We know that greed and selfish ambition has always been a strong motive that impels people to lie. Another factor behind lying is fear; we fear the consequences of what others may think if the truth is told. For myself, I guess the latter made sense to me. I wasn’t trying to intentionally deceive another, but rather I feared losing the other person from the way the truth was dressed. I never was doing anything “wrong”, but because he was so controlling, nothing that I ever did was really “right” in his eyes, at least that’s what he made me to believe.   I tried hard to please him, so by me NOT telling him that I was going to hang out with girl friends, innocent fun; or me NOT telling him that I had been violated, would avoid his anger and rage with me.  Again, as I look back, the things that I was doing were not wrong, or out of the ordinary, but I knew that he not being able to control my every movement would just cause him to be unhappy with me and not look at me the same. So I just tried to avoid telling him details. I wanted to be good enough, I wanted him to know that I am what you want me to be. I am the “good girl”. It always ended up me telling him where I went, what I did. Again I never did anything wrong, it never involved another man, or anything of that sort. He would call me untrustworthy, I would feel like I had to prove that I wasn’t, I ended up hurting and so starts the entire cycle all over again and again. What a pattern of thinking!

It’s amazing how I look back at this routine and I see the real lies and the real deceit were in him. He was the one deliberately lying to me. He was the one entangled with multiple women, in multiple relationships. Deep down you know the truth, but you don’t want to believe it. You’ve made him your “all” for so long that you convince yourself to believe all the lies that he tells. Initially, as the lies come to head, your hurt, it pains. Remember the saying short term pain for long term gain…

 When you snap back into reality, and realize you’re better than all the lies you’ve accepted, all the affairs you’ve accepted, you see the truth for what it is. He’s deceived no one but himself, and you’ve been deceived by no one but yourself. You ARE the good girl, too good of a girl to accept his treatment, his abuse, or anyone’s abuse. The reality that I have come to accept is that no matter how truthful I was to him, no matter how straight forward I was, he would have never been happy or satisfied, because of his own insecurities within himself. So me learning to be truthful to myself, not allowing “me” to deceive “me”; you see the entire relationship, your life, your love, your happiness, for what it really is. You are in control of you. You don’t make his problems and his insecurities yours. You realize that you don’t need, nor truthfully speaking, do you want a relationship full of lies and deceit. I say truthful speaking because sometimes you’ve deceived yourself into believing that he is the man you want and need. What happiness comes from lies and deception? Someone always hurts in the end. Be truthful with yourself, be truthful about your relationship, your happiness and truth begins with you.

Happiness….some people try to find it superficially thru their material possessions. I, also superficially, tried to find it through people. I always felt like having a particular person in my life could make me happy. So when one relationship was over, I looked for my replacement, because of my own unhappiness. This is what brought me to my second relationship. He was a replacement for my first. He was the one that was suppose to bring me the happiness. He was the one I tried to love with my all, doing all things for him. What I realized is not him, not the first, nor the next would ever bring me happiness. Happiness is something that you attain within yourself.

Today, as I sit here, and I think about all the trials and struggles that I have been through in the name of love. I think about all the pain I’ve had to undergo, and mind you, pain that I am still feeling the “aftershocks”. I ask myself was he worth it? Rather, I am worth more? Let’s make it about me today, let’s focus on me. Something that is long past due. Too many times I tried to please him thinking that him being happy would allow me to be happy. He was happy; they were both happy; they did what made them the happiest; whether that was the infidelity, the partying, whatever it was. I was the one unhappy in both relationships, because I wasn’t happy with myself. At some point there’s an end that comes. You can’t keep running around playing with the serpent, one day you are going to get bit. No one can evade “right”. The consequences are what brings you to the reality of your actions, and when you “love someone”, you don’t want to see any type of consequences being laid upon them. You think about the parent disciplining their child and saying “this is hurting me more than it is hurting you”. When you love someone, regardless of their actions, regardless of them making their own bed, you don’t want to see them hurting. But did they ever think about your feelings, your pain they caused, or did they just not care? Was it being embedded in their own selfishness and selfish desires? Sometimes that discipline is what saves lives.

In life, we are surrounded by people. It is our duty to be cautious of others feelings, without sacrificing our own. You treat others as you would like to be treated. At what cost to you do you worry about others feelings though? You don’t lose yourself, you don’t lose your feelings, your thoughts, your personality, your make up, your morals, your principals, your guidelines, your virginity for others. If you lose any of these, make it for yourself, lose them because you wanted to. You don’t put anyone’s feelings ahead of your own. You recognize that in a relationship, any type of relationship, there is a compromise sometimes. This is something that is equal, don’t compromise who you are, never. Someone that truly loves you, wont ask you to compromise you. They love you for you. You have to know your make up. How can you possibly defend something that you are unacquainted with? Get to know yourself, love yourself, your happiness is within you.

When you find a like minded person, you are both striving for the same goal, you have the same morals, same values, same or a similar route. How can you possibly reach the same destination if your going opposite directions? Do you both have the same destination in mind? You can not force someone to change their route in midstream, the only person that you can change is you. Don’t change you, for no one but yourself. We all live and learn, and hopefully grow.

Determine what success is for you and your life. Could it be financial freedom, a healthy family, a promising career or being a nurturing mother? What ever your idea of success is you can achieve it.

It is the small things that we do on a daily basis that determine our success. We as humans are a victim of our psyche. We subconsciously determine the outcome of our progress. Do we genuinely believe we can become a success or do we doubt our every decision? As a young college student I took every class that appealed to me. With No real goal in mind, I studied counseling, sociology, child psychology and catering. I had no idea of where either class would lead me and I didn’t develop a plan. I was trying to be a good mother and wife as well as fulfill my mothers’ aspirations to “get myself a degree”. My personal views on success were in the background because of my perception of what was expected of me. Long after college I began to realize I had not achieved success by my own definition. You see I wanted to please the people in my life so much, that I lost myself in their ideas. I had subconsciously decided I was unworthy of success and failed at every attempt of it. I was unfulfilled. What was holding me back? Fear!

The subconscious mind will tell you that you can’t make it, people will laugh at you and your ideas or that you do not deserve success. I am here to tell you that everyone is deserving of the freedom of their own ideas of success. No matter what our childhoods were like, we can achieve our goals. We are not super beings that can change the past. We can not foresee the future. We can only strive to be the best person right this moment. No one is promised the future but getting past our psyche and self defeating thoughts is the first step to achieving success. Most people would agree that “you are what eat “and I would also add that “You are what you think”. If we can get rid of the negative thoughts, we can focus on the successful outcomes. Try thinking positive, making a plan and putting that plan into action.

In my own life, I’ve played the game of “break-up” many times.  Do you ever ask yourself, if things are so bad, I’m so miserable when I’m with him, why do I so long to be back with him when we are apart?  How do you get over the pain, the temptation of calling him? You want to make it right between you, you want to make a mends.  But, deep down inside, you know that you are so much better without him. You are so much happier without him in your life, but for so many years you’ve associated your happiness, your future with him. We loved them not as they were, but the way we wanted them to be. We loved them for their potential, what we saw they could be. This is what kept us there throughout all the pain, this is what keeps you longing for him even after the break up.  Realize, your not missing anything.  Most likely he will never become who you want him to be, not to you, or not in his next relationship.  An abusive relationship will never work no matter how much time and trouble you sacrifice.  The damage is irreversible. 

So how do you stop the longing to call him, how do you stop the pain your feeling without him?  First you have to recognize that anxiety and excitement are often mistaken for one another, especially when people are blinded by longing and lust.  Both raise your blood pressure and fuddle your thoughts so you can hardly concentrate, making it vitally important for you to know the difference if what you seek is grown-up, real and authentic love.  So what your actually feeling is not hurt and heartbreak from love, but anxiety and stress from fear.  Do you fear being alone, especially when your not sure of who you are without him? Do you fear not being with him when he’s provided you with what you thought was security? Do you fear that maybe there won’t be another after him? You have to be honest with yourself and your feelings, that means recognizing and paying attention to yourself and your feelings.  That means that the time your spending thinking about what “was”, think about what really “is”, especially in you.  Think about who you really are.  Invest time in you, getting to know you, loving you.  Know that breaking up with him, this time especially, was the best thing for you, whether you’ve offended him or not, “let it go”!

Saying goodbye is really about letting go.  It’s about letting go of relationships, letting go of people.  It’s about welcoming a new day, and saying good bye to the old day.  It’s about growth.  It’s about you learning to be happy, it’s about you learning to love yourself.  So in the end, as in the word’s of a song, “It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday” but your happiness is well worth it!

 As I listen to Alicia Keys sing her version of “Lesson Learned” it reminds me so much of the decisions I’ve made in my relationships.  She sings “you give it one more chance just like the time before, but he already knows you’ll give a hundred more”.  How many times do you have to experience the broken heart before you realize that the relationship is not working and doesn’t look like it’s going to be working anytime soon? You give so much of yourself and you hold on to the hope that this time it will be different, this time it wasn’t in vain.  But it’s never different; it always ends up the same, you hurting.  So why again this time, why did you give him another chance?  Did you think this time there was a light at the end of the tunnel, your relationship would blossom, and your mate will be all that you hoped him to be?  Why do you keep falling in this same deadly web of games, of lies?  Was this all a waste of your time?  Consider it a lesson learned.

 One thing that I have learned about mistakes is we live and we learn.  Sometimes it takes some longer to learn the same lessons in life.  Sometimes we have to completely fall and hit the ground before we recognize that there is a lesson to be learned.  Sometimes we fall, hit the ground, and have to be hit over the head and still only recognize that there MAY be a problem, there MAY be a lesson we are suppose to be learning.  Life has a funny way of beating you up, and what’s worse is we have an even funnier way of beating ourselves up; we can be our own worst critics.  What we all have to realize is that mistakes are going to be made.  Unfortunately there’s a school, called “Hard Knocks” that we all have attended, no matter how much we’ve attempted to graduate or avoid it.  A lot of lessons are learned through experience.  Consider this, as a child when you first started learning to ride a bike, you had to experience falling before you realize that there’s a balance that keeps you stable, steady on your bike ride.  If you lean too far to the left, you fall.  If you lean too far to the right, you fall.  The key is the balance.  But without the experience of falling, you would have never figured that out.

 In life, these lessons that we go through are our teaching tools.  Over time, we are going to grow from our experiences, we learn from our mistakes.  It’s the experiences in life, and how we handle them, which mold us to who we are developing to be, we are constantly evolving.  So next time you feel you’ve made a mistake; you’ve accepted that man back; you chose the wrong path yet again; don’t feel discouraged, but rather encouraged.  You recognizing your mistakes are HUGE first steps in your growth. You can’t expect to walk before you crawl, nor run before you walk.  Understanding we all make mistakes, learn from them, and at that point we will begin building the strength to change it.  The worst thing that we could ever do to ourselves is harp on our mistakes, that will only tear us down by breaking our self esteem.  We have to have self confidence to make the changes, to growth.  No one is perfect.

During my adult years, as early as my teen years, I was always looking for love.  You hear the love songs on the radio, or watch the love stories on the television and you can’t help but wish that was you.  The underdog always gets the guy or the girl and they live happily ever after.  My relationships were never the fairytale ones more like the nightmares.  They were filled with the abuse and the infidelity.  Yet I thought that this was love.  I thought that this was as good as it got for me. Why couldn’t I find my “prince charming” I was a good girl?  Why was I always getting the guys that cheat, or couldn’t give me the attention that I needed, nor wanted? I just wanted to be loved. 

In my last relationship, I made him the answer to my happiness.  I guess I associated my happiness with spending time with him, or really him spending time with me.  Everything was at his discretion.  My future involved him.  It was not my own.  So when our relationship ended, it was devastating for me, because without him, I had no future. My first mistake, trust me, one of many. 

I always associated love with the pain, but in reality, love doesn’t hurt.  Where there is real love, there’s no pain.  There’s a scripture in the bible that describes love so beautifully, it’s found at 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.  If you’re ever confused about what real love is take time out to read and meditate on that scripture.  I had to learn about love, and it started with loving me.  Through my studies and my self-discovery stage, I found out that I was codependent and had a fear of abandonment, and for obvious reasons I had difficulty trusting people. These issues are what kept me holding on to the abuse, to the pain.  Because of these issues, subconsciously I gravitated to people who would hurt me or who would be emotionally unavailable for me.  I confused sex with love, and felt rejected if at all my mate didn’t want to have sex.  I “needed” him in my life by any means necessary.  I blindly attached myself to him; I was incapable of making a realistic analysis of the situation.  He was the only one that could make me feel better, if only he could spend more time with me.  If only he knew that I truly loved him and would do so much for him.  No matter what I did, it was never enough. What I realized is that it didn’t matter to what extent I was there for him, he was never capable of giving me what I needed or wanted.  Where I felt I wasn’t good enough for him, really he wasn’t good enough for me.  I had to walk away because we would never be happy together. The moment that you let go of trying so hard to believe in him, you’re free to start believing in yourself. 

Even through all of this, I had a hard time leaving.  I learned that I had to counter my old, unhealthy behavior pattern with something healthy.  And no it’s not true what they say, the easiest way to get over someone is not finding someone else to replace them.  You don’t get over a man with another man unless it’s God.  That will just start your unhealthy cycle all over again.  I got into myself and my higher power.  Without fixing me, I would only find myself in another unhappy, unhealthy relationship.  So if you find yourself going from one unhappy relationship to another, it’s time to look at yourself.  You have to be complete, then you find some else that’s also complete, and you learn to complement each other.  You have to learn to be comfortable with you, by yourself.  You have to learn that you deserve happiness, and no form of abuse is acceptable.  It’s okay to set your standards high.  It’s okay to be by yourself.  You are in control of your own life and you don’t give anyone the power to dictate your future.  You make plans for your future, they are your own.  Break away from your self-defeating personality and you will find your true happiness as well as your true love.

We each have a choice.  We choose to stand up for ourselves or to sit down to an injustice.  We choose the people in our lives, whether they are worth keeping or ones to shake (throw out).  We choose the road we go down.  We choose what to wear, what to eat, to do right or to do wrong.  The one thing that God has granted each of us is the gift of free will.  No one can make us do anything that we don’t want to.  There are always consequences to our actions, realize that everything that we do has consequences.  We have to acknowledge that we are solely responsible for the choices in our lives.  We cannot blame others for the choices we have made.  As we choose the path we are going to take, we have to take into consideration the consequence, or the outcome of our action.  We then decide if our choice is worth the risk.  Sometimes we weigh out the risk; it’s called a calculated risk.  For me, I had risked it all for what I thought was love.  My decision wasn’t thought out, nor was it calculated, it just was a situation that I allowed to become.  Was it worth it for me? Absolutely not.  I thought about my future, but my distorted thoughts would only enable me to see the illusion, not the reality.  I envisioned living this great life with someone, but this someone was not such a great person so how could our life be so great?  I overlooked his faults.  I minimized and even covered, or made excuses for his actions.  I closed my eyes and became blind to who and what he really was and about.  There was nothing that was so bad that we couldn’t workout, or shall I say I couldn’t fix.  Because throughout my life, I’ve always been the savior, the one to “help” or  “fix” everyone’s problems.  This was the role that I was given as a young child, the rescuer, this was where I fit into people’s lives.  I associated love with being needed.  If I couldn’t be of help in someone’s life, I didn’t feel like they liked or loved me.  So I always volunteered my services to help everyone, and eventually everyone always knew that they could count on me having the answers or the solution to their need or problems. Subconsciously, I’ve always seeked out and attracted “needy people”.  What you see in yourself, is what you project in the world around you. I guess I had a strong attraction for dysfunction, because I was dysfunctional.  Obviously, this type of relationship will begin to take a heavy toll on you, and at what point is enough, enough? 

For me, my breaking point came when I nearly lost it all.  I lost my business, my dignity, my sanity, my money, my pride, and almost my family.  I was incarcerated for a crime that I did not commit.  I had never been arrested. I didn’t even have a traffic ticket on my record.  This was a calamity for me.  I believe that everything happens for a reason though.  There’s a scripture found in Amos, chapter 5 that says, “Search for what is good, and not for what is bad…”, this was an opportunity for me to reevaluate my life, accept responsibility for how I allowed and chose to let this affect me.  By doing this, I began empowering myself.  My whole life, I enabled others to have power or control over me.  I was accepting the events and circumstances in my life with gratitude, understanding that all things work together and happen for the good, regardless to how we perceive things to be at the moment in time. By accepting responsibility I was empowering myself.  By accepting that it was all brought on by me, it meant that I had the power to create the solution.  I was the one with the problem.  When you blame others for anything in your life that you’re not happy about, your giving them the power to create, or destroy, your happiness.  With that, I worked on developing myself. I acknowledged my faults and flaws, and I worked to improve my circumstances, I worked on my self- esteem.  Accepting responsibility for your actions and your life is one of the most important aspects of personal development and as you develop personally; your esteem begins to rise.  I began recognizing my feelings, and doing things for me, rather than everyone else.  I grew spiritually. With this growth, I found happiness.

So in my search, I started by looking up the definition of assertive, which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “disposed to or characterized by bold or confident assertion”.  They also said it is a synonym of aggressive, in which aggressive “implies a disposition to dominate often in disregard of others’ rights or in determined and energetic pursuit of one’s ends”.  Aggressive is definitely not the characteristic I was seeking to be identified with.  In my journey, I was learning to connect with my feelings, speak up for my feelings, and respect my feelings and rights along with respecting the feelings and rights of others.  I just wanted to learn to say “No” and not feel guilt when I put me first.  How would I do this?

I’ve always been who other people felt I “should be”.  I’ve always looked to please other people. When I came to realize this truth, it amazed me because I was the one who always said, “I don’t care what people think or say about me”.  This may have been true to those who I didn’t know or care about, but when it came to those that I chose to be closest to me, it really mattered a great deal how they felt about me or what they thought about me.  I overextended myself for them all the time, I had lost myself, no, I had abandoned myself.  I had to realize my rights and feelings were just as important as theirs.  I could no longer subject myself to manipulation, deceit, or abuse.  When you deny yourself of your own rights and feelings, you are subjecting yourself to abuse.  I had to recognize and face my fears.  After all, it was out of fear of losing those I thought were closest to me that enabled me to be who they needed or wanted me to be.  Maybe I thought that just being “me” wasn’t good enough.  I didn’t really know who being “me” was.  I had been a victim to sexual abuse and kept quiet about it out of fear that the man I thought loved me would find out I was raped and would leave me.  As crazy as this sounds, I hid my rape out of fear that the man I thought loved me would not believe me and would leave me.  I felt guilty about the rape, how would he take it if I told him that a “monster” came to my territory, uninvited, and violated me, uninvited, and I DID say “NO”?  It was someone that I knew, as a lot of rapes are, someone that I had business dealings with.   I tried to deny my feelings about the rape, disregarding my feelings all together, ignoring the deep pain I was experiencing, because he wouldn’t understand if I told him the truth, hurting myself emotionally, physically, spiritually, and financially in the end.  Eventually, the truth was what set me free.  So speaking the truth to myself and others was an important step in standing up.  By speaking the truth, I took back my power and decided at that moment I was not giving it away anymore.  I replaced those feelings of fear with love, peace, and understanding for myself.  It takes confidence to stand up for you, it takes courage and self-love.  It’s about being honest and having an appropriate expression of your feelings, opinions and needs. It takes a lot of self-analysis and then a lot of practice, you humbly view yourself in an honest and objective way acknowledging your imperfections, recognizing that no one is perfect.

Humility means submissiveness; submissiveness means obedience.  Humility involves a state of mind, how we view ourselves and others.  A humble person is not a proud or haughty person.  This person is not arrogant or assertive.  So how can you still be humble, but stand up for yourself?   It takes balance.  You don’t lose focus on the “more important things” in your life.  You just begin to see your feelings as important; recognizing we all should have healthy boundaries set in our lives.  We keep our morals and values, understanding that we have the right to take care of ourselves and to sometimes put our needs ahead of others.  What comes to mind are the safety instructions you receive on a plane in case of an emergency.  They always tell you to secure your oxygen mask first before you secure the mask of others around you. You have to save yourself in order to save others around you.  And that’s where obedience comes into play.  I think about the laws of nature.  The ocean and the waves, there’s invisible boundaries that are obeyed, including the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth.  There’s a flow of things and when this flow is disregarded, that’s when things become chaotic.   This is the same with each of our lives.  We have these invisible boundaries that should be respected by ourselves and others.  In the end it’s about communication, communicating these boundaries.  It’s about speaking up, telling other’s when they have crossed or violated your boundaries.  It’s about standing up, not allowing others to disrespect but accepting of your love and feelings and others love and feelings for you.  Express yourself and prevent others from taking advantage of you.  If you don’t stand up for yourself, who will?

To love yourself means to truly accept yourself for who you are, as you are, coming to terms with those aspects of yourself that you cannot change. You respect your beliefs and your body, understanding you and not trying to be someone else. Your esteem is high; you have self-respect, and a positive self-image. This love is definitely not to be confused with self-adoration or narcissism. It does not mean being arrogant, conceited or thinking that you are better than anyone else. It means having a healthy outlook of yourself, knowing that you are a worthy human being. You begin loving yourself when you stop rejecting yourself.

The bible confirms the existence of the basic principle of self-love by saying, “You must love your neighbor as yourself”. It’s only when you love yourself that you can expect others to reciprocate that love. So before we can have a truly successful relationship, we must first learn to feel love for ourselves. How can we do this?

For myself, especially as a woman who experienced abuse, I was trained to deny my own feelings and needs, and to take care of others. So my recovery began with me first going to my quiet space. In my quiet space I had to learn to accept and deal with me. I lived with myself for so many years, but was a total stranger to myself. I had to learn to recognize my different feelings and emotions. I had to pay attention to myself. Accepting myself helped me grow mentally, physically, and spiritually. To change and strengthen myself I had to accept myself and learn how to live with myself in a productive manner. Self-hate had become a pattern, a way for me to survive and live; it was now time to turn the hate to love.

The next thing that I did was compile a list of positive things about myself; things that I liked about me. The list started very small, but as time progressed, so did my love for myself, so my list grew. So with this list I wrote affirmation statements and practiced positive talk. In short, an affirmation statement is just a simple, positive statement that reinforces, motivates, or recognizes something good that you want to come into your life. Look at yourself in the mirror, daily, and repeat your affirmation statements to yourself, compliment yourself.

My next step was to combat all the negative things that I could ever remember being said against or about me. I did this by writing them down and counteracting the negative with positive. It was always so much easier for me to accept what others said to me that was negative about me, than it was for me to accept others compliments and praise to me. It’s hard to love yourself when the only messages you’re getting are hate. So understanding this, I had to reevaluate my current surroundings, my choice of friends and associates. You have to understand that two important aspects of self-love are receiving love from others, and making an open-hearted decision to love yourself. So I had to make the choice to love myself, or at least to stop hating myself.

In conclusion, after continuing with these methods over time, patience, and persistence, I realized that I was worthy, just as all of us are. Your worth comes from you, and others will only treat you as good as you treat yourself. Enjoy being you, because you will spend the rest of your life with yourself. Invest in yourself. Work on your personal growth and development, be the best that you can be. Take care of your body, your mind, and your spirit; with the self-love will come the happiness.

Visit my website at www.biztreeconsulting.com. My new ebook will be available for download June 15, 2009.