Do you want to live happily ever after?
My guess is that you do.
After seeing it on television and films, reading it in books for all these years,
it only makes sense that you would want to achieve the gold standard of love,
the highest possibility that one could possibly achieve.
Yet have you ever considered that the happily ever after story might actually
be damaging you and hurting your chances to be happy in love?
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You know, the happily ever after myth, that gold standard to which
we're all aspiring to, was only created about 400 years ago,
when the lifespan was less than 40 years of age.
It was created in Venice, Italy, where at the time, most of the people were
born into utter poverty, with no hope of ever escaping.
Half the children were dying before they reached their 16th birthday.
Life conditions were harsh and dire.
People couldn't even break free of their chronic impoverishment
through marriage, because at the time, there was a law on the books
forbidding a noble person from marrying a commoner. Just think of it.
When we look at the happily ever after myth, we always see a commoner
marrying a noble person and coming into great wealth as a result.
So this myth, which was first created as an escapist fantasy to help people survive
at a very difficult time, has now somehow become the covert standard
to which we're holding ourselves and each other accountable to.
But it's important to question our cultural assumptions and myths, because
they might not actually be appropriate for us to be aspiring to.
I mean, are you really expecting to live less than 40 years of age?
Are you anticipating that half of your children, if you plan on having them,
are going to die before the age of 16?
Is your life just about surviving and somehow making it
through just another year? Of course not.
The context of our lives, thankfully, is completely different
from someone who lived 400 years ago.
The truth is, what's actually normal for us is serial monogamy.
Studies show that statistically, most of us will have two to three
significant relationships in our lifetime.
And in just the past 100 years, our lifespan has doubled, and continues
to grow by leaps and bounds, as have our expectations
of what we want from a romantic union.
We want so much more than our grandparents would ever dare have expected.
We want that person to be your best friend, our soulmate, our lover for life,
which, with the invention of viagra and hormone therapies
is now actually possible.
So given that more people are going to divorce this year than buy a new car or
eat grapefruit for breakfast, I think it's time that we begin to rethink
the goals of love to which we are aspiring and to stop feeling like such a failure
when our relationships end before someone dies.
Because many of us will indeed experience the pain of a breakup.
I mean, if we're going to have two to three significant relationships
in our lifetime, that implies one or two big breakups as well.
And inside of this happily ever after myth, we've never actually learned
how to transition out of our relationships well.
And most of us will slip into a sense of shame and despair
at the end of a relationship, as though we have completely failed.
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So if you are up for it, I want to take you through a little values
assessment awareness exercise, just to give you a chance to see
for yourself which standards you're actually holding yourself
and others accountable to.
So just close your eyes for a moment and take a deep breath, and consider a breakup
you've had, maybe you're in the midst of one right now, maybe you're still
suffering with some unresolved grief from a past breakup, or anticipating a possible
breakup in the future, just noticing the judgments that you have
towards yourself or the other person as it relates to how you think this
was supposed to go, as opposed to how it actually did go.
See if you can identify the standards to which you've been
holding yourself and that other person accountable to.
Another way of saying this, "What standards have you
or that other person failed to live up to?"
Notice also what you're afraid that other people might judge you for.
Who are you imagining might judge you and for what,
even if they're not expressing it overtly?
Where does this land in your body, and then how do you respond?
Do you then try to hide? Are you not telling the whole story?
Are you having imaginary conversations where you're defending yourself
or are you beating yourself up?
Again, just asking yourself, "What standards am I failing to live up to?"
Notice the standards that you're holding yourself accountable to,
which might not even be yours.
Asking yourself, "Do I even actually agree with these standards?
Are they values that I share? Where did I even get them?
Are they congruent with what I'm here to create in my life
and in integrity with what I really believe?"
So you want to start to sort out the values that are true to who you are
and what you came here to create from those that you just inherited
from others, and which you're not really aligned with at the deepest level.
If you find that you're holding yourself accountable to standards
that you're not actually committed to, I invite you to just
start to let those go.
And when you're ready, you can open your eyes.
You might want to take out a journal and do some writing about this.
But here's the thing.
If you are living someone else's unexamined idea of love,
then you're in danger of setting yourself up to settle for less
or compromise your true life path.
The values we hold are influencing our choices and our actions every day.
And we want to make sure that the values that you are aspiring to are the ones that
are going to empower you to fully actualize the potentials that you hold
for happiness, health, fulfillment, and love on all levels.
Do you want to know more? Join me in my free Mindvalley masterclass.
And I look forward to seeing you there.
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