Avoid This Dangerous Habit When You Date Someone New... | Matt Monday

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Have you ever fallen into this really bad habit when you like someone, maybe you go on a date with them, you have a great time, maybe you've been on a couple of dates with them, you've started to decide that you really like this person and then the stalking starts. Alright, it might not be full blown stalking, you might not be showing up at their place of work, but there is a version of stalking that has become far more appropriate, which is to go into someone's social media and check on their life, what they've been up to, where they went last night, who's tagged them in photos, who their ex was three years ago. There is a version of obsessively, compulsively looking into someone's life and behavior that has become the norm for so many people. Now I want to talk about how destructive this can be, how much it can affect how attractive we are and our ability to just be ourselves in dating and ultimately how it can get in the way of us finding the love we want. So let's get into it. Here's the first thing I want us to recognize from a place of self compassion that this compulsive checking of someone's social media that we are not yet in a fully committed relationship with is a way to keep ourselves safe. It's a way of trying to manage the situation so that we don't get rejected in this abrupt way so that we don't get any bad surprises along the way. We are trying to keep ourselves Safe. What I want to discuss is whether this is the most effective way to keep ourselves safe. Now, there's obviously an appropriate level of looking into someone that makes sense in a day and age where we can actually get a little information on someone before we go on a date with them, or maybe even after we've been on a date with them to see if who they say they are and the information they present up front aligns with the information that they've posted online and to see if their last 20 pictures that they've posted are in alignment with our values. If you don't like the things they're posting about because they don't align with your values, you know, if, for example, the last 20 pictures they've posted are of them with flashy cars and standing outside of a private jet or showing their watches, and you can't stand that kind of obsession with materialism or someone who clearly values themselves for that thing alone, then you may decide never to go on a date with that person. And that would be fair enough. But there is a level beyond which it's no longer productive or helpful. We're not necessarily supposed to know so much about a person that we are trying to organically get to know. That's the whole point of the dating process. Beyond the initial. Does this look like my kind of person or not? Often the stalking that we do takes place at the time when we've decided we like someone. And then we go looking for signs that we're not safe, that their ex was better looking than us, that they might be dating other people at the same time, that there's someone out there who has something we don't, whose photos they're liking. When we do this, we. We start to torture ourselves and we breed insecurity in ourselves, which then doesn't help us to be the most attractive version of us when we're actually dating them. Now, if you're listening to this going, oh my God, I do this. I compulsively obsessively check things and you know, I go down the rabbit hole with people I like. This video is for you because I'm going to show you some different ways of thinking about this that I think are really going to help you. The first of which is understanding that we can't control everything in early dating and that the very nature of early dating is that it is messy. We are not always coming into someone's life as a brand new chapter with a clean break from their old life, from anyone they may have been seeing or talking to. And all of a sudden we come along and it's just now begins the new era. Most people's early dating lives aren't quite like that. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're hooking up with lots of different people at the same time. But that might mean that there are loose threads in their life at the time we come along. That while we're talking to them, they're still talking to other people, that they're still going on dates, that they are still liking other people's pictures. And these things don't necessarily have to represent a threat to you. And they don't have to form a personal story about yourself that you're not worthy, or even that this person is a bad person to be avoided. I think about it like this. In the early dating stages, we are in dialogue with their old life or their existing life. What is a relationship? A relationship is that moment where someone decides that I'm going to continue the conversation with you and only you, that I'm going to drop the other loose threads of my life. But there is a time when our part of the dialogue is just showing someone how great life is when we're with someone before they've made up their mind about those things. And we can feel so threatened by the other things going on in someone's life at the time that we never really fully embrace the conversation we're having with them. We never fully show up as the best version of ourselves. And what I'm saying right now shouldn't be a mandate for bad behavior. When you feel like you're giving your all to someone, you're regularly sleeping together. They've at least led you to believe with their behavior that there's something real or their words that there's something real going on between you. And then you find out that they've been hooking up with lots of different people at the same time. I'm not giving a green light to that kind of behavior or for you to just accept them. That what I am saying is at the time when we're still getting to know each other before any real commitment has been made or any conversation has been had about the meaning of this thing or where it's going, we should allow for a little bit of that messiness that takes place in early dating. I think sometimes what we struggle with is the romantic notion we have of how the best relationships start, which is that they start with a bang. And from that moment forward, it was only about those two people. And we hear stories like that all the time. And by the way, some of them are amazing and some of them are true. I remember watching a clip from Steve Irwin, who is a personal hero of mine, talking about meeting his wife and that moment of love at first sight that he felt. And she describes meeting him when she went to a sanctuary where he was working with crocodiles and being blown away by his passion and thinking, this is the most incredible man I've ever seen. When they both describe it, they describe this bolt of lightning moment.

I thought, this man is the most incredible guy I have ever seen. He's probably married.

When I saw Terry in the crowd, I looked up and our eyes met and my heart just went bang, bang, bang, bang. Just started thumping. It was love at first sight.

Now, that may well have been true for them. And I actually think it's an incredible, beautiful story, but it's also one that can set an expectation for the rest of us that feels like it's impossible to live up to. And what I do believe, by the way, is that, and I know nothing of Steve Irwin's life in this capacity, but knowing what I do know about that man, I don't believe that had social media been around at the time, he would have been spending his time in their early dating phase looking into who else she might have been talking to and who else she might have been liking the picture of and so on. My impression of the man is the man that she met when she walked into that show, which was, this is someone who has a passion that he lives and breathes and is his reason for being. And when someone is like that, there's an attractiveness to that, that they lose themselves in the things that are important to them. They don't lose themselves in their obsession with someone who has just walked into their life. And I want to just make this note for everyone out there, be too busy. If you just had a great date with someone, be excited about the great date you had with them. Be excited about the fact that, wow, this person's amazing, have that passion. But be too busy with your other passions to be checking in on what they're up to every minute of the day or who they might have followed in the last week. Be that person who's got too many cool things that you're obsessed with going on in your life to have time for that. When it comes to someone you like, even if you feel that bolt of lightning, moment of passion towards them, that's fine, but be so passionate with the other things in your life that a day later you don't have the time or the inclination to be checking in on their social media and what they're up to, be the person who is too busy to be sat around waiting for a text back or obsessing over what they're doing. So let that be our goal going into early dating. I want to talk about one of the focuses we have when we go and stalk people on social media. And it's a focus on the competition, it's a focus on who they might be talking to, who else might be in the running for this person's partner, who else they could be liking or swayed by. And this focus on the competition is a really unproductive distraction. A little ignorance can actually go a long way in this department. I often think that in any thing in life, not just dating someone attractive, but, you know, creating a business or going after a big opportunity, a dream of ours. If we assessed all of the competition before we started, we would never try. I was 24 years old when I first pitched my book get the Guy to different publishers. And I remember flying to New York. I was living in London at the time. I remember flying to New York for a meeting with Harper Collins and I sat in front of Karen Rinaldi, who was the person who ended up publishing my first book, get the Guy who published my new book, Love Life. And I've been friends with her for many years. But I had a bit of a healthy ignorance when I went in that room at 24 and sat down in front of this woman because this woman was a veteran of the book publishing world and had I researched everyone she had published, that would have been an intimidating list. Had I known every other person that was pitching her at the time who essentially I was up against in the running for who does that budget go to, I would have been so nervous and so psyched out that I don't think I could have been me in that meeting. Luckily, I didn't know all of that. So when I went in, I just got really excited about what it is I do and what I teach. And I showed her that that can pay dividends because firstly, there's always going to be other amazing people out there, just as there's going to be amazing people pitching books out there at the same time I was pitching my book. But alongside being good, being competent, there is that X factor of confidence. And I don't mean confidence here in the sense of being arrogant. I mean confidence in the sense of being in your lane, not comparing yourself to other people, but simply being really, really connected. To what is special about you and your. I don't like to use the word brand in a human context, but you know, your brand in a sense, what makes you you if you stay really connected to that. The irony is that that you being connected to what's great about you becomes the thing that convinces someone else that you're the person, you're the thing they want to invest in. Because who's to say what's the best thing? So much of the time we get connected to the people who are really connected to what is special about them. And you can't be connected to what's special about you if you're looking at everybody else. While we're on the subject of not focusing on the competition and focusing instead on ourselves, I have a brand new announcement to make. This October, I am doing something I have never done before. This is an absolute first. I am running a two day experience that is going to be our one and only 2025 retreat. For those of you that have followed me for a long time, you know that up until this year I did a six day immersive retreat and many of you wanted to come but you couldn't either because logistically it was too difficult to take six days off of work or you have kids or pets or you're a teacher. We never had teachers because it was always in term time. Well, this year we are doing the retreat as a two day experience, meaning many people who couldn't come because of price or logistics will now be able to attend for the first time. Get a ticket for you. Get a ticket for a friend or a family member, someone you love who you know would benefit from this. Men, we want to invite you too because you've never been able to come to our retreats in the past. We are opening this one up to everybody. So it is going to be an incredible weekend together to build our confidence, break lifelong patterns that have been holding us back, affecting our emotions, our happiness, our sense of peace, or our ability to go out there and get what we want in life. I am so excited about this. Come join us by going to mhretreat.com and secure your ticket. Now while the early bird special is on. This is a live event so once the seats are taken, they're gone. Mhretreat.com is that link. And now let's get back to the video. Now you may be saying to yourself, yeah, but Matt, this is like compulsive for me. I get anxious and then before I know it I've opened up the app. I've opened up Instagram, I'm checking what they're up to. I'm going down that rabbit hole. I don't know how to stop. A key way to stop is first to realize that this is a bad instinct. Many of us have to try to control things that way. Let me try and eliminate all possible threats that I could perceive by going looking for those threats. And I talk in my new book about this concept of the wall, the analogy of the race car driver. A very famous race car driver once said, don't look at the wall because the car goes where your eyes go. Well, in dating it can be the same thing. If you're looking for things to be upset about all the time, if you're looking for ways to be jealous all the time, if you're looking for ways to feel threatened, you're going to find them. So we have to decide where should my attention be going? Because my attention is a very powerful thing and it helps to create my reality. If my attention is very empowered places, then I'm going to come across as a very attractive person. And then by the way, if they were talking to somebody else, they keep showing up and meeting this attractive, confident you and going, this is where it's at. This is who I want to give my time to. Right? Because that's the state of mind you're coming to it with. But all of a sudden, if, because you keep looking at what's going on over here, you're coming to the table in a very insecure way, constantly saying to someone, why are you liking that person's pictures? Why are you following that person? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? And this person says, oh my God, we're not even in a relationship yet and this is already a really difficult situation. Then they start pulling away. So we have to say, my eyes have to go where I want to go. If I want to go towards a relationship, if I want to go towards being really attractive to this person, where does my focus need to go? Look, I want to take a moment for us to apply some self compassion around all of this. Because social media is incredibly unnatural and incredibly powerful. You know, it's bigger than us when it comes to being a temptation. Why is it that there are apps that exist to block you from your own social media? It's bigger than so many of us, I would argue all of us in some way. So it's completely normal that we find it irresistible temptation. But the problem is that it is so unnatural. We're not Meant to know all of the things that we constantly know by looking at people's social media. You know, you could go on a great date with someone. Does that mean that in the next week they're not going to walk past someone in the street and see an attractive person and think like? Doesn't mean they did anything about it, but they might have registered a like in their mind when a hot person walked past them. The difference is on social media, someone goes like. So you're now seeing the thought in the shape of a little heart on your screen. So we're able to be the thought police on people's everyday actions and behaviors through this medium. That ends up being entirely unproductive. It ends up being too much data if we're not careful. If you were to read the thoughts of the person you're dating every second of the day, there would be thoughts you didn't like. There would be things that hurt your feelings. Luckily, we don't get that kind of access, but we still get too much access too much of the time, which is why it's our job to guard the gates of our mind. We have to take that responsibility. And one of the ways that we can do that, and we can leave you with this practical thing in this video, is by setting up a new trigger. When you get anxious or where you feel that need to feel safe, or go and check what someone is up to, I want you to allow that to be a new trigger for something useful. So the moment you're about to check social media to see what someone is up to, ask yourself, is this useful? If it's not, then what is useful? Spending time with my friends, making a phone call to someone I love, reading a book, losing myself in something that I really enjoy. In a project that is bringing me a lot of meaning in my life right now, something I'm passionate about that enriches me and enlarges me. Now, James Hollis has a quote that says, will this diminish me or enlarge me? You know that going and checking social media for the 10th time today is only going to diminish you, but using that moment as a trigger to go and do something important in your life that will enlarge you. So set up that trigger and the next time you feel that anxious compulsion to go and check on someone, go do that thing instead. In October of this year, on the 18th and 19th, I am holding my live retreat treat. But for the first time it is going to be a two day experience instead of a six day experience. So for all of you teachers out there who have never been able to make it, for all of you pet parents out there who haven't been able to get the dog sitters and cat sitters, for all of you people with kids out there or who just have jobs that don't give you that amount of time off, this is for you. We have an early bird special right now. So the tickets are also cheaper than they're ever going to be at any other time this year. And come check it out. Mhretreat.com is the link to get your ticket and I will see you in Miami in the flesh in October of this year.