Are you someone who willingly, or unwillingly, gives your power away to others? As noted in Psychology Today, “Any time you allow someone to have a negative influence over the way you think, feel, or behave, you are giving them power over your life. This will rob you of the mental strength you need to reach your greatest potential.”
Does that sound familiar? Do you find that you will do almost anything, including sacrificing your own needs, in order to make someone else happy? We have all done this at times, but when people pleasing is habitual, compulsive and subconscious, it can be detrimental to our physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual health.
As a child in a family with addiction, trauma, or other dysfunction, we often learn strategies to keep relationships going that could help meet our most basic needs, such as: safety, security, love, food, shelter, clothing, etc. For example, we may have learned “making mom happy” was the way we received affection. Or, if we learned to keep the house picked up, dad would be pleased, drink less, and be, therefore, less likely to become angry. These strategies, while meeting our needs, can become dysfunctional strategies in adulthood when we subconsciously and almost “blindly” do anything we can to keep our spouse, boss, friend, or family member happy and pleased.
When that happens, you can find yourself in a relationship where you deprive yourself of “self-love” and care, because you believe that someone else’s needs are more important than your own or that you are undeserving or unworthy of safe, healthy, nurturing love from others. If this sounds familiar to you, then it is time to let go of old beliefs and practice these top 10 powerful self-love mindset shifts:
- Old mindset: He/She will change.
New Mindset: I deserve wholehearted, healthy love and can set boundaries to create that for myself.
- Old Mindset: If I love him/her enough and sacrifice myself, he/she will be able to receive my love and change.
New Mindset: No amount of self-sacrificing will change his/her ability to receive my love. I don’t have to be the one to fix him/her. Instead, I can lovingly “fix” myself.
- Old Mindset: If I love him/her enough I can keep him/her from cheating, lying, manipulating, controlling, and/or abusing me.
New Mindset: I am worthy and deserving of whole, healthy, love. My belief in my worthiness has nothing to do with his/her choice to cheat, lie, manipulate, control, or abuse me.
- Old Mindset: I can do, be, have enough to make him/her happy.
New Mindset: I am enough to make me happy!
- Old Mindset: I am not enough or good enough to keep him/her happy.
New Mindset: I am enough! I am enough! I am enough!
- Old Mindset: My needs, desires, hopes, dreams, wants come second to his/hers always or most of the time.
New Mindset: It is a requirement that my needs, desires, hopes, dreams, and wants are valued in a healthy relationship.
- Old Mindset: My needs, desires, hopes, dreams, and wants aren’t important in this relationship.
New Mindset: My needs, desires, hopes, dreams, and wants ARE essential in co-creating a healthy relationship.
- Old Mindset: Chasing him/her is love.
New Mindset: I don’t have to chase love to feel secure.
- Old Mindset: If I am worthy and deserving of love, he/she wouldn’t “avoid” emotional, physical, and intellectual intimacy.
New mindset: I am worthy and deserving of a secure, nurturing, caring, loving, healthy, and intimate connection.
- Old Mindset: If I set healthy boundaries, I will lose him/her and be abandoned.
New Mindset: When I set healthy boundaries, I am loving myself in ways I’ve never been loved before.