Accepting the Totality of Your Worth

One question that I get asked a lot in Tarot is “How do I find my soulmate?” While I can’t tell you exactly where you’ll meet your significant other or when, there are several things that I believe can help bring you to the point in your life where just the right circumstances are met and you finally meet “the one”. It all has to do with what you believe you deserve.

I didn’t meet “the one” until I was 36, and even then, we didn’t officially get together until I was 37. I had settled, hard, in a new relationship post-divorce, and two years in I was having second thoughts. Through playing music, I met my future husband, but of course wouldn’t have ever been able to fathom being married to this amazing person one day. I had to wrap my head around the concept of me being worthy of everything I wanted, which is actually kind of terrifying at first. I’m sure I’m still learning these concepts, even as I write this, in some form or another. But being on the other side now and in the actual love-of-my-life relationship, and my first ever healthy adult relationship, I can tell you there are certain things I did on my manifestation journey, to get here.  

I believe that we are taught far too much, through tradition, “family values”, relationship norms, gender stereotypes and 300 year old fairy tales that love means sacrifice. That one would cut off their hair and sell it, trade their voice for legs, or drink poison even for love. “For rich and for poor, better and for worse” becomes “stay even when everything is terrible and makes you unhappy”, and it’s hard for many of us to challenge these deeply ingrained beliefs.  While some of these concepts may be romantic or noble sounding in a twisted way, real true love and good relationships don’t actually require much (if any) work, sacrifice, or compromise. We take all of these incredibly old-skool romantic notions, combine that with today’s image heavy focus on beauty and worth, along with our own insecurities and heavily laid expectations we place on ourselves, and (beep boop boop beep, BRAIN COMPUTING LOVE EQUATION IN ROBOT VOICE) boom: we decide that we are only worth X. We only deserve Y. We must settle for Z. 

We do not need to settle for these low-hanging alphabet fruits. We must LOOK UP, and lift our gazes at the totality of all that we are worth. It will never work until we do. 

Equal Energy Exchanges

When I was in self-imposed hippy school in my twenties (“hippy school” meaning me taking a bunch of healing/metaphysical classes, getting into Tarot, Crystals, yadda yadda palo santo), I heard of the term “energy exchange” and it rubbed me the wrong way. Honestly, many hippy things I learned I disliked at the time and had to challenge my consciousness in order to understand why these were good or true concepts. “Equal energy exchange” basically means that you expect to be given back what you put out. That we should be paid and paid well for our services. Or that we shouldn’t do things that would be or feel like an unequal energy exchange. I disliked this concept immediately because, I thought, “but I love doing things for other people just because I love them. Some people need certain things and I am willing to step up and try to give them whatever they need, and I don’t expect anything in return for anything that I do.” I rejected this concept, outright. If we are supposed to be getting into all these ‘hippy’ concepts, and understanding all of this “we are one” bullshit (again, I had a very hard time with some of these concepts back then), how were we supposed to expect something in return? Shouldn’t we just give and give freely? I didn’t agree with this, and I resisted accepting it for many years. But you know what? It’s true! Is it easier to ride a unicycle or a bicycle? When there is equal energy flow and exchange, your life can move and go places, rather than being stuck in a never-ending cycle. Once I started to accept this equal energy exchange idea more, my life became better and better and better. But this is no easy concept for those of us that are givers, bleeders, or care-takers.  

How many of us enjoy doing things for others just out of the goodness of our hearts? (raises hand) How many of us like buying things for people, go overboard on presents, pick up the tab always, or do more than our fair share of something because we are being helpful or picking up the slack for someone else who can’t do their part for some reason? (raises hand again) While this is very kind of us for those who are like this, we honestly do this WAY too much. Myself totally included. How many times have I taken it upon myself to give someone a Christmas just because I don’t want them to not be included or made to feel alone at the holidays? I have really tried to (and still am trying to) make myself understand that I am enough. You are enough. We don’t need to do/buy/be responsible for all this extra shit. We don’t need to spread ourselves so thin that there is none of us left for our own enjoyment. We don’t need to constantly put everyone else first and be last on a list of twenty. These are unequal energy exchanges.

So now think about that unequal energy exchange in the course of a relationship. Have you ever felt like you were in a relationship where you did most of the work? Most of the child raising? Most of the cooking, the cleaning, the help with homework, the party planning, the grocery shopping, the bill paying, etc.? Did it feel shitty? That’s because those are all examples of unequal energy exchanges. 

When we think of that fairytale “we-must-sacrifice-and-give-all-for-love” concept in the light of needing an equal energy exchange in order for love to work, those two things appear to be in conflict, don’t they? We can’t both feel worthy of a good relationship but also treat ourselves poorly by giving too much of ourselves, sacrificing something about ourselves, or putting limits on what level of happiness we should have. We cannot give more and receive less and expect a good relationship to happen or for things to “go” anywhere. We need a bicycle, not a unicycle. 

Conflicting messages to the universe

Talking to the Universe is key to manifesting what you want. The Universe is very old, it runs on a very old program (think DOS if you’re old enough to know what that is), and it’s very literal. It will give you whatever you say you are worth, whether you’re saying it to the Universe directly, or whether you’re saying it to yourself in the back of your mind. The Universe is a total eavesdropper, and it hears all that shit you talk to yourself in the back of your mind. It says “What’s that you say? (Universe cups hand to ear) You aren’t enough and have to do all this extra shit in order to feel worthy? And you also want a boyfriend? Hmmmm, ok, coming right up: One sounds-like-you-want-to-settle-in-an-unequal-energy-exchange-kind-of-relationship special!” And you find yourself in yet another relationship that doesn’t work out. That’s because an uneven energy exchange isn’t ever going to work out! So stop trying to settle for less than what you are worthy of! 

  Sometimes we try, we really really try to tell the Universe “Ok, I am a good person, I deserve good things, I believe a good relationship is possible in my lifetime” and we mean it. We say “I deserve love, damnit!” but deep down, in the back of our minds and our hearts, we are still quietly beating a steady drum that says “….but I am still willing to settle… it is noble to give more of yourself in some way, and I am willing to do that….I would sacrifice anything for true love to come into my life”….. So we are telling the Universe “hey I’m worth X, but I am also willing to settle for Z out of fear of not getting X”. This is a conflicting message to the Universe, and the Universe can’t handle it. It overloads it’s very ancient system. It doesn’t understand what to do with that information. You’re basically saying “I want love but am being guided by fear”, and those two things are the complete opposite of one another. A conflicting message to the Universe isn’t going to manifest what you really want. You have to actually feel that you deserve this, even in the back of your mind. You have to beat that steady drum that says you believe that the perfect person for you is out there and you don’t have to settle for anything less along the way. 

  Accepting the Totality of Your Worth – Look Up!

I could not have imagined that I would get to be with a person like my husband back when I met him. I didn’t feel that I measured up to whatever I had trumped him up to be in my head. When I finally got to know him, it only made things harder for me because it was confirmed: he was as amazing as I had trumped him up to be in my head. How could I not fall in love with this guy? Oh my god, what was I going to do? This was terrifying because I did the worthiness math (p.s. I’m bad at all math), and it did not look good. I crunched the numbers, and I was not worthy of this guy. Fuck! But then something amazing happened. I was wrong! He fell in love with me too, and everything was awesome and still is. In four years we have never had a fight. He has never made me cry, we make each other laugh everyday. Neither one of us feels at all like we have settled in any way, and needs that we didn’t know could be met, have been met. 

For a full year I knew my future husband and I stayed in a bad relationship because I didn’t want to hurt the other person, even though that relationship was literally going nowhere and there was definitely not an equal energy exchange. I couldn’t fathom that I might be worth this guy that I secretly totally had a crush on, and when we finally got together, it was overwhelming almost to be so happy. It was fucking foreign. It can be a shock to the system to receive what you are actually worth. It is mind blowing to finally, seemingly by accident, land in a good relationship. But it’s not by accident really. It’s because you finally accept the totality of your worth and allow yourself to see all of the options the Universe has put in your path.

You have to quit looking too low for your partner. You must lift your gaze to the full extent of what you want and need and nothing less. You have to utilize this “equal energy exchange” concept and accept the totality of your worth, because you will never see all that the Universe might be laying out for you until you do. You cannot give conflicting messages about what you deserve and expect a good relationship to be manifested. Let your heart be the drum that beats out these messages to the universe. Let your pulse be the sound wave and the Universe the sonar that manifests all that you want and deserve in this life. 

If you do the energy math, I’m sure you can look back and see how many times you have given conflicting messages, or how many times you had an unequal energy exchange in a relationship. If I can solve this equation, trust me, you can too. Cuz I am terrible at math, and even I was able to pass Universe Algebra 101. Start making these adjustments and I’m sure it will open doors in your life, and lead you to that time when you meet your other, or allow you to see that maybe you already have.