Hey, all. For the next bit I’d like to do a series based on the book Meeting Your Half-Orange: An Utterly Upbeat Guide to Using Dating Optimism to Find Your Perfect Match, by Amy Spencer. The book is divided into six steps to help you, well, meet your half-orange, also known as your perfect match. I’ve started reading this book a couple of times and now I’d like to work through the whole thing from start to finish. So let’s do it together!
Here are the main ideas for step #1:
You attract what you think about, focus on, and feel — both positively and negatively. That’s why the first thing to do in this process is to take an honest look at the content of your thoughts about dating and marriage. Are you thinking that you’ll never get someone you’re really attracted to or who really “gets” you? Are you thinking, “I just don’t want another date like XYZ?” These thoughts are made of neural energy and are actually measurable — they’re real in a way you might not have considered (real and true are not the same thing).
Your thoughts change your energy and your body language, and your energy and body language change your life. So your thoughts have the power to create, or change, your reality (my brother told me there is something in the Zohar about this, I will have to take his word for it!). But optimism is a skill like any other. The more you practice optimism, the stronger those neural pathways become and the more easily you feel optimistic.
In order to tap into dating optimism, you need to believe you can have exactly the kind of relationship you want. Even if you’re not feeling it now, or even if you’ve gone a long time without really believing it, you can still connect to that belief! No matter how hopeless or negative you are feeling, try to get in touch with that belief deep down that you really can have exactly what your heart desires. Even if it’s just a “tiny smidgen of belief” as Amy puts it, try to go there and connect to it. It’s there.
Since we attract what we think about, focus on, and feel, it’s really important to frame things in terms of what you do want and not what you don’t want — because if you’re saying “I don’t want another DOA, I don’t want another date with someone who will just dump me the next day”…that’s where your attention and energy is going and that’s what’s actually more likely to happen again.
The other really important thing to keep in mind throughout this process is that you’re not being too picky. You should want to marry someone who you really, truly enjoy and like and respect and who you are attracted to. You are not asking for too much! Remind yourself of that over and over, or come back here and read this paragraph again. For dating optimism to help you, it has to be optimistic! You need to believe you will marry someone who you are truly happy and grateful to be marrying!
So that’s it for step #1. Connect to your deepest, truest belief, no matter how faint, that you will get the husband and marriage you desire, and reword your thoughts/declarations about what you don’t want into thoughts/declarations about what you do.
Step #2 coming next week be”H! Have a great day.
