You Are Loveable!

"O God, help me to believe the truth about myself,

no matter how beautiful it is. Amen."

Macrina Wiederkehr

I had lunch at an Asian restaurant the other day and my Fortune Cookie had this to say to me: “Be yourself and you’ll feel at home anywhere.” Obviously this statement holds great truth, so what keeps so many of us from being ourselves? The answer is actually simple: We don’t feel lovable.

There are way too many of us who never have felt lovable. According to Robert Holden, in his new book Loveability, “the basic fear ‘I am not lovable’ is what causes you to be afraid of everything.” This makes sense to me. I’ve been possessed by two interwoven basic fears since I was a small child. Those interwoven fears are “I am not good enough, therefore I am not lovable.”

In my course of work, I discover everyday that almost everyone I encounter is haunted by these same two interwoven fears. And these two basic fears then spread fear and worry to every other aspect of our lives like an uncontrollable wildfire blazing across our souls.

Fear of not being good enough to be lovable leads to constant fear of rejection and thus of abandonment. It leads to fear of never being able to do anything right, fear of failing at school, fear of never getting a good job or fear of losing one, fear of love and relationships, fear of being verbally or physically attacked (even by strangers who are looking for a victim to make them feel better about themselves), and the most devastating fear of all: The fear of never truly being loved by anyone-- ever.

Holden goes on to say “When you accept the basic truth ‘I am lovable,’ you welcome love into your life without any fear. You love others without any hesitation, and you let yourself be loved without any resistance. When you know you are lovable, you can see that love is safe because love has no fear in it.”

I believe it’s true that love has no fear in it because when true love flows through us there are no strings attached. Fear, based in poor self-love, is about attaching stings. It’s about attaching to others and clinging to them in unhealthy ways. When we honestly love ourselves, we have no need to attach or cling to others. So we are then free to honestly love another person by always wanting what’s best for them—even if it isn’t what’s best for us. Self-loving people offer their love freely, including their assistance, without any fears concerning reciprocity or of losing the other person.

And when we truly love ourselves, we are equally able to receive love from others without any inner-hesitation or inner sense of being unworthy. Instead of feeling embarrassed when others freely offer their love, we feel warm all over. And we are filled with joy. We feel connected. We feel like we belong. We feel like we count in this world. We feel safe.

Recovery from codependency, or any other addictive behavior, is all about developing a good, healthy self-love. If you are still struggling with believing you are lovable, you need to start by “choosing” to love yourself. You have a choice, and the choice most of us have made for years is to not love ourselves. We’ve made the bad choice of believing we aren’t lovable and we’ve lived with all of the fears that bad choice has brought upon us.

Now is the time to make the opposite choice, no matter how difficult it may seem at first. Use Macrina Wiederkehr’s prayer to help you. Say the prayer over and over and come to believe that your Higher Power will show you just how many beautiful things there are about you to love.

As you grow in your self-love, your fears will diminish because love will wipe them away and replace them with a sometimes quiet and a sometimes vivid joy.