Anchoring

Rather than trying to anchor ourselves to someone outside of ourselves – and ultimately risk floating away due to our inherent inability to control the steadiness of another person – we could begin to learn how to anchor to ourselves. But before we can rest in the safety of our own presence and steadiness, we need to trust that we can, in fact, provide this unwavering comfort to ourselves when we need it. We need to begin to trust ourselves. We do this by striving to uncover, and then show up as, our most authentic selves. When we walk in line with our values, we become a person of integrity. When we walk towards our heart’s longings, we light up our own path and bask in awe of the journey…no matter the outcome. We become a stable beacon of perseverance as well as refuge. We become our own anchor, our own lifeline. 

Being our own anchor is a relationship we have with ourselves. When we feel safe within it, we start to notice that our need for external validation falls away. This is not to say that receiving external validation is no longer meaningful…it just means that it is not necessary. We finally feel a sense of good-enoughness, a beautiful worthiness that we used to question. We no longer need anyone to prove to us that we matter…or for us to prove ourselves to. We reach out to others not so that they could help keep us afloat, but to help remind us of which direction to face in the moments when our eyes are too full of tears to see straight as well as when we can hardly contain our excitement and we twirl and twirl and twirl until we are dizzy… We become able to cultivate a beautiful interdependence (as opposed to stifling codependence) with people who we value, respect, admire, look up to…people we would seek out for advice. Anchored to ourselves, we feel a tremendous sense of freedom to connect to others without grasping. We appreciate them in our lives for all that they are, rather than what they do for us, and free them from responsibilities of meeting the needs we can only truly meet ourselves.