30 Days to a Better Love Life: Practice Makes Perfect

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So are you feeling good about being single today? Really?! Great! That’s good news. That’s a great segway into what I’m going to talk about today. The way people react to you, perceive you, and interact with you is based on how you portray yourself. That’s why it is important to be happy with yourself and to not be defined by your relationships. If you are positive and optimistic, you will open up many doors that you didn’t even know existed.

But being positive and upbeat is not the end all. You can be very happy with your life, in a wonderful place, and still have a bad love life. Most people will tell you that “you’ll find a relationship when and where you least expect it”. While that might be true, the reason for that is not as apparent as it seems.

They lead you to believe you magically meet someone because you’re not looking anymore… You will just meet some guy/girl, hit it off, and fall madly in love… And then they will give you some examples of times this exact situation happened. And I agree. That’s usually a great time to meet someone. But it’s not magic. Not even a little bit. The reason this bit of wisdom is true, is because you are meeting someone WHILE BEING YOURSELF. That phenomenon happens when you meet someone in a comfortable setting where the goal isn’t to “find someone”.

Which brings me to my point. Most of the time, the most difficult way to start a relationship is to “date”. It’s unnatural. For most people who struggle with relationships anyway, it puts tons of pressure and stress on any potential relationship. You spend more time wonder whether to call, when to call, if you are calling too much, where to go, what to wear, what to do, etc. etc. etc. Dating breeds doubt about EVERYTHING. And doubt is the enemy of successful relationships.

So am I saying to stop dating? NO! Of course not. What I am saying is that it’s key to maintain a comfort zone. You need to learn something from conventional wisdom and apply it outside the box. If you can simulate the way you are when you aren’t searching for a relationship WHILE you’re searching for the relationship, you’ll improve your chances of meeting someone AND of actually hitting it off!

So how do you do this? I think it’s vital to get comfortable in dating situations and make it comfortable for your date so you can stop worrying about all the dating stuff and focusing on getting to know the person.

The best way? PRACTICE!
I’ve never understood how anyone expects to be “good” at dating when they’ve never actually done it well. Just like anything, being comfortable when “interested” in a guy/girl takes practice. For some people it’s pretty natural. For most of us, it’s one of the most difficult things we can possibly do.

So how do you practice? Find low risk situations and learn from them! Start with small things. Make it a point to “flirt” (whatever that means to you and your personality) with people you find cute in your everyday life. You’ll learn this later, but “flirt” is in quotes because most people DON’T KNOW HOW! They think flirting is complimenting the person! WRONG! My definition of FLIRTING is taking a chance and showing someone you are interested by showing them your true personality without knowing if they are going to “like” you.

It’s about taking a chance. They key is, finding situations to start with where the “chance” is small. So you flirt with a waiter/waitress and her/she completely blows you off? Who cares! The key to success is to get to a point where that situation doesn’t bother you. Where you can go up and flirt with the next waiter/waitress and try again. Are you going to meet someone this way? Maybe. But probably not.

Most waitresses/waiters get hit on CONSTANTLY, especially if they are cute, which is why they are perfect practice. You get instant feedback in a very low pressure situation. If you are feeding them bull, you’ll know very quickly, as you will get the “oh, that old line again” look. You should practice being yourself. Your goal should be to act the same way towards your waitress for that 30 minutes as you would around your best friend who you kinda have feelings for because you get along so well. You might be surprised how receptive they are if you’re just yourself.

Once your perfect that and start feeling comfortable, you up the ante. You start going and talking to cute girls/guys in the store, at the coffee house, at the bar, at school, at work… You don’t need to be smooth. You don’t need to be suave. You just need to go up and talk about something. You should always have an idea of what you COULD talk about, but don’t use a script. If you’re used to talking and “flirting” with the opposite sex, conversations will come fairly naturally, especially since you’ve been PRACTICING!

I’ll take this time to warn you about some pitfalls. First, DON’T PRACTICE ON YOUR FRIENDS!!! I can’t stress this enough. Don’t do it! Second, don’t lower your standards. Don’t “practice” on girls/guys you know you can get. That does you no good. It doesn’t do anything but prove that you can get them. Plus, if you do it right, they will fall madly in love with you and you’ll spend hours trying to tell them that you aren’t good for them.

One last note about this “practice” stuff is this: The whole reason you are practicing is to practice! You have to keep an upbeat positive attitude about the whole thing and take all the positive and negative reaction in stride and learn something from it. Most of the reason I like “practicing” on servers, bartenders, etc. is that you don’t really pick them. You have as good of a chance having nothing in common as you do having lots in common. This is all leading to something… Keep the big picture in mind. You can’t change your life overnight, but if you work at it, you can prepare yourself to really make it work when you get in the right situation.

So if it’s not overly obvious already, the “love work” for today is to start breaking down those barriers and practicing what you struggle with. If the situations don’t really apply to you, think about what you do struggle with and try to find a way to practice and make it less hard for you. Too many people don’t realize how confidence and self-esteem work. It’s not about always making it work… It’s easy to believe in yourself when things are going your way. What’s a true test of self-confidence is to still believe in yourself when things don’t magically fall into place. You will be able to handle things much more logically when aren’t scared of rejection.

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