Hey, all, we are back with the next installment of our dating optimism series. The first step we talked about was believing you can and will marry someone you truly like and want to marry. The second step was embracing your deep desire to get married to someone you truly like and want to marry and not going halfway in your dreams! The third step was creating a big, detailed list of what you want in marriage.
Now for step four! Step four is to fully focus on, imagine, and embody the feeling of getting what you’re dreaming of! There are many tools and strategies for this step, it’s a really fun one.
For starters, Amy Spencer says to work on how you smile and how you breathe. The Duchenne smile is the most authentic smile, the kind that reaches your eyes. You can find lots of info and demonstrations about how to create a true Duchenne smile online if you’d like to see. In this step of the dating optimism process, you are actually going to practice this smile and start using it everywhere! Not only do we smile when we feel happy, we feel happy when we smile — and dating optimism is all about creating happy, positive energy around us.
The second way to embody positive energy is to focus on taking deep, diaphragmatic breaths, which help your brain cool itself off and release stress. Deep breathing helps us be mindful and present, instead of being stuck in worry and rumination about the past or future. So in this step we focus on deep breathing and experiencing what it is like to be truly at peace and grounded in the moment.
Another tool is visualization. To create a visualization, imagine yourself in a scene with your husband. Where are you? What are you doing? What is your day-to-day like? What do you do together for fun? You can imagine a Shabbos or Yom Tov scene or just an ordinary day. Create this scene and really see it in your mind’s eye. Return to this scene every day until you know it like it’s real.
You can also use visualization to imagine yourself feeling calm, confident and yourself on a date.
Create a vision board – it’s so easy! You’ll find lots of ideas online for how to do this but what I like to do is just sit down with stack of magazines, a pair of scissors, and some quiet, and cut out whatever speaks to me without thinking about it too much. Then take the images and arrange them on a large piece of paper. You can even make a vision board with one image if you don’t want to do a whole collage.
Do things that make you feel the way you want to feel when you are married. Things that make you laugh or feel calm or stimulated or safe or loved. Like swimming or baking or learning how to ride a bike or anything you can think of.
Practice gratitude because it really makes you happier, as demonstrated by zillions of studies on positive psychology. A tried-and-true practice is to write down three things every morning or night that you are grateful for.
Go places where you feel happy and where you are loved, whether to a far-flung vacation place you have always dreamed of returning to or someplace right here where you know you are totally accepted and loved for who you are.
And once you’ve done one or a few of these exercises…keep doing them! Over and over, it doesn’t matter if the novelty wears off. Repetition changes your brain! Believing and feeling and focusing on and embodying your dreams changes your energy, changes your body language, changes your expectations, changes your life!
Wishing you a fun and awesome week trying some of these ideas! You can and you will marry someone who you LIKE and who you are HAPPY to marry, and he will be worth the wait!
