Are you seeking happiness in the wrong places?

When I was in my mid-twenties, I went through a period –like many of us– where I felt very critical, concerned and confused about how I was perceived by others, how I looked, and what my purpose in life was.

To be honest, I felt very lonely for a few years.

Within a few short years, I had gone through back surgery for herniated disks, had somewhat abruptly ended the path I was on to become a doctor, and began a MA program in Counseling Psychology, which was immensely healing in some ways while painful and emotionally challenging in others.

I was single, had just left NYC for California, where I wasn’t walking by far as much and felt frumpy as a result. Plus, I felt like I spent way too many nights of my young life alone in the house, drinking wine, painting and watching reruns of Sex And The City.

This “lonely time” was, however, an immensely critical stage in my life because it was the period, when I learned how to look for happiness and values in new, deeper, and truer places.

In many ways, I felt that who I was had to break down so I could rebuild myself.

Here is what I mean:

Through my studies in Counseling Psychology, I spent a lot of time diving into my dreams (not wishful thinking life dreams but actual nighttime dreams, when the unconscious can make itself heard), my ego, my shadow, archetypes that were particularly guiding in my decision making processes, my family patterns and inner expectations of myself and the world.

I realized that so much of what I spent my energy on was motivating by pleasing others because their approval was what gave me permission to approve of myself.

It’s like I didn’t really know what I (!) actually wanted, because I perpetually looked to the outside for checkmarks.

In other words, my happiness and self-value was determined by external values, by how well I performed, how successful I was, how pretty, thin and fit I looked, how well-liked I felt etc.

The problem was that THAT happiness never lasted, never sunk in deep enough to build an actual happy, meaningful, and resilient foundation.

I had to learn how to look deeper.

So here is my question for you:

Are your values and how you orient your life, how you make decisions, choose friends, and plan your day (& life) motivated by external values or internal values.

Do you believe that a thin body or lots of money will actually make you happy (not just temporarily a bit happier or relieved)?

Do you derive self-value from things that are inevitably fleeting or could be subject to change at any moment? For example, the way you look, how many likes you get, if men hit on you, what kind of car you can afford, how perfect your children are.

Or, do you derive self-value from a deep knowing of yourself, who you are, what your purpose is and how you add value and meaning to the world?

Do you derive value and happiness from your relationships, your alignment with yourself, your inner harmony, the joys that can be found in any small moment, who you are as a whole person –good and bad– and the meaning you create?

The thing is that while these external values are a part of our lives and things like feeling pretty and having a abundant lifestyle are nice (plus, studies do show that people who are thin and beautiful are being treated differently than people who are deemed less attractive), deriving your value and happiness from places that are inevitably subject to change, will never give you this deep sense of purpose, this inner knowing that you are loved and cared for, that sense that you have meaning and purpose just because you are you.

Here are a few ways to start deriving value and happiness from inner sources:

1. Care for your relationships.

   A while back, I created a Friday Celebration Group with five of my dear girlfriends and we check in with each other once a week to share our successes, challenges, life events, and simply things that we discover and enjoy learning about. We live spread across the country now, but I honestly feel closer to them now than when we all lived in NYC many years ago. In this circle of friends, I feel deeply seen and supported and I know that the only thing that matters is that I show up as ME.
   
   Today, in an effort to shift how you experience value and happiness to a deeper, more resilient and lasting platform, check in with a friend (or two) today and ask her or him to tell you three things that are going on in their lives.
   
   Friendships need care.
   

2. Learn to honor yourself.

   This is different from self-love in that self-honorship takes a respectful, elegant, and consistent approach to valuing who you are even on days when your boss yells at you in front of your co-workers and your reflection in the mirror makes you want to hide. You don’t have to love –or even like– who you are every.single.day in order to honor yourself respectfully. I talk about this in more detail in my Well Mama course (if you are a mom or are expecting, I’d love to invite you to check it out).
   
   My favorite way to start a self-honorship practice for women is by teaching them how to honor their natural cycles and understanding how their hormones fluctuate throughout the month.
   
   I have seen it time and time again that when women gain a deeper wisdom of their bodies and how they can appropriately anticipate its needs depending on where they are in their menstrual (or the moon’s) cycle, they begin to look at their bodies –AND LIVES– through a very different lens. If you want to learn more about this check out my Well Mama course or my article for Blood+Milk called “Harnessing the power of the menstrual cycle.”
   

3. Ask yourself the simple –yet often very challenging– question of “What do I really want?”

   I cannot tell you how often I speak to women who tell me that they don’t know what they want. In my opinion, this is because women have been trained by our society to anticipate the needs to others, to be empaths, and to tune into what other people need. Women are taught to nurture and while that is a wonderful and incredible gift, we have forgotten one very important component: how to nurture ourselves, how to listen and anticipate our own needs, and how to hear our own desires in life.

   So, let’s begin to teach ourselves that.

   Let’s give ourselves a voice, so we can hear our own wishes, longings and desires.

   That is the only way to actually feel purposeful, fulfilled, and whole.
   
   Take a few minutes today and place your hands on your lower abdomen –the center of your feminine wisdom and intuition– and ask yourself “What is one desire I have?” And then listen. How does your body respond to being asked an open-ended question like that? Maybe you get an immediate, big response, maybe you get a very simple response, and maybe you feel like nothing shows up at all. All of these responses are ok. Honor where you are at. Sometimes it takes time for our body to speak up; especially if it’s not used to being asked what it desires. I want to encourage you to make this a daily practice, because, trust me when I tell you that, as you allow yourself to become genuinely curious about yourself, your body will respond and tell you where your truth is. I’ve seen this time and time again in my own experience as well as in my work with hundreds of women over the years.

   Here is to you, my beautiful reader!

   I believe in you.

   Love,

   Caroline