The 90 Day Self Love Challenge
People who identify with codependent tendencies have perhaps learned that we suffer from a blind spot that we didn’t even know we had. The 90 Day Self Love Challenge helps everyone break from these underpinning by taking away their power over us. Everyone I know who had tried this challenge has had incredible benefits.
Two years ago my girlfriend moved out and it happened at a point in my life when I didn’t think things could get any worse. Then they did, but what would come of that was a great opportunity to discover my own repeating patterns in relationships that could set me on a course to true love.
There is never a “good time” for a break up but my business had already been in a tenuous situation for a while when my daughter was left alone in my ex-wife’s care and developed a major anxiety issue that forced me to care for her full time spending my days “working” for 3 months from the hallway of her school, just outside her classroom, until she gained the confidence to be alone for a full day that I could go to work at my office again. It took 6 months.
During this crisis I had turned into a robot — working incessantly in the spare minutes I could find between trying to save my daughter and I had lost sight of my girlfriends needs. I had become a “human doing” not a human being (John Bradshaw), and I thought that I was doing what was right and expected but my life was entirely about sacrifice, but I was not only sacrificing my relationship but also my own self.
Losing someone I loved jolted me into a mission of learning and reflecting about all the relationships I had in my life and this left me wondering
why was I unable to consistently maintain a relationship?
Growing up I never had the role models of love in my family with both my parents addiction to alcohol and drugs with my Father eventually robbing a couple banks to pay off his drug debts. I was actually raised by my grandparents on both sides of my family. I didn’t have many examples of what loving relationship looked like — and no idea how to model one in my relationships.
Most kids who grow up in a household where they are just tolerated and not loved go on to make a major confusion between love and acceptance. I did this too — I thought that if I could just make everyone else around me happy I could then get the love and comfort that I wanted so badly in my life.
This false hope is defined as follows; If we can fix everyone else around us through our diligence and hard work then we in turn will be rewarded with the love we so desire.
This distorted view begins when we contort ourselves to satisfy the image of what we expect others want from us and start to confuse the little bit of acceptance we get from doing so as love itself when in fact it is only mere acceptance. We immediately become huge people pleasers.
Later in life we confuse doing things for other people as an expression of love itself and we equate our efforts and tasks to please others as love, expecting others to do likewise to us and we get upset when we don’t feel that the favors are returned to us in kind.
I realized that my emotional underpinning for relationships was heavily dependent on pleasing others and anticipating their needs. So I wanted to cut this instinct off and replace it with a radical new concept: self love.
I wanted to take 90 days to spend alone not seeking any relationship or connections with the opposite sex and instead just letting that time be a period of writing, self discovery and observation. It seemed like a super long time to commit to — and for what?!
But after realizing how pre-occupied I was with every move of my ex on social media I decided that it would be best for me to pump the breaks on any connection from outside and spend 90 days really only looking inward with journaling, reading and meditation.
That was the best time I’ve had in a very long time.
I don’t want to ruin it with a spoiler for anyone who might think of doing the challenge but I would say the obvious things come through forcefully; you gain a deeper perception of your underlying issues in relationships, you build a self love and confidence by journaling and reading and you gain an independence by giving yourself the love you seek.
If you try the 90 Day Self Love Challenge #90DSLC please come back and comment and let me know what you discovered.
Sending you a mental hug on your journey.
Terrence Kelleman
Inventor/Artist
Reading suggestions: I highly recommend “Love me don’t leave me” a guide to understanding these issues during this time.
Video / Training exercises: I highly recommend “Inner Bonding® — The Power to Heal Yourself” by Dr. Margaret Paul, Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTlhC8fQYIY
