Having to Start Over in Love? WATCH THIS

What does starting again actually look like? It's a scary time. It's a time when the game may have changed. You may find yourself in a dating paradigm that you just don't relate to. Maybe the last time you dated, it was a very different landscape. Maybe it just seems like the Wild West to you now. You do not even know how to get started. Maybe your life has become so routine and so you have had a certain kind of life for such a long time that you are now faced with a completely new way of living, a new lifestyle. Maybe your entire social life left with the old relationship. Maybe you moved in the process. Maybe you're living in a different place now, but you find yourself starting from the ground up. What does it actually look like? What advice would we give to someone in this position? So I think it's worth quoting here, John K. in his book, Obliquity, where he talks about the idea that the best route to any goal is indirect. That he talks, you know, if you want to make money, you don't focus directly on making money. You focus on creating something of immense value to people. Making an amazing product, making an amazing service, providing value, providing entertainment, doing something that will attract money to you. And we could talk about our love life as being a good case example of that concept, that there are things, if you drew a line down the middle of a page, you could say that on the left, There are things that are directly related to building a love life. Those might include joining an app, approaching people that you find attractive, going on dates. And then there would be things on the right-hand side that indirectly contribute to having a great love life. Because starting again doesn't just have to mean the things that directly and literally relate to dating. It can also involve a lot of things that, as a byproduct of doing them, will bring you either more opportunity in your love life, either because you meet more people, Or it will make you more confident by doing that thing and that will have an impact on your love life. Because you'll be a different person in conversation, because you'll have more to talk about, because you'll be able to maintain certain standards because you have this baseline of confidence that comes from other things that you're doing in your life. So there are direct ways to attract love again. And there are indirect, or as John Kay puts it, oblique ways to start again and improve our love life.

The thing that springs to mind for me is the idea that you talk about on your retreat, Matt, of turning your plan B into your plan A. I think if you're starting over, it's probably not, you're probably not in the position that you wish you were. You're probably not the course that you're sort of going through right now isn't the one you anticipated and it might not be the one that you, you know, wish was happening. So I think it's about almost reframing the reality of your situation now as a starting point before anything else so that you can actually go into it without an energy of sort of regret and melancholy towards how you wish things were or should have been, but rather just excitement for what the future has to hold with this new Plan B, which is now Plan A. I always.

Look at any stage of my life for a role model or inspiration or emotional reference point. that kind of aligns with the stage of life I'm in. I remember when I first watched Guardians of the Galaxy, the first one. This is gonna sound so silly. Before I go any further in this video, I want to tell everyone, I want to announce to you that at the beginning of this new year, we have just released our early bird tickets for the virtual retreat. They are available until the end of the month. The virtual retreat is coming up this June. and this is the best time to be a part of it because we have some special early bird bonuses and the early bird ticket means you get $200 off the actual price of the event. So go grab it now. What better way to kick off your year than to guarantee your progress with the virtual retreat? Go to mhvirtualretreat.com to grab your early bird ticket now. On to the video. When I first watched Guardians of the Galaxy, I was single. And I had a kind of melancholy at times that I wanted to meet someone, but I hadn't met someone that I wanted to really, truly be with. And I remember watching Guardians of the Galaxy and Star-Lord, Chris Pratt's character, was this sort of single, having fun person who was, galavanting around the galaxy, just making the best of it. And for whatever, it just stuck with me as like an emotional reference for like, I'm all right. Like, life's exciting and it's fun. And, you know, there's Star-Lord and he's just got his ship and he's going around and having fun and making the best of it. And, you know, it like became this weird, silly reference point for me for like, it became what I would call on the retreat. emotional button for the stage of life that I was in. Now, that's no longer, like that's for me, a reference point that's no longer the same. So my reference point may change or I might have a new emotional button. But I would, I remember watching the best exotic Marigold Hotel and thinking, if I was like in my 50s or 60s, right now coming out of a long relationship and I was finding myself starting again. This movie would be like a fun reference point. It would fill me with a sense of adventure for this phase of my life. It would make me feel like anything was still possible. It would excite me. And that would be an emotional button for me. So, I feel like whether it's a real person in your life that you know, Or whether it's a movie reference or a book that you've read that gets you excited about something. Like to me, the Old Man and the Sea just by Hemingway just always makes me feel like I want to just be out on a boat doing something difficult. You know, like, whatever is the reference point for you that makes you feel emotionally connected to the excitement of starting again. That's something to draw on. Look for those moments where you feel like you're emotionally connected to why this actually is a really exciting new phase, because that's a great place to start from. It's all about our focus. Where does our focus go? If your focus goes to, oh, this is so hard, and I never thought I'd be single again at this stage of my life. I never thought I'd have to do this. And you're kind It's this backwards look at how your blueprint didn't, the blueprint you had for yourself didn't materialize or got shattered. But if instead you just go, okay, well, that blueprint happened for a while. But now I get to have an entirely new blueprint. And I can either sit there grieving the old blueprint or I can say, actually, this new blueprint can be really This can be a brand new blueprint. What references do I have for that blueprint being really exciting? And then make those things you connect to, make that reference point, that emotional button, something you connect to every day.

I think we make a mistake always looking at life linear in a way like I was this far ahead, now this has happened, and now I'm backwards. And I think that's a very narrow view of what life is, is this idea of I was this far up the mountain and now I'm back here. I don't really see things like that. I don't see my relationships like that or, you know, having relationships I've gone through in the past. I feel like they've enriched me and given me all these added dimensions and wisdom. I certainly don't look at it as being back at square one every time. I think, wow, I'm now armed with all this different life experience and, and knowledge. And, and another thing is I have a kind of weird thing where I sort of love the, to go to another movie. I sort of sometimes love the Shawshank Redemption-esque demand to have to, like, rebuild piece by piece. Sometimes I love it when I'm I'm back against the wall, shit's falling down, and like, okay, I'm like, I sometimes get excited about, like, doing the comeback. Like, I'm gonna. I'm getting my shit back now.

I. So I completely relate to everything you just said, Steve. And I. It reminded me of that line we were talking about it the other day in the. The sun screen. that, that one line.

Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. But in the end, the race is with yourself.

I think it's that.

Is that right?

Is that how it goes? Sometimes.

Yeah, I think it says the race is long and in the end it's only with yourself.

Yeah. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, but in the end it's only with yourself. It's beautiful. It's. It's great. And I think, Steve, what someone might feel listening to you is, I can imagine there might be some people going, yeah, I used to feel like that. I used to feel like it was fun to have my back against the wall and have to fight my way out. And that was kind of a place that, in my 30s or my 40s, I could do that. But there might be some people who find themselves in their 50s or 60s back out there again at the end of a marriage that they thought would last a lifetime and going, I just don't have the energy. I just. I just don't. I can't do this again. And, you know, I. I may have. You know, yes, there may be something to learn from coming back from something, but I feel like I've already come back from a bunch of things in my life. The reality of my life today is that I'd prefer to have the person in my life than the lesson. I'd prefer companionship over another lesson about how tough I can be.

Not to mention it is harder. When you're older to meet people, it's harder to you don't have as much energy to go out and date and gallivant around the galaxy to try and find your person.

It's, you know, though you might have more time. It's possible you might have more time, ironically.

Possible.

Not for everyone. Some people are still working hard at that time and making ends meet. But for some people, you might find you have more time on your hands, which is absolutely an advantage. But, yeah, there is that thing that at a certain point you go, no, I don't want any more challenges of this nature. I'm not, this isn't fun for me to have to do this all over again. And I really believe that firstly, what has happened to you if someone left you unexpectedly is that it's something that will still happen to other people in other ways, right? You could be the person whose partner died. And it's not that they intentionally left you, but the result is still the same. And so I think we almost have to reframe it as what's happened to me is a possibility for anyone at any point in life. This is just a reality of living that if I found love, I can lose love either because someone decides they want something else or because life happens and they're taken from me. And really, we only ever have, you know, we have the choice to just decide, I don't want to be here anymore, and we have the choice to keep living. And if our choice is to keep living, then the next logical thing to do is to say, what will allow me to make the best of it? What will allow me to make the best of this time that I have? and I don't think that it always has to start with, well, let me get back out there and date. I think sometimes we think so literally about dating that we almost, we end up overthinking it. There are plenty of relationships that start because we were just in a certain place at a certain time in our lives and we met someone, we hit it off and we decided to have coffee and it, one thing led to another and we wouldn't necessarily have even seen or labeled the process as I'm dating. You just happen to be at a certain place in time and meet another amazing human being. And so I think one of the things that can help people start again is to not overload that word dating with so much meaning. Stop thinking of it in terms of I'm going to be dating again. I think that it's better to start from a place of saying, I'm going to be open. to anything that life offers me in the way of experiences, in the way of new adventures, in the way of a new season. I am just going to go in as someone who still deep down, even if life is incredibly challenging right now, still deep down believes that there is something worthwhile about life. And even if I can't find it in me to say that there's something magical or exciting about life right now, even if I can't connect to that, I'm gonna. I'm gonna be humble enough to remain in a place of curiosity about what possibilities there may be in life. either to meet someone interesting or to do something interesting or to have an experience that turns out was actually incredibly rewarding. I'm going to remain open to that possibility. I've talked on previous episodes about dealing with chronic pain and in the worst times, and for anyone who doesn't know, and maybe I can do kind of an episode on this at some point, but When I was in the worst time of my chronic pain, I'm not talking about weeks or months. I'm talking about years of being in a certain place physically with pain that had a dramatic impact on my life and my worldview. The thing that got me through those times was not thinking that life is so magical, because the truth is when I was in my worst pain, I didn't connect to the to the magic of life. I had to just remain open to the possibility that it might actually get better at some point, or that even if my pain didn't get better, that life might get better, that my emotions around it might get better. And I had to remain open to that possibility. And I think that when we're starting again, we don't have to connect with all of the magic of life and the excitement. And won't it be fun to meet someone again? And you might not be there. You might not be in that place. but you have to, at the very least, be humble enough. View it through the lens of humility. Humility is you do not know how you'll feel in a year. You do not know how you'll feel in three years. You don't know the meaning that will be in your life in five years. So humility is accepting that you don't know and therefore remaining open to what may come. And even Being more than open, being proactive about creating possibilities that may lead to different feelings and new people and maybe even new love. I'm a huge believer in the things that we can do socially, the things we can say yes to that we wouldn't normally say yes to. the activities we can experience that we haven't experienced before, and even some of the things we've convinced ourselves we don't like that actually come more from a place of fearing those things than actually truly disliking those things. That if we start to say yes to some of these things and truly build a new life, that becomes the gateway to everything else. It becomes the gateway to personality changes. It becomes the gateway to growth. It becomes the gateway to meeting new people, new conversation, new love. And that then becomes the Catalyst for finding love as a byproduct if we want it. And the most powerful way I have that you can do that is by joining us on the virtual Retreat. Like I said to you at the beginning of this video, it's coming up in June until the end of January. There are early bird tickets available with special bonuses, 200 off the normal ticket price. And it's an amazing way to tell yourself that this year, no matter how busy we are or how much we have going on or how many responsibilities there are, I am spending the time to get where I want to be and to craft the life I want to have. So come join us by going to mhvirtualretreat.com and I will see you over there. Thank you for watching this video and welcome to the new year.