Hi Kimberly,

I can totally help you out here. I’m a life coach and have dealt with this many times with my clients and this is my advice to you.

1) It makes me feel like I will never meet someone, and it’s emotionally draining to feel hopeful and then let down on each date. What if you didn’t have so many expectations for the first or second dates? What if you looked at it as if you were willing to go on 100 dates until you meet the person you will marry? Then, if it doesn’t work out, look at it like “Well. One step closer to meeting the one.” instead of “ugh. this was awful, I’m never going to find anyone, it’s so exhausting.” Try to get to neutral when it doesn’t go well. “It’s totally fine that the date didn’t go well. Most won’t, and I only need to find one good one.”

2) In regards to being happy being single.

– Remind yourself that life isn’t perfect in a relationship. AT ALL. It’s all 50% good and 50% negative. For example, being single. Pro’s: do whatever you want whenever you want, don’t really have to shave your legs lol, you get to go and do exciting things and have adventures, you can watch whatever you want to watch on television. It’s adventurous and exciting. Dating is fun if you can let the attachment to the outcome go and just play around with it. The downside in relationships is that life can be boring, you don’t have as much downtime, you have to meet in the middle, you have to hang out with in-laws lol, you will argue and disagree, you can’t be as spontaneous. I’m sure you know plenty of people in relationships that are MISERABLE. There’s good and bad to both. Focus on the good that comes with singledom. Embrace, love it, and appreciate it.

I hope this is helpful. Love the journey and take advantage of being single now so that when you’re in a relationship, you can look back to this phase of your life and know that you made the most of it. 🙂

Best,
Machele

Hi, first of all, I would let it be okay that things have been messy. Rather than beating yourself up, practice compassion and remind your brain that you’re a human and not a robot. Yes, you could have done all of those things and had the motivation and discipline to follow through. You can choose to focus on that, but it will feel awful. But what else is true is that you are a human going through a global pandemic on a level the world hasn’t experienced before. Of course, you fell off of your routine. This is true and you can choose to focus on that version of the story. This version will likely help you feel relaxed and you’re much more likely to take action toward self-care from this place than the other.

Best of luck to you and practice giving yourself permission to be human 🙂

Machele

Hello, there’s a lot to dig into here, but here’s my advice to help you get started. And how I would coach you if you were a client (I’m a life coach, btw).

1. Make a firm decision that you are going to take full responsibility for how you feel from this day forward. This will require you to support yourself and to stop going to friends and family to help you feel better. They can’t, we have to do that work on ourselves.

2. The first step in doing this is to always know how you are feeling and why you are feeling that way. Start journaling. Even if it’s only for 5-10 minutes each morning/evening. Here’s how you do that.

• How do I feel? Write down the one word emotions that you are feeling (Google emotion wheel if you have a hard time doing this, most of my new clients have a really hard time naming the emotion they feel.)
• Next, after you write down all of the emotions you’re feeling, ask yourself why and write down all of your answers. For example. I feel lonely, sad, unmotivated. Why do I feel lonely? Because I don’t have anybody to talk to, my friends never support me, I don’t even have that many friends, I’m all alone, etc. let your brain get all of the fear-based thoughts out of your brain and onto paper. Keep writing and keep asking why until the timer goes off.
• Then, go back and review each sentence that you wrote and write an F next to those that are factual and an S next to those that are a story or a thought. I don’t have that many friends is a story. A fact has to be specific, neutral, and almost scientific. I have talked to 3 people that I know in the last 3 weeks. Continue to determine if each is an F or an S and make sure they are really a fact before writing an F. They often feel like facts but rarely are.
• Anything that you wrote an S next to is your story. And your story is optional. Question all of them. Especially the painful ones. Is that even true? What else is true? Could I be wrong about this?

This is just super basic stuff, but it will definitely give you a place to start and it only involves you so you don’t need anybody in your life to step up so you can feel better.

You can do it on your own. You’ve totally got this, I promise. Start today. Let me know if any of this was unclear or if you have any questions.

Best,
Machele Galloway
macheleg@lifeleapcoaching.com