Only You can Save Yourself: A Letter from A Friend.
“A book can teach you, a conversation can assure you, a poem can seduce you, a genius can inspire you but only you can save yourself.” ~ Anthony Anaxagorou
Dear Friend,
I hope you will accept me, for this moment, as a friend and not as an expert. I’m no expert.
No one is an expert on you. Except you.
I’m here as your friend. I’m here as someone who knows something about you, something beautiful, something that you might not remember that you know. I’m here to remind you of who you are.
I know who you are because, several years ago, I began to feverishly discover myself, discarding that which did not belong to me and keeping that which did. I dug deeper than I thought I could. I found my pain and my dreams.
Quite accidentally, I found the pain of the world and I found the silent dream within each heart.
I learned about myself, and that is how I learned about you. I learned to love myself, and that is why I love you.
I don’t know what makes you unique, but I know what you’re made of. I am your friend, not your expert.
And as your friend, there’s something I have to tell you.
I hope you listen, because this is from the heart.
Please listen to yourself. Please don’t ignore that call from within while you’re too busy listening to some other authority or guru.
You will not be happy until you learn to love and trust yourself. Everything else, until then, will just go down the void of a love-shaped hole.
You wake up to yourself each morning and you go to bed with yourself each night. You may grasp for approval from others, and yet it is your own approval that you are grasping for, day after day. Your relationship with yourself decides the quality of your life.
If you are grasping for book after book, expert after expert, quick fix after quick fix, always feeling empty, this is why. You are walking a path, but it is not your own. You are holding out for a hero, never knowing that your hero is you.
You don’t do this by accident. Disempowerment fuels the economy. Shame sells products. Self-loathing keeps the cycle of supply and demand rolling along.
The more you hate yourself, the more you’ll buy.
The less you trust yourself, the more you’ll trust those who sell your dreams back to you.
As your friend, I’m here to tell you that you are perfect, just the way you are. You have all the answers within you and, at most, you need someone to guide you with questions that will help you discover those answers. You don’t need anyone to save you, except yourself.
And I think, intuitively, you know this. You’ve always known. And perhaps what keeps you seeking for answers, for approval, for affirmation, outside of yourself is fear — the fear of looking at yourself, naked and authentic, and seeing ugliness.
I promise you, nothing real is ever ugly.
If you’ll only have the courage to look yourself in the eyes, and not at those parts of your face you obsess about. Look into your eyes and you’ll see. You’ll see how amazing you are.
I know you, because I know myself.
And you’re not ugly. You’re not pathetic. You’re not weak. You’re not broken. You’re not doomed. You’re not insignificant. You’re not any of those things you’ve learned to think about yourself.
You are so much more beautiful than you’ve ever seen. You’re more powerful than you can imagine. You’re more magical than you’ve dared to explore.
I promise.
You’re not some item to be bought and sold that can be altered to perfection so that people will want to buy you. You’re not some consumer walking the aisles, who can buy the perfect person, the perfect personality, the perfect body.
You can’t become perfect because you already are.
Everything you’ve ever wanted is already within you, awaiting your acceptance. The giant, love-sized hole within you will not accept anything else. No amount of money, Botox, sex, or donuts will ever be enough.
I promise.
Take a leap, follow your heart, and dare to be who you already are, not what someone else thinks you should be. Be your own hero and rescue yourself from the darkness of the tower to which you hold the keys — and you’ve always held the keys.
You are your own hero.
And only you can save yourself.
*****
Vironika Tugaleva is a people-lover, inspirational speaker, reformed cynic, and bestselling author of The Love Mindset. She helps people suffering from mental and emotional distress heal and love themselves. She is a new breed of people-helper who won’t call herself an expert or a guru. She’ll help you become the expert on yourself. You’re invited to read more about Vironika and get a free sneak preview of The Love Mindset.