If the man of your dreams walked up to you tomorrow and asked you on a date, would you be ready for it? Chances are, having the relationship that you dream about will require you to show up differently than you’ve shown up in relationships of the past.
For example, if your last significant relationship involved you ignoring your needs as an individual (like time for yourself, time with girlfriends, doing hobbies or work you love), you allowed that to happen. In order to be ready for the relationship you really want to have, which involves not giving up the life you have currently that you love, you have to exercise the muscle of not allowing your personal needs to be ignored.
For me, I want a relationship that has the number one priority in the relationship that I be the fullest version of myself (and for my partner to do the same), and the number two priority in the relationship is that we are both committed to bring *that* person into the relationship. If I’m not practicing being who I am fully every day, I can’t actually know that that works in the context of a relationship, so I have to develop those muscles to do those things first.
One of the most significant ways to practice being fully yourself (and one of the things that I see often gets lost in a relationship) is knowing what you want and allowing yourself to have what you want. The way you invite a relationship that prioritizes this into your life is by showing up this way regardless of whether there’s a man in it or not. You take a stand for who you are and what you want, and the man that wants that kind of relationship will follow.
What that means is you need to be uncompromising in terms of the things that you want in smaller pieces. So if the thing that you want in a partnership is to tell the truth all the time and you want your partner to tell the truth all the time, you have to start doing that in real life to see that it’s possible before you’ll believe that it’s possible in a relationship.
In practice, what that means is that if I go out to dinner and I order beef fajitas at a Mexican restaurant and chicken fajitas show up at my table, it means I have to tell the waiter, “I believe I ordered beef fajitas, not chicken. Could you bring me beef, please?” Any time that you accept something other than the thing you’ve asked for, you are actually telling yourself that the thing you want doesn’t matter, or that it isn’t possible. So if I didn’t say anything to the waiter in this situation, it’s reinforcing to myself that I don’t actually believe that I can have the thing I want, or that someone wants give me the thing that I want. (This sets up a really bad habit of settling, which is the ONE thing you’re determined not to do in the relationship you want, so STOP IT!)
Opportunities to play this game with yourself are everywhere, and it just takes some practice. If I drive into busy parking lot around the holidays and think to myself, “Oh, it’s so busy, I’ll never find parking,” that’s usually what happens. If drive into the parking lot and say, “Wow, I totally deserve to drive into the parking lot and find a space that’s close relatively quickly,” I usually get just that.”
It may sound unrelated, but I promise you, it’s not. If you aren’t willing to be true to yourself in situations of little consequence, there’s no way you can do it in the most intimate and vulnerable of relationships. Bring it into your daily life today so that you can practice being the person that can have the relationship that you really want.
Hop on over to the Facebook page to tell me the trick you’re going to play with yourself in everyday life to start to be ready to have the relationship that you want! (And report back once you’ve started practicing it!)