Transcript:
[00:00:01] Good morning. So, patience! I want to talk about patience.[00:00:10] I have never been good at waiting for things, especially when I feel really, really invested in the outcome and I cannot wait for it to come. A really good example of this is wanting to be emotionally healed post-divorce. I remember I was in such a hurry to get over it and be over it and to be able to like, show up and be my best self and then attract my soul mate . . . that I just like could not sit long enough for the process. I hated the process, in fact. And I remember sitting on my therapist's couch and crying because I was so frustrated that I just wanted it to be over and I hated the process.
[00:01:02] However, the truth is that the process is how things actually get done. And if we skip over the process, we . . . well, we can't skip over the process, first of all. But when you're so focused on getting it done and getting it over with and wanting it to come right now, you actually make it take longer. You make the process longer than it would be if you had actually just faced the process and embraced it.
[00:01:37] So here's what I mean. We've all heard the cliche that until you love yourself, you can never truly love someone else. Barf, right? Nobody wants that to be true, because loving yourself is difficult and it's a process. And we all have issues of unworthiness, and none of us is perfect, and most of us can't accept that we're not perfect and we shame ourselves and we feel horrible all the time.
[00:02:17] We just want somebody to come along and love us for who we are. And then once they love us for who we are, *then* we'll be able to love ourselves because somebody else loved us first. That is what would be the easier thing to do . . . But the truth is we have to get there ourselves first.
[00:02:45] Now. Dating after divorce. Soooo many of my friends that have gotten a divorce have gone absolutely buck wild — buck WILD — with dating. And it's like that freedom that they felt, they just wanted to embrace that freedom and just go like, whole hog into, you know, experiencing everything that life has to experience. And they did it too fast. Most of them (all of them) after a couple of years of being with one person or of, you know, jumping into a relationship too fast, they regretted it and said, "I really should have taken that time for myself, but I didn't want to because I was scared of myself." And then they had to take that time later. So the two years that they spent with the wrong guy, I'm not saying that was a waste of time because we learn something from every relationship. But first, I have to take the two years with that wrong guy, and then they had to take the two years that took them to love themselves before they found that right guy.
[00:03:58] So if they had just held off and gotten to know themselves first, then maybe that right person would have come along earlier. And I'm not a person who necessarily believes in soulmates. I am a person who believes in compatibility. And my partner is really compatible because he shares my values. And I knew that the minute that I met him that he shared my values. He is super family oriented. If he had five minutes to spend with his daughter and he had to drive 12 hours to get to her, he would drive 12 hours to spend five minutes with her. He is a good man.
[00:04:45] I was not ready for a good man for a long time, and that's because I didn't take the time to love myself first and figure out that that was actually what was important to me. Flashiness wasn't important to me. I needed somebody who was solid. That is what was important to me, somebody who was really moral and had high integrity and that is what mattered to me, instead of attracting all of these guys who were not interested in monogamy or whatever, I needed to figure out what was important to me. I needed to evaluate my own values. I needed to figure out that I'm not perfect and that's okay and that I will get better with every year and that I'm doing the best that I can and that there are people out there who are not looking for perfection, so I don't need to try and do that.
[00:05:51] Dating is an example of being super-focused on the outcome at the expense of the process. If you spend time really digging into the process and really trying to grow, the outcome can be better than you ever would have imagined. Often things need to fall into place too, before the outcome can even happen. So, for example, you want another relationship so so so SO bad. But you haven't learned to love yourself, the right person won't come. Those things have to fall into place first. You will continually be attracted to the wrong person because you didn't take the time for yourself.
[00:06:36] So if you have patience in the process, which trust me, I do know is hard, you will end up with what you want because you've taken the time to build that foundation for yourself. I hope this has helped. It does not just apply to dating, it applies to basically everything. It's like saving money for a house. You have to stack up that money before you can buy the house. You have to be patient with the process and know that good things will come if you take action. So I hope that helps. And I hope you have a wonderful day.