 I really don't understand why people are so hooked on these how to manifest your soulmate or text from anybody instantly videos. I mean it's like an epidemic thing on YouTube and it's so ridiculous because when you talk to the people with really great relationships, they're almost never saying that's how they met their person. Now in this video, I'm going to talk about a very practical framework for designing your love life. Hey guys, Alex Hine, author of the self-help book, Master the Day, now one of my greatest obsessions at improving myself for relationships and in love has been reading. I've shared on my Instagram the 50 relationship books that I'm working on reading to improve myself but another company that can help you do this faster is called Blinkist. Now in today's age, it's pretty tough to find the time to actually sit down and truly learn and when it's easier just to flip open Instagram and go through a bunch of pictures when you're online, it can seem like you don't have the time to actually read. But there's a really cool service I use called Blinkist and it's the only app that actually takes the best insights from a ton of nonfiction books and condenses them to 15 minutes or less so you can read or listen to them and get the key points to improve your life. Now even books I've procrastinated on, like Think and Grow Rich, I drove through a friend's house the other day and I re-listened to all the essential points in under 15 minutes. Now Blinkist is a special package here for my listeners. If you go to Blinkist.com forward slash Alex, the first hundred people will get a free trial so check the link below. So let's talk about what I think are really the three essentials at designing your love life. I think of course with all achievement, all success, whatever you want to attract in your life, the foundation is always becoming a better person honestly upgrading oneself because you can guaranteed control that. So the first thing for me is what traits do I need to work on? So what traits about yourself are the most essential to improve? And I'll give you three buckets that I think will generate a lot of reflection. The first is what are the traits that annoy your friends and your family? What are the traits that annoy the people you've dated? And then what are the traits that annoy you? So you have your family, the people you've dated and you. Those three buckets are probably going to give you a lot of memories to come up and address. Maybe with your family, you're the annoying know-it-all. Maybe you're lazy. Maybe you're critical or negative. Maybe with the people you've dated, you just don't put in that much effort and you're not thoughtful. Or maybe you expect way too much on the other side and you're the slave driver, the nag. And then maybe with yourself, you wish you had the will to go after your dreams and goals. Or you wish you were braver and took those risks and those challenges in life. Start by having these three buckets. One of the things I need to improve in those three domains. But for me with my family, one of my biggest, most problematic traits is being critical and really expecting a lot of people. With the women I've dated, one of my, I guess, worst traits is that, again, I have really high expectations and really high standards. And I'm really growth oriented and I hope the women I date are too. And with myself, the biggest trait I have to work on is the ability to kind of self soothe and just relax. So learning to recognize when I'm getting exhausted and taking care of myself so that I don't need to date women who take care of me. The second thing I would recommend to design your love life is really to study your own attachment style. So there's a great book called Attached. And it's based on these three psychological dynamics that typically follow us and haunt us from childhood. Typically we are anxious, secure, or avoidant. The anxious person is generally very preoccupied with their relationships. They get worried and stressed when their partner doesn't really reassure them or overly reassure them. And their default assumption, if relationship ends, was that they did something wrong, which may or may not be true. The secure person is generally okay, direct, communicating their needs. They can accept feedback without it really hurting their self-esteem or their feelings. They say what they want, and they're in the middle in terms of being afraid of losing their partner or not afraid. And then you have avoidant people who really love averse. Essentially they want love, but the closer they get to someone, the weirder they start becoming. And the more they want to push that person away or play hot and cold, saying they love them but not showing what their actions they love them. And I found that these three psychological dynamics are shockingly accurate. Maybe you've realized that you're avoidant, like you're the runner every time in the relationship. Or maybe you always attract people that are obsessed with you. That's a hint that you are avoiding it and they have to keep chasing. Maybe you're the chaser who always dates these people that don't treat you well. And you're wondering what it is about you that always attracts these guys or these girls that take advantage of you. Maybe you're somewhere in between. But just understanding your attachment style, I found, can be one of the most powerful ways to change how you show up in dating and relationships. And it also provides a context for all the previous people that you may have dated before. Now the last, of course, is what daily habits and rituals do I have to change? Matthew Hussey, who's a dating coach for women, on one of his YouTube videos he shared this clip from his seminar. Now I thought this was really wise because this one woman was talking about being in her earlier mid-30s, has innumerable heartbreaks, and she's basically like, I've given up. I've given up on men. I don't want to date anymore. I don't, like, it just always results in this heartbreak and this letdown. And so he countered in a very interesting way when he said, okay, let's say you do that. But what are you giving up on? You're never going to go out ever again to a bar or to a social event or to a hobby or to a dance class. You're never going to leave your home anymore. You're never going to pursue your passion. You're never going to travel the world. You're never going to do all the things you always wanted to do. Like, what are you not going to do? What are you giving up? And he said, a lot of this attraction stuff is when you live a full life, you naturally end up attracting somebody. Because number one, you're living that full and that exciting and that happy life and all the other quadrants, the domains of self-growth. You're doing well. And by having a varied, interesting, fun life, you increase the chances of meeting somebody. So what are you going to give up on your entire life? You're going to live in a cave forever and quit your job, stop eating food. In reality, the ritual that often needs to change is we stop chasing love. And the ritual that we change is we start chasing all the biggest dreams that we have had. Whatever those things are that make us feel alive, whatever those other domains are, the dreams, the travels, the salsa class you always wanted to take, the career you always wanted to go after, that city you always wanted to live in, that language you always wanted to learn. Honestly, not chasing love is probably one of the biggest things. Because when you chase your own excellence in your own life, chase that excitement of a fulfilling life, and you have a varied life where you go out, you're meeting people, maybe you're a little more social than you normally would be, that is where you make the space for a dream person to come in. And that is what I've seen has been the most effective way to design your love life, and not trying to manifest people with some ridiculous eight second technique, but you becoming someone who is deeply attractive on every level, who's also living a full and fulfilling and varied life. That is an attractive person who will naturally attract people everywhere they go. I hope that helps again you guys, check out that sponsor code for Blinkius down below that discount, and then I have some more videos on this exact same topic right over here.