Have you ever let your thoughts stop you from having a loving relationship with someone in your life?

I did and for many years I felt unlovable!

One of my earliest memories is my fifth birthday. My parents had put me into a boarding school when I was 4. So when my mom came to visit around my fifth birthday, she gave me my birthday present: a pair of socks. Now these weren’t any ordinary pair of socks. No, these socks were so big they would fit me today. So in my five-year-old body, they came all the way up to the top of my thighs. After my mom left, my teacher took it upon himself to take the socks because they fit him.

For many years those big socks had a lot of meaning for me. They meant that my mother didn’t love me. I mean how could she love me? First, she puts me in a boarding school, and then she gives me socks that are way too big for me. Does she even care? This sad story followed me around for almost 20 years.

After I had begun the process of personal growth, my mother and I were beginning to create a new relationship. We talked about the past and things that had happened. I told her about the socks and how I had felt for so many years. What she said to me was totally amazing and brought tears to my eyes.

Would you like to know what she said? She said. “I gave you really big socks because your birthday is in the middle of winter and I didn’t want your legs to be cold, so I bought socks large enough to go all the way up to top your thighs so you could be warm.”

Wow, that really blew me away. I realized that for the last 2 decades I had been robbing myself of this loving relationship, this connection with my mother because of the story I made up when I was five. Our conversation that day and my willingness to give up my story, was the start to an amazing new relationship with her. Now she is one of my biggest role models; she is my friend and we even coach each other.

“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.”  The Talmud

I now take the time to examine my stories and judgments of others. I consciously adjust my perception by opening my eyes to a wider picture (like putting on a new pair of glasses). This is so much simpler than trying to change the world. When I change my viewpoint, the view of what I see, (the world I see) changes drastically.