By setting clear intentions and then striving to make choices and take actions that are in integrity with the future we’re standing for, we access unprecedented power to evolve beyond painful patterns, and realize our higher potentials in life and in love.

Yet what I’ve seen countless times over the years is that it’s nearly impossible to create radical lasting change by ourselves, in isolation. We need a relational field in which to grow our capacity to love and be loved. Love doesn’t flourish by writing about it in our journals, and healing doesn’t happen just by reading a book. It happens in the

Ask yourself: “In what ways am I failing to love, nurture, and commit to myself?”

I become so disheartened sometimes listening to people telling me why they don’t need anyone to be happy in life. As though needing others was somehow a crutch. The truth is, we human beings are a pretty needy bunch.

In order to attract an extraordinary love, and sustain relationships that are characterized by authenticity, kindness, and respect, then we must outgrow our tendencies to unconsciously duplicate the relational traumas of our past, and replay over and over again our deepest disappointments in love.

These types of relationships—often with people who are not easily gotten rid of like a sibling, parent, or boss—suck the life force right out of us, draining much of our creativity and power, and reducing us to the least of who we are.

It means discovering how to be completely responsible for your own feelings and needs by understanding the lens through which you are interpreting, then responding to whatever’s happening between yourself and others.

we’ll want to stretch ourselves to consider having all that we desire—love, purpose, creativity, self-expression, career success, belonging, health, abundance, intimacy, and autonomy.

In his book Search for the Real Self, psychotherapist James Masterson