Is your Mindset Sabotaging your Dating life?

If you are serious about dating and finding your person, I URGE you to read this.
This is when I had one of my own epiphany moments, when I was craving a genuine connection with someone, and started questioning if it was ever going to happen…
 
Pay attention, there are about 3 important takeaways…
 
 Friendly reminder:

“The way” you think about something, can be exactly what is causing you to stress about it.     

Read that again: Not WHAT it is you are thinking about, but the WAY YOU are thinking about it.

This means, your belief about what happens in front of you, is more important than the facts that are actually right in front of you.
 
Here’s a really good example of that...
 
I want to share with you a moment in my life, where a simple unexpected conversation with a good friend, changed my mindset, almost instantly. The words she said weren’t necessarily all that profound but the impact was almost instant.
 
It was at a time in my life, where I was really struggling. I could both see and feel how being in the struggle was consuming my life. It was all I talked about.

I was chatting with a good girlfriend. We were both single moms at the time. We were both entrepreneurs, trying to run a business while making sure our kids were getting the right amount of attention,  feeling loved, hoping we are we being good parents, both living on an expensive island where we had to continue to make money, and both really interested in finding genuine love and having someone to share our life with.
 
I noticed though, if so much of our dynamics were similar, then why did I feel so constantly stressed about it, and she seemed to be ok.  Her energy seemed much better than mine, she seemed a lot less phased than I was…

So I just asked her one day...
 
“I said, "Look at me... I walk around stressed, what feels like all the time, wondering how I’m going to change my career, while raising my son, while trying to take care of myself and be happy, how does the future not scare you? Financially, having your own business, and raising children … do you not stress? How do you not look stressed like me all the time?"
 
Whether she had put any thought into this before or not, I don’t know, but very casually and confidently, she said, “I don’t plan on doing life alone. I do want to meet someone. I do want to find love and share my life with someone… so I know I will.  And when I do, I won’t be doing life alone. We will help each other out, create a partnership and build a beautiful life together, so I know all of this “doing life on my own” is just temporary.  And when I do meet that person, all the things I worry about, I won’t need to worry about. We will figure it out together.”
 
I thought, “Well ya, I want that, too….but…” - and that was it. That was my epiphany. That’s when I realized, it’s not the facts in front of us, but our beliefs about it, that were creating our current realties. (*Ahem* my current MOOD!)
 
She approached her wants with desire and faith. I approached mine with fear and worry. We want the same thing, AND we both have the same amount of proof in front of us that it could or wouldn’t workout.

The way we were thinking about it is what was creating stress for me, but ease for her. If you looked at straight facts, we were in the very same position, but the lens we projected into the future, changed the amount of stress we were experiencing about it in the current moment.

My lens was fear, hers was confidence, and we have the same information about our futures directly in front of our faces.

She didn’t have any more proof than I had that that was or wasn’t going to happen.
She expected it to happen.
 
I focused on, “What if I don’t find that person…?” while she planned for “I will and when I do…”, and those thoughts created our emotions at the current moment of time.

THAT is why this matters.

“Those thoughts created our emotions, and our energy, at that present moment in time.”
  
Being in that energy space, of lack and worry, had me cling to survival mentality. “Do it on your own”. It made me feel independent, but at the same time, it made me feel even more alone…even more closed off…almost like a self-sabotaging self fulfilling prophecy.
 
How did we develop such different mindsets over the same thing?

We were both positive people with what seemed like similar energies...?
 
Personally, for me, I had realized for a while that I had been stuck in survival mode since I was very young. "Survival mode" is a mindset. It's a space where we can get really stuck without some conscious effort to climb our way out.  

Mindsets like that are engrained in us when we are quite young, and tend to apply themselves across the board. This is an example of how mindset can be a blanket : we can apply the same survival mindset to experiences we haven’t even experienced yet. “How we do one thing, is how we do everything.”
 
This was a prime example of “What got you here, isn’t going to get you there.”
You might be successful, but what got you here, isn’t going to get you to the next level.
Being independent was important to be a working, single mom, but “Don’t worry about me, I got this, I don’t need anyone” isn’t “I’d love a partner in life” kind of energy…
 
 That moment still sticks with my today. It wasn’t that profound, but it changed everything.
 
The energy behind it was faith, and abundance, not fear, and survival.
 
My mindset, was protecting me. I have to do this on my own. But it was also forcing me to see all the reasons of why I had to keep doing it on my own and thus creating more reason to need to. Because that’ s what I was focused on, that’s what I was seeing. I kept thinking, "You're fine. You've got this. You're fine on your own,"  – yet that’s not what I wanted.
 
You can project both fear or hope into the future. That is a conscious choice. And it needs to be conscious. You have to catch yourself. But what you are focused on right now – the fear, can create your current mood – and your current mood, is what “your person” is going to be attracted (or not attracted) to.

Your thoughts about your future are affecting your mood and energy right now, in the present, impacting your ability to be your best self.
 
You can sense when people are “desperate.”
 
This is why your fear of being alone can manifest in attracting exactly that, in this exact moment.
 
You can project both fear or hope into the future. You have to catch yourself. This is why having a solid foundation of self-awareness is so important. There are so many tools I used to help develop this, the Energy Leadership Assessment being a big one, it tells you all you need to know about your current energy and outlook on life.
 
 
So keep in mind:
 
1. “The way” you think about something, can be exactly what is causing you, the stress about it.     
Not WHAT it is you are thinking about, but the WAY YOU are thinking about it.
 
2. That will impact your energy in the PRESENT MOMENT – it will create your current emotions, mood, and energy – and remember, energy is contagious.
 
3. “How we do one thing, is how we do everything.” Where else might this mindset be spilling over into other areas of your life?
 
Here’s how you can find out: My favourite self help tool ever.