If You Spot It, You've Probably Got It

One of the fascinating ironies about humans is that we often think it’s easier to change other people, rather than change ourselves. When actually it’s completely out of our control to ever change other people.

Take for example, while dating, a man shares about how often he works with a woman. The woman concludes this man is a workaholic and she sees it as an invitation for her to help him to stop working as much. She fantasizes that her love will inspire him to change so that he’d spend more time with her. While this sounds well-intentioned—it’s actually setting herself up for major disappointment, because she will never be able to make him change.

This woman will most likely experience disappointment because one day her fantasy that she’ll be able to change him will burst. Yet if she uses the pain to become self-aware, she may realize that the very issue she saw so clearly in her partner, is actually the work she needs to tend to in herself.

Personally, I’ve stared at myself in the mirror a handful of times, while judging an ex’s problem, and saw a similar ugly problem looking right back at me. Sure it may not have looked the same as their XYZ issue, but I recognized that I got the same root of their issue, with a different manifestation.

It can be alluring to try to change the other person, because it helps us to avoid the uncomfortable feelings of facing our own “not so pretty” problems. For example, If a man gets caught up in “Miss Drama’s” world where she’s always running out of money or mismanaging her schedule or reacting in excessive outbursts, it can make him feel good to think that he can try to rescue her. But he ends up looking like a juggler that tosses all 5 of their balls in the air and scrambles to catch none. While scrambling after balls, he thinks he’s avoided feeling his own depression.

This rescue mode feels good in the moment because we are creating a connection through that person’s dependency on us. And if they become “dependent” on us to meet a responsibility that is theirs alone to meet, then it seemingly lowers the risk of them rejecting or abandoning us.

It is a way of protecting ourselves from the fear of not being lovable enough so we make ourselves worthy by rescuing. This way the connection is formed based on one-way give and take, not on mutual giving or risking vulnerability. The one being rescued may stay for a while because you’re making it easier for them, but they don’t offer genuine love—and you end up resentful—becase you never see the change or “payback” in the relationship for all the investment you’ve made.

If you can relate to this pattern in your relationships, there is hope that you can stop the pattern in order to create mutual, supportive, and emotionally available relationships. When you recognize the pattern, there’s hope of creating a relationship where you are worthy of being loved for exactly who you are and both persons have a vested interest in meeting the needs of the person, instead of trying to change them.

If you’re in one of these relationships or have a past relationship with this dynamic, here are 3 tips for starting your change process:

1. Notice Where You Are Rescuing Them and Stop - What’s common in many healing processes is the first step to acknowledgement the problem. Do you notice when you tend to rescue someone? What prompts you to do it? What makes it hard to stop? How is it serving you to try to rescue them?

2. Identify What Feelings You’ve Been Avoiding When You Stop - What comes up for you emotionally when you decide to change the behavior you’d normally do? What kinds of sensation do you feel? What kinds of compulsions do you notice?

3. Use the Problem(s) that You Spotted in Them to Discover Your Own Work - What are the problems that you normally are drawn to fix in others? —-Lack of presence, over-working, substance abuse, criticism, manipulation, avoidance, anxiety, depression. See if you have a similar manifestation of the same problem. For example, someone could be drawn to very self-centered people and while they don’t seem selfish, they use their sacrificial serving others as a selfish way to win approval.

If you’re feeling down on yourself because you’re currently facing the disappointing reality that the person you’ve been with will never change to be the person you need in a relationship, it may be a good time to let all the issues you spotted in your partner be a starting point for you to explore your own areas of growth to make this or your next relationship even better.

If you’re noticing these patterns and would like outside support to get clarity and help on your next steps towards healing and growth, set up a complimentary hour coaching conversation here.

Won't Our Soulmate Just Find Us?

From the time we’re able to understand a bedtime story, we learn that one day “our prince will come”. He will find us and climb mountains to reach us and rescue us from all that might harm us. While this story is called a fairy tale for a reason, I believe there is something deep inside the female psyche that longs for love to find her.

Not only with Fairy Tales, but also, if you’re a spiritual woman who believes the Creator of the universe brings partners together, then it can be easy to settle into the mentality that my soulmate will just find me because it’s “meant to be”.

All the while in the year 2019, we woman are discovering and being challenged to go out and make things happen like never before!

So when it comes to our dating lives - which is better? - to take massive action to find and get a man or to recline in our modern castle tower waiting for our prince to make his ascent?

Well, let’s talk more about these ideas.

If we let our fairy tale mentality bleed into our dating lives, it can start to look like a lack of taking risks. We can play it safe and surround ourselves with good women friends, watch chick flicks, babysit our nieces, do our jobs well, meanwhile giving ourselves that one slim opportunity that the Amazon delivery guy is “Mr. HeavenSent”.

We may pride ourselves on how patient we’ve been in waiting for the right man to come, but blame the lack of results on the fact that there aren’t any good men out there. With this mentality we can have the subconscious belief that we’re somehow adding to the cinematic climax of our love story by not taking much action, so that the grand ending will be that much more amazing when our prince comes to save us. This mentality however, can actually be a subtle cover up for the real fear that lies underneath our inaction - often fears that prevent us from opening ourselves up to love and be loved by a man.

On the other hand, if we use the same approach as what’s led us to be successful women at work and take focused action to make a relationship happen, then the results can start to feel shaky. We may find ourselves acting out of insecurity, jealousies, or uncertainties. We can start to take on manipulative strategies. We may start to be more concerned with an outcome, like getting a ring on it, rather than feeling truly cherished and feeling respect for the man we are choosing. Doubt may start to creep in about whether a man truly loves us if we’re making all the moves and securing all the plans and he is just going along for the ride because we’re an easy catch.

I’m talking about both of these mentalities as extremes, but is there a healthy balance in the middle?

There is a fine balance, between taking action in our dating lives and trusting in an element of mystery when it comes to success in romance. What does it look like to trust in a divine process that’s actively working in our favor and all the while not give ourselves over to living passively comfortable lives?

To approach this process with balance, let’s consider for a moment the common dating advice you’ve probably heard before from your married, well-intended friends:

“The moment you stop looking for your husband, he will appear.”

While it may not feel like the most helpful advice, because the moment I ask you to stop thinking about the color orange, right now the color orange is flooding your conscious. However, there is evidence to support why people share this advice. I have seen this concept play out over and over again in my own friend’s and client’s lives. It does commonly happen, that when a woman decides to go travel the world or foster her own children or wait until she’s 50 to get married, that a good man for her shows up proposing she let him join her.

If we stop focusing on finding a relationship, then we may stop taking certain dating actions to make things happen. Or maybe we date, solely for the enjoyment of meeting new people and having fun experiences. Either way, in letting go of outcomes for a relationship, we feel freer to actively create fulfilling lives.

I believe that when we start to focus on our own pursuits, it releases all kinds of pressures and expectations—So that any man who shows up feels that sense of freedom to choose us because he wants to add to the fullness of life a woman’s already experiencing.

We find balance because we are actively making things happen in our own lives—practicing risk, vulnerability and self-love—all the while we are better prepared when love shows up, even if it looks nothing like what we expected. Surprisingly that “boy next door” type who was always nothing more than a friend suddenly becomes hotter than you ever thought. His interest in you is more consistent, sacrificial, and cherishing than you’ve ever experienced before.

So how can we be more active in making our lives better and open to being surprised by love?

1. Actively Pursue Dreams - Not for the purposes of attracting a man, but for the purposes of living your best life. If you take some time to get really quiet this week and give yourself permission to tune inside to that one thing you’ve been avoiding doing because it’s too scary—-listen and then take one small step to start towards that dream!

2. Clear Out Any Blocks - Explore if there could be past hurts, fears and feelings of unworthiness in your life. Do you lack of confidence, have a tendency to hide who you are and not open up, or keep a hard exterior because you’ve been hurt before? For your own mental and physical health, find a safe person or group to explore these blocks so you can create better connection in all of your relationships.

3. Hang Out an “Open Sign” - Are you open to people you are meeting in the world? Not just for small talk, but do you regularly open up in appropriately vulnerable ways? The key to being open is trusting yourself to create connections with people who are good for you and being able to walk away from those who aren’t. You are honoring your desire for connection without letting it rule you. Actively work through emotions or habits that cause you to show up as “closed” so instead you can start to display your “Open Sign”.

Attracting a partner is by no means a hard science. There is a je ne sais quoi element to every romance story that no one can give us the step by step directions for. Whether we are stuck in our own excessive waiting mindset or we are using all hands on deck to carry out “operation relationship”, I encourage you to take action to create your best life—whether that means doing personal growth work, opening a school for orphans in Africa or cleaning out that bedroom to make an office. Then stay open to various social connections, resting fully in your own womanly worthiness, knowing that mysteriously your action will prepare you to attract a surprisingly good relationship.

If you’d like support to explore how to create your best life or open yourself up in places where you know you’ve closed down. Schedule a time for us to talk here.

Make the Most of Singleness So You'll Have the Best Relationship

Human beings love to peek through the rails of our neighbor’s fence, assured that their grass is most definitely softer, lusher, greener than ours. As single women it’s easy to gaze longingly at your best friend’s life while she kisses her husband and proceeds to snuggle with her baby.

While we long for a good partnership to be ours, it can be easy to forget to take advantage of the moments we have now. In fact when we live in the certainty that the partnership we want is only just a matter of time, we are more likely to prepare ourselves for the best love possible.

But how can we prepare?

Here are five powerful ways that single women can prepare right now to draw in a great partnership. (and often it draws a man in more quickly!)

1. Invest in building and deepening your current social network. Do you have friends that you really enjoy, but haven’t seen for a while? Do you have a conflict that you’ve been putting off addressing with someone? Are there invites that you are turning down because you’re just “too tired”? Sometimes we’ve gotten lazy in the amount of effort that we’re investing in our current relationships and as a result we may feel more isolated and out of touch. Often the strength of the relationship we attract in a partner can be similar to the quality of the relationships we have now. So if you’re not happy in your friendships or family/community connections—start making those relationships better now. They will be the people who will support you too as you are dating and prevent you from jumping into a relationship that isn’t good for you or encourage you when there is a good opportunity to continue with a good prospect.

2. Take advantage of the time you have now (that you’re not spending with a partner) to invest in your personal growth. While relationships can bring up our issues in a way not many other things can, we can do more self-reflective work on ourselves by way of counseling, reading growth oriented books, attending support groups or seeking out coaching. These kinds of outside perspectives can help you gain insight into tendencies or patterns of behavior that could be shifted in order for you to attract and create a good partnership. The less baggage we carry into a partnership, the more energy we’ll have to love and receive love from a good man.

3. Start dating and see it as a means of gaining experiences. Dating is a great opportunity to gain so much experience in relating to people. Though it may be tempting to want to just jump into a relationship and skip getting to know different people, we can learn so much while navigating our preferences about what we like in a person, knowing what our boundaries are and practicing communicating them, as well as practicing enjoying the moments with a new person without clinging too tightly to a specific outcome. All of those kinds of skills will play out over and over again in a long-term relationship, so why not start practicing now.

4. Seek out experiences that you couldn’t do as easily if you had a partner/family to be responsible for. Did your friend invite you to go spontaneously to Egypt next week? You’re excited about it, so why not go because you can! Take sky diving classes, learn to dance, pursue that dream of what you feel called to do while you have less strings attached. Doing these kinds of things will make your life richer and you will give off that “Happy” scent that men love. (it really can’t be bought in a bottle=)

5. Seek out ways that you can serve others that is meaningful to you. As singles, it’s easy to slide into a somewhat self-centered lifestyle. Entering a partnership means not only having the love you want, but also learning to give in ways that serve the other person. So you can start now and build those muscles. What area of the world stirs your heart where you’d like to help make a difference? Who in your circles could use some help this week? What church, club, group, class might benefit from you stepping up to offer your gifts? Stretch yourself and you will see how you’ll gain more than you give.

Putting these five things into practice will prepare you to be the person who creates an amazing partnership. And it will give you more confidence to show up as a sexier you —so go get ready girl!