Matthew Hussey outlines five steps to open your heart after being hurt: go on casual dates with low expectations, talk sincerely about what you care about, give real compliments, share small vulnerabilities, and move at your own pace. He argues that dropping your defenses, not your standards, lets people actually see you.
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matthewhussyretreat.com
I find that one of the most special moments in life is when I feel seen and I see somebody else for who they are. We don't experience enough of these moments in life because truly opening up and being vulnerable and allowing someone to really see us at our core can be terrifying. And it's especially terrifying if we've ever opened ourselves up and been hurt in the process. And we all know there are patterns. When we close ourselves off, Some of us get sarcastic, we start becoming snippy in our comments. We find a way to get mean about other people. We essentially reject and judge other people before they can do the same to us. Others amongst us get quiet. We just stop talking about ourselves. We go into our shells and we don't really put ourselves out there anymore. Some people turn into the joker, you know, everything becomes a joke, everything's funny. They become a performer, an entertainer, as a way to put a barrier between everybody else and the more sensitive, vulnerable sides of themselves. Take a moment right now and think about what your pattern is. What's the layer that you put between everybody else and your true self? If you are someone who has shut down because of heartbreak or trauma in your life, I want to give you five baby steps to opening back up to life and love again. The first way to open up again is if you're not doing it already, get back out there on a couple of dates. I think that people shut themselves off to dating because they have these giant expectations of where it could lead. In a way, there's a part of them that's hopeful and that makes them scared because they're looking at the long term view of how someone might let them down or hurt them. Tell temporarily. I want you to lower your expectations of the long term and re energize the spirit of immediate and spontaneous connection. Number two, talk about something you love or are passionate about without any hint of sarcasm. One of the ways we actually make ourselves vulnerable is by talking about what matters to us. So you love painting, gardening, you love cooking, you love painting miniature figurines. It doesn't matter what it is, but talk about it in an earnest way. When we reveal what we love, we reveal a part of ourselves. And many people find it hard to do that without making a joke about it. That leads us to number three, which is talk about something you like about the person in front of you in an earnest way, without any hint of sarcasm. Many people, when they're not being vulnerable, they kind of deliver a compliment in a jokey way so they'll look at someone and they'll go, well, you look snazzy tonight. Instead of saying, you look really handsome tonight. When we're being vulnerable, we deliver compliments with sincerity. Number four, talk about your weaknesses. Now, these don't have to be really serious things or anything melancholy, just things that show you're more human. So if, you know, you worry too much about the little things, talk about that. If you're not always good at a party, or maybe even if you're a little nervous on this date right now, vocalizing those little imperfections can actually humanize us and really connect us to another human being. And they are an act of vulnerability. Number five, go at a pace that works for you. That doesn't mean artificially putting the brakes on something with someone simply because you're scared. It just means sometimes other people try to rush us into a stage of the relationship that we're not comfortable being in right now. We want to allow trust to develop. We want to allow the relationship to grow organically. And there, there are other people who, you know, they love the drama of relationships, they love the romance and say they want to jump headfirst into the deep end immediately. It's okay to put the brakes on someone else as long as you don't shut down to connection completely. Your job right now, person who has shut down, is to start opening yourself up to new experiences with people and building positive reference points for how opening up and seeing someone else and being seen in return can create really beautiful moments of meaning in your life. Look, maybe if you shut down and don't connect to anyone, you avoid some of that pain of relationships, but you also risk living life on a lukewarm level that has no passion and life is short. So don't put your life on hold because we don't have that much time to waste. If you've been doing it until now, I want to challenge you to make today the day that you change that. And if you're nervous about how to open up again and begin a fresh chapter of your life, but you know deep down, you really want to. I'm here for you and I want to lead you by the hand in showing you how to do that. My retreat program is something I created literally as a step by step process that would walk people into the next chapter of their life, the one that will define the rest of their life. So if you're ready to finally put the past behind you and begin the next chapter of your Life, come to matthewhussyretreat.com and let's do it together. I'll see you there.
