Trust yourself and give yourself love – Flavia Powell
Trust yourself and give yourself the love you so kindly offer to others ❤️
Think about it! How much time do you spend in a day, week, month and year pleasing other people, helping them, listening to them and doing your damn hardest to fit in and fulfil their expectations? How many times do you compromise who you are or your happiness to reach out, pick someone up, rescue them, guide them, support them and put yourself aside so that they can thrive? How about the amount of time you spend recovering from being drained by other people’s problems and catching up on the work you should have done whilst babysitting someone else’s emotions?
Stop!!! You are compromising your values, boundaries and core self ! You are putting aside your needs, wants and happiness to help someone else achieve theirs. We are all responsible for ourselves. You cannot rescue people. They have to do it for themselves. Give them enough support and guidance for them to help themselves. You cannot polish a turd! You cannot help or rescue someone unless they want to help themselves and have the necessary learnings and drive to maintain their own happiness.
Ever found yourself worrying that someone will drop you unless you fit in with their expectations? You try to fit in but your gut is screaming “ this is not me” and you end up in inner turmoil and conflict . Let them drop you if they so wish to do. The people who love you, for you , will always stick around and carry on loving you. The ones who offer you love but it’s interest based add no value to your life. Let them go.
Guess what though! When you reach a low point and end up frazzled, you don’t receive the same treatment back from those you’ve helped and disappointment sets in. That’s right! It sets in and you start to question yourself. You ask yourself what the point is in you offering so much support and yet it’s never returned in the way you would like it to be or in the way that you need it. You want people to see what you’ve done and recognise the impact it had on you but they don’t. You want a pat on the back but you don’t get it.
The people you’ve helped are now flying but you’re picking up the pieces, your energy levels, the mount of work gathered and dragging yourself around as though you’ve been hit in the face with an ugly stick. You drop into a victim mode…” Poor me…all that hard work for nothing…nobody cares”.
Ask yourself who are you truly doing it for? Who are you putting yourself aside for? Is it for them or is it for yourself? Are you doing it to help them , are you doing it because it brings you happiness or are you doing it to fulfil your own need for recognition, love and acceptance? What are you trying to fulfil within yourself that you believe you can’t do and that other people can do for you? They can’t! Is helping others your passion? If it is, go for it and rest assured that seeing other people happy will bring you fulfilment. If you’re doing it to fill a void, stop! You’ll never find what you’re looking for unless you look inwards. That’s where you’ll find it. Only you can fill the void in your heart and find the missing piece of the puzzle. Nobody will give you a medal for frazzling yourself for others. They will be grateful but the void inside of you will still be there . They’ll be grateful in their own way, not in yours and you’ll be left still searching for the missing part.
Ever heard someone saying “ I did so much for them and when I needed them they weren’t there…they didn’t even say thank you…they forgot what I did for them “ ? Offering support is selfless. You do it without expectation . Whether they show gratefulness or not, you helped them and you are happy in the knowledge that you did your best.
Be proud of yourself for doing it and grateful to yourself for having the resources to do it . Their success should make you smile . If their success makes you sad because they forgot to pay attention to you, why are you doing it? Do you like being worn out and miserable?
Pay attention to yourself and to your happiness whilst helping others. The moment you stop paying attention to yourself and you feel exhaustion creeping in, it’s a sacrifice and a compromise which infringes upon your happiness. It ultimately leads to resentment. Self care whilst supporting others is a must because if you crumble, you’ll be no good to anybody anyway. Be aware of your reasons for reaching out.
Give yourself the love , trust and care that you so kindly offer to others and you can help others thrive whilst thriving yourself. Remember that the givers have to set limits as the takers don’t have any.
Stay true to yourself and keep smiling 🙂
Flavia
