You Are Not Broken! From A Place Of Fear To A Place Of Love

Self-love teacher Melissa Ambrosini shares a personal story and important advice for women when they are feeling broken.

Feeling Broken And In Need Of Fixing

My journey inward began in 2010, when I hit rock bottom, ended up in hospital, and had my health taken away from me (you can read more about my path to wellness in my book Mastering Your Mean Girl). All areas of my life felt completely crazy and out of control, and as a result, a tiny seed was planted in my mind which my inner Mean Girl watered daily… and that seed was, ‘I am broken and I need fixing’.

That tiny seed grew like a weed, spreading throughout my mind — ‘I am broken and I need fixing’. It was a stinky mantra, but it was on high rotation on my mental mixtape… so naturally, I came to fully believe it.

From there, I spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to fix, change and improve myself. I saw healers, coaches, experts, specialists, shamans, gurus, naturopaths, nutritionists, integrative doctors and more, all with the underlying belief that I was somehow defective. However, I did have a glimmer of hope, but that hope was that they may be able to fix me.

Reflecting back on this time in my life, I can see two bright red warning signs here…

Warning Sign One

I was putting all my power outside of myself. My Mean Girl told me that those people held the key to my health, happiness and freedom; that they had the answers for me. Which is the biggest, fattest lie of the ego…

The truth is, YOU hold the key to your freedom! YOU have all the answers within.

But way too often, our Mean Girl is so loud (not to mention obnoxious) that we can’t hear our heart. So we spend years living a life where fear (aka your Mean Girl) is in the driver’s seat. Or we don’t stop for one second to just sit and be still and allow whatever it is to pop up. We do-do-do, rush from one thing to the next, take pride in our busy-ness, and fill every second of white space with social media, junk food, TV and relationships.

Read more: Explore Fleur Chambers’, mindfulness and meditation teacher, mindfulness for moms guidance to shift from doing to being.

But if we simply committed to sitting in stillness every single day with ourselves — if we allowed ourselves to just be — we’d be able to hear the steady, thrumming wisdom of our inner self, our intuition, and our heart.

All it takes is two minutes of stillness a day to connect inward with yourself.

Do you want to invest more than two minutes into your daily routine of nurturing and caring for yourself? Listen to and practice with these guided meditations by Melissa Ambrosini:

If you regularly have experiences of feeling broken, these free self-compassion meditation practices can help healing and improve self confidence.

Warning Sign Two

The second bright red warning sign was the fact that everything I was doing for my health was coming from a place of fear. You see, in every situation, in every circumstance, we only have one of two choices… love or fear! And whether you are aware of it or not, you are constantly choosing love or fear, all day every day.

Don’t believe me? Tell me, did you workout this morning because you LOVE the way it makes you feel, or because you ate too much chocolate cake on the weekend and you’re feeling super guilty? Are you in a job that you LOVE, or are you doing something you loathe because you are too scared to make the leap and launch your dream business? Are you surrounding yourself with people that you LOVE and who inspire you to be the best version of yourself, or are you still hanging out with Negative Nancy because you feel bad and guilty and don’t want to ‘rock the boat’?

Read more: Discover six meaningful approaches of how to practice self-love.

How To Act From A Place Of Love

Whether you are aware of it or not, you are always coming from a place of love or fear. These days, I’m pretty good about anchoring all my actions in love.

So, for example, I went to the gym this morning because I LOVE the way it makes me feel. I ate a nourishing bowl of veggies last night because I LOVE the taste and because I LOVE and honour my beautiful temple. I surround myself with people I LOVE and who inspire me. I washed the dishes after lunch from a place of LOVE and gratitude. (The fact that I even have dishes in the first place, and delicious organic food to go on them? So. Much. Love and gratitude.)

I am not ‘perfect’ though (what ever perfect is) — I still slip up sometimes! For instance, Sunday is my cleaning day, and last week — as I was vacuuming, mopping, dusting and cleaning the toilet — I had a moment of feeling cranky. (Hello, Mean Girl!) But the moment I became aware of that crankiness, I deliberately re-framed my attitude. I ended up scrubbing away with the biggest damn smile on my face, feeling so grateful that a) I had a home to clean, b) I could afford non-toxic, organic cleaning products, and c) I was cleaning a home for two people I adore and LOVE deeply.

I haven’t always been so quick to spot the fear and replace it with love. I can see now, with the benefit of hindsight, that every healer, coach, expert, specialist, shaman and guru I saw back in my early days, was all coming from a place of fear. I was so scared that I was never going to heal, or experience vibrant health again, that every appointment I rocked up to was purely from fear. I now take a different approach — not just to my health, but all areas of my life: if I can’t do something from a place of love, I don’t do it at all. Simple! Letting go of the fear and getting to that place of love takes some Mean Girl mastering, but if you have read my book you will be a pro at that by now.

Read more: Psychotherapist, author and Insight Timer teacher Andrea Wachter shares guidance and practical tips from her own healing journey to overcome depression.

A Mantra To Stop Feeling Broken

So, my darling, I want to remind you that NO, you are not broken and YES, you can do everything from a place of love. In fact, the world needs your love! It’s time to stop putting the power outside of yourself and remind yourself that you are whole and perfect, just as you are. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Discover free guided love meditation practices for giving and receiving love to us and others.

To make the transition from fear to love easier, I want to share a new mantra that you can use to replace any crappy ones you’ve got stuck in your head. I suggest writing it on a Post-it note and sticking it somewhere where you’ll see it every day, like your bathroom mirror, your computer screen, or your forehead… just kidding about that last one! Here it is…

I am not broken. I hold the key to my freedom. I do all things from a place of love.

This is the first step to mastering your Mean Girl and upgrading your belief patterns. And guess what… nothing changes if nothing changes, so if you want different beliefs, you have to do something different.

You got this! All it takes is a commitment to yourself, which you can make right now. Are you ready, beautiful?

Explore hundreds of free affirmation meditation practices to increase positive thinking and self-empowerment — especially when feeling broken. The aim is for thoughts to consume our awareness to manifests goals or changes in behavior.

Read more: By telling the powerful journey of a client, psychotherapist and meditation teacher Dorothy Ratusny emphasizes the damaging effects of lacking self-love in children all through adulthood.