Dig Deep
My friend Susan became a kind of surrogate mother to a young woman called Kate. When she about 4 years old, Kate’s natural mother died tragically. Susan helped Kate in all ways possible. She was there for her throughout and Kate loved her as much as she loved her own mother. For almost twenty years they had a close and caring friendship.
When Susan died suddenly, Kate experienced losing a second mother and her emotion was just like what she experienced when she lost her natural mother.
In the face of this experience, Kate could easily have opted to see this world as a cruel and unforgiving place where every time she has a degree of security it somehow gets taken away. She could have held onto this theme as she went through life, using the continuing sense of loss as a dramatic influence and something she would have in the back of her mind in all her relationships.
To avoid the hurt of future loss, she could have chosen never to get that close to anybody ever again.
So in essence what these two sad experiences would have taught her is to be guarded and to avoid loving relationships in the future. It would have been understandable if she decided to adopt her experiences of terrible grief as a negative influence on how she will live out her life.
Instead, she came to the decision to use her loss as a way of learning to believe in her own well-being.
This doesn’t mean that she is not or will never be sad or that she won’t feel vulnerable and sometimes alone. She will most certainly feel all of these emotions - and that’s okay too - but out of the tragedy of losing two mother figures she has embraced the opportunity, difficult, as it may seem, to really find the truth of who she is.
Kate is perfection, success and completion. She was born that way.
What she is now doing, regardless of what the world would supposedly teach her, is looking beyond the circumstances and events and tapping into the endless resource of self worth and self-belief.
In doing so, she will find a whole new self, which is complete, powerful and secure.
And while not diminishing the love and the loss she felt for her natural mother and for Susan, she now begins the process of understanding the value of self-love and belief.
This is not the self-love of the selfish or self-obsessed.
This is Kate’s self-belief born out of choosing to see the world from a different angle and perspective, using what was truly a very, very sad experience as a means to develop a newfound security about her self.
This is what Susan really wanted Kate to do; to tap into that inner limitless resourcefulness, to stay keen and aware of what she wants for her self and to avoid the temptation to remain anchored in the hopeless.
This is often a big step, given our human nature and the human condition of love and loss, but in truth it is the real step of growth.
It is where you find that place of most opportunity for your own personal development and successful understanding of who you are and could be. It is here too that you start to see your world from a different vantage point.
It is here that you start to teach your self that you have choices and that you can make a difference to your own future.
Loving your self is not about forgetting others. It’s about understanding your self and in that understanding you find successful happiness and completion as you begin to see that, as well as having external best friends, you also have an inner best friend; the inner you that’s there for your self with your self to bring your self to where you should be.
What you’re really doing is building a bridge between you and your self. You cherish the external relationships with your friends and family. Also cherish the internal relationship of your self with the You you want to be and so richly deserve to be. In your mind’s eye, learn to see your self as okay, loved and complete.
Feeling sad is perfectly alright. Feeling unloved by your self is perfectly sad.
Kate can use her sadness as a stepping-stone to a better place and a place where she has a much greater understanding of and belief in what she is capable of and what, in truth, her two mothers would have wanted for her. Her challenge is to want it for her self. I knew Susan well and know without any doubt that self-success and acceptance are what she wanted for the Kate she so loved.
Not every situation is as dramatic as the death of a loved one and not every situation will carry such profound emotion, imagery, messages and often enlightenment, but there is no doubt that as we go through life every experience gives us the chance to reassess our decision-making process, our judgments and our opportunities for correction.
Correction gives us choices about how we want to live and how we want to see ourselves. With or without drama, we can make the change from that wayward place of loss, vulnerability and indifference to a world which is ours in all its completion.
Learn to make decisions without the drama from that heart-felt place where you want to give your self the truth and the meaningful life that you know you deserve.
Beyond all you see around you shines the inner light of your true potential.
This is the golden light of inner belief and inner potential, the distant memory of how you found your way into the world. Everybody will recognise when you are in tune with your real, perfect, successful and complete self because that is where we all started.
Every one of us has a story of loss. Every one of us has experienced losing something or someone we loved, but equally, we each have the opportunity to reassess our loss and - through the experience of sadness and isolation - to go to that place within ourselves where we are not alone. Out of the apparent tragedy or loss, we begin the nurturing and growth of the true self, successful in essence, aware and still caring but not bogged down in the symphony of life’s losses.
It is perfectly alright to feel sad or hurt sometimes. The real hurt happens when we fail to see the opportunity to learn contained in the experience that causes those feelings of loss.
Just like Kate, the greatness of who you are is a given, but often forgotten, Remind yourself that it is important that you remember to remember that you are already complete and totally fine. Now the challenge is more how you will express your completion than how you will achieve it at a cost to your self or others in your world.
Real freedom is having the awareness that perfection lies within.

Author's Bio: 

Geoff Canavan - creator of The Solved Ststem - is an Entrepreneur, Author, Business Owner, Leader and Radio Show Host.
Geoff has many years’ experience in business in Ireland, Europe and the USA. He has worked with global
organizations and entrepreneurs and has a wealth of practical knowledge.
Geoff has developed a deep understanding of the nature of success and firmly believes that, regardless of circumstances, education, social status, history or any other outside influence, success is an inside job, inherent in, available to and attainable by everybody.
Geoff believes that each and every one of us is a greater and infinitely more positive force than any circumstances we can encounter.