How to Stop Seeking Happiness Outside of Yourself, and Become Self-Sourced
- Apr 24
- 6 min read
Tara Swann is an Emotional Empowerment & Embodiment Coach and three-time Author who guides women to alchemise emotional patterns, reclaim their inner power, and manifest a life that reflects their deepest truth.
As a sensitive child growing up in an unstable household, I would constantly scan the room before I knew who to be. I would attune to those around me, my mother and my father, so I would know what I needed to do or who I needed to be to feel safe.
Where external seeking begins
Constantly attuned to my parents and siblings as a child, I would know whether I needed to be nice or be hypervigilant, quiet or compliant, and I spent my childhood forming my identity based on who I needed to be to be safe, not on who I actually was. My sense of security was conditional on my external environment and the mood of those closest to me.
So, as an adult, I found myself seeking, through relationships, the security I never truly felt as a child. The problem was that this only created deep insecurity within me, because it was always conditional on having someone in my life to provide that security.
We also grow up in a world that conditions us to believe that happiness and security are found when you fall in love, get married, buy a house, have children, and live happily ever after. So, we spend our time searching for our soulmate, have children when we aren’t fully happy, thinking that must be the “thing”, only to find out we still aren’t happy.
Then we get told our worth is equivalent to what we have achieved in our lives. So, you spend your time trying to be successful, working hard, only to either find success and realise that you still don’t feel whole, or no amount of success ever feels enough. Translating to you, yourself, never feeling like enough. It feels like an endless, impossible game of chase.
Enjoy life’s fruits
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t feel happiness through external things; of course, you should. We are here to enjoy life’s beautiful experiences as well, such as a romantic relationship, the birth of a child, delicious food, money, and success, but if your only source of love and joy comes from something external to you, it can also become the source of your suffering.
The catalyst for change
Oftentimes, people need to fulfill their desires before they realise that these things are not their source of wholeness, happiness, worth, love, connection, or security. Or they have things ripped out from under them, such as the ending of a relationship that gave them their sense of safety or source of love, or a sudden financial collapse when money was their source of security, before they realise that they have no sense of Self, that their worth was tied up in external things, conditional to them having those things to feel worthy or safe.
These moments become catalysts for change, crisis points where they are forced to look within and make internal shifts, rather than continually seeking externally, if they choose to do so. At this point, people have one of two choices: Option 1. Continue to source externally, chasing money, success, relationships, or even fleeting sexual experiences or comfort food, which only leads to never feeling fully whole, complete, or secure within themselves. Or option 2. Take radical responsibility, go within, and become Self-Sourced
What is self-sourced?
Being Self-Sourced means connecting to one's innate worth, finding love for and within oneself, and finding happiness, security, wholeness, and anything else they desire to feel within themselves. We don’t feel certain emotions because of others, we feel them because they’re accessible to us, at any time. You need to know how to release the parts of yourself that are blocking those feelings and how to cultivate more of those feelings within yourself.
Once you do, you no longer need to seek anything external to you to make you feel the way you desire to feel, and therefore, it becomes unconditional. Meaning you feel whole and complete regardless of who or what is in your life, and, interestingly, this is exactly what is needed to manifest it outside of you. For example, a true authentic connection to oneself creates a true authentic connection with another, as within, so without.
Becoming Self-Sourced also helps you detach from needing it from outside of yourself, because you’re no longer chasing feelings through something or someone else; you already have it. You can detach from possessions, from relationships, and ultimately create freedom within.
This doesn’t mean having desires and attachments is wrong; it’s a part of the human experience. The practice is to recognise when these attachments become a source of insecurity, worthlessness, or powerlessness within.
How to become self-sourced
Becoming Self-Sourced is a process of deconditioning yourself from the beliefs that true happiness, wholeness, and security are found anywhere but inside of yourself. It’s a process of letting go of long-held emotions in the body that are blocking you from feeling whole, feeling pleasure, or feeling loved, to name a few, so that you can create space for new emotions to flourish. That power you desire to feel lies on the other side of the uncomfortable emotions you shove away.
You don’t get to feel the full extent of joy without experiencing sadness. You can’t have the light without the dark. The more you allow yourself to go into the depths, feel what’s there, and release the old beliefs and stories of “it’s out there”, the more you realise, firstly, that you can actually hold yourself in your darkness, creating internal security. Secondly, you create space for more light to enter.
Once you have felt out your anger, you realise how powerful you are, you unlock your voice and your truth, and clarity arrives.
Once you have felt your grief, you connect with your heart at the deepest level and find that grief doesn’t exist without love, and that love is all there is.
Once you have felt through your feelings of worthlessness, you realise that you were worthy all along. Once you have felt these things, you create shifts in the body, allowing space for the new.
Cultivating self-love and happiness
When I was feeling lonely and seeking a relationship, instead of chasing it from a place of need for love and connection, I magnetised it from wholeness and self-love. I let myself feel my loneliness, I let myself grieve the parts of myself that thought she needed it from another.
Then, I found joy within, connection within, and gave myself everything I desired so as to have it before I had it.
I am going to share my favourite journal prompts with you. These help you access and cultivate the feelings you desire to feel.
What do I desire in my life?
How would that make me feel? List the emotions.
Where in my life do I already feel that way? Bask in those feelings.
In what creative ways can I feel more of these emotions?
Create a gratitude list for these things.
It’s a journey
Becoming Self-Sourced is a journey of unbecoming. Unbecoming the person you’ve been taught to be over your lifetime and then choosing who to become instead. This takes time. You’ve been conditioned in so many ways throughout your life, and it’s up to you to use the ways in which you feel trapped, lonely, triggered, or unhappy to recreate your life and choose to source from within.
“It’s a practice, maybe one you will never master, but maybe the mastery is the practice itself.” – Becoming Her by Tara Swann
Everything you desire to feel is accessible to you now, and you get to choose differently, starting today. If this article sparked something within you, and you’d love to delve deeper into this work with guidance, go here.
Visit my website for more info!
Read more from Tara Swann
Tara Swann, Emotional Empowerment Coach & Author
Tara Swann is an Emotional Empowerment Coach, Author, and Speaker known for helping women alchemise emotional patterns into personal power. She guides women into deeper confidence, clarity, and self-connection through her unique blend of emotional mastery, feminine embodiment, and manifestation work. Tara is the author of You Don’t Have Anxiety, Becoming Her, and The Ocean Is She, and is currently deepening her expertise through formal Tantra Practitioner training. Her mission is to help women remember who they are and consciously create lives that feel aligned, expansive, and unapologetically alive.
