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When you’re looking to go back into the dating world, it is important to know what you desire.  Are you looking for a long-term relationship, perhaps even marriage?  Or are you just looking to get your feet wet again, and see what it’s like out there?  Maybe you’re just looking to have a good time.  Once you define what your desired outcome is, you can set a clear intention that will act as a compass to navigate your journey.

The most important thing to remember about dating, that most people overlook, is that it is PRACTICE! If it is truly just practice, then how would that change your relationship with you?  

We often say that hope is the first thing that comes into a relationship, and is often the last thing to go.  To take the pressure off and to utilize dating as a great tool for personal growth we have a process we call: Date To Discover™.  

Rather than placing emphasis on the other person, wondering if they are the right fit for you, and what they are all about – turn your attention inward.  Start paying attention to your inner dialog – “What am I saying to myself about myself?”  Do you have a negative inner dialog in response to dating?  Or are you saying positive things about yourself and your prospects?  Your attitude towards dating will largely determine your results.  

Being aware of our inner dialog gives us the opportunity to make adjustments.  For example, if we find that we can speak our feelings easily with someone we are not attracted to, but find it difficult to do so when there is an attraction gives us the opportunity to spend some time practicing being emotionally authentic under all circumstances.

Be certain that you do not approach dating in reaction to past hurts.  When we have heartbreak, we often decide that we never want to feel that feeling again and so we make the opposite of what happened to us of the utmost importance.  For example, if your partner cheated, then we focus on finding someone who is faithful and trustworthy.  It’s not that these traits are undesirable, it’s that we are still caught in the energy of what caused the heartbreak which can draw it to us again and again simply by being caught in that story.  

Additionally, when our behavior is in reaction to what just occurred our values in relationship are not in alignment with what we desire in a partner for our overall lifestyle.  We had a client who came to us after ten years of marriage and two kids who was unhappy that his wife was constantly requesting that he, “Tone it down.”  We discovered that he dated his wife in reaction to a woman who had cheated on him and broken his heart.  He certainly married a faithful woman, however, she was not accepting of him and his inherent personality.  

When we desire love, we look for it outside of ourselves, yet it must be INSIDE us in order for it to be mirrored back to us. Ultimately you cannot say or do the “wrong” thing with the Right Person.  So, whether you are looking to date casually, or wish to connect with the love of your life, the best approach is . . . to be true to yourself, not twisting into a pretzel to get love.  That way when you are in a committed relationship you’ll know that person loves you for who you truly are, inside and out.

Are You Stuck in the “Lie” of Love?

At some point every single one of us has been caught in the “LIE” of LOVE.

The lie of love that says we can only have love with this one person.  The lie of love that fears we can only receive love in this one way.  The lie of love that says we will never feel “this way” with another person.

It is easy to get stuck on the details of the past.  We all spend time revisiting the loving memories and the heartbreaks of old relationships.  What we forget is that our memories are malleable.  They change with time.  We recreate them and alter them every time we revisit them.   The more we nurture these memories, the more we get attached to the lie.

This lie of love keeps us stuck in the past.  It keeps us stuck in our pain and heartbreak.  It keeps us from being able to receive love from anyone else.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the lie of love is an illusion.  We decide that love has to exist in our life exactly the way we want it.  Our love has to arrive on our time schedule or else it is not love.  Our love has to make us feel a certain way or else it is not love. Our lover has to express their love in a specific way to us or else it is not love.

This is the path to disappointment, pain and loneliness.  And this path is perpetuated in literature, on TV, and in movies.  The Truth of love is so much more freeing – it is easier and allows us to receive what we truly desire.  When we step into the Truth then we become the Master of Love!

What if we could be free from that lie and step into the TRUTH of LOVE?

The Truth of love is that love is everywhere.  Love is created by you.  No one can give you love, because it is always yours to have.  Love has limitless expressions.

We’re not referring to some abstract idea of love.  We mean feeling loved each and every day.  Receiving that love from your soul mate, and giving that love in return.  

The Truth of love is that love is your birthright.  You were born perfect and whole.  You simply have forgotten that Truth in the pain of experience, so you’ve been trying to become whole again through another person.  You’ve been trying to feel complete through another person.

The only person who can complete you is you.  And the way to do that is to realize that there is nothing wrong with you.  You are not broken.  You don’t need to be fixed.  The truth of love is found in self-acceptance.  Shining the light of love on those dark places inside of us.

It is time to change our relationship to those old memories so we can release ourselves from the lie.  Look for the golden nugget in each past relationship.  There is a gift for you to take away from your heartaches.  Finding that gift allows you to grow and your love for self to expand.  

Examine the ways in which you reject yourself.  How often do you negate or reject your feelings by not expressing them?  Maybe you hold back your true self and present a version of yourself that you believe will be more likeable or acceptable.  You will not be loved for who you are until you start loving yourself for who you are.

When you learn to love yourself then love is available to you in each and every moment, and you can create love in your life under any circumstances, then you can experience the Truth - Love is inside of you and limitless.

When we get stuck thinking that LOVE is in the details – we set ourselves up for disappointment. We enter a relationship with hope – and that hope is the last thing to go.  Only by releasing that hope (the hope that says love can only be fulfilled by this one person, at this time, and in this one way) can we open up to all the possibilities that love has to offer us.  

What if every time your heart broke, it actually expanded and allowed room for more love to enter?  When we release the lie, we welcome all our experiences as an opportunity to love ourselves more deeply.  When we experience Love from inside of us, then and only then is it reflected back to us through the eyes of our Beloved. 

Dating, Dialog and Discovery!

I find it interesting how much effort and energy is often put into “where to meet people” when we’re single.  I have found with my clients. as well as from my own personal experience, its not about WHERE you are, but more about WHO you are being.

Dating is important for one reason that most people overlook – PRACTICE!

In order to change the patterns that you’ve been living over and over again in relationship its imperative for us to practice that new way of being in the world.

When I was internet-dating I had set one clear intention – to discover things about myself.  

If I met someone I was interested in, then that would be icing on the cake.  My clear goal was to pay attention to who I was being.  How was I different when I was meeting with someone I was attracted to, versus someone with whom I had no spark?  How did the presence or lack of that spark shift my internal dialog?

Often times with our clients the desire to find “the one” by internet-dating comes up again and again, and we respond “Its just practice!”  (This is true whether the dates come from the internet, or in “regular” life.)

Take that in.  

If it is truly just practice, then how would that change your relationship with you?  

Ultimately you cannot say or do the “wrong” thing with the Right Person.

When we desire love, we look for it outside of ourselves, yet it must be INSIDE us in order for it to be mirrored back to us.

Years ago, I married myself.  I went down to Venice Beach and bought a plain solid silver band, went out to the beach and promised to Love, Honor and Cherish ME!  It was incredibly fulfilling and nurturing.  Each time I looked at that band, or felt it on my finger, it was a constant reminder of that promise to myself.  

Nurturing yourself during the search for love is NOT optional.  

If you are truly in a place where you really don’t get out to meet new people, that’s okay.  Practice with the people in your life; friends, family, and co-workers.  Start to pay attention to what you would like to shift and then practice.  Do you judge?  Do you get angry?  Do you run through what may happen later in the day while you take your morning shower – only to realize that the dialog you’re having is not the one you want, but the one you fear?  

The real KEY to shifting on the inside is to pay attention to what you are saying to yourself about yourself.  Notice the negative dialog and change it to positive comments that you believe.  Pay attention to your inner dialog the way a marathon runner pays attention to their pace.

Discover what you would like to be saying to yourself and say that instead.

Do You Know How to Grow Together Rather Than Apart?

Do you and your partner have a common goal in your relationship?  Did you ever?  People come together because of shared attraction and companionship and over time as you grow together you make a deeper commitment to the relationship.  But did you ever discuss your shared goals, your desires, your dreams of your life together?

Maybe you just entered into your relationship the same way you entered your current job.  You needed a job to pay your bills.  The longer you worked there, the more comfortable you became in your position, you advanced and eventually you had a nice pension.  But did that job serve your soul?  Did it serve your natural talents and abilities?  Or maybe it just paid the bills and allowed you to buy a house and feed your family.

Relationships can develop along those same lines.  But does this relationship serve your soul?  Does it feed your curiosity and your creativity?  Mutual attraction and similar likes and dislikes are helpful in a relationship, but that is often not enough over the years to help you grow together.

We believe in relationship as the next step in our personal and spiritual growth.  Both Orna and I believe we could be happy and fulfilled alone.  We waited until we were past forty to marry.  However, we both wanted to continue to grow; to be the best versions of ourselves that we could be.  And we knew that required a partner.  Someone to reflect back our better selves and our highest potential.

It is so enriching to have a shared vision, a common goal in relationship.  It gives you a guidepost for the journey and helps you stay on the same page.  It is easy for one person to outgrow the other if you are not both clear on what you are creating together.  That doesn’t mean that like Orna and myself you also develop a business together, but it does mean that you both decide what is important to you and what is necessary for your satisfaction.

A couple days after our wedding Orna and I went to one of our favorite places in Los Angeles, the Self Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine.  This is a beautiful and holy place.  We did a short meditation together and then we took our guest book from our wedding, opened it to the empty pages in the back and began to write.  We each alternated writing  a single vision of what we desired from our partnership until we both felt complete.

We plan on returning to that same spot on our yearly anniversary to review and update the list; checking off things we’ve completed and adding the next steps in the vision.  In this way we can track our goals continue to grow together.

If we knew about this exercise earlier we would’ve done it long before our wedding.  It was suggested to us to do at our wedding and we loved the idea.  Do it when you both have committed to the relationship.  And add to it each year.  

 
 

Do You Know How to Love and Value Yourself?

We are strong believers that your ability to attract love in your life is tied to your ability to love and value yourself.  These practices are at the root of creating intentional love.  When you embrace the idea that your experience in the outer world is nothing more than a reflection of your inner world, then it seems obvious that in order to attract and receive the love you desire you need to create that relationship with yourself first.

I can hear you thinking how great that sounds however, what does that look like in practice?  What actions can I take that teach me to love and value myself?  We’re going to start looking at those practices and how to implement them in the next series of blog posts.

The place to start is to begin to examine your relationship with yourself and ask yourself some key questions:

1.  Do I feel that others are always draining my energy?

2.  Do I have a list of actions or activities that I do regularly to replenish myself?

3.  Do I feel any resentment towards important people at home or at work?

4.  Do I set and enforce my personal boundaries?

5.  Do I know what my ideal day would look like?

6.  Do I speak to myself in a harsh or critical tone?

7.  Do I dwell on past mistakes?

8.  Do I focus on what I haven’t yet accomplished?

9.  Am I holding onto unresolved issues from  the past?

10.  Is there anything that I am unwilling to change or let go of in order to get what I want?

11.  Do I take time for myself away from friends and family?

12.  Do I focus on the present and reward myself for how far I’ve come on my journey?

If you answered yes to #’s 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 then that is a great place to start making changes.  Pick one of these and add it to your New Year’s Resolution list.  In order to avoid becoming overwhelmed, work only on one at a time and be compassionate towards yourself.  There is no time limit for how long it should take to make these changes, its all a process.

If you answered yes to #’s 2, 4, 5, 11, or 12 then you already have some great practices in place.  If you answered no, then these are great actions to add into your daily life.  Once again it is best to take them one at a time.

So today’s tip is to spend time with this list, notice where you are not honoring your needs or hanging onto the past, notice which practices you would like to develop and pick one to focus on for the next 30-60 days.

Let us know how you’re doing.  We’ve set up a forum topic so that you can support one another and keep track of your progress.  Click HERE to post on the forum.

Love and Abundance,

Orna and Matthew

Are you hoping on a wing and a prayer?

 

Hope is a great emotion.  It often brings light into the darkest of places.  There is absolutely no logic in HOPE.  For this reason hoping is a good thing, although sometimes many of us simply hope, and do nothing else.

 

This is often the case when it comes to LOVE.  At my wedding last Saturday a dear friend said several times: “You give me hope!”  I knew what she meant.  I’d been there myself, many times, not just once.  At a lovely wedding, no boyfriend, no date, and feeling so happy for the couple and yet that green-eyed monster of jealousy was lurking over my shoulder.  Hope was all I could muster.

 

Hoping is a great place to start.  You’ll get a lot more mileage out of taking action – even a small action.  Setting an intention is how to begin the process of manifesting what you desire.  Be clear on what you want.  The more details and the more you incorporate your five senses the better.  When you have love in your life what will it FEEL like?  Answer that SPECIFICALLY and then find ways to bring that feeling to life in your day right now!

 

If you are serious about wanting love in your life – real love – life long lasting love, then its time to get serious.  How do you want your lover to treat you?  Once again, be specific.  Are you treating yourself this way already? 

 

Here’s an example from my own life.  I knew I wanted the real deal, real love with a spiritual connection and every time a relationship did not work out I would dissect it to discover the lesson.  I’d ask myself, “What did I learn?”  In the year 2000 a clear piece of my love puzzle came into focus – RESPECT. 

 

I realized that in my family of origin “I love you,” meant I don’t respect you because there were no boundaries.  In order to have respect there must be boundaries.  That boyfriend I had in the year 2000 had a family that loved respectfully.  Certainly every family has their issues, and they had their share, but in this arena they truly excelled. 

 

I did not know how to LOVE RESPECTFULLY.  I set the intention to have respectful love and set myself on a course to learn HOW to love respectfully myself. 

 

Setting an intention that is in alignment with what you truly desire is an action that you must take to create change.  Who do you have to BE to have what you desire?  In what ways can you shift from where you are now to where you want to be?  Again, how you FEEL is everything!

 

So the next time you find yourself HOPING for something – Love, Money, Health – allow that to be the SPARK that ignites action and set a clear intention of what you want.