What you believe shapes the quality of your life

I feel I can safely say I’m not alone when I confess that I’m frequently confused about love. There were so many inconsistencies in my experiences. The misuse of the word love could be seen practically everywhere. Unfortunately I was becoming pretty cynical about it all. Some changes needed to happen in my life.

That’s why Jacki writes about transformational Magic. So we all have the opportunity to change. Continuing with our theme from Jacki’s book Coventry Magic chapter six on her seven steps to a personal magical evolution. We are still on step one, Getting comfortable in your own skin but are now looking at love and what we believe about it. If you missed January’s blog, go and take a peek at it to get caught up. So in January we took ownership of ourselves and the stuff our lives are made up of, now we’re going to see how love is mirrored back to us and take authority over that.

By the way, the mirror is the belief. What we believe to be true is mirrored back to us in people and circumstances. The best way for me to talk about this is to use myself as an example. Jacki calls this “using myself as the cautionary tale”. I hope you are also inspired and not just warned.

I grew up child number two in a nine child family. All kids close in age except for the last three. My parents attempt at slowing down, which eventually did work. Needless to say there was chaos, competition for attention, cookies and sitting in the front seat (so seatbelts back then). One’s self esteem got trounced on often and thoroughly. Nobody was evil, it’s just the way it is in a big family. I coped by deciding not to ask for or expect too much. A survival skill that outgrew its usefulness pretty quick.

Fast forward to being an adult. My belief about love was; I was loved yet I was not to expect special treatment, affection or promotion. I believed that I was marginal and not interesting enough to create a ripple of passion in my life or anyone else’s. Invisible, neutral, agreeable and definitely mild cheese. If your story is similar to mine you know it’s a painful way to live and eventually it’s not enough. As I grew older I got angrier, more demanding, felt neglected and misunderstood.

Here comes the mirror. When someone tried to love me, boyfriends, husbands, friends, kids, parents; I got prickly and they got pricklier or just left. In my career, I’d get passed over. Why not? I was invisible and that made me mad too. I did have the sense to recognize I had a pretty big part in being invisible I did see that this made me behave like a victim and be treated like one too (more mirroring). It took time, therapy, making new choices and following through on them (taking risks) and becoming responsible for myself.

What I mean by becoming responsible for myself is, I had to own my earlier decisions, attitudes, reactions and beliefs. Talk about being brutally honest. It’s not easy to give up the habit of blaming others, even the ones who were just treating me the way I wanted them to (this is all subconscious of course). The healing came when I became consciously aware of the game in play. Sweet liberation! I learned I could change the game, transformational magic showed me I could.

That is my story. What is yours? What patterns and habits in your life speak to you about your belief about love? Choosing to examine this will take courage and honesty. I recommend lighting an Inner Beauty Affirmation candle while you reflect on your mirrors. Always be good to yourself and remember all your choices can be followed up with a new choice. I’m fifty five years old and still making new choices and will keep doing that until I’m done. The difference now is that it’s fun instead of humiliating. I focus on the adventure instead of the mistakes.