Start Showing-Up for Your Life



“I've asked myself
How much do you
commit yourself?

It's my life
Don't you forget
It's my life
It never ends (It never ends)”
It’s My Life by Talk Talk


How much do we commit ourselves to our own lives is a good question for everyone to ask. After all, that’s what recovery is all about. Those of us recovering from codependency spent most of our lives committing ourselves to everyone else’s life. We grew-up with our eyes always focused outside of ourselves. We lived by “Who can I commit myself to today? Who can I take care of today? Whose problems can I try to solve today?” Our only interest was in “your” life.

Then we get into recovery and we learned that “your” life isn’t “my” life. We learned that they were two separate and distinct entities. We then learned to untangle the two. And in doing so, we discovered that our lifeline isn’t inside of someone else; it’s inside of us. Suddenly, all of our focus shifted, and we began the process of looking inside ourselves for answers instead of looking outside. 

Turning inside then forced us to realize that across the history of our lives, we had never really shown up for ourselves. By having previously focused all of our energy on others, we hadn’t fully been participating in our own lives. Instead, we had attached ourselves to other people’s lives. We had lived their dreams, their histories, their lives.

Early on in recovery, it’s both a rude awakening and a blessing to realize that you haven’t been showing up for your own life. You step back and realize that you have been enmeshed in someone else’s dreams, and that you aren’t even aware of what your own dreams are. And as you get more in-touch with yourself, you also realize that there’s an emptiness inside of you that’s been trying to get your attention for years. That very emptiness is there because you aren’t in touch with your dreams, you aren’t showing up for your own life and you aren’t committed to yourself.

Now you have a choice to make. You can allow yourself to feel totally uncomfortable with your new found “life” and you can go running backwards to find someone to enmesh in again. In other words, you can return to being a leech on the lives of others. Or you can ask Higher Love to guide you further inside yourself. You can ask for the help you need to connect with the dreams that are inside of you, to explore those dreams and to dance among them as they become more and more clear inside of you. 

You can then ask for the help you need from Higher Love and others to put those dreams into motion. This means asking Higher Love to help you fully show-up for yourself and your dreams. It means getting spiritual enough to really believe in your dreams. And it means learning to love yourself enough to value your dreams and the important role you play in both your dreams and life.

Life is what we make it. We have to choose to believe that we have an honored role in our lives and that we indeed need to show-up for ourselves and our lives. So let go of the lives of others. They need to take care of themselves. The more you let go of their lives, the more you will start showing up for yourself and your own life.

So detach from others and start showing up for yourself today. We are called to participate in our lives fully because we only have one life that truly belongs to us. And it’s the life that has our name attached to it. So honor your life by being Number One on your own team. Begin living your dreams NOW!

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