First off Happy New Year to everyone. I am not really huge on New Years resolutions, but I am really huge into creating daily goals. I mean New Years is just another day right? Well I will say that I am thankful, and blessed to have been able to experience a New Day and New Year. My goal is to have daily growth in all areas of my life. A lot can change in just one year, so I realize if I put my focus into the correct areas of my own personal growth. Then my results will be enormous. My personal growth lesson of today has everything to do with love.
What is Love? Can anybody answer this? Will there be a lot of different answers to what love is? I definitely feel that every question that I just asked will garner a different answer and reaction. That is okay. That is the biggest thing that I am learning about LOVE. I mean let's face it. We all grow up differently. Different backgrounds, cultures, family dynamics, morals, and religious beliefs. I'm making this point to say not everyone is taught the same, and I truly doubt that we are sat down by our parents and given directions on what love is, and how to love LOL. I mean am I right? Better question is does anyone agree? I have recently learned that the way we express our opinions, could be taken out of context, if the parties involved are not clear of the intentions. What I am saying is, you could have a different opinion than someone else, but you don't have to make the person feel as if you are trying to belittle them, compete, upstage, or not pay attention to their opinion, and or feelings, because that is where your love or care could be put into question. (It took me until recently to get this) I've never ever, ever, ever, thought of this in this way before, especially when I am trying to express my feelings. I am not thinking of upstaging, or any of the other things that I mentioned above, but to many people that view love as an action word, may feel that your placing your actions in the wrong place. Basically if your putting so much time and effort into just trying to prove a point, instead of getting to the point of seeing why the person is feeling the way that they are. Then you could be viewed as not showing enough love.
Story time. I am going to open up big time here and show you super growth from myself, I was dating a girl some time ago. We had met in NYC at an event that I was performing at. She was fun, cool and very outgoing, (I definitely attract the outgoing ones LOL) problem with meeting her was that I was just getting out of a 2 year relationship that ended basically because of timing. She felt that she needed to find herself. She told me that I showed her what love was. I didn't know what that meant. I was young and confused but I had to accept it because her decision did not change. Now I will explain how this all spiraled out of control and how I picked up traits that I had been carrying with me to the other relationships. The feeling that I was feeling didn't feel good, I was hurt, and I knew that I did not want to feel this way. Of course I am human, so I was being human asking advice, hoping someone had the magic answer. I kept getting the same advice to move on. There are plenty of fish in the sea. Go be happy. Forget her she is missing out. Just go have fun. WE need to Really look at this advice. I get it. I understand why this advice is given, but we have to stop giving negative advice. ALL of the things said here wasn't right to do and I will explain how this advice can backfire. Here comes my actress girlfriend which I truly wasn't ready to move on with at that time, but decided to anyway.(Which I now see was super selfish) So of course we started out cool with the honeymoon phase. Feeling happy all the time. Then life hit, and a more supportive and deeper approach for the relationship was needed to be taken, and we weren't prepared to handle that yet. So we ended up arguing a lot, disagreeing a lot, and things got worse. Our communication was lacking. I felt I didn't have a voice. If she was mad I had to sit there, and listen to her talk for hours until she felt that her point was proven or understood. If I interrupted then she would run to the bathroom and cry, come out and say that I wasn't listening, and then I would have to sit there another 2 hours getting talked to about a problem that probably could've gotten resolved fast if we were both apart of the conversation. This trait created something in me where I lost myself, and I punished other relationships moving forward because, I made a vow to myself that I would never go into another relationship and not talk. Bad news was I became super bull headed, and I punished people that didn't deserve to be punished. Shouldn't this trend have changed if I started over with someone new? Shouldn't the new girl have gotten a fair shot? Well she should have, but I was blinded by my own ways. I was blinded by my own hurt. She wasn't treated fairly when I view things this way. I was stuck in my ways of making it a point to talk. Not just to talk but to be heard. It was disrespectful to me if you didn't allow me to voice my concern. I mean sheesh. I realize now that I was wrong. I was very wrong. I didn't realize it then, but I do realize now that I wasn't healed from the actress that wouldn't let me talk. So in return I was never ready to move on, so I kept this vicious cycle going. A cycle that most of the world is facing and suffering from, because we must move on so fast, but the timing is wrong and you meet someone who is ready to settle down and your not ready, and then they get hurt and this cycle repeats over and over. Now I can understand why no one wants to fight for a relationship, or why we question if the relationship is over when things gets tense. Then one day while sitting still I realized what one of the issues was. Forgiveness. I never forgave myself or her.
Okay Chuck this is getting deep what are you talking about? I know you are asking me this. Well here you go. Look at the domino affect. I was dumped, which caused hurt within myself, I moved onto fast when I wasn't healed from getting dumped. The new girl could pick up on this, but had her own insecurities. My insecurities then kicked in as well because she was testing my insecurities, now neither of us are growing because instead of figuring out the problem we continue to add too it. She would talk to me for hours and I couldn't respond. I told myself that this would NEVER happen again to me. We broke up, I got into another relationship. I was dominant now, you wasn't going to talk to me unless I spoke. Now I just carried 2 different relationships into this relationship onto a girl that didn't deserve this, but I wasn't aware because. I didn't ever address it within myself and forgive myself for moving on with the actress to fast, when I knew that I wasn't ready. I didn't forgive myself for carrying baggage into a new relationship and hurting her with my baggage, insecurities and ego. I didn't forgive the girl for dumping me to find herself. I didn't forgive the the actress for not communicating correctly with me. Do you see the domino effect and damage done because nothing was forgiven. God forgives us every second. The more that we don't forgive the more layers of hurt we continue to carry around with us. I realized that if I took the time to forgive myself, my ex and any other issue that I hadn't resolved, then I would have been able love myself freely. In return I could've given my all to love them freely because I wouldn't have bought in any baggage which in return would had given everyone a clean slate to grow together. Let's stop looking for temporary happiness, it's okay to forgive. I forgive myself and anyone else that I allowed to cause me hurt.
I was blessed to watch an interview special with Jay-Z. What made this special great was the fact that Jay-Z spoke on the fact that people are out here hurting. That struck a chord with me, and it also opened my eyes wider, because we don't realize how many people are crying out for help. I was one of them. This gets me to this viewpoint on my role of daily growth. This is a very important thing that I have been shown, I realize in a relationship, or friendship. That asking if the person is okay genuinely can go along way with how someone feels, but the true statement that is not said enough is, that I truly want to understand you. How can I understand you as a person better? What are you struggling with to make you feel hurt or not wanted? What are your deepest imperfections that you can't forgive within yourself? What happened in your past that is causing you not to trust? Why are you so scared to hurt? What can be done to build your trust? What makes you who you are? Why do you think the way that you think? Could you help me understand where your happiness lies? I ask these questions today because a lot of times these questions are avoided. These questions are avoided because we don't take the time to ask them, because we are caught up in ourselves to much to notice. These questions are avoided because we as humans are scared to communicate. We are scared to feel like we may have given the other person too much of ourselves. We are scared to open up that door because it could be used against us in the future. We GET so caught up in our own views as to how things are supposed to be through our ego's or through our own hurt and fear, that we don't fully give a chance to give ourselves, and that is where I had been lacking as a leader, a man, and a future husband. As a man I am supposed to take the lead, but it takes both of our efforts to conquer this fear together through God.
As you can see I can get emotional. I am a very passionate guy, very passionate, bull headed, stubborn, I am a leader. I am also loyal, caring, humble, loving, competitive, driven, determined, motivated, fun, compassionate, and corny. Yeah I admit it. I have a lot of cornball corny moments, but those are the moments that make the greatest stories LOL. I am a performer/singer as you all know. I am a very social person, my love language is physical touch. My right eye squints when I am hitting a high note while singing, I have to use my hands when I am speaking, and I can't hide how I feel about things because my face will tell the story. These are some of my characteristics, that make me who I am. With that being said we are all made different. I know you are wondering Chuck what are you saying. I am getting there. I am long winded LOL. What I am trying to say is love is unconditional. We are all different, but the moment we become accepting of the other person, and how they express their love and who they are as a person, that will be the moment that your true love for them can shine through and you can enjoy one another. That is my learning experience.
It's crazy what happens, and what you are shown when you stand still and focus on getting yourself fully together. The things that can be accomplished. You can't be scared to be you, but you can't be scared to allow someone else to be who God created them to be either. My daily growth has been accomplished. Thank you for reading. This is fully my opinion that I wanted to share with you. I am fully invested in my personal growth and with my personal growth I will be able to fulfill my life's purpose of leading and inspiring others. I told you 2018 would be a huge year. Don't forget to mark your Calender's for the release of my single "Fire it up" on numerous streaming stations (Spotify, itunes, tidal, apple music, shazam, pandora) to name a view and The Video will also be released on Jan 9th on VEVO, youtube. I am very excited about this and appreciate everyone's support. Get ready to go on this ride because things are about to become interesting. Thank you again for all the support. Keep a lookout for Who is Chuck Starr part 6. I will discuss life on the cruise ship since I will be joining the Carnival Liberty for 3 months from Jan 7th - April 15th 2018. I will discuss my next daily goal. I will also discuss the excitement of my new release of "Fire it up" and I will keep you updated on the blogs, festivals, and late show appearances and performances (Hint Hint Jimmy Kimmel) that I will be blessed to be apart of later on in the year. I am very excited to share.