January 11

ACCEPTANCE MONTH: DAY 11: “Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don’t let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.” ― Jim Carrey

I think that someone with the skills of acting (out) like Jim Carrey truly understands the need for attention and acceptance in the world around him. What an interesting person to state this quote. I also always saw Robin Williams in the same light.

Most of us are walking through the world with a neediness that is deep and insatiable.  The reason it exists is to teach us things about us, not others. We can attend to giving ourselves the radical acceptance we seek in the world as we progress through this recovery process. It is not from others we can receive the acceptance and attention we are dying for. It is from ourselves.

This is the only true healing. My needs are not yours to meet or supply. They are mine. The world at large believes they were there to be met by my family and then by the significant relationships in my life at some point later. Not true!

Our human needs are to be met by US! We are here to learn to love and accept and nurture our own broken ways of living in this world. Looking to others to supply us with love, security, companionship, or any other form of emotional need is going to end badly. It is, quite simply, not their job.

We are not here to get what we think we are missing from other people. We are here to learn to give it to ourselves. I cannot nurture another until I learn to nurture myself. If we attempt to do this, we become bitter, angry, jealous, selfish and miserable. Sound familiar?

Then we walk around the world looking for others to satisfy those longings we have for acceptance and a sense of belonging. I cannot fully belong to another. It does not work. I must belong to ME. I must accept and adore myself in every way to have what I need to be in relationship with anyone. I have tried to ingest it with drugs, alcohol, food, money, sex, shopping, SHOES, and in a million other ways. It will not work, it will never work. Any thought I have about being satisfied with anything or anyone other than from within myself is a ridiculous and dysfunctional way of thinking. Duh! Addiction! Oh yeah…

So, if I learn to let myself shine, just as I am, because I am fully in love with myself; I am finally actualized. When you look at the hierarchy of Maslow’s, you see this at the top of the pyramid, the apex of life, the goal of life. Not having a million dollars or being a sports’ legend or a movie star or a mogul. It is self-actualization. The goal of life is to fully embrace ME and love ME and be completely satisfied that I am the best ME I can be today, in total acceptance of who and what and how I am and all that is my life. What an order…I CAN go through with it! And I have so many to thank…not who you think they are either!