“...looks like we always end up in a rut/trying to make it real/but compared to what?”- Roberta Flack
As a coach, I’m pretty hands-on. Clients come to me for help with their professional aspirations, but quite a few of those coaching conversations eventually, through success and goals achieved, and tequila, morph into much more intimate discussions about life, sex, marriage, more sex, lack of sex, sex toys and where to purchase them, cookies... and sometimes even love.
Anne Frank
”We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.” -Anne Frank
If you think about it, there’s a great many parallels between searching for a job and searching for love. To get an interesting, rewarding job, you must begin from a position of confidence; you have to believe that you could do the job. You have to believe that the right firm would hire you, that you bring value, experience and expertise to the company. If you don’t believe in yourself, forget it, you’ll sabotage yourself before you even begin... assuming you even begin. In the same way, falling in love and forging a lasting, loving relationship, requires you to believe that you are worthy of love, that you’re lovable. Your ideal career, like your ideal love, is built on hard work, sacrifice and courage. If your crush ― whether it’s that delicious redhead on Tinder, or the prestigious McKinsey & Company ― doesn’t even know you exist, it’s difficult for something real to develop.
You have to believe in yourself. And your crush, the object of your eye, must also believe in their worth. Because all the courage in the world won’t save you from a battered heart if your crush’s silicone soul is busy with her carefully groomed insecurities and self-loathing. If you’re working up the guts to declare your feelings, but all your date can do is brood about that time Missy Markowitz didn’t invite her to her 8th grade party, and how it’s all been downhill since them... save the wedding invitations, buddy. Your feelings were real, but she probably didn’t even really process you. And if she does, it’s probably just to wonder why you’d even be interested in her. Self-loathing is a commitment. These are the people who say, “I thought God forgot about me,” and you wonder, “What about all the men who tried to love you? No regrets, eh? Better luck next time.”
People in plenty of professions despise themselves... and if they hate themselves, how could they possibly love you? How could they allow you to care for them? How could they do anything but break your heart? If you go for a job interview, and employees are bad mouthing the boss... or if you go on a date, and he’s dismissive of his job, or himself...spoiler alert. Some people think, “Well, if I was better at {fill in the blank}, I’d make him (her) love me...” Don’t get it twisted, it’s not about you. There’s no room for you in the wilderness of their psyche.
Anais Nin
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” -Anais Nin
Obviously, I’m a romantic. I’m romantic enough to believe that we deserve love, from ourselves and others. I’m romantic enough to believe that we can create the lives we desire if we’re brave enough. What’s the alternative? There’s not enough wine and Netflix in the known universe.
James Baldwin
"People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply: by the lives they lead." - James Baldwin
Whatever job it is you want, whatever love it is you want, I hope you have the courage to forgive yourself your imperfections humanity, to believe in yourself, and to fight for what you desire. I’m a romantic like that.
