Appreciation

It hit me like a tonne of bricks…”I don’t appreciate me!”

What is this desire for appreciation and where is it really coming from?

The insight arrived after a day of stewing over an incident where I’d perceived another person to have not been appreciating me. His innocent actions hijacked by my mind. Turning a simple mistake into meaning through the filters of my innocently acquired beliefs and conditioning.

In the moment his actions meant that he didn’t care about me, he didn’t value or appreciate me and he was wrong. He needed to know what he had done to me and to apologise for it; I was angry.

The ‘victim’ and the ‘villain’ story. The ‘them’ and ‘us’. The “I’m right and they’re wrong’ narrative that is so familiar to us all. And it felt *horrible*!

But what was really going on?

An idea of me (ego you might call it) creating separation; projecting past wounds out into the world and then resisting them. Building itself up as someone ‘better’ than the ‘other’.

And suddenly it became clear. I was seeing my own inability to appreciate and value myself, projected out into the apparent behaviour of others. Otherwise called the ‘mirror’ in spiritual teachings.

That realisation stopped me in my tracks and made me laugh.

No amount of apologising, or him telling me he valued me, would mend that acquired ‘wound’ from the past. That can only be satisfied by the unconditional love from which the idea of self emerged.

And so I sit and notice where no value or appreciation shows up and wonder where this journey will take me next.

I know one thing is for sure and that is that life is always providing the perfect scenario to see what is really going on…

Get in touch

If this raises any questions for you or you’d like to explore what’s happening when someone frustrates or angers you, get in touch. Either send me an email or book a complimentary exploratory call.