching the C-suite, or learning to be more aggressive in the boardroom.   I don’t dream of 80 hour work weeks where I crack the code to cancer while navigating a book deal.  Those versions of success are all deeply valuable.  And I wholeheartedly support the discussions that Sandberg is igniting around helping women to be more successful according to those rules.

But when I take the time to listen to myself, really listen, I hear a voice that defines success as something entirely different.  In my world, I am successful if I can create safe, sacred spaces for people to experiment with authenticity, compassion, cooperation, ease and integrity as ways of being. In essence, I’m successful when I build a life that is in line with my values.

So if you find yourself wondering if you need to Lean In, ask yourself, what version of success do you care the most about?  There’s no use in measuring yourself by a yardstick that’s not meant for you.

What does success mean for you?

All it takes is 10 minutes each evening.

Five minutes to bring water and 3 cinnamon sticks to a boil while I add honey to my favorite mug.

Five minutes to slowly sip my tea (10 minutes if I’m in the mood to indulge). During those 5 minutes, I focus my mind on the warmth of mug against my palms.

I gently coax it to stay here, in this moment, instead of dancing around in the stories it likes to create about the past or the future.

I breathe in deeply, let the air expand my lungs, then I let it all out in an audible sigh. Each exhale takes the anxiety of the day away from me.

Less anxiety means that I can enjoy a deep, refreshing sleep.

Refreshing sleep means that I can have more patience as I move through the next day.

With more patience, I can get a handle on my frustration when A., one of my middle schoolers, gets out of her chair for the 3rd time — refusing to focus on her worksheet.

Having a handle on my frustration means that I call her to the corner and give her time to tell me her story, instead of sending her straight to the office for being disruptive.

And with shy whispers she lets me in on her secret. She got her period today. For the first time! She needs a pad but didn’t bring enough with her today.

I congratulate her (yay!) and we negotiate a signal that she can use with me next time she’s in this boat. Now we’re allies, and I get to model compassionate, respectful communication.

I’m the teacher I’m meant to be.  All because of 10 minutes.

I used to think that effective self-care took hours of time and hundreds of dollars. But now I’m an expert in using 10 minutes to change my world.

Curious about how you can do the same?

Join the free Treat Yourself eCourse. For 10 days, starting March 11th, we’ll experiment with self-care and find ways to honor ourselves within our crazy schedules.

Worship Wednesday is a new feature on the blog where we explore the connection between faith and self-love.  Each blog entry contains a question to help jumpstart your own inquiry.  Feel free to post your responses in the comments, in your own blog post or your own journal.

To surrender (verb) -  to give up in favor of another.

Many spiritual traditions refer to the concept of surrender, letting go, as a crucial step in the process of getting closer to God. In my own spiritual practice, I’ve found a particular form of surrender to also be a crucial step in my process to loving myself.

Each time I find myself caught up in a self-judgement loop where nothing I do feels good enough, it’s usually because I’m viewing myself through a highly critical lens.  That lens was created by the crazy standards I sometimes place on myself, taunts that I received when I was younger, and the warped messages we’re all bombarded with about who is worthy of love and who’s not.

God, on the other hand, never views us through that lens.  In God’s eyes, we are always worthy of love and belonging.  In God’s eyes, we are precious gems.  Each gem is unique, a bit scratched up by our life journeys and all the more valuable because of that.

Surrender is the place where my spiritual practice and my self-love journey intersect.  When I surrender my warped, highly critical lens and see myself through God’s eyes, I suddenly see a woman who is deserving of love and the best that the world has in store for me.  In God’s eyes, I see myself as I truly am.

What would your life be like if you surrendered your vision of yourself and saw yourself through God’s eyes?

Worship Wednesday is a new feature on the blog where we explore the connection between faith and self-love.  Each blog entry contains a question to help jumpstart your own inquiry.  Feel free to post your responses in the comments, in your own blog post or your own journal.

Hi dears,

This week, I wanted to share one of my favorite gospel songs to help get you over the midweek hump: “It’s Not Over” by Israel & New Breed.  I love the lyrics:

I know it’s darkest just before dawn/might be the hardest season you’ve experienced

I know it hurts, won’t be too long

You’re closer than you think you are

You’re closer than you’ve been before

What if the finish line for the thing you’ve been working towards is closer than you thought it was?  How would your actions & moods change if you believed that?