Really Being Alive

Recently I was invited to a celebration and professional recognition on the 25th anniversary of a friend's work in a specific sector of the hospitality industry. The fact that John (not his real name) was being honored thrilled me.

It also caused me to reflect on my own life in those past 25 years. John and I had coincided for a few years in the same profession. In some fashion I had been instrumental in moving him forward but the harvest he was now reaping from that move forward was entirely attributable to his own hard work. Shortly after my small influence on his life I not only left the profession, but also left the country.

And over the course of the next quarter of a century I did many things, faced many challenges, took many risks, had many successes and failures, and of course, I learned a lot. About life. About myself. About what was important to me. About what I was willing to do without and what I was not willing to do without. I refer to the inner life, of course.

And I realized that having taken the risk to leave what was a very prestigious position with excellent future prospects, and the guaranteed pension that would allow me to continue to live well, I had moved myself to another level - for me - of satisfaction and growth. But of course, as said, there was risk. And it was a risk that meant losing a measure of security in my life - at least for a time - and not knowing where I would end up. Very often - I have found in my life - it is in the voluntary (and sometimes even in the involuntary) giving up of security that I have reaped the most.

What did I stand to gain, apart from everything I have already mentioned? Really being alive. Really living my passion. Really following through on what had to that point only been mere inklings of where I wanted to go. What a prize!

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Also visit my book website: www.gabriellakortsch.com where you may download excerpts or read quotations from any of my books. My new book Emotional Unavailability & Neediness: Two Sides of the Same Coin is now out globally on Amazon in print & Kindle. You can also obtain it (or any of my other books) via Barnes & Noble.

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch

Note: If you are wondering why this blog is now only appearing on alternate days (excluding Sat/Sun), it is because I also post on my other blog on the others days. That other blog is Rewiring the Soul so named for my first book. Click here to visit the blog and/or to sign up for the feed.

Find more free articles from my monthly newsletters as well as more information about my work at Advanced Personal Therapy

Patience As Your Daily Practice

Some years ago I decided I needed to eliminate complaints from my life. Obviously it was a process to do so and it didn't happen overnight. I found great pride and eventually even joy in this process and realized that part of that pride and joy had to do with the fact that I was "growing" myself, and that at least in this regard, my growing was fully impulsed by myself and my willingness to choose to regard and accept daily situations as they arose as opportunities to practice not complaining.

Since then I have elected to also work on other aspects of myself that I felt needed improving: criticizing, judging, negative thinking, gossiping, needing to be right, and being impatient, to mention only those that pop into my head as I write this.

You probably already guess what I'm going to state next: this work on myself has not only allowed me to feel increased pride and joy in myself, but it has also shown me how we are all a work in progress. As soon as I felt that one of those heavy and very unattractive bags I had been carrying around with me was getting lighter, I found another bag that I could also work on lightening by beginning to discard the black coals that were inside it.

And clearly something else was going on. It's not that I was ridding the sacks entirely of their load, but enough that it became very easy for me to recognize the moment I took one of them up again. This happened because as long as I did not have that particular sack on my shoulders - for example the criticizing one -  I felt lighter. But if at a given moment I began to criticize, I felt the heaviness. That means that I can quickly - and quite easily - choose to not continue with that particular load and let go of it - I.e., not criticize. But that only happens because I've been consciously working on lightening the load of all those sacks, otherwise I wouldn't have had the sufficient ability to be aware enough to notice the sudden increase in weight when I began criticizing again.

This implies that as you (or I) continue to work on those different aspects of yourself, it's not that you will rid yourself of it all - you may even note that some elements continue popping up over many years - but you will improve those bits enough that you become aware almost immediately when they do pop up. This gives you enormous and ever-increasing freedom to see how much you can be in charge of your inner life.

And thus you make of this - ridding yourself of complaining, or criticizing, or being impatient - a daily practice.

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Also visit my book website: www.gabriellakortsch.com where you may download excerpts or read quotations from any of my books. My new book Emotional Unavailability & Neediness: Two Sides of the Same Coin is now out globally on Amazon in print & Kindle. You can also obtain it (or any of my other books) via Barnes & Noble.

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch

Note: If you are wondering why this blog is now only appearing on alternate days (excluding Sat/Sun), it is because I also post on my other blog on the others days. That other blog is Rewiring the Soul so named for my first book. Click here to visit the blog and/or to sign up for the feed.

Find more free articles from my monthly newsletters as well as more information about my work at Advanced Personal Therapy

Why Do You Think It's Love?

It's so easy to mistake our own needs for love when we find someone who somehow fits nicely into the gap those needs have created in us.

If you're not good at loving yourself, and someone comes along who appears to love you, you will generally (gladly and happily) jump to the nearly foregone conclusion that this is the real thing - this is love in capital letters, in other words, it means that you are in love. If you're hesitant in public situations and someone comes along who appears to be strong in those situations, and furthermore appears to loves you, again, you will generally (gladly and happily) jump to the nearly foregone conclusion that this is the real thing - this is love in capital letters, in other words, it means that you are in love.

If your mother or father was slightly cool or rejecting or simply not good at expressing his/her emotions towards you, and if you missed out on being 'loved' in that more overtly affectionate and warm way you saw other children getting hugs and kisses, then if someone comes along who reminds a part of you (subliminally) of one of them in that slightly cool way, but who is also very attractive in many other ways, and who furthermore appears to be interested in you, then you will generally (gladly and happily) jump to the nearly foregone conclusion that this is the real thing - this is love in capital letters, in other words, it means that you are in love.

This is merely a small selection of the many scenarios that can occur when you fall in love, and particularly when you either repeat patterns (via projections) that originated in earlier parts of your life, or when you go looking for that which you have not yet fulfilled in yourself in the other - in the potential partner.

In all of these cases you assume that your feelings indicate that you are in love - and in some ways, indeed you are! But much of it has to do with having fallen in love with yourself (or with the potential of yourself) through the eyes of the other - because you are not yet capable of seeing yourself in that loving way without the other's reflection to show you to yourself, and so this means that rather than truly loving the other, you are, as said, actually loving yourself in that reflected way, and that may often lead to heartache and pain. When the other leaves you or is no longer in your life for any number of reasons, you will no longer have the mirror and hence will find yourself bereft in ways that can cause great emotional pain, and even physical nausea, and one of the most important reasons is that you are no longer able to love yourself in that way that you could while the other person's love for you allowed you to see yourself in ways you are not capable of on your own ... until you learn how to love yourself.

This is an extensive topic and certainly not one that can be covered in a brief post, but one thing is clear: as long as you are not aware of yourself and of your own unfulfilled needs, and as long as you go about your life looking for what is missing in yourself in the other, you will find it difficult to find lasting relationships filled with harmony and love.

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Also visit my book website: www.gabriellakortsch.com where you may download excerpts or read quotations from any of my books. My new book Emotional Unavailability & Neediness: Two Sides of the Same Coin is now out globally on Amazon in print & Kindle. You can also obtain it (or any of my other books) via Barnes & Noble.

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch

Note: If you are wondering why this blog is now only appearing on alternate days (excluding Sat/Sun), it is because I also post on my other blog on the others days. That other blog is Rewiring the Soul so named for my first book. Click here to visit the blog and/or to sign up for the feed.

Find more free articles from my monthly newsletters as well as more information about my work at Advanced Personal Therapy