Jan 27, 2024

Hope Is A Terrible Plan

In the quest for love, hope, while comforting, often falls short as a strategy.

The truth is, love seldom knocks on doors uninvited. It’s found in the midst of life’s hustle, in the laughter shared over a coffee, in the serendipitous encounters at a bookstore, or in the electric air of a social gathering.

When it comes to love, hoping for the best just doesn’t cut it. It’s time to make your own luck.

Why Waiting Doesn’t Work

Many of the clients I meet tell me that they want a romantic partner more than anything else in their life. They state that it is their #1 goal.

Yet when I ask them what they’re doing to proactively call in such a partner, their strategy can be summarized as ‘being open, and waiting for them to arrive.’

Can you imagine if we utilized the same strategy in other areas of our lives?

‘Hey Fred, what are you doing to change your dire financial position?’ ‘Oh, just being totally open to a stranger dumping a million dollars in my lap.’

‘Hey Tina, what are you doing to get in shape?’ ‘Wishing, dreaming, and hoping that these fifty extra pounds will just melt off while I’m asleep.’

This notion of being open to an amazing, healthy, high quality partner is ultimately just us protecting our own egos.

We get to have the warm, comfy identity of being someone who is totally open and completely willing to be in a healthy, aligned partnership… while also being in a position where we get to completely avoid the responsibility of doing anything about it.

And yes, openness and reception are a factor. It is true that you cannot water a garden that is covered in a huge plastic tarp.

But if wishing, dreaming, and praying aren’t the end-all-be-all strategy, what is more effective than getting high on hope-ium?

How To Meet A Partner Who Loves You

1. Break up with all of the things that are currently having you remain stuck, small, and tethered

Still casually seeing someone who is familiar, but that there is ultimately no long-term potential with? Cut them out immediately.

Are you spending your time with people, and in hobbies and environments that make you less you? Time to stop.

Do a deep, honest audit of how you currently invest your energy throughout your life, and wherever you find people, places, and things that consistently dim your light, remove them ruthlessly.

2. Build a happy, aligned single life that holistically nourishes you

The best way to beam your authentic lighthouse light out into the world is to do the work of cultivating a happy single life.

For many people, there could be a big gap between their current life and a life that makes them feel truly content and fulfilled. And that’s where the work comes in. It wouldn’t be fair to expect that a new, promising partner would be the thing that jumpstarts the dead car battery of our hearts. We have to do the work ourselves, and get there as a result of our own efforts.

When your eventual partner comes to meet you, they should know exactly how to love you well because you are already demonstrating the act of loving yourself via your own daily actions.

3. Make it known that you are looking

By informing your friends, family, coworkers, and whoever knows you best that you are actively looking for a healthy relationship, you achieve two things at once.

First, you take advantage of the low hanging fruit of people who might be able to be referred to you. And second, by leaning into some potentially uncomfortable conversations (it’s vulnerable to publicly state our desires), you let life know that you aren’t messing around, and that you really mean it when you say you want a loving relationship.

4. Get busy getting out there and interacting with the world

In a business sense, an amazing product is one half of the work… but the other half is marketing. You could have the most amazing product or service on the planet, but if zero people know about it then nobody can benefit from it.

So it is with your love life.

Being your shiny, authentic, happy self is one part of the equation. But you also need to consistently focus on exposure.

I don’t care how introverted you are. You can make steps to get out of your house more often, and increase your surface area for luck by getting yourself out into the world on a regular basis.

Want To Meet Your Dream Partner? You Already Know How

If someone put a gun to your head and said you have six months to get out there and meet an amazing person, you would know exactly what to do.

You would get busy being happy… you would make your intentions known… and you would meet a lot of people, while doing your best to both keep your heart open and available, and also be clear and direct about what it is you’re looking for, and clearly state your desire and excitement when you met potential partners who had higher degrees of potential. And you would do that over and over again until you found someone who was exciting and aligned enough to really invest in deeply.

Ultimately, in the key areas of life, I believe that we already know what to do.

If you want to get in shape, you should probably eat nutrient dense food, and exercise consistently.

To change your financial position for the better, you would create value for the world and then monetize it.

To meet and attract your dream partner, you would be someone who is worthy of an amazing partner, and then increase your exposure to the world so that such a person has the opportunity to know that you exist.

It is so easy to hide behind the identity of being someone who is so open and so available… but then do next to nothing about changing our lot in life.

Can we meet someone magical in a serendipitous way with minimal effort? Sure. Of course. These things happen all the time.

But if you’re someone who has said they want to get into an amazing relationship, and yet you continue to actively block yourself by staying in relationships that you know have no future… or you do next to nothing about putting yourself out there in a proactive way… it would be delusional to think that your lot in life is going to radically transform, until you change your default behaviours.

In summary…

Hope is an ingredient… but it is not the entire strategy.

If you want to find love…

Get out there, and make it happen.

Dedicated to your success,

Jordan

Ps. If you enjoyed this article, you will also love checking out:

– 6 Ways To Meet Someone Without Online Dating

– 7 Ways To Increase Your Value In The Dating Market

– Everyone Asks The Wrong Questions When It Comes To Finding The Right Partner

– 11 Ways To Become A More Attractive Man (Or How To Fight Entropy 101)

Jordan Gray
About Jordan Gray

Jordan Gray has been a sex and relationship coach for over 18 years, with his work reaching over 250 million people worldwide. His writing has been featured in Vogue, GQ, The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, and countless other publications around the world. When he’s not working with 1-on-1 coaching clients or writing a new article, he’s most likely to be found reading a book, working out with his trainer, or spending time with his wife and son on the East Coast of the United States.

Blog

Related

See All
I Met The World's Greatest Mom Today
Jan 27, 2016
Jordan Gray
I Met The World’s Greatest Mom Today
I was walking home from the grocery store today when I witnessed something truly special. It gave me a tremendous feeling of hope for humanity, and I'd like to share it with you. ... A mother was walking down the sidewalk with her son. She was in her 30's. She walked in a straight line. And she was...
Continue Reading
What The Most Compassionate People All Have In Common
Sep 21, 2015
Jordan Gray
What The Most Compassionate People All Have In Common
I was on a weekend retreat in Colorado with thirty other people. Each of the people that were there was selected by the primary criteria of them all being young entrepreneurs who were game-changers in their field (according to the event organizers). There was one woman in particular who I really felt...
Continue Reading
6 Ways To Meet Someone Without Online Dating
Jan 15, 2024
Jordan Gray
6 Ways To Meet Someone Without Online Dating
I was recently speaking with a client who felt exhausted by online dating. The endless swiping... the sub-par dating pool... the lack of intrigue for anyone that registered as anything more than a (totally generous) 5 out of 10 on the excitement scale. And hey, honestly, I don't blame her. Back...
Continue Reading
How To Rest (A Guide For Type-A People)
Aug 11, 2021
Jordan Gray
How To Rest (A Guide For Type-A People)
For as long as I can remember... I've always been a bit of a high-strung workaholic. On one occasion, I worked myself into total burnout - where I could barely stand for more than a few seconds without feeling dizzy. And mustering up the energy to walk to the sink to pour and drink a glass of water...
Continue Reading
9 Things To Do When Life Gets Hard
Jan 25, 2024
Jordan Gray
9 Things To Do When Life Gets Hard
There will always be times in life that just suck. Nothing is going according to plan, everything is getting harder, and situations keep popping up that only make it more and more difficult for you to make significant progress on the ever-increasingly challenging mountain of things that are staring...
Continue Reading
In Praise Of Emotionally Strong Women
Mar 9, 2015
Jordan Gray
In Praise Of Emotionally Strong Women
Here’s to the emotionally strong women... The women that have done their work. The women that know the value of self-love and self-care. The women that hold themselves, and others, to higher standards. The women that have felt grief, and received the grief of their loved ones. The women who turn...
Continue Reading