When You Are Being Your True Self Your Tribe, Your Money, And Your Love Will Just Show Up

When You Are Being Your True Self Your Tribe, Your Money, And Your Love Will Just Show Up

I know that you want to believe if you play the game right — if you make yourself more beautiful, if you exhaust every ounce of your energy, if you force yourself to make relationships work — you’ll end up where you want to be.

I know that it’s easier to think that you have to be better, and be different, and be more whole before the things you want most in your life will show up, but that’s almost never how it happens.

Our soulmates often show up when we give up on them ever coming around, and then get into a relationship in which we actually do the work of making it good, instead of assuming there is one magic person we will meet with whom everything should be instantaneously perfect.

Our tribe usually shows up after a deep period of isolation, once we’ve separated and cleansed ourselves from all the people who were eating up our time and energy and mind space. Our tribe shows up when we are willing to first be alone.

Our money usually shows up when we have stopped trying to earn it at all times, at any cost. Our money shows up when we unearth our flow, when we do the hard work of discovering where our interests and skills and the market intersects, and we find ourselves in a groove, a sort of effortlessness. That is when abundance starts pouring toward us, faster than we ever thought, with more ease than we ever could have imagined.

These are not fairytales. This happens. This happens to people all the time. The things that grow in our lives are not the ones we grip most tightly. They are not the plants we over-water, or the people we have to force ourselves to be.

Abundance doesn’t unfold from us being in a constant state of tension, an untapped well of anger and resentment and doubt. Love doesn’t find us when are so hungry to find a missing piece, we don’t even realize why we’re broken in the first place. Our tribe doesn’t come together when we are so needy for companionship we piece together the wrong people, at the wrong time.

We don’t find joy when we are desperate for joy. We don’t find love when we are desperate for love. We don’t find ease when we are desperate for ease.

When we are holding most tightly to these things, we’re buoying off of fear. We are so completely unconvinced that we could ever have any of these good, decent things in our lives, we force ourselves to take half-assed versions of them. We force ourselves to be who we really aren’t, because we think that is the way that all the good will finally find us.

The truth is that when your life isn’t coming together, yes, something does need to change. But moving farther away from who you really are is not the answer.

Getting into a relationship for the sake of it is not better than being single. Being wealthy isn’t worth it if the way you have to earn it nearly kills you. Keeping up with friends who exhaust and deplete and frustrate you and keep you small and stiff is not better than being wholly, decidedly alone.

And when you realize this, when you start prioritizing yourself over the ways in which you think you need to keep up with your life, you free yourself. You unshackle your chains. You open up the possibility of actually finding love, because you aren’t attached to the wrong person anymore. You open up the possibility of actually finding friends, because you aren’t spending your time with the wrong ones. You open up the possibility of feeling financially secure, because you’re willing to go through the process of trial-and-error and find what makes you feel supported, and fulfilled.

I need you to know that these are not pipe dreams. These are not unreasonable, unrealistic things to want from your life, this is the reality that’s calling to you, and you know this already because you’re uncomfortable.

You know that your life is not working as it is, and being less of yourself is not the answer.

The truth is that you have to be honest and authentic before you can find someone with whom you are actually compatible. You have to be willing to be isolated if you’re going to be able to find the right tribe. And you have to be willing to let every single past version of yourself die so you can be reborn into the person you actually are. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

January Nelson is a writer, editor, and dreamer. She writes about astrology, games, love, relationships, and entertainment. January graduated with an English and Literature degree from Columbia University.