Am I really ready to have a man in my life when I’m not yet where I want to be in my career?
If you are putting love on hold and rationalizing that it’s because “you want to focus on your career,” your mind may actually be playing tricks on you. And it might be doing that because of a decision you made a long, long time ago… which you aren’t even consciously aware of.
This is something that I can totally relate to. In my case, it comes down to a belief that I can’t be both a mother and an entrepreneur. Did I come to this conclusion consciously? No. Five-year-old me did, subconsciously.
It started with a babysitter I absolutely hated. My mom was a pharmacist and worked the first 6 years of my life. One day, my babysitter, Ruth, was watching me. I had a ballet class I needed to go to that day. I knew it was time to go to ballet, and so I asked Ruth to find my ballet slippers for me. She immediately answered, “You know where you took them off last, and you are going to have to find them.” I instantly hated her in that moment. I was asking for help and she wouldn’t help me, and we were getting late for ballet. I remember just crying and being like, “Why won’t you help me!?” Then finally, while crying, I found the slippers. That moment scarred me for life.
In some way it seems like a silly little moment. However, I don’t remember much about my childhood and I can remember that day vividly. At some point in that day, I promised myself that I wouldn’t leave my kids with a babysitter while they were young because of work.
And there you have it: a simple experience that felt tragic, and my mind created the belief that working and being a mom is a bad thing.
The brain cannot handle having an open-ended question asked without answering it. It will do everything in its power to answer the question, usually by piecing other experiences together to make up a story.
So for example, if you saw a child running around causing a raucous in a restaurant, you first wonder: Why is this kid running around like this? Then your brain is tasked with closing the open loop that the question created. The brain would then say: Oh, it is probably because the parents are negligent or not paying enough attention to the child. The reality is, they could have just come from a birthday party where the child had way too much sugar and he’s now all riled up because all the jumping he did on the bouncers in Riverside (https://jumpersnrentals.com/riverside/). It could be a million different things — the only way to get the real answer would be to ask the child himself.
That is what happened in the mind of 5-year-old me. My brain went into overdrive, wondering: Why is it that Ruth is so awful?And my brain finished it with: If my mom was home this wouldn’t be happening. And boom. Belief created.
A simple, painful moment is all it takes for our mind to create a story.
After that, we feel and think that we absolutely have to do something a certain way or the world will fall apart. Interesting… right? So, what about your fear of losing yourself in a relationship? (Because when it comes down to it, this is what’s behind the belief that you need to just focus on your career in order to succeed.) There must have been an extremely painful experience when you loved all the way and felt like your whole life was on hold.
Once the relationship was over, you somehow made a promise to yourself — while your brain was in overdrive — that you would never lose yourself to love again. So, the safe zone is to immerse yourself in work. But deep down, what you really want is not only a successful career, but also a loving partner to share it with. That’s what makes us human. The first step for you to release this old belief is to recognize where the fear is coming from. You may have to do some time travelling. In fact, you definitely will. Think about a relationship that you have had in the past that may have triggered you to come up with this conclusion, or see if it is something you translated from your parents’ relationship.
By bringing your awareness to it, you will be ready to deal with it and recognize it as a fear and not what you thought you really wanted in the first place. Once you spot it, the next step is to admit to yourself what the truth is: Admit to yourself that you are ready for LOVE! This is the pathway to receiving it! The truth for me is: I WANT to be a MOM and I WANT to be a successful femmprenuer! And I am in the midst of making this happen. 🙂
In Love,
