self help

Looking for the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with? Tired of being alone? Obviously, I can’t guarantee or promise anything… but I can tell you what mindsets you need to adjust in order to find a good woman.

Too often, our relationships are doomed with the wrong goal. We start pursuing relationships with women from the perspective that they will want to date us, marry us, sleep with us. We start with romance in mind.

If you want to “get a good woman,” what you are chasing is a long term committed relationship with the right woman. Not to oversimplify or sound too judgmental, but let’s call it that marriage. (It seems strange that we have to offer a disclaimer about marriage in this day and age. I know I’m old-fashioned, but I fear our culture is abandoning some very important values when it comes to long term relationships in regards to marriage. That is another topic for another day.)

If all of your energies are focused on building that romance from the start, what you build is a relationship built on attraction and emotion – and those are pretty weak foundation blocks for a lifelong commitment.

Don’t start by asking her out. Start by getting to know her. Invite a group of friends, coupled and un-coupled out for dinner, or a hike, or over to play board games. Be friends first. Build that friendship, and the rest may follow. If it doesn’t, you can keep trying, or you can move on! Moving on is tricky though – if you’ve already walked down the aisle with her in your heart. Take it slower. Don’t try to inject that into your friendship, and keep those emotions and imaginations under control.

Take it slow may look different from case to case. When I met my wife, our collective groups of friends hung out at college all the time for about a month or so, and then I just knew that I should pursue taking that friendship to a romantic level. We were married nine months later. For some, it may appear “fast” or “quick”  and I’m not averse to a quick relationship….

But it does need to start out with friendship. We spent a lot of time with friends talking, laughing, goofing off, eating meals, going to concerts, watching movies together. We had conversations, and grew to trust each other, and knew each other quite well, surprisingly, before progressing to romance.

Too often, this step is skipped.

And if a friendship is not built well and carefully, it might not survive the “Hey, you want to go on a date?” question.

It doesn’t have to be awkward afterward. It only is awkward if you’re all puppy-dogged and weepy about it.  Keep those emotions in check, and if she isn’t interested in you, then keep the friendship and work toward building another romance with someone else – unless you think you can try again later.

The problems come when we gunk all this up with sexual tension, unrealistic attachments, and unbridled emotion.  

Keep your wits about you, young man.

Looking for the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with? Tired of being alone? Obviously, I can’t guarantee or promise anything… but I can tell you what mindsets you need to adjust in order to find a good woman.

I feel strongly that if you do what we talked about last week, and improve your self, you’ll naturally be more confident.

But women are looking for confidence. They are looking for a man who knows himself, and who is confident with who he is.

They can smell bravado a mile a way, though. Whatever you do – don’t fake it. If you project confidence when you don’t have it, you look like that little kid on the playground who lies about what his dad does for a living.

Here are the steps you need to take to become more confident,

1. Change your mind. (Change your thoughts)
Confidence is birthed out of a mindset. That mindset has to be cultivated. Your mind is a garden. You’ve got to plant seeds of confidence if you want confidence to grow and produce fruit.

You can’t choose to be confident in the moment when you’re on your first date. You have to choose to be confident now! Make the choice, and work toward cleaning up your thought patterns – taking negative thoughts captive, and replacing them with confidence.

2.  Set Goals (and then acheive them)

The biggest way to boost confidence naturally is to set a goal, and make it happen.  
I watched my son, who took the driver’s license test a few times before passing, set a goal to pass it, then practice his parallel parking. When he passed his test – he was beaming with confidence. In fact, this young man who is normally shy around the ladies started immediately chatting up another young lady who successfully passed her test.

Your goal may be losing weight, learning french, getting a job, finishing a project, buying a car – or any other number of goals that will give you the feeling of accomplishment you need.

3. Build our tribe (and evaluate who is in it)
   I’m never a fan of kicking people out of your life – but you may want to take inventory of the people that you allow to speak into your life. Are they building you up? Or cutting you down?
   
   Spend time with the people that build you up, and limit your contact with those that don’t. You don’t have to tell them you are limiting their contact. Be cordial to them – but just allow yourself to pull away from the influences in your life that bring you down.
   
   Note: Sometimes a good friend may talk tough to you – this does not always equate to cutting you down.  Keep your skin thick, but be open to friends who really do want to see you improve who share the hard truth with you. A real friend tells you if there is a booger on your face.
   
   
   4. Mirror Talk
   
   The idea of pep-talking to yourself in the mirror is a bit of a cultural trope… but maybe there’s a little something to it. Maybe looking yourself in the eye and speaking positive truths to yourself actually does build you up.
   
   Sometimes I think the words that we use are a bit magical. There are power in your words. So use them wisely to build yourself. The power of saying. “I can do this!” is quite possible the most mystical experience there is.

I know most of these things seem to focus on the internal more than the focus on the relationships with women directly. The truth is – what a woman wants has more to do with what’s behind the scenes, ANYWAY.