One of my favorite quotes is by the poet, Rumi. Rumi says: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
I remember the first time I read this quote; it made me a little angry, actually. I didn’t see how I could have been putting up invisible barriers between me and what I wanted most: love.
I was doing everything “by the book”. Literally. I spent time reading self-help book after self-help book. I read dating books and websites. I read books about femininity and masculinity. I desperately tried to absorb all of the lessons and put them into action.
Surely, I had no barriers within me keeping me from love. I was convinced it had to be something external that I was doing wrong.
I was exhausted by trying to perfect myself. The problem with self-help and dating tips is that they imply that there’s something wrong. The fixing cycle is all about getting rid of what is innate “wrong” with us.
It’s exhausting. And it certainly doesn’t invite in love.
So I hired my first love coach. I hired her because her central message was that I wasn’t broken. When she said that to me for the first time, the floodgates of my emotions opened up and I cried and cried and cried.
In our society, we are told over and over again that we are too-this or too-that. No wonder we are all guarded when entering new relationships and looking for love.
Once I jumped off the fix-it roller coaster, I was actually able to look inside and find those barriers I had built up against love. Consciously, I wanted it; but my coach helped me see that there were deep-seated parts of me that I had never acknowledged before. It was these that were running the show; they were drawing me to the same type of man over and over again.
I didn’t have to fix these in order to change the quality of my relationships. I only had to see them and accept them as part of me.
That’s true freedom!
You don’t have to fix yourself or get stuck on the self-help merry-go-round. Look inside and see what you might be protecting yourself from. This is the birthplace of love because YOU are the birthplace of love.
Once you look inside and listen to your inner wisdom, you can navigate your relationships from a place of wholeness, true wholeness. And it’s from this place that you are able to love another completely.
Heather Lynn Temple, of Heather Lynn Coaching, is a certified Creative Love™ Coach who specializes in helping people find their authentic selves so that they can attract their ideal match. She busts through dating myths and tosses aside dating games, focusing on doing inner work with her clients so they discover love from the inside out.
Heather offers two free gifts: a free ebook about how people unconsciously sabotage their love lives and a free 30-minute strategy session!
Link to free ebook
Link to free 30-minute session
