By: Lisa M. Hayes – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
This is an inescapable truth. You get out of life, all of it, exactly what you are willing to settle for. No more, no less. Which is why understanding your settling point is so important. It’s not hard to figure out what it is because when you look around your life, you will see evidence of it in every area.
When it comes to relationships it’s particularly easy to spot, because other people reflect it for you. Your settling point will determine how rich and fulfilling your relationships are. They will determine how other people treat you. They will determine how much joy you experience or abuse you endure.
This might be really obvious when a situation is extreme. For example, in the case of physical abuse, it’s easy to see that the settling point for the victim is very low. However, it’s less obvious in less extreme cases.
For the woman who really wants a long-term commitment, but is in a relationship where that isn’t coming, that’s a settling point.
In the relationship where someone is constantly being belittled or made to feel small, that’s a settling point.
In a relationship that’s full of yelling and rage, that’s a settling point.
In the relationship that is alright, but just not fulfilling, that too is a settling point.
The challenge, as almost everyone knows, is a settling point, is hard to reset. But why? On one side of the coin, we know better, we want better. On the other side, we continue to settle for less than what we know we want.
Two words – self-love. You get exactly what you think you deserve. I know how that sounds – a little harsh. However, it’s the truth. I’ve been there. Talking a mean game about what I think my worth is. Saying I deserve great things and wondering why they aren’t showing up. I was doing a vision board, chanting, saying a mantra one thousand times, keeping a gratitude journal, and still getting less out of love than I wanted, by a long shot.
Why? Because I didn’t love myself enough to demand more, out of myself or other people. Not only was I having a hard time figuring out why I wasn’t getting the love I wanted, but people around me were equally dumbfounded.
I didn’t wear my lack of self-love on my sleeve. From the outside looking in, I appeared to be confident and self-assured. On the exterior, I seemed to have everything going for me. On the interior, not so much. It’s easy to see in hindsight why I was settling for crap in my relationships. I didn’t love myself enough to expect or demand better.
Self-love is the heart of almost all relationship work. It’s often not what people are expecting when they come to the table. Usually, they are looking for a quick fix and frankly looking for a quick way to change the other person. Sometimes we can get those quick fixes, but without self-love, nothing that changes is sustainable, and in the end, with the same person or another, things eventually return to the settling point.
People will often complain they are dating the same person over and over again in different people. I dated men who were very different but would end up in the same place, my settling point. I was always the common denominator. I look back on that now and feel a little said, because I took some really great guys, down to my settling point.
Some people think self-love is a concept that is nebulous. In my own life and in my practice I’ve come to see it as an exact science. When solid self-love is on board, everything, and I mean everything else, sorts itself out.
More by Lisa:
Lisa Hayes, The Love Whisperer, is an LOA Relationship Coach. She helps clients leverage Law of Attraction to get the relationships they dream about and build the lives they want. Lisa is the author of the newly released hit book, Score Your Soulmate and How to Escape from Relationship Hell and The Passion Plan.
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