To Find My Voice: The 180 Relationship and the List
When we work from a place of need we spend our time filling the holes and cracks in our life and don't take the time to learn what WE want. We are so focused on our needs, our wants become secondary. Sure, everyone has their type (tall, short, blue eyes), but rarely do we truly focus on and learn our wants. We need to allow ourselves to be important enough, and worthy enough to find what WE want in life.
I made my way from one bad relationship to another, bouncing from: "guy with job, bad home life, bad attitude, dad issues" to "guy with job, dates strippers, smokes pot" to "guy with nice family, no brains, and great eyes." Were they all tall, dark and handsome, sort of. Were they all so far from what my ideal would have been, absolutely!
When we bounce around in life without any idea of who we are, we then also bounce around in life without any idea of our worth. We live without knowing that we have choices, and we live without realizing that filling our life with nonsense is not filling our life at all, it is merely clouding the chaos with more chaos.
When we don't have a clear-cut recognition of what we want, we CAN'T recognize if the person we are with is someone we should be with. Without figuring out WHAT we want in a boyfriend we have no way to discern if "this is a person I WANT" or "this is a person that has a pulse."
When we work from a place of need, we tend to move haphazardly from one polar opposite to another. From the nice guy to the bad boy. From the hard-working guy to the always-available-to-play guy. This is how I ended up with The Jerk. I went from one type of guy to a totally focused, manipulative, psychopath that gave me more attention, but in the bad way.
I never took the time to ask myself, "hey Meredyth, lets figure out how you got here and then we can figure out where we are going." I just went looking for something to fill the new holes made by a failed marriage. I just allowed anyone to fill those holes and what I found was a man who sensed the need inside of me, and took advantage of it.
This sort of reminds me of the grocery store. If you go in hungry, the store manager takes advantage of those hunger pangs and puts all the good stuff out front. If you don't have a list and a focus of what you want, you end up with junk in your cart. BUT, if you have a grocery list with what you are looking for, you end up with exactly what you were looking for before you were swayed by, shiny white teeth and a flashy car, or pink frosted cupcakes....
With no list for our life, we end up walking around life's store grabbing at whatever catches our eye. We don't take the time to find out what we want in our life. If we don't take the time to sit down and focus on what we want our life to look like, we end up in relationship after relationship wondering how we ever ended up with "this person."
Before I met Jim I would date whomever I saw on the "end cap." Was he cute, was he "nice," ok, we'll try this...and that was it. Then one day I actually sat down and wrote out a list and put down the characteristics of THE man that I wanted. I wrote down everything I could think of and allowed myself to be selfish and shallow and I didn't care one bit! I thought enough of myself to allow myself to HAVE A CHOICE! I allowed myself to make a plan as to what I WANTED TO FOR MY LIFE! I allowed myself to BE SELFISH for my future. I allowed myself to HAVE A DREAM FOR WHOM I WOULD SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE WITH.
I decided that I was not going to allow myself to haphazardly float through life without a goal. I decided that I was going to make who I spent my life with, as important as any other part of my life.
We have no problem having a plan for college, our career, our savings, our retirement, but we feel that to make a plan for who we want to spend our life with is taking the romance out of it. But to FLAIL around without a plan, without a focus, does not place our future in our hands, but instead places our love life in the hands of nobody!
We are worthy of our "wish list." We are worthy of knowing what we want. We are worthy of being whole and finding who we want, instead of what we find when we are NEEDY. We are worthy of completing who we are before we rush into a NEEDY relationship with someone that is NEEDY as well. We are worthy of not waisting our time with people. We are worthy of planning our lives. Because it is so much more romantic to wake up in twenty years happy and still married, versus alone and wondering, "what happened?"
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I made my way from one bad relationship to another, bouncing from: "guy with job, bad home life, bad attitude, dad issues" to "guy with job, dates strippers, smokes pot" to "guy with nice family, no brains, and great eyes." Were they all tall, dark and handsome, sort of. Were they all so far from what my ideal would have been, absolutely!
When we bounce around in life without any idea of who we are, we then also bounce around in life without any idea of our worth. We live without knowing that we have choices, and we live without realizing that filling our life with nonsense is not filling our life at all, it is merely clouding the chaos with more chaos.
When we don't have a clear-cut recognition of what we want, we CAN'T recognize if the person we are with is someone we should be with. Without figuring out WHAT we want in a boyfriend we have no way to discern if "this is a person I WANT" or "this is a person that has a pulse."
When we work from a place of need, we tend to move haphazardly from one polar opposite to another. From the nice guy to the bad boy. From the hard-working guy to the always-available-to-play guy. This is how I ended up with The Jerk. I went from one type of guy to a totally focused, manipulative, psychopath that gave me more attention, but in the bad way.
I never took the time to ask myself, "hey Meredyth, lets figure out how you got here and then we can figure out where we are going." I just went looking for something to fill the new holes made by a failed marriage. I just allowed anyone to fill those holes and what I found was a man who sensed the need inside of me, and took advantage of it.
This sort of reminds me of the grocery store. If you go in hungry, the store manager takes advantage of those hunger pangs and puts all the good stuff out front. If you don't have a list and a focus of what you want, you end up with junk in your cart. BUT, if you have a grocery list with what you are looking for, you end up with exactly what you were looking for before you were swayed by, shiny white teeth and a flashy car, or pink frosted cupcakes....
With no list for our life, we end up walking around life's store grabbing at whatever catches our eye. We don't take the time to find out what we want in our life. If we don't take the time to sit down and focus on what we want our life to look like, we end up in relationship after relationship wondering how we ever ended up with "this person."
Before I met Jim I would date whomever I saw on the "end cap." Was he cute, was he "nice," ok, we'll try this...and that was it. Then one day I actually sat down and wrote out a list and put down the characteristics of THE man that I wanted. I wrote down everything I could think of and allowed myself to be selfish and shallow and I didn't care one bit! I thought enough of myself to allow myself to HAVE A CHOICE! I allowed myself to make a plan as to what I WANTED TO FOR MY LIFE! I allowed myself to BE SELFISH for my future. I allowed myself to HAVE A DREAM FOR WHOM I WOULD SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE WITH.
I decided that I was not going to allow myself to haphazardly float through life without a goal. I decided that I was going to make who I spent my life with, as important as any other part of my life.
We have no problem having a plan for college, our career, our savings, our retirement, but we feel that to make a plan for who we want to spend our life with is taking the romance out of it. But to FLAIL around without a plan, without a focus, does not place our future in our hands, but instead places our love life in the hands of nobody!
We are worthy of our "wish list." We are worthy of knowing what we want. We are worthy of being whole and finding who we want, instead of what we find when we are NEEDY. We are worthy of completing who we are before we rush into a NEEDY relationship with someone that is NEEDY as well. We are worthy of not waisting our time with people. We are worthy of planning our lives. Because it is so much more romantic to wake up in twenty years happy and still married, versus alone and wondering, "what happened?"
Click COMMENTS to leave a comment!!! Like what you read today? Post it to your Facebook page so everyone can read it! Click below to share!
so true Meredyth!! Too bad I didn't read this before I spent all my college years wasted on Todd. UGH!!
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