My TOP FIVE TIPS TO LOVE AND BE LOVED:
By Jacqueline Nichols – Love Expert and Professional Matchmaker
1. DESIRE – Desire love, the real deal kind of love. Not the quick fix for affection but truly the desire to love another person and become real for another person to love you.
Many people come to me feeling frustrated they are single or struggling in their relationship but as we begin to talk I hear more about what other people aren’t giving them and less about truly owning their own role in finding deeper love.
The reality is that it begins within. You must have a deep core desire to actually move forward. Let go of the past pain that has held the walls up and kept people from getting close. This isn’t easy but when the desire gets strong enough the heart expands and the walls begin to melt.
2. DECIDE – Just like any big decision deciding isn’t easy but once you truly own your decision you will feel a complete shift. Whether you want a deeper connection with your current partner or you are done random dating you’ll know in your decision. Too many people are wishy-washy on making decisions. The truth is that the universe can’t help you move forward, if you are sending confusing signals.
Take time to honestly pause and look at where your life is now … and where you want it to go. I find writing in my private journal to be very powerful. Often when I’m overwhelmed or not sure what steps to take next I’ll just start writing. Pen to paper still works. Letting myself get away from electronics and just be present with my choices and my own thoughts. Quieting the mind.
Realizing that my choices are just that MY CHOICES. When I make decisions with the quiet of my own thoughts then I know I’m being truthful with what really matters to me and my heart. I’m not making choices based on what someone else directs for me to want. The truth in claiming your own happiness is to actually know what you crave and would honestly make you deeply happy. Many times our desires are cluttered up by the decisions we react to and not the decisions that give us pro-active opportunities for real connections.
3. ENGAGE – This is the part that where people quit before they even get started. Being engaged is easy to say and assume it’s easy to do but the honest aspect is realizing that being vulnerable is never easy. When you open yourself to love and desiring to be loved, you also have to keep yourself as a part of the equation.
When clients come to me asking why they haven’t found their “person” yet… I go right to asking how engaged in the process they are to be discovered by their mystery person. This is where they usually begin squirming or pulling back. YES this is the hard part because you have to keep yourself in the HOT SEAT! Desiring and Deciding are personal decisions. When you engage in the process you are inviting another person into your journey for your wishlist to come true.
There will be times you question if there are any good men or women out there? Are there any happy couples? Is there anyway you could just skip the work to get to your person. I’ve been working in the LOVE biz for long enough to say “YES” there are amazing eligible singles also looking for love and there are totally happy couples that have love or re-vived their love multiple times to keep growing as a couple. When you stop engaging you just attract the left overs of love desperation and not the fine tasting love that is so sweet you couldn’t even imagine life without it.
Asking for help, reaching out for guidance, reading books, turning on a the hallmark channel, asking friends that are in love… how they found love, how they stay in love… what ever it takes keep looking for what you need to keep engaged. YES doing your homework… aka personal work really does work!
It’s like the connection between our bodies and our desire to be healthy. We know if we train consistently and go to the gym three times a week we’ll soon have a body with the curves we desire. We also know if we keep eating with bad habits and skip the gym our bodies will not improve. Same goes with seeking to find LOVE… the really good kind of love that makes you feel so sexy and mmmmm so yummy to someone that also has done the work to find you!
It’s not about having a perfect body but having a perfecting radiance with a true desire to actually attract the most magnificent energy to love and be loved by. Fill yourself up with joy, energy, sparkle, laughter… give yourself a promise and go out to ENJOY LIFE THREE TIMES A WEEK!
I’m not a gym person but I am a person that craves great connections. Get out and meet new people. I challenged myself to meet three new people in one week. I know how momentum works for me so I decided to do it all in one day. I met a great new person to become a client and had a wonderful conversation. Next sat at a bar with two empty stools next to me and met a wonderful man, while we enjoyed happy hour and I learned all about his most amazing wife. Continued my momentum and went to a networking event. Walked in the door with my radiant energy of meeting new people and was curious who I was to meet next and achieve my challenge for the week… I met a most wonderful man and we had an instant connection.
When you engage in your journey to find love, you also invite people to engage in their own journey of life. You learn and grow from others. You also might just find someone that you too experience an instant connection with because you have the desire and the decision within you as you become fully engaged in the process!
4. PATIENCE You know you’ll be a TOTAL CATCH when the right person arrives but waiting for them is so not fun! But can it become FUN?
Daily I receive e-mails saying “dating isn’t fun”, “I’m tired of dating”, “I’m insecure worrying if it’s mutual with the person I’m dating”, “I think it’s over but I wish it wasn’t”, “I wish he’d want to work on our relationship”, “I want a deeper connection”, “now that I’ve found someone wonderful, I wonder if they like me too”…
This is the human heart at it’s deepest. It’s the raw truth of what happens with my clients daily. I love that I am invited into the delicate hidden places of the true heart of loving people. It’s not a place for just anyone but I’m blessed that I get to visit and turn pages of the past with my clients as they get closer to an empty page ready to record new and fresh memories with someone incredible.
Patience is the hard part when we feel like we are waiting on the “other” person to show up or catch up with where our hearts are at… but is it more about being patient with ourselves to find the right and truly deep love connection that we sometimes hope to skip the hard parts? Real love is true love at it’s finest.
Let yourself be patient. Use the time hoping and wishing for love to be real and let it be time for you to know more about yourself. If your dream person hasn’t arrived yet, become the person your dream person would desire. If your dream person has lost their way in your relationship begin showing them memories of where you two came from and begin creating ideas of where you two could go as you grow.
Learn to love this in-between time. Once you do find love and love is bubbling up it’ll become more of a WE than a ME journey so be sure to know who you are and what you want for you to recognize it when it arrives!
5. EMBRACE – Let yourself accept the gift you have been asking for and embrace it now that it has arrived! Many people ask for something and then when they actually receive it… they often push it away or over question it’s arrival.
You know you might have just found your wishes do come true… or at least now you are soooo much closer than you have ever been before. Gratitude is truth in letting love inside your heart.
Pause and let this moment be real and feel it. Absorb the vibration. We don’t know how long it will last. We don’t know what is happening in the future but at this moment.. embrace how great it makes you feel. Know this feeling, recognize this moment, smile in this truth. You can’t move forward unless you first pause to embrace what you have been given. The joy, the giggles, the flutter feelings you have inside… at this moment they are awesome!