The dating hack you didn’t know you needed
Today we wanted to offer a simple hack for all of our readers who are single and desire to be in partnership. One of the things that we’ve discovered over the years in our coaching practice is that it's quite common for there to be a big gap between what people say they want in a partner and the types of people who they actually end up dating. So many of our single clients over the years have come to us with a long list of ex’s that bear little similarity to what they consciously say their ideal is. This is ultimately due to subconscious beliefs and patterns in the area of love that are antithetical to what a person consciously says they desire. Those subconscious patterns need to be uncovered, understood and reprogrammed in order to begin to attract something different.
How many times have you said that you want to date somebody who is available and ready to be vulnerable, and yet found yourself wildly attracted to the unavailable and aloof? What about if you’ve said that you want to be with somebody who you can trust and feel safe with, and yet, been consistently drawn to people who end up cheating on you or lying to you? What about telling yourself that you want to be with somebody who has a healthy relationship with substances and yet, found yourself in the arms of another person with compulsive behavior? If these examples sound anything like you, then today’s column can hopefully help.
The most important thing to understand about this dissonance between what you say you want, and what you find yourself drawn to is that the subconscious will always trump the conscious. Meaning, that if you have a subconscious pattern and/or belief about love that is antithetical to what you consciously desire, then that subconscious pattern will always take precedence over the conscious desire. In order to change this, we have to deal with the root cause of the issue and work directly with the subconscious parts of ourselves.
This is not as hard as it may sound because if we want to know what is going on subconsciously, all we have to do is read the road map of our personal history. Your personal history in any area of your life tells you what your underlying subconscious programming is in that area. So if you’ve been struggling financially your whole life, even if you consciously desire to be financially sound, that tells you that you have underlying subconscious programming that is sabotaging your conscious desires about money. The same goes for the area of love. If you consciously desire one thing, but end up choosing cheaters, liars, unavailable, aloof, abusive, addicted, the list goes on, then that tells you that your subconscious needs reprogramming in the area of love.
Step one to reprogramming your subconscious is to take a good honest look at your personal history. What does it tell you? What patterns can you extract from it? Step two is then to ask yourself “what would a person who has this personal history, need to believe about love, dating etc., in order to attract this pattern?” For example, if you consistently attract unavailable people, the question would be “what would somebody who attracts unavailable people need to believe about love and or themselves in order to attract that experience? Maybe that love is ultimately unsafe? Maybe that they are not worthy of feeling seen? Maybe that love is akin to “winning” somebody over in order to prove their own worth? There are a number of different possibilities, but ultimately the process is the same. What are the underlying beliefs that are causing these patterns to repeat themselves?
Another good way to hone in on subconscious beliefs is to think about what your parents mirrored to you about love? What was their marriage like? Was it harmonious? Dramatic? Loveless? Abusive? How did they speak about love and each other? What did they demonstrate? So many of our subconscious beliefs and patterns come from what we learned through osmosis in our early childhood as children grow up inside the ecosystem of their parents' relationship.
Once you have done this deep dive and begun to hone in on your subconscious patterns, now you can work on reprogramming them. Whole books have been written on how to work with the subconscious mind, but at a high level, the subconscious is programmed through repetition. Whatever you repeat consistently, the subconscious will begin to accept it as true and over time, this repetition will create new beliefs and new neural pathways.
So ask yourself, “what would somebody who has the kind of relationship that I desire, need to believe about love in order to attract that relationship”? In the example of attracting available vs unavailable people, a belief that it is safe to love and be vulnerable would be a great start. Also, a belief of being worthy and deserving of a partner that they feel safe with would serve them extremely well. Taking it even further, a belief that they are drawn to and attracted to partners that are available and who make them feel safe would take this to a whole new level.
All of these new beliefs should then be repeated as much as possible. You can do this in the form of affirmations, aligning your actions with these new beliefs and consistently catching yourself when you are thinking from the old belief vs. the new one. The more you repeat this and the more consistent you are with this, the more it will be reflected in your actual experience because, as within, so without.
