It's Saturday night.
You’re on a second date. As your bubbly, blonde, 20-something bartender hands you your Pinot Grigio, you look over at your date and get an all-too-familiar sinking feeling in your stomach as you realise that, with or without that Chase Crawford jawline, he's reminding you kinda-a-little-a-LOT of your awful ex. Again.
And, even though you haven’t even been seated for dinner yet, you just can FEEL another night coming on of tossing and turning, stressing out about running out of time to find-the-partner-build-the-relationship-start-the-family.
Now stop. And before we let this scenario progress any further — pause. I’m going to tell you what I tell my clients who exactly where you are right now:
Don't stress out. Make a plan.
I meannnn . . . obviously process your feelings, eat ice cream, have a solid venting-on-the-couch-with-your-BFF sesh . . . But when that's done — make a plan.
I can tell you that most of my clients are where you are right now — in their early 30's to mid 30's to late 30's, wanting to start a family, and navigating a dating landscape that has not been kind to their goals.
What they’ve done in the past is HOPE and WISH that their circumstances were different.
Unsurprisingly, that hasn’t worked well for them.
Now, going forward, what they need is to DO something different.
What they need is to take action that MAKES things different.
And, in that respect, this feeling of urgency may be just what the doctor ordered.
As Leonard Bernstein said: “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time."
Sometimes, as icky-awful as it feels, urgency can be our friend. Urgency can be information. Urgency can let us know that we want something, and that if we want to get it, we need to act NOW.
If we befriend urgency, we can use urgency to as a tool to help us, not to freeze us, and to give us the boost that we need to create the change in our lives that we want so much.
To bring us back to our second-date scenario above: When we have a solid bringing-the-partner-and-family-we-want-into-existence PLAN that we know will work, we won't do the awake-at-night-at-four-am-worrying thing.
As long as we wake up every day and choose to abide by the behaviours, habits, and actions that, when repeated consistently over time, we know will put us into an optimal position to get what we want, we can rest in the assurance that we are setting the stage for a healthy, loving relationship in our lives, even if we can’t see it yet.
We’ll just be putting one foot in front of the other, executing our plan.
I'm going to tell you something else that I tell my clients who are in your shoes: You likely DO have time to create the relationship, the family, and the life that you want.
But you don't have time to waste.
Now is the time to get clear on what you want out of life and out of love and to figure out a plan that will get you there.
Now — go out there, give yourself a hug (and maybe a glass of wine), and start making your plan.
PS. What IS a dating plan, you ask? Learn more about that HERE.
PPS. If you're drained from drowning in a sea of dreadful dating dossiers and want nothing more than to just find someone attractive and normal for once — I see you, I was you, and I'm here for you!
I walk you through how to spot the sneaky red flags that are lurking in your Hinge queue and how to gain the CONFIDENCE to walk away from them inside of my FREE workshop, Confident & Clear Dating. Confident & Clear is my FREE workshop where I walk you through how to avoid red flags and date with confidence — EVEN IF you hate dating and never want to use a dating app ever again. (I get it!)
If this sounds like your thing, get the free workshop here.