The edge of a new year can be an exciting time full of hope and possibility. If you’re anything like me, you’re likely asking yourself, “What do I want to create this year?”

If real, vibrant, lasting love is on your list, keep reading.

Envisioning your hopes and dreams for 2019 is a beautiful practice to open another revolution around the sun, but I want to take some time with you right now to help you make sure that those big, beautiful dreams don’t fall flat before you even get them off the ground!

That’s why in this special New Year’s follow up episode, I’m going to let you in on some secrets of the unconscious and just how the stories it might be concealing could be playing out in your love life without you even knowing it! (Sneaky, bastard!)

We are going to take a look at your “limiting love stories”, how they may be affecting your relationships now (whether you’re single or partnered), and how gaining clarity is absolutely essential for you to make 2019 your year of epic REAL Love!

In my video episode I share my own personal “limiting love story” and how it resulted in me setting myself up to be unfulfilled in relationships for years, AND how I was able to wise up and take my power back (and how you can too).

So let me ask you: what are the limiting stories you’re telling yourself about love or your own lovability? Take a minute and really think about that. This is heavily charged stuff, so I invite you to breathe deeply and allow the honest truth to surface.

I want you to bring to mind:

• What were your experiences with love growing up?
• What did you see, or hear, feel in reference to love?
• What was modeled for you?
• Who taught you about love?
• What were their beliefs or messages about what love was supposed to be like or feel like?

The compilation of these answers is in part what I call your Downloaded Love Blueprint. Our parents, our families, and the cultures we grow up in influence, almost pre-program, the way we will experience love for the rest of our lives!

This includes (but isn’t limited to) things like how you think people in love should behave, how worthy you believe you are, and how much you value yourself, or whether you honestly value yourself at all.

Your family of origin is an important part of this but isn’t totally to blame here. Society, media, art – even children’s storybooks – all have a hand in influencing how we perceive what love should be. And for the most part, these stories leave us with warped, unhealthy and often detrimental ideas about what romantic love is or can be.

Think about it – what were the earliest stories you heard about love?

• Was it a fairytale where some princess or damsel in distress needed to be saved by some knight in shining armor? Right, exactly.
• Or how about this one – the countless movies where the heroine was able to change the “bad boy” with the power of her love? Yikes.
• Or what about the story of the ugly duckling (or the nerdy girl in glasses, or the girl from the wrong side of the tracks) who transforms into a great beauty worthy of love under the attention and tutelage of some caring, altruistic man?  Um…hard pass.

Since this is indeed what we have to work with, it’s no wonder our relationships are out of whack. We’re taught that if the stars align and if we’re in the right place at the right time that true love will fall in our laps and we’ll finally get our happily ever after…

As a therapist, I can tell you is that is just bullshit! Lasting love is not about stumbling into some magical love story to be swept away by a handsome prince.

Real, healthy, vibrant love is (and always will be) all about your mental health, self-regard and the energy that you’re putting out into the world. It’s about your beliefs, and more specifically your self-limiting beliefs about what love is and about what’s possible for you.

When we have these stories planted in our unconscious, we can’t help but act them out over and over to our own detriment. What you saw growing up as a child, what you were taught about love, the stories that reinforced those false ideals… all of it gets internalized and lives in your unconscious mind without you even being aware.

Whether you know it or not these injuries still have energy. They’re still charged, and if you don’t find a way to reveal + process them, you will most likely continue to play out these bad storylines over and over again.

But here’s the GREAT news… YOU have the power to change your love blueprint! You learned it and that means that once you can raise your awareness around it, you can UN-learn it.

So what can you do?

Find A Good Therapist

I know I may be partial, but I cannot begin to tell you how transformative regular talk therapy can be for your mental, emotional and even spiritual health. When you are able to sit down with an impartial party trained to give you the tools you need to unearth even the most buried wounds, you will find yourself on the fast track to the healthiest you that you can be.

Talk To A Friend

Find a good listener and talk it out with them. Share your origin stories with each other.  It’s important that the person you choose is on the same path as you (even better if they’re a few steps ahead) so they don’t accidentally reinforce your crappy love story.

Write It Down

Journaling is a beautiful tool to bring things up to the surface. The act of writing things down has the effect of making the experience concrete and therefore legitimate and simultaneously taking the power out of it. Write it down. Then write it down again. Do this as many times as you need to process and let go.

The beautiful thing is, once you acknowledge and understand these unconscious stories, you have the ability to stop playing them out because the charge from that injury will be released through the process of seeing it for what it is. Whether that is through therapeutic writing, working it out in therapy or talking about it with a friend, the key is to get it out of the basement of your mind (subconscious) and bring it on up into the main part of the house where you can really see it, clean it up to let it go!

With that in mind, I have an extraordinary gift that I’m so excited to share with you today!

I’ve created special questionnaires and corresponding guides to help you dive deep into your story to help you excavate and understand exactly how these stories have been holding you back and the action steps to take to get the most out of your love life.

There is a different questionnaire and guide for those of you who are single and those of you that are partnered because you’re in different places in your life, right? It’s important to me that I’m able to meet you where you are right now.

You can get started on your questionnaire right here. Once you’ve finished answering the questions, all you have to do is enter your email to get access to your downloadable guide based on your answers.

When you can get clear about the truth and about what love really is you can finally begin to RE-write your own story– one that is authentically and uniquely aligned with what you want! And that, lovebug, is a beautiful thing. @terri_cole (Click to Tweet!)

So I invite you to create some time and space for yourself to sit with these assessment tools and get really honest about not only where you are, but where you’ve come from. The more awareness you have about yourself and your story, the more empowered you will be to create the kind of lasting, loving relationships you desire.

And then please leave me a comment telling me how your “limiting love story” has been playing out in your life and relationships. I want to hear everything! 

As of January 14th we are running our 10-day More Love Meditation experience right here!  You can jump in at any time and I would love for you to join us. I’m thrilled about this! I’ve created 10 brand new meditations for you motivated by what you have shared with me about your biggest challenges in love. I feel like we co-created this powerful experience together! It’s going to be super transformative, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

We’re capping off our 10-day meditation experience with new free training, More Love Live on Wednesday, January 23rd. You will have the opportunity to take everything you learned today and join me live, learn additional strategies and tools and get your questions answered so that I can help you make real change so that THIS year is YOUR year of epic Real Love.

Together let’s put our stake in the ground and take a stand for 2019 being the year for epic REAL love!

I hope so much that you have the most beautiful New Year’s Eve.

Enjoy yourself, be safe, and as always take care of you,

Terri

Terri Cole is a licensed psychotherapist, transformation coach, and an expert at turning fear into freedom. Sign up for Terri’s weekly Newsletter, check out her blog and follow her on Twitter.