Welcome or welcome back to the podcast! 

Let's dive right into the 5 dating mistakes to avoid this year (and beyond)!

Mistake #1: Early narrative-building. This is when we take what we know about someone that we just start dating...I'm talking within a month or so...and we build a story about who this person is, what they value, whether or not they'd make a good partner, parent, etc.  And going based on this impression that they give off is a problem for several reasons, right? They could end up being the opposite of what we're looking for...and when they inevitably show up as their true selves, it becomes harder to end the relationship because we've already fallen for the version of them that showed up on the first few dates.  

Mistake #2: Bringing old relationships into new relationships. For example, a lot of people have an issue with trusting partners because of past experiences of being lied to, betrayed, cheated on & sometimes even being the cheater in past relationships can spark some trust issues. It's natural for our minds to go back in time to when we've felt triggered with someone else & assume a similar outcome is around the corner. But when we're bringing the insecurities that someone else helped to create, into something new with someone else, it can damage the positive potential of being with that person. It could turn into us emotionally reacting to things that don't warrant that type of response, it could turn into us accusing them of things they're not guilty of, and ultimately, we can end up pushing them away altogether. 

Mistake #3: Ignoring red flags...if we're looking at these people through rose-colored love-lenses because of that early narrative-building we talked about,
red flags or warning signs that a person could have toxic qualities can be hard to spot. Some things you wanna watch for are signs of controlling and/or possessive behavior, rushing into things faster than you communicated you'd like to, signs of emotional unavailability, being flat out rude to you or to other people while they're in front of you, unrealistically hyping themselves up, not asking you questions about yourself, etc. I'm not saying to hyper focus on finding these things in someone else...but go into every date, unbiased, with an open, neutral mind...be an open book and ask the same of whomever you're dating

Mistake #4: Being inauthentic. It's normal to be a little emphatic about ourselves from time to time, right? But when we're straight up lying about ourselves, we're putting on a façade that we won't be able to keep up long term. We're creating an unrealistic image of ourselves to this person, so now they're gonna have their own set of expectations as to how WE show up. And pretty early on, I learned that this doesn't work, and people completely pick up on whether we're being authentic or not. 

Mistake #5: Refusing to change/better ourselves. Expecting different results without changing what we typically do to try & achieve them will get us nowhere. What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over & over again, and expecting different results. Another angle to that is Einstein's quote: "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Now, I'm not saying you or any of us CREATED our relationship problems but we have made decisions & we chose to keep certain types of people in our lives, who chose to cause us stress & heartache. Stepping outside of ourselves to observe our own behaviors & who/what we let into our lives can be a powerful way to make decisions that serve us in the long run!

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