Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.
Eckhart Tolle

In Scott Peck’s book ‘A Road Less Traveled’ he states that we as people are innately lazy. And it’s this laziness that may explain why we want and at times expect others to fulfil our deepest needs and desires. We want our spouse to give us the love we seek so that we can feel loveable. We want our children to give us the appreciation we seek so that we can feel appreciated. We want our friends to give us the acceptance we seek so that we can feel accepted. But why then, when we finally get these gifts from others is the feeling so short lived?

Why is something still missing? Well, from my understanding, we can only accept from others that which we first believe to be true of ourselves and if we are lacking that internal belief in the first place it is because we haven’t done the work necessary to have obtained it, whether it is love, appreciation, acceptance or whatever. Yes the truth is – we haven’t done the work – YET!

So how do we go about actually obtaining the needs we so deeply desire? Well first off we need to take action; if we want to feel love we must be willing to give love away – unconditionally without any expectation of getting anything back. It must be a gift! Now I know this may be hard to comprehend to start, because far too often we have been trained to blame others for our predicaments and feelings, but if you take a moment and look back over your life you will find that the times when you felt the most love was when you were giving love away to someone else, the times when you felt the most appreciated was when you were appreciating someone else and the times when you were feeling most accepted was when you were accepting others.

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
Lao Tzu

So the next time you are feeling really good stop and take a moment to see what it is that you are giving away and once you accept this little skill as the truth – you will find that you will have more control over your life and with that control come self respect and with self respect come self love – so it’s all good.