How to be Worthy of Love

“Love is happiness”, a lonely young woman once told me. She said, “Nobody loves me, and I will never be happy until I am loved”.

Do you feel unloved? Do you feel unworthy of being loved?  Have you been abandoned or rejected? Did one or both of your parents leave you? Are you an orphan? A foster child? Or maybe a loner?

Do you feel like you do not qualify to be loved?

I felt this way. I was the middle child in our family. I compared myself to my older brother, the doctor. I went to school to study writing, and felt like a loser. I felt unworthy of love.

When you feel unworthy of love, you reject the love that comes your way. Your emotional sense is ‘I am unworthy of being loved, therefore if you tell me you love me, you are lying’. This becomes a ‘limiting belief’—it blocks out love, denies love to its’ face, says ‘No No No, don’t confuse me with the facts, I’ve already made up my mind: I am unworthy of love.’

I wanted to be loved, but I didn’t feel worthy. So I set some goals, thinking that when I achieved those goals, then I would be worthy of being loved, then I would be lovable, —and then I would be happy.

And so then guess what:

The stakes for achieving my goals were enormously high—‘succeed or be unloved’. The pressure was suffocating. I was miserable during the journey—because I would not be worthy of love and happiness until i achieved the goal.

My rules for success were irrational. I would achieve a goal but then, still feeling unloved, I modified the rules, set a new goal, and slogged on.

“The joy is in the journey, not the Inn.” -Cervantes

For most of my adult life, I believed my Dad, who passed away years ago, had never really loved me. I felt he just sort of didn’t really care for me.

Then I found a journal I’d written when I was 19—and here’s what I wrote:

One day, at home, my Dad asked me to hit some tennis balls with him—I said no. So off he went on his own. Later that same day, he asked me to take a walk with him—I said no.

When he left, my Mom confronted me [I’m reading this in my own journal, with no memory of this ever occurring]—my mom confronted me and demanded, “What is wrong with you?!? Your father is so sad. He is depressed, he feels rejected—he keeps trying to reach out to you, and you keep rejecting him. This is affecting his work. What is wrong with you?”

Written in my journal was my defense:  sure, he could love my older brother, the Doctor, but not me, the lowly unpublished writer. To my face, my Mom flat out declared that she & Dad LOVED me very, very much, that their love for me had nothing to do with my worldly success, that they loved me just as I was, just for who I am—me—

“And besides,” she said, “I’ve thought you should be a writer since you were in third grade.”

So there was my mom assuring me they loved me. You know what I did as a 19 year old with that information? Wrote it down, forgot about it; and lived several decades feeling unloved. For some reason, my emotional center would not receive that love, receive that truth. I denied the truth to its face and limped off into the lonely sunset.

I found that journal entry just a few months ago, read it and wept. How could I not have received his love? How is it I did the rejecting, then called myself rejected??

Somehow I missed the foundational truth: There is value in each of us, just as we are. We are worthy of love right now—not for ‘what we do’ but for Who we Are. We are objects worthy of Love.

What you do is not who you are. Your worth as an individual is INTRINSIC—indelible, integral, built in. It’s YOU.

You are one-of-a-kind, absolutely unique individual. There is literally only ONE of you (see fingerprints for details). God loves his creation, and He loves you very, very much. You may not comprehend that yet. But you can grow to understand it, yes.

The Greatest Thing in the world is Love. And listen: there are people who LOVE you. They may not know how to express their love—or you may not know how to receive it– but believe me, you are loved.

You are loved, you are worthy of love. And you are called to love.

If you tried to convince me that no one loved you:
–I would say I don’t believe you.
–I would point to God and say HE loves you, and you need to know that and receive His love;
–And if you said you still did not believe me, I would say: Then Go Love others.

Be a lover (spiritually, not sexually). Be a contributor.

Why would I say Go Love others? Tony Robbins says we have six needs [at least!], and the top three are: Love & Connection, Growth, and Contribution.  By loving others you will fulfill those needs in yourself.

Matthew Barnett says, “Find a need an fill it. Find a hurt and heal it.”

Don’t know how to do that? That’s ok—you’ll figure it out. Be a Giver. Find a cause! Help people! Love them! Give to others the love you wish you were given. By doing so, you will be deeply fulfilled. And by the way—you’ll discover that you, too, are deeply loved.

Which will make you very, very happy.