As promised this week I’m talking about the opposite of last week’s deep dive into relationship scarcity, which came out of thinking I was doing around the concept of love never enough-ness (that is a real word, right?) and our most intimate relationships. If you haven’t read that post yet, please go do that before you continue.
This week I’m marrying relationship with the opposite of scarcity – abundance – and taking a deep dive into what that can look like in your life, starting with individual definitions:
Relationship definition: our thoughts about someone.
Abundance definition: overflowing fullness – extremely plentiful or over sufficient quantity or supply.
Before I dig into the topic I’d like to share something I learned while thinking about these two relationship concepts. My mind truly wanted to be confused about relationship scarcity, it felt difficult to conceptualize, describe and explain, it felt very abstract and foreign.
This week when I went on a concept walk to think about relationship abundance and, though the weather was cold and cloudy, I felt bright, warm and full of capacity to understand.
This caught my attention, knowing that most of my life I have lived in relationship scarcity, always searching for love yet never truly feeling it. I thought love to be elusive. I thought it would be easy to explain, but I realized I was an expert from the inside, I lived it.
When we are in the middle of something for so long, it is our truth and we don’t even recognize it for the dysfunction it is. As my eyes were opened to my fixation on love and relationship dependence, I started to put all of the pieces together. The further we step away from our problems, the clearer our perspective is.
Relationship abundance is a new experience for me over the past three years. As I step into this abundance, it’s been all consuming for me because it feels OH SO MUCH BETTER than relationship scarcity! It feels so good that I am always in search of correcting any relationship scarcity thoughts I find myself thinking.
Relationship abundance is about having all of the love you need, always.
You don’t ever fear not getting enough love from anyone, not your spouse, your friends, your mom, your dad, other family members, even your co-workers, regardless of how they treat you.
You always know how to generate the love you need, no matter the circumstance.
You know true love because it flows from within.
It doesn’t matter what other people say or how they act, you always believe in yourself. You know that someone else’s ability to love you, or inability to love you, is about their own ability to love, it has nothing to do with your lovability.
With that said, it doesn’t mean you won’t at times question yourself, or attempt to do things in an effort to get people to love you. The beautiful thing will be that as your love and respect for yourself deepens, the more you’ll recognize protective mechanisms you use to attract, or push away, other people, in the attempt to draw love in from outside of yourself.
Next week I will be digging into how to move from relationship scarcity to abundance, but today let’s look at a few ways to tell if you’re relationally abundant. Tell yourself the truth here because if you really desire happy, robust, bright relationships then lying to yourself will not get you there, it will just keep you in scarcity.
What relationship abundance looks like:
You show up as yourself – always.
You don’t hide because you don’t know how to act so that people will like you. You like you and that’s all that matters.
You don’t embellish the truth when talking to people in an effort to impress. You are 100% honest and proud of who you are.
You admit that you’re 100% human so when you do catch yourself masquerading, you become aware and have a heart to heart with yourself, see what’s going on and correct it.
You meet all sorts of new people.
Introvert or extrovert, it doesn’t matter. I used to use the excuse that I was an introvert, that’s why I didn’t like to meet people, but it was a lie to cover up my insecurity. I didn’t want people to judge me, or I would judge myself ahead of time and live small. Introverts come clean: you just are having thoughts like “This is scary.” “They might think I’m awkward.” “I don’t know what to say.”, these thoughts create a paralyzing fear that keeps you from going up and introducing yourself to people. Try carrying fear along with you and doing it anyway. It’s amazing the fun, interesting people you will meet when you take on courage and don’t be surprised when you notice it actually energizes you as well as begins to get easy. Just make sure you plan time alone to process and let go.
You let people be who they are.
You aren’t trying to control and change people so they conform to what you think you need. You don’t judge them as better or lesser than, just different. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to accept things you don’t like.
If you feel someone needs to be different you can certainly state your mind, always knowing they get to decide how they want to be in life.
You do your work around being responsible for your own feelings.
Ultimately, you get to chose how you want to feel. You do the work around relationships you choose to keep. Maybe it’s a spouse that you’ve grown apart from, or friends, family or co-workers. If you choose to stay in your marriage, which I hope you do, keep your job, see your friends and family then you always do your work around generating love – for you.
You don’t compromise.
You know what you believe and you don’t compromise those beliefs, ever.
Relationship abundance shows up in so many different ways and the more you practice it, the better it feels. It feels better than good, it feels right, like love is created to feel. We humans were designed with love, it’s inside of each of us. Once you actually find it, you’ll never want to let it go. You’ll yearn to do the work that generates the feeling of love from within, over and over, until it becomes who you are. Why? Because the feeling is so much more intense and beautiful than any form of false love generated from outside of you.
Love on sisters and don’t forget to check back next week when I talk about how to move from relationship scarcity to relationship abundance!
Want to know something extra fun? I created a FREE COURSE to go with this topic. This course will help you start creating abundant love in your romantic relationship today, go grab it here!
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I am a life coach who works with individuals looking to change their current or future romantic relationship – my program helps them discover that they are enough. This self-love empowers and equips them to take continual, forward steps in achieving the healthy, romantic relationship they desire. Are you ready to explore this journey in your life? Schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s decide together if this is your next step to creating the life you’ve been dreaming of.