I am currently very happily experiencing my second marriage to Mr-Oh-So-Right-For-Me, but there was a time post-divorce when I was refusing to observe the helping hand Ms Universe was giving me when she was figuratively pointing her big Coles ‘down down, prices are down’ finger from the sky onto the men I was choosing to date. She was actually yelling ‘no, no, they are so wrong!’
I wasn’t listening due to the fact that my old, not-so-helpful beliefs about myself, life and others still had pole position in the forefront of my mind, consciously and otherwise.
Just because I had moved on from the challenging experience of my first marriage, did not mean that I didn’t still carry the burden of unhelpful beliefs like ‘there must be something wrong with me’ and ‘I better date anyone who takes an interest’ and not to forget this pearler ‘you should date men who are challenged in the looks department because then they may not think you are as physically unappealing as you are’
There wasn’t, and still isn’t to my knowledge (unless Apple have invented it), an App to release unwanted beliefs and in turn replace them with more helpful and positive ones. That always has been, and still remains to this day, an inside job commencing with intent and choice.
At that time, self-esteem was lacking in my life. I aimed to convince myself that now, because I was divorced, I had automatically gained entry into the Strong & Savvy Sisterhood, but my choices and actions reflected otherwise. I’m sure my choices had outsiders looking in and seeing several neon signs flashing above my head blinking ‘desperate’, ‘needy’, ‘unsure’, ‘scared’ and ‘worthless’.
I laugh at myself to this day about the level of ignorance I carried in relation to paying attention to what Ms Universe was trying to tell me. I really do see now the importance of reading between the lines of life and understanding that ‘coincidences’ are not coincidences, but messages to be deciphered and paid attention to.
I’m sure being the loving energy she is, Ms Universe’s aim was to point me in the right direction, a path where I loved self, respected self and carried self-worth. But I’m also entirely sure I could have been one of her biggest headaches at the time with my lack of choice to focus on what was there in front of me and my resistance at reading between the lines of life, and it all had to do with the incompatible men I dated, and well, their surnames.
I’m not going to name names, but let’s just say one guy I dated had a surname that means ‘to throw up’ and another had a surname that is a synonym for ‘lunatic’.
Now, my aim is to not disparage these gentlemen. The simple fact is they were totally inappropriatefor me - and I’m sure I was totally inappropriate for them). It highlighted that I was following the same belief system from when I was married to my ex-husband. I’m sure these men have the capacity to be suitable partners for someone else.
This story is not about them – it is about my failure to see how my choices created undesired connections and how I chose not to listen … for a while anyway.
There did, however, come a point where my higher self was so totally over my human self and these repeated, unwanted patterns that she hijacked my belief system and forced me to wake up to myself. I mustered up the courage to do something for the very first time, something that had taken me 40 years to be brave enough to do. I instigated the end of a relationship.
A friend said to me afterwards in a much appreciated and stern manner: ‘You better get the key learning from the experiences of these blokes, Bobbi, or you’re going to end up with another relationship that is just the same.’
So I made that my purpose until I 'got it'. I was going to analyse, investigate and uncover why I was attracting these men into my life. It took about three weeks of being willing to let awareness in, and it all focused on one thing: I had been the deliberate creator of the relationships I had drawn to me. They had all reflected a very unsupportive belief system.
So I made the choice to change to a belief system that supported, nurtured and loved me. That’s all it took initially - choice.
Once I had made the choice to believe better, I then held better thoughts. In turn those better thoughts fuelled more self-loving emotions. Those more positive emotions instigated actions that were kinder and more respectful to self.
And you know what happened? Five months later I met Frank.
The beginning.