(Reading time is approximately 15 minutes)

It was a high school assembly in 1992, and a teacher who was retiring decided to play us a song just before she left. The song was “The Greatest Love” by Whitney Houston. All I remember hearing were these words:

“I never found anyone who fulfils my needs. A lonely place to be.
And so I learned to depend on me “

Teenage Gayle was pretty appalled. “Geez, lady, could you be any MORE depressing? Like what exactly are you advocating? A lifetime of solitude and desolation? Never had ANYONE to fulfill your needs? Shame! Thanks for the heads-up, but rest assured that is most certainly NEVER going to be me!” Needless to say, it has taken 25

(ummm….plus)

years of life experience to finally grasp the meaning of that song and the message this teacher was trying to leave with us….the importance of loving yourself. Ahh yes, that age-old admonition:

“Love yourself”.

If you are single, you are routinely reminded that truly loving yourself first is the key to finding your significant other. If you are attached, you are told you will never be genuinely happy with your significant other unless you love yourself first. While logically this has always made perfect sense to me….I have always had a little problem grasping it. Like how exactly do you actually truly define this much-needed self-love? How do you measure its quality or its quantity?

(Is there some sort of ‘self-love barometer’ we can buy to make this whole process a little less confusing?)

Sure,

• you can spend years working on your limiting beliefs
• you can clean up your negative self-talk and annex all those gremlins (umm..most of the time)
• you can start to nourish your body properly (minus the odd chocolate doughnut here and there)
• you can start exercising AND
• you can karate kick those unhealthy habits out of your life once and for all.

But deep down, even though you preach self-love to the nth degree, you might still be left with this niggling fear – does all that actually equate to you really and truly loving yourself? Or the even bigger question is, is it possible to ever really know that you truly love yourself? Maybe some people are just innately born with the ‘love yourself’ gene and the rest of us plebeians will just have to continually hack away at it until we are 88?

(Why the hell weren’t we ALL given a “love yourself manual” at birth?)

So yes, this has been my experience over the last 10 years or so, and if you can relate, even a bit… then hopefully you will relate to this post.

Guess what the great news is? I do believe that after almost a decade of relentless soul searching, I might finally have my own built-in, fully functional self-love barometer that actually works!

(Woop Woop….see there is hope for us all!!!)

Yes, it is true…..I think I finally fucking get this whole self-love malarkey and it does feel pretty damn amazing. Alas, no, it didn’t come to me in the form of a blinding mystical experience of enlightenment – where I was awakened to a dimension of reality beyond the confines of my tortured ego!

(Sigh🙄)

While there are thousands of magical stories of gurus, spiritual teachers and everyday people who experience miraculous, instantaneous conversions that alter their lives forever…..
My gut feeling is that for the majority of people it is never that clear-cut or that magical. The rest of us simply need to consistently do the work. We do the work as long as it takes until one day we suddenly find that our confusion and unanswered questions don’t seem to be that overwhelming anymore. True, we may not have the answers yet, but we no longer feel the need to continually harp on those big life questions either. We may not be blinded by glorious light, but we can’t deny that our road somehow seems a little less dark, and we can recognise, with a sigh of relief, that just maybe something has finally shifted inside us. Maybe this is just the wonderful age of being in your 40’s? Maybe this is me finally stepping free from the grief of losing my parents and my second mother Anna ….or maybe it’s just my time? All I know is that the last 8 weeks have just been incredible for me. I can honestly say I have never in my life felt so joyful, so contented and so connected on a daily basis. I am by no means claiming to have the answers to everlasting happiness; there is nothing new or exciting I have to offer the world. Trust me, it’s all been discovered before ….this is just my version of the same story.

1. Overriding the fear and finally finding my voice

About 8 weeks ago I wrote a long overdue post about how I was finally DONE with online dating. Although this has been something I have been itching to write about for a good couple of years now, I have continually railroaded myself. Simply put, I didn’t want to be one of those negative, whiny people who continually complain when stuff doesn’t go their way.

(I considered myself waaaaay too evolved for that😜! )

I also didn’t want to risk alienating people who have found love online. Think of all of the MILLIONS of followers I could lose!!! Out of my current 14 followers…that could be catastrophic!!!! But all that said and done, I finally couldn’t take it anymore; something inside me snapped, and I just wrote the damn post anyway. Now all I can say is, “Oh my God” writing that post was the most liberating thing I could have ever done for myself. It dawned on me with such clarity that, frankly, I am simply not as evolved as I always like to think I am. I am just a normal woman who has likes, dislikes and opinions, and I have the right to get them out there, just as much as the next person.

Photographer Harry Callahan once said “Opinions are like assholes; everyone has one.” So true…and if you don’t learn to shit, you will be constipated as hell! I feel I lived 40-plus years with verbal constipation. Yes, I can easily moan about trivial stuff, but heaven forbid I actually stand up for myself when it really matters. Living with the constant fear of other people’s opinions, while never actually verbalising your own, is truly exhausting and so fucking sad. Writing ‘that post’ and finally just getting it out actually propelled me into looking for a new solution to my dating dilemma. In the last two months since writing it, I have launched myself into the world of speed dating, social mixers and various free seminars and weekend training. I have thrust myself into the social arena every single weekend, and as a result, I have met some truly amazing and inspiring people. Writing ‘that post’ shifted me out of my victim mentality and into a more productive and energetic mindset that got me creating a happier and more fulfilling life for myself.

2. Breaking those old tapes

Random Guy story #1:

So about 3 weeks ago I headed off to a singles meetup that was hosted in a pretty cool ‘wannabe’ beach club. No sooner had I arrived there than I was approached by a man named Amos. Amos is a British journalist who is as white as day.

(He did explain to me how he ended up with a Hebrew name…but I can’t for the life of me remember).

So Amos is truly awesome. We jump into an easy banter about life, we laugh our heads off, and very soon we are dancing. I will be honest. He was a terrible dancer.

(Arms and legs flailing all over the place…really terrible😵).

He was so bad I couldn’t stop laughing at him. The best part: He just didn’t seem to care. The more I laughed, the crazier his moves got. His absolute sexiness came from the fact that he was having fun, and it was so contagious.

After we had been dancing for about an hour, his magnetic dance moves and cheeky grin seemed to have attracted him to another admirer. An absolutely gorgeous, compact and cute Indian girl who was as stunningly beautiful as she was…. drunk.

(Let’s call her Pocahontas.)

So now Pocahontas is dancing, swaying with us. It is clear that poor Amos is all of a sudden a little torn…. not quite sure where his attention should lie? After about 5 minutes of us all dancing together, this huge beefcake of a man, who had been poser dancing on the side wall of the dance floor, suddenly decides that he has had enough of Pocahontas fornicating over some white dude. He jumps down, grabs her by the arm and pulls her to the other side of the dance floor.

But wait!!!!

Quick as a flash, the now laughing Pocahontas escapes and comes running back to pull ‘our‘ man Amos with her. And just like that, he is gone….and I am left on the dance floor dancing in silent hysterics.

(Like seriously, the drama!)

All these years I had no idea that watching drunk people when you are stone cold sober was actually so bloody entertaining. So I danced by myself for a while, and then about 20 minutes later Amos sheepishly returns to me

(Maybe he couldn’t shake Beefcake? )

and we continue dancing.

(Far be it from me to hold a grudge- Pocahontas was flipping gorgeous!😁)

After a while, it dawns on me that I wasn’t really enjoying the music

(understatement: “It was pretty crap”).

I tell Amos that I am going to go sit down for a while, hoping he might come and join me. But alas….no.

So I am sitting on the side of the club looking out over the dance floor when I am suddenly hit with this overwhelming feeling of happiness. It literally bowled me over like a tsunami.

(Rest assured, the only bright light was that of the disco ball).

I suddenly thought about all the years I have spent going out in my 20s and 30s. Years of drinking

(and other various substances),

years of being so happy

(ummm inebriated? )

on that dance floor.

(Nothing quite like an alcohol-induced high)

And then I remembered all the times the alcohol wore off, or some guy would act like an idiot

(or worse yet, I would act like an idiot😌),

and I would absolutely crash. I remembered the drama, the angst, the insecurity, the self-loathing, the comparing myself to other women, the harsh internal dialogue I always had reserved for myself. Now I sat alone in this club feeling absolute joy and bliss. My internal dialogue this time went something like this:

“Fuuuuuuuuuck I’m so happy”

“But this music is shit”

“I think I am going to go home”

And that is exactly what I did. ‘Old me‘ would have hung around in a club and danced to music I hated for a man…that might or might not have been interested in me. So I walked up to Amos, gave him a hug, told him I had had an amazing night, but I needed to go home now.

(Bless, he genuinely looked disappointed).

We stood in awkward silence for a few seconds, me wondering if he would ask for my number. But nope, no such luck. ‘Old me’ would have quite happily handed over my number. Attempted to take control – to make sure I got to see him again. But this time I refrained. Over the last couple of years, I have had time to clearly define exactly what it is that I am looking for in a man….and one of my top core values that I am looking for is courage. I don’t care how amazing a man is; if he doesn’t have the courage or the inclination to ask me for my phone number, then I am willing to walk away. I have always been a very big believer in the law of attraction. One of the reasons I have compelled myself to make so many changes in my life over this last year or so is because I believe like attracts like.

I realised a few years ago that I had this incredibly strong desire for an inspiring and courageous man to show up, and yet I was living like a pip-squeak, too scared to face any of my own fears in life.

(Umm…how wrong is that on so many levels?)

How could I honestly expect a confident, self-actualised, energetic man who is living out his full potential to be attracted to me if I was simply living in a state of fear? If I was living my life on the sidelines just waiting for ‘something’ to happen? So I made a conscious decision in my life to choose courage over comfort every single day. I decided that it was finally time that I made something happen in my own life.

So that night I walked out of that club like I was on a cloud. It didn’t bother me that I hadn’t “taken action“. I wasn’t worried that maybe I was missing out on a good man

My overwhelming feeling was simply one of peace. Yes, he was awesome. Yes, he was fun and easy to talk to, but for the first time ever I felt like the world might just be full of awesome, fun, incredible men. For years I have joked with my friend that all I ever meet are strong, amazing women.

(Hahahah we would laugh.)

Unfortunately, now I finally get how powerful my words were. What I was simply doing was replaying the same old tape and reinforcing those same old negative beliefs that there are no incredible men out there or that all the good ones were married. I wasn’t living in a state of abundance; I was living in a continual sense of lack. While I was always upbeat and positive about being single, my underlying vibration was one of fear and panic that I might actually have missed out.

That night, for some reason, I felt like that belief was finally, truly and utterly demolished. As I walked through London, I just had this intense knowing that the universe has my back and that right now, I have everything that I need to be blissfully happy. After months of trying my best to actually believe it, I think it has finally, finally sunk in……

Sorry this is a long post. 😂 To be continued tomorrow……