Love Life
If your love life is not what you would like it to be and you are willing to elevate it to one of the two higher levels, what should you do? Stephen R. Covey: “You cannot be successful with other people if you have not paid the price of success with yourself.”
Since your most important sex organ is your brain, the best way to improve your love life is to improve your brain. The most profound shift in your approach may be the most beneficial: it involves shifting from a “getting” to a “contributing” mindset. Instead of being wary of you because they fear you are trying to get something from them, others will open to you once they realize you are trying to add value to their lives. As more and more potential mates become attracted to you, you will be able to stop worrying about having to gain a lover.
Most of our behavior is habitual, automatic. Since none of us has a lot of willpower, it is vital to leverage what we have. The best way to improve your life is to improve one habit at a time. If you will improve one habit every two months, those six habits will significantly improve your life in a year. Avoid the mistake of trying to make too many improvements too quickly.
Improving a habit requires understanding the beneficial outcomes it will produce, letting go of obstacles to the improvement, learning relevant skills, and desiring the beneficial outcomes sufficiently to commit to the improvement during the transition. (Once the improved behavior becomes habitual, it will not require much willpower to sustain it.) Improving your brain requires nurturing it better. There are three ways to do that, and each is very important with respect to your love life.
(A) Make daily learning habitual. Start with fifteen minutes every day and work up to one hour daily. Usually, reading is the most efficient way to learn, but if possible also use audio and video programs. (An excellent time for learning is when you are doing cardiovascular exercise such as walking on a treadmill, which means that the time you set aside for learning need not always be only for learning.)
What should you learn? Learn about learning! Also, learn about primary habits B & C [below]. Once all three primary habits are well-established, learn about less important but still relevant topics such as love languages and interpersonal skills.
(B) Exercise properly and eat well every day. [Do not make significant changes in your physical habits without the prior blessing of your personal physician.] Remove obstacles to flourishing physically. For example, if you smoke, quit. If you ingest psychoactive nonprescription drugs, stop. If you are addicted to processed or refined carbohydrates, break that addiction.
If you have not been exercising, start slowly and work up to doing about 45 minutes or one hour daily. Both cardio and strength training are important. With respect to cardio, a good program would be to walk briskly for 30 or 45 minutes on an inclined treadmill 5 days each week, and, with respect to strength training, do a full-body routine of mostly the primary exercises (namely, squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, dips, and chins) for about 45 minutes twice weekly.
With respect to eating well, eat a meal every three or four waking hours. Each meal should have sufficient proteins (preferably from natural sources). Consume a variety of (preferably organic) vegetables and other natural foods such as berries and nuts. Drink a least a couple of quarts of clean water daily.
These behaviors are both sustainable and healthy. Installing them properly will enable you to get your percentage of body fat below 20 (or, even better, 15) if you are female or below 15 (or, even better, 10) if you are male. All things being equal, that one change will make you more attractive than all your overweight or obese peers.
Meditate formally for one hour daily. Meditation is very simple. Find out how to meditate and begin “sitting” for 5 or 10 minutes daily and work up to at least one hour daily.
If you have never meditated, its benefits will amaze you. Meditation is life’s reset button. There is nothing better for your brain than detaching from your everyday concerns. It will reduce excessive stress and improve your ability to concentrate. Even more importantly, it will reduce your egocentricity. By themselves these improvements will make you a much more attractive person.
Furthermore, sufficient meditation will weaken all your egocentric desires and cravings, including your desire for a better love life! That weakening is an increase in freedom from incessant desiring, which is life’s most important spoiler. If you have been hiding yourself, as soon as you improve your behaviors, circulate normally. If you are a recluse, you are preventing others from being attracted to you.
Permit me to stress the importance of not trying to improve everything at once. If you try to improve more than one habit a month, you will only be setting yourself up for failure. There is no task worth mastering that involves either instant gratification or easy success. Plan for lasting success, and work your plan. Beverly Sills: “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
If you are immature, you may have the idea that you can “game” the system and trick someone into being attracted to you. You might think that your plan should be to make yourself more skillful at, say, using cosmetics, dressing, dancing, or learning pick-up techniques. You might even enjoy a little short term success doing that. So?
Even if you tricked someone temporarily, how long would it be before he or she sees through to the real you? For example, if, like most people, you are emotionally dependent, how unattractive is that? Getting rid of all your “neediness” vibes would be a major, lasting improvement.
To improve your love life, improve your life. To improve your life effectively, first develop the basic three kinds of habits mentioned here. Mastering the fundamentals is always the way to go. If you do, you will not just improve your love life; you will greatly improve the overall quality of your life. Following these recommendations is a very clever way to enjoy life.
