 So, this morning I was thinking about the dating process and what a mess it might seem like. And I know many people are frustrated to asking how can I meet a high quality person, how can I meet, and I'm not a big fan of the idea of high quality, but what I think that really means is how can I meet someone who's vulnerable, authentic, transparent, has integrity, their actions match their words. They don't make assumptions. They're not hypocritical of others, they're not judgmental of others, that sort of thing. Boy, that's a tall order for anyone to fill because I think on some level we all have frailties or flaws within us that makes it difficult to actually be a fully actualized human being. But with that said, coming back to the original part of this conversation, how do you meet people that are aligned to who you are and what you want and that they genuinely want a fully committed relationship and why does it seem so hard to meet these people? So this morning I was envisioning a football stadium in particular, the Coliseum because I believe it can, oh no, excuse me, Rose Bowl, I live in Los Angeles, so the Rose Bowl I think can house close to 100,000 people. And I want you to imagine that the entire stadium is filled and all of, even down at the ground level, it's all filled up, right? It's just completely filled up with people. And I want you to imagine that you're walked into the stadium and you go, I've got to meet my soulmate. I want to meet my high quality person. I want to meet that person that we can build a life together and it's this entire stadium of people. It's going to be rather challenging to meet someone in that type of environment. And yet that is what we're dealing with today is literally walking into a crowded stadium and say, this is what it, I mean, that's literally what it feels like. And I'm using this as a metaphor when I say it feels like this because I want you to think back 50, 60, 70 years ago before the internet, before social media, before all these ways of connecting with everybody on the entire planet practically. It used to be if you walked into the stadium, there might be the bench on the left side of the field. And that was all the people to choose from or maybe there was the bench on the right side of people and there's only like 30, 40 people to choose from. And what I'm trying to give you an example is if you grew up in a small town, you grew up in a small town where everybody knew each other, you had a sense of familiarity, had a sense of alignment with these people because most likely you shared the same values, your lifestyles were blendable. And this is what it's been like throughout history up until about 50 or 60 years ago. I want you to think about cave people. They literally congregated with 30 people and that's who you choose from to meet with. And then when we moved into tribe environments where it was a little bit larger, basically the people you chose from was within your tribe or when we moved into towns or we moved into villages and everybody knew each other. So it made it rather simple. Now we're walking into a crowded stadium and it's much more challenging to figure out who's really aligned with who we are and what we want. Does that make sense? And I think the challenges today, especially women, and I say this, well I shouldn't judge women when I say this because men are just as bad as this as well. It's like there's this attitude, well why haven't I met my person? Why haven't I met my person that I'm supposed to go off into the sunset or like Cinderella or whatnot and get that glass slipper? Why haven't I met that person? Well maybe it's to recognize that we are literally swimming in a sea of people and we're bombarded with people through our devices nowadays. I think the swipe dating apps has certainly bastardized the way we connect with people, certainly more so now than it was five or ten years ago before these apps existed. And so the real question coming back to where can I meet this person, this person who fits my values, whose lifestyle is blendable with mine and more importantly who is an emotional grown-up to actually lean into a healthy, happy relationship. And the reality is these days is we have an emotionally constipated group of human beings out there in this pool, in this stadium of people, we have a lot of emotionally constipated people out there and it makes it even more challenging. I think the most important thing first and foremost is to work on oneself, work on your maybe of codependent tendencies, maybe you have boundary tendencies in the sense that you compromise your boundaries, maybe you have an egoic way of approaching things that's very entitled and there's a lot of expectations you have in another person, maybe you have really controlling behavior, maybe you have submissive behavior. First and foremost I invite you to work on yourself, work on that's really the reasons why I wrote my book what the heck is self-love anyway, a journey of personal development, self-help and spiritual work to actually begin to recognize that we are the center of a lot of our own frustrations yet most humans point the finger at somebody else saying they're the problem in the dating mating and relating realm right now most people hyper focus on on especially women, they focus on men being the problem and men focus on women being the problem. Do you know most couples therapists when they see a new couple come in to their office they immediately know what's gonna happen, it's gonna be this, he's the problem, she's the problem instead of looking within because when we point a finger we have to look back at the three fingers pointing back at us and so first and foremost if you want to attract or meet again I use the term high quality but what I'm really saying is a person who's just aligned to who you are and what you want first and foremost I invite you to work on oneself in the dating process. Now I'm going to tell you one other thing that happens when you're actively dating and let me just say this in no effort if you're putting in no effort to actually connect with someone then you will not meet someone it will require effort whether it is choosing the online dating method whether it is going to a meetup group which I'm not a big fan of per se whether it's just volunteering which would be a great way to connect with people you're gonna have to make effort to be seen because whether we like it or not you know if there's a stadium full of people and you're sitting at home they're not going to be able to see you so it's going to require some effort but more importantly when you work on yourself I want you to know that ultimately when you meet a person to begin the dating process then you're actually that person is a mirror to help you also work on yourself at the same time because it it's one thing to work on oneself without another person and that's a whole another thing when you have another person in your life to work on yourself and what I mean by working on yourself is catching tendencies of maybe being neediness catching tendencies of being avoidant catching your tendencies where you might be controlling catching your tendencies where you might be a dormat or a people pleaser and actually working in real time to heal those things most even though I'm a big fan of doing inner work and I oftentimes recommend the Hoffman process as a way to heal your childhood wounds and traumas that cause you to become that needy person that come that causes you to become a controlling person and when you get to the root of why this happens you can actually begin working on it in real time and just recognize that sometimes the whole dating process is an opportunity for you to work on yourself and not necessarily find that ultimate soulmate on that first second or first guy you meet or the third guy you meet or the 10th guy you meet because many of us are gonna have to go shopping you know I was just thinking about shopping for a moment I had this interesting thought yesterday when when you know these days men and women are like shopping for clothes you know the way they treat the dating process and they put on they go into a department store they put on clothes just to try it out to see what it feels like the problem is some people leave their BO on the clothes and what I mean to say is they leave their stink on the on the clothes which is representing the other person they've left their stink and then you've got to choose to wash the clothes being yourself to rid yourself of that stink and that's where inner work comes in because the bottom line is this you don't need someone to love you for you to feel good about yourself I repeat that you don't need someone to love you to feel good about yourself which you what I invite you to do is love on yourself and become a magnetic attractor so what happens is when you go to that football field all the people that are not vibrating with you are gonna start pushing they're gonna start moving away and the people that vibrate with you are gonna start coming closer to you if you believe in the law of attraction and when I mean that they start coming closer to it doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be this perfect ideal relationship it's gonna be an opportunity to do even more healing through a relationship and hopefully with a person that you have chemistry with you share the same values you have lifestyles are blendable and most importantly they're an emotional grown-up so I invite it invite in a prayer God universe spirit I invite in someone where we have mutual chemistry with one another and our communication and banter can go on for hours and hours at a time and we have lifestyles are blendable and we share the same values and this person we are both emotionally grown up to did build the deep roots of trust through social activities hobbies mutual interest spending time with family and friends traveling together teamwork building skills both in our personal and our professional life and lastly intimacy both physical emotional intimacy to build that deep rooted happy healthy juicy delicious relationship God universe spirit I invite that in and I invite you to say a prayer while you're doing the work to attract in a great guy that might be high quality and merely that means you're just aligned with each other alright I think that's I think you get the gist of where I'm going I'd like to hear your thoughts please post a comment below and if you find value in this group please tell your friends about midlife love mastery send them to my website Jonathan as a comm have them click the group coaching button so they can join our fantastic group and I'm gonna sign up this video as I always do first I've given myself a big gigantic Jonathan bear of self-love I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay I'm gonna ask you to turn to someone a pat a teddy bear pillow and give it or them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love and let's face it we could all use more love in our lives thanks a bunch bye bye now bye