What if I told you your beliefs set the foundation for what you'll create in relationships? There was a time when I didn't know this, and the state of my relationships was proof that I was in the dark.
I used to struggle in romantic relationships — trying to get my needs met, trying not to get hurt! But the same patterns kept happening over and over again. No matter what, I'd end up feeling disempowered and disheartened, like I could never get the love I wanted.
This experience went on for years, until finally, during a particularly difficult time in my life, I had an insight about why my relationships weren't working. The insight was:
Relationships unfold based on your beliefs about yourself. Change what's happening inside of you, and your relationships will change, too.
Was it possible that my relationships were dysfunctional because of what I believed about myself and about love? Was it possible that if I changed myself, my experience in love would change, too?
Fast forward three years later and the answer is an undeniable yes!
Yes, your beliefs set the foundation for what you'll experience in relationships, and yes, when you change your beliefs, your experience in love changes, too.
Below are three major beliefs that will drastically shift your entire experience in love. Change what's happening inside of you, and your outside experience will change, too.
1. You have to believe in yourself.
People treat you the way you treat yourself, and the way you expect to be treated. This is why we repeat patterns over and over again; we expect something to happen, so it does. This is called a limiting (or dysfunctional) belief.
Think about this concept for a second: If you care about yourself, you won't stand for someone treating you poorly. It just doesn't happen; you stand up for yourself (the way you'd stand up for a good friend), and move on. But when your self-worth is lower than it should be, you end up accepting treatment that mirrors that low self-worth. This keeps you stuck in relationships that don't work for you!
The problem is that most of us don't treat ourselves the way we treat our friends. The way we think, feel, and behave toward ourselves can be pretty harsh!
In order to find incredible love with another person, you have to love and respect yourself. This means you have to treat yourself the way you want to be treated. Say kind things to yourself, do thoughtful things for yourself, listen to yourself, get to know yourself. Essentially, you're dating yourself, and you're in the honeymoon phase!
Make this major shift and your entire experience in relationships will shift, too.
2. You have to believe in potential partners.
Any pattern you continuously encounter in other people is a pattern that lives within you. While at first sight, it may seem like all men are unavailable, or all women try to control you, what's really happening in these situations is that you're coming up against an old belief system. A belief system that tells you relationships are going to turn out a certain way.
Our wounds become ingrained when we're young; this is why, as adults, we create dysfunctional patterns in relationships. Whatever your wounds are — whether you felt rejected, abandoned, insignificant, unheard, or trapped — you'll continue to experience the same dynamic in your adult relationships until you heal the wound and move beyond it.
So how do you heal? By treating yourself the way you want to be treated.
If you feel invalidated by others, you need to practice validating yourself.
If you feel trapped in relationships, you need to evaluate how you're trapping yourself (by not speaking your truth, by not showing up authentically), and change this.
If you feel rejected or abandoned, you need to show-up and love yourself, through thick and thin.
Any pattern you see in others is mirroring a limiting belief about how you expect to be treated in relationships. Heal yourself from the inside out, and your experience of others will drastically shift, too.
3. You have to believe in relationships.
It's easy for us to feel cyclical about relationships; we're surrounded by dysfunctional couples everywhere we look. In fact, culturally we're a little addicted to the drama.
But the truth is, being hyper-focused on the dysfunction in relationships will not lead to a healthy, happy relationship in your own life.It just won't.
If you don't believe you're capable of forming a mature, respectful, powerful, loving partnership, it's going to be really hard for you to do so.
While every relationship is difficult at times, partnerships are an amazing opportunity for us to feel connected, supported, loved and seen by another person.
When your beliefs are aligned to the highest potential, you create partnerships that are unbelievably fulfilling; when your beliefs are aligned to limits and dysfunction, then that's what you're going to see. The choice is yours.
Believe in the highest possibilities, strive for the highest possibilities, and anything you want can be yours.
Please leave a comment below telling us one belief you're going to shift to transform your experience in love.
By Shelly Bullard | Mind Body Green
