“Oh, I’m lookin’ for my missin’ piece
I’m lookin’ for my missin’ piece
Hi-dee-ho, here I go
lookin’ for my missin’ piece”

  ~ from “The Missing Piece” by Shel Silverstein

I thought about that quote during a recent conversation with a client when she said “I feel so consciously aware that I have no one to love.”

“Wow,” I thought, “that’s the missing piece problem!”

Just like the “piece” in the Shel Silverstein story, many of us are looking outside for someone to love, someone to make us happy, someone to complete us.

You are love. You are complete. Until you embrace yourself as the primary object of your own affection, you may always be looking for your missing piece and will rarely find it.

It’s a feeling you can’t out eat, out drink, out sex or out shop. Those quick highs are as fleeting as they are dangerous – and they actually prevent you from getting what you really want.

Looking for a person to fill you, to complete or repair you is a recipe for disaster. It’s coming from a place of need… “Fill me! Fix me! Make it okay for me to be me!”

The most successful relationships grow from a place of abundant self-love. “I am successful. I am worthy, and I am so full of love, I want to share it with someone else.”

Contrary to the popular wisdom that “opposites attract,” the truth is “like attracts like.” If you feel needy, broken, alone and unloved, you will attract a partner who is feeling needy, broken, alone and unloved.

If you are optimistic, abundant, loving and generous, you will attract a partner who is optimistic, abundant, loving and generous.

But how do you get from point A to point B?

By starting where you are and giving yourself the love you need.

As the character in the book searches for his missing piece, he tries on different “pieces” – some fit and some don’t, until one day there is one that feels just right – almost…

After searching and searching for his missing piece, he realizes that he isn’t missing a piece after all. He is complete just the way he is. And so are you.

Be love.