You know those days when you are so on your game that you can literally handle anything that comes your way? Things that you weren’t expecting to come up, and you just deal with it right then and there. And, they don’t feel like a big deal…you feel energized by these situations and not drained.
I want get to the heart of why so many women feel really drained by the idea of dating. So, stop for a moment and think about one or two or three people, that when you spend time with them, you feel energized. What’s going on in those scenarios?
Are you talking, are you laughing, is there comfortable silence? How are you being? Take 10 seconds and write down five ways to describe how you are being in those situations that have you feel like time spent with this person actually gives you more energy than you had when you walked into that situation.
And now let’s take those five things and I want you to run down that list and ask yourself if that is how you behave on a date? Is that how you’re showing up? And if not, let’s start to look at why.
For example, when I feel super energized when I’m with a really good friend of mine, the circumstances that are present, that have me able to feel energized, are that I’m really just being me. With this friend, there are times that I walk into her house crying, there are times that we laugh so hard that we pee our pants, there are times that we say really disgusting, inappropriate, and offensive things. We don’t hold anything back.
So if this friend is doing something that I think is stupid or a poor choice, or makes me worried for her or something she says raises a red flag, I bring it up right away because my friendship with her is more important than whether or not she has hurt feelings for a few minutes while we work it out.
Those are the things that have me leaving an interaction with a good friend of mine really energized. If I take that list of things: being really myself, showing up however I feel, telling the truth, expressing a wide range of myself…
Those aren’t things that we typically do on a first date, right? We can make up all kinds of reasons about why, but that doesn’t really matter. That short list that brings us energy is the reason that going on dates is hard. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether you have time, or whether it’s the right guy, or any of the other bullshit excuses that we make up about why dating is hard. It’s that we are restricting ourselves in a way that we can’t breathe. And of course that steals our energy. We are spending so much energy holding those parts of ourselves in, that when you walk out of the date, it doesn’t matter if you liked the guy or not, it’s that you physically exhausted yourself by not showing more of yourself.
So, I’m going to give you one way to show more of yourself.
(I know not everyone dates online, but this is just an example. I’m hopeful you can take the principle and put it in the context of meeting someone in person.)
If you date online, often there’s a really jarring experience between meeting someone online and exchanging a few messages, and maybe even texting for quite a bit before you move to a date, to the point where you have this picture of somebody. And you get to the date and you realize that there are lots of things they haven’t said, and that there are lots of things you haven’t said. So one way to set the stage for energy-producing dates is to share more of yourself upfront: in a dating profile, in your messages. Really talk about the things that make you who you are, not the things that make you the lowest common denominator for somebody that the group you’re trying to attract wants to date.
I live in Seattle, so everybody’s profile here says “I love the Seattle Seahawks, I love to go skiing, I love to hike, and of course, I look great in jeans and heels.” That’s sort of what we, in this part of the country, think of as meeting the minimum requirements of the guy that I want. I think that’s women’s impression of who they need to be in order to attract the man that they want.
And those things might be true about you, but it is not all of your story, and it is certainly not the part of your story that makes you interesting and attractive to other people. So try to focus on the things that make you different.
If you articulate the things that make you unique, you’re going to accomplish two things.
The first is that you’ll keep away the men that will read those things and think, “Oh my god, you’re nuts,” or “The things you like are stupid,” or “We have nothing in common.” You don’t even have to mess with them, because they will just go away.
So that’s one bonus because you don’t have to waste your time with people who aren’t going to appreciate you for who you really are. It is the first step to really owning who you are in a relationship: setting the stage for who you are from the beginning. This is who I am and I’m not hiding anything.
I’m not saying you need to share your deepest, darkest secrets online, or even in a text, or even on the first date. But really give people something to sink their teeth into around who you are, what you stand for, and what you want, both in your life and in your relationship.
The second reason that sharing more of myself is a win is that the things that I like that are weird are things that attract people who are like me. I religiously do Bikram yoga: 105 degrees, 40% humidity, and the same 26 postures every time. (People have all kinds of opinions about this style of yoga, but the important thing here is that it aligns very closely with who I am.) People who know something about Bikram yoga can decide pretty quickly if that’s a mindset that they are attracted to. So, win-win. I got to share about something that’s important to me, and I got to draw people in closer who are interested in something that I am interested in.
Ok! Your turn! What’s one thing you’re gonna do to show more of yourself? Share it on the Facebook page so we can support you.