From Single To Family In Less Than 60 seconds: A Disgusting Tale of True Love, Part 1
Here's a fact of life that continues to amaze, shock, and delight the hell out of me: When you're brave enough to release your truth to the world, you give others the courage and the permission to be cool with their own truth. It's an awesome cycle. And it's one that I want to perpetuate, right now and all the time.
So we're gonna get down to business when it comes to the beginning of the story, so that we can get closer to the present and then roll with this crazy-making new world I've found myself in.
***
You know those people who say, "True love will find you when you least expect it!"? Or "The minute you stop looking for someone, you'll find them"?
Those people can go fuck themselves.
Let me explain...
Last summer I did the Bon Iver thing and moved northwards to a cabin in the woods to better concentrate on My Art (it sounds so important, when I capitalize it like that, doesn't it?). After a particularly exciting yet exhausting year, the thought of sort of running away to write (and swim in the lake in the morning and take long walks in the woods in the afternoon and meditate on the dock at sunset and read by the fire late into night) sounded like the most amazing idea I'd had in a long time.
Now, I knew that by moving to the middle of the forest, I would be essentially staring down the barrel of a sexless summer. Which was not the most attractive prospect ever, but maybe it was good for me, right? After a couple of extremely dramatic pairings that year, a break sounded good. Healthy, even. Also, I really had to work on this fucking book, and I couldn't seem to satisfactorily accomplish that while being swept up in the social swirl of Minneapolis.
So anyway, to sum up, I ran away to the woods like a pretentious douchebag and even though I knew I probably wasn't going to get laid all summer long, I figured it was okay because I'd already gotten laid a lot the year before.
Good? Okay! Let's move on.
A lot of what I wanted to do that summer was deepen my study and practice of meditation. This could be a whole other story for another day, but the year before I sort of gave myself permission to build out my spiritual life by digging into stuff I had a long-held curiosity about - meditation, the law of attraction, metaphysics, etc (you know, stuff that too-cool people like me usually associate with crystal prism necklaces and long flowy skirts and gross cereal from Good Earth). And the moment I started plugging into that stuff, miracles started to happen. Real, actual, tangible miracles. And the mental and spiritual growth stuff...like, wow. But the effects of that kind of practice wasn't what I loved most about it - it was the act of it. I loved the study of it. Just taking time for it every day felt...good. Joyful. Like both my body and mind were humming along together, both vibrant and thriving. And I love writing, and I really do feel that it's my purpose in this life to write, but this...this made me so happy.
So it seemed to be a gathering of forces when a Cyber Dating Sidekick client of mine wrote to me about how she had read The Soulmate Secret by Arielle Ford, and asked me to read it while we were working together. I had already heard of the book by listening to podcasts that featured Jack Canfield, an author I really dig (you may know him from Chicken Soup For The Soul, the ridiculously huge empire of books that I still haven't touched. I know him from The Success Principles and the awesomest audio series with the corniest title, Maximum Confidence: 10 Steps to Extreme Self-Esteem), who used to be one of Arielle's clients back when she was a book publicist. He spoke very highly of the book, which piqued my interest. But, initially, the book...it sounded pretty cheesy. While I get pretty jazzed about meditation and spirituality and intentional thinking because I know what those things can do, I'm still that girl who sometimes cringes at the casing. Why we gotta put flowers on everything, kids? What's up with the books covers of sunsets and tree canopies? Doesn't anyone else get tired of wind chimes and flutes? Why can't we just be cool about this stuff?
Also, buying a book called The Soulmate Secretwhen I'm known for my disasterous dates and angsty-type relationship writing kind of felt like being 50 pounds overweight and picking up a copy of 10 Pounds in 10 Days by Jackie Warner. Glad you're keeping your chin up, kid, but let's chat about this thing called reality. But three facts convinced me to at least give it a shot: First, if a client asked me to do it because she felt it would help me serve her better when it came to her online dating endeavors, I couldn't really say no, right? Second, I had to admit that Arielle's premise for the book was true - if we use meditation and intentional thinking for other areas of our lives - career, life purpose, etc - and see results, why can't the same be true for our romantic life? Why can't our search for our life partner be just as spiritual as anything else? After all, we do call it a soulmate...isn't kind of defeating the purpose of trying to find a soulmate if we're not getting down with our soul to find them?
And third, it was perfect timing. I had a whole summer ahead of me, a blank slate of a season. A lot of what the book talks about is clearing out space - head space, emotional space, physical space - to make room for the person you want to bring into your life, and lot of that is a process. And if you're serious about finding your soulmate, Arielle wrote, then you have to get serious about it. Telling the universe that you wanted to find the perfect person for you and then going out and dating a bunch of "he's okay" guys sends mixed signals to the universe/God/your inner intentions, and when you're sending out mixed signals, you're going to get mixed results.
And since I was living in a cabin in the middle of the woods and planning on dating no one, I could hardly fail at that part.
So I dug in. And found, to my surprise and delight, that the book was fun. You do all these different, fun rituals that help you release emotional energy from your exes or prepare you mentally for someone new or help you get clear on what it is that you really want. That was the part that was radical for me - being a sort of relationship-study junkie, I had of course made tons of lists before of what I wanted in a man. But they were always carefully crafted, "are you sure you want that because what if ___"-type lists. I was making lists of the man I thought I should want. The biggest thing this book did was teach me that I'm supposed to want what I want. For example, tattoo'ed up guys. I am sooo attracted to that stuff. But, I used to always tell myself that that wasn't realistic, since I didn't have or want any tattoos and edgy guys like that didn't tend to go for preppier girls like me, etc. Then, while reading the book, I realized that was kind of ridiculous: If I'm attracted to someone like that and I'm like me, then that means that there has to be someone out there that's like that who's also attracted to someone like me. What you want wants you. So what I did with the list practice in this book was allow myself to just write down everything that came to my mind - and challenged myself to not talk myself out of a single thing. I read it over, copied down the things that really resonated with me - the things that caused a loud shout of "YES!" inside my brain - and then gave my original list up to the universe (aka, burnt it in the fire place while drinking a glass of wine and listening to Ray LaMontagne, because that's how you do things when you're living the romantic comedy that is my life).
The other cool thing that the book taught me was that instead of doing visualizations of what you want, to try doing feelingizations. I'm a super visual person - I think in pictures and my thoughts play out like mini-movies, etc - so visualization is easy for me, but I really connected with the idea that it's so much more powerful to think about how you want to feel in a relationship rather than what you want it to look like. Because relationships can look awesome on the outside but still feel terrible on the inside, right? So I took myself through that process and really started capturing how I wanted my romantic-life-For-Life to feel. I wanted to feel that the moment he walked in the door, the party was about to start. I wanted to feel that when we asked about each other's day, we really cared about what the other had to say. I wanted to feel like every single aspect of each other was totally accepted by the other: Not just liked, not "I love this about you now but in six months I'd like you to change it", but accepted. I wanted to feel that I could let go of the selfish tendencies and self-absorbed living practices that I've culled over the past decade - and let go of them gladly - if he asked me to...which is something I've never felt or wanted with someone before (because fuck those guys and their demands on my time, right?).
Around this time, I started noticing my OkCupid.com inbox had started to fill up when I would log onto the site to do research and matches for clients. While I had absolutely no intention of doing any online dating that summer, I had made a sort of half-hearted decision to keep my profile active on there because, in the past, so many clients had requested to see my profile (I guess there's something comforting about knowing that the person you're hiring to write your profile hasn't totally messed up their own). So I mostly ignored the messages. One online match, however, was persistent and contacted me on Facebook. He wrote a very sweet message about not wanting to be perceived as a stalker but had simply noticed that I was rarely on OkCupid anymore, and since he still wanted to get to know me, he figured Facebook was the best avenue to do so. I noticed we had some mutual friends in common, and he seemed like a cool enough guy, so I accepted his friend request, went back to work, and promptly forgot all about it.
And that's the end of Part I. Look for Part II, coming soon to a blog (this blog. The one you're reading right now. This one) near you!
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So we're gonna get down to business when it comes to the beginning of the story, so that we can get closer to the present and then roll with this crazy-making new world I've found myself in.
***
You know those people who say, "True love will find you when you least expect it!"? Or "The minute you stop looking for someone, you'll find them"?
Those people can go fuck themselves.
Let me explain...
Last summer I did the Bon Iver thing and moved northwards to a cabin in the woods to better concentrate on My Art (it sounds so important, when I capitalize it like that, doesn't it?). After a particularly exciting yet exhausting year, the thought of sort of running away to write (and swim in the lake in the morning and take long walks in the woods in the afternoon and meditate on the dock at sunset and read by the fire late into night) sounded like the most amazing idea I'd had in a long time.
Now, I knew that by moving to the middle of the forest, I would be essentially staring down the barrel of a sexless summer. Which was not the most attractive prospect ever, but maybe it was good for me, right? After a couple of extremely dramatic pairings that year, a break sounded good. Healthy, even. Also, I really had to work on this fucking book, and I couldn't seem to satisfactorily accomplish that while being swept up in the social swirl of Minneapolis.
So anyway, to sum up, I ran away to the woods like a pretentious douchebag and even though I knew I probably wasn't going to get laid all summer long, I figured it was okay because I'd already gotten laid a lot the year before.
Good? Okay! Let's move on.
A lot of what I wanted to do that summer was deepen my study and practice of meditation. This could be a whole other story for another day, but the year before I sort of gave myself permission to build out my spiritual life by digging into stuff I had a long-held curiosity about - meditation, the law of attraction, metaphysics, etc (you know, stuff that too-cool people like me usually associate with crystal prism necklaces and long flowy skirts and gross cereal from Good Earth). And the moment I started plugging into that stuff, miracles started to happen. Real, actual, tangible miracles. And the mental and spiritual growth stuff...like, wow. But the effects of that kind of practice wasn't what I loved most about it - it was the act of it. I loved the study of it. Just taking time for it every day felt...good. Joyful. Like both my body and mind were humming along together, both vibrant and thriving. And I love writing, and I really do feel that it's my purpose in this life to write, but this...this made me so happy.
So it seemed to be a gathering of forces when a Cyber Dating Sidekick client of mine wrote to me about how she had read The Soulmate Secret by Arielle Ford, and asked me to read it while we were working together. I had already heard of the book by listening to podcasts that featured Jack Canfield, an author I really dig (you may know him from Chicken Soup For The Soul, the ridiculously huge empire of books that I still haven't touched. I know him from The Success Principles and the awesomest audio series with the corniest title, Maximum Confidence: 10 Steps to Extreme Self-Esteem), who used to be one of Arielle's clients back when she was a book publicist. He spoke very highly of the book, which piqued my interest. But, initially, the book...it sounded pretty cheesy. While I get pretty jazzed about meditation and spirituality and intentional thinking because I know what those things can do, I'm still that girl who sometimes cringes at the casing. Why we gotta put flowers on everything, kids? What's up with the books covers of sunsets and tree canopies? Doesn't anyone else get tired of wind chimes and flutes? Why can't we just be cool about this stuff?
Also, buying a book called The Soulmate Secretwhen I'm known for my disasterous dates and angsty-type relationship writing kind of felt like being 50 pounds overweight and picking up a copy of 10 Pounds in 10 Days by Jackie Warner. Glad you're keeping your chin up, kid, but let's chat about this thing called reality. But three facts convinced me to at least give it a shot: First, if a client asked me to do it because she felt it would help me serve her better when it came to her online dating endeavors, I couldn't really say no, right? Second, I had to admit that Arielle's premise for the book was true - if we use meditation and intentional thinking for other areas of our lives - career, life purpose, etc - and see results, why can't the same be true for our romantic life? Why can't our search for our life partner be just as spiritual as anything else? After all, we do call it a soulmate...isn't kind of defeating the purpose of trying to find a soulmate if we're not getting down with our soul to find them?
And third, it was perfect timing. I had a whole summer ahead of me, a blank slate of a season. A lot of what the book talks about is clearing out space - head space, emotional space, physical space - to make room for the person you want to bring into your life, and lot of that is a process. And if you're serious about finding your soulmate, Arielle wrote, then you have to get serious about it. Telling the universe that you wanted to find the perfect person for you and then going out and dating a bunch of "he's okay" guys sends mixed signals to the universe/God/your inner intentions, and when you're sending out mixed signals, you're going to get mixed results.
And since I was living in a cabin in the middle of the woods and planning on dating no one, I could hardly fail at that part.
So I dug in. And found, to my surprise and delight, that the book was fun. You do all these different, fun rituals that help you release emotional energy from your exes or prepare you mentally for someone new or help you get clear on what it is that you really want. That was the part that was radical for me - being a sort of relationship-study junkie, I had of course made tons of lists before of what I wanted in a man. But they were always carefully crafted, "are you sure you want that because what if ___"-type lists. I was making lists of the man I thought I should want. The biggest thing this book did was teach me that I'm supposed to want what I want. For example, tattoo'ed up guys. I am sooo attracted to that stuff. But, I used to always tell myself that that wasn't realistic, since I didn't have or want any tattoos and edgy guys like that didn't tend to go for preppier girls like me, etc. Then, while reading the book, I realized that was kind of ridiculous: If I'm attracted to someone like that and I'm like me, then that means that there has to be someone out there that's like that who's also attracted to someone like me. What you want wants you. So what I did with the list practice in this book was allow myself to just write down everything that came to my mind - and challenged myself to not talk myself out of a single thing. I read it over, copied down the things that really resonated with me - the things that caused a loud shout of "YES!" inside my brain - and then gave my original list up to the universe (aka, burnt it in the fire place while drinking a glass of wine and listening to Ray LaMontagne, because that's how you do things when you're living the romantic comedy that is my life).
The other cool thing that the book taught me was that instead of doing visualizations of what you want, to try doing feelingizations. I'm a super visual person - I think in pictures and my thoughts play out like mini-movies, etc - so visualization is easy for me, but I really connected with the idea that it's so much more powerful to think about how you want to feel in a relationship rather than what you want it to look like. Because relationships can look awesome on the outside but still feel terrible on the inside, right? So I took myself through that process and really started capturing how I wanted my romantic-life-For-Life to feel. I wanted to feel that the moment he walked in the door, the party was about to start. I wanted to feel that when we asked about each other's day, we really cared about what the other had to say. I wanted to feel like every single aspect of each other was totally accepted by the other: Not just liked, not "I love this about you now but in six months I'd like you to change it", but accepted. I wanted to feel that I could let go of the selfish tendencies and self-absorbed living practices that I've culled over the past decade - and let go of them gladly - if he asked me to...which is something I've never felt or wanted with someone before (because fuck those guys and their demands on my time, right?).
Around this time, I started noticing my OkCupid.com inbox had started to fill up when I would log onto the site to do research and matches for clients. While I had absolutely no intention of doing any online dating that summer, I had made a sort of half-hearted decision to keep my profile active on there because, in the past, so many clients had requested to see my profile (I guess there's something comforting about knowing that the person you're hiring to write your profile hasn't totally messed up their own). So I mostly ignored the messages. One online match, however, was persistent and contacted me on Facebook. He wrote a very sweet message about not wanting to be perceived as a stalker but had simply noticed that I was rarely on OkCupid anymore, and since he still wanted to get to know me, he figured Facebook was the best avenue to do so. I noticed we had some mutual friends in common, and he seemed like a cool enough guy, so I accepted his friend request, went back to work, and promptly forgot all about it.
And that's the end of Part I. Look for Part II, coming soon to a blog (this blog. The one you're reading right now. This one) near you!
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