430. Dating Tips for YSAs

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 430, Dating Tips for YSAs.

This is Better Than Happy, the podcast where we study what the healthiest, most successful people in today’s world think, feel and do. And we leverage this knowledge to create our best lives. Are you ready, little bird? Let’s fly.

Hello everybody, welcome to Better Than Happy. I have a message today for the young single adults. For those of you that are not members of the LDS church, YSA stands for young single adult. This of course can be relevant to anybody who is dating, a lot of it will actually apply to just out there trying to find friends. But I want it to just be specifically to YSAs because I feel it’s such an interesting and complicated and amazing, exciting fun but also kind of, for me anyway, a bit of a rollercoaster time of my life.

And I got married when I was 30 which is very young actually but I thought it was old at the time. In hindsight, I think it was very young and it was for me the perfect age to get married. But I did go through a long period of, first of all, when I was in college and then after college, many years of being in the YSA club, being a young single adult, which is just an easy way to refer to that age group in our religion.

And what’s kind of cool about the way our church is set up is we have specific church service opportunities that you can go to if you want to when you’re in that age group, just to kind of be around other people in your same stage of life, meet people, kind of have common challenges and goals and interest and things. It just creates a nice little community. I really loved the YSA wards that I was in before I got married.

But also in hindsight, if I could go back and talk to that version of me, my 25 year old, 28 year old self. Knowing what I know now and having some of the experience I have, just life experience but also as a coach and what I know about mindset and what I know about our ability to create our results. There are some specific things that I would tell that version of me. And I’ve done maybe one or two podcasts to this age group in the past but not nearly enough. And so today I want to talk about some dating tips.

Now, I do have a little bit deeper dive class. I’m going to be teaching a master class on this topic. So if you want to go further on this journey with me, make sure that you head to jodymoore.com/masterclass and join me for that $59 masterclass where we will take it a lot deeper. And I’ll be able to interact with you and talk through what’s going on for you specifically. But today I want to give you like I said, six things to consider if you are dating and you are a YSA.

The first thing is to not be in a rush. It is tempting to want to be in a rush to find that special someone whether you want to be in a committed relationship or you want to get married. The rush that we’re in, and this is not just true for getting into a relationship. This is true for any goal that we set. The rush, that we have to hurry and lose the weight or hurry and achieve our financial goals or hurry and buy the house or hurry and have the kid.

Whatever the rush is about is always an indicator that your brain is putting far too much emphasis on external things to create your happiness. And it’s an easy thing to do. I don’t even think it’s entirely wrong that we do this. I think it’s actually partly what drives us to keep striving and getting ourselves out of our comfort zone and trying new and somewhat challenging things. I think if we maybe didn’t have this part of us that believed once this thing changes, then I’ll be happy, that we might just stay in our comfort zones all the time. I don’t know.

I’m going to ask, in the next life I can’t wait till maybe God will reveal to us some of His intentions for creating us the way He did. But it is human nature is my point, so it’s not wrong. It’s just whenever I notice myself in a rush to change something, like I’ve got to hurry and get married. Then I stop and go, “Whoa, what’s the rush about?” Because I know that while it’s a great thing to want to get into a relationship. A lot of these goals we have, they’re not wrong. I want you to go after these goals.

The truth is the happiness that you seek is available to you right now. So if we really truly understood that, if we understood that I can be happy right now, I don’t have to hurry and create this change in my life to be happy because happiness is available to me right now. And it is in fact an inside job. It is in fact up to me to create it. It’s not going to be external factors that will create it in the long run. I might get short bursts where it becomes much easier to be happy as circumstances change.

But in the long run it will always be up to me to create my happiness if happiness is what I seek or lack of loneliness or more confidence, increased self-esteem and confidence, increased feelings of security, increased feelings of belonging or worth. Then that’s my job to be working on that right now.

So when I was single, one of the things that did help me a lot was I heard somebody once say, “Yeah, it would be great to be married. You could be happily married but you could also be unhappily married and that wouldn’t be better than where you are now. You’re single and you can be unhappy and single or you can be happy and be single.” And happy is a very simple word. I don’t mean to oversimplify it, but it can include a lot of different positive emotions that we’re seeking. But just remember that you could be unhappily married. So that would be worse than just being single and being happy.

Why don’t I just focus on being happy as I keep on dating, as I want to get into a relationship? The way I like to describe this when I’m coaching people is I’ll say, “Of course, you’re going to want that. It’s okay to want that if you want that. I want you to keep wanting that. But let’s not need it. We don’t need it to be happy. I don’t want you to need it to be happy. I want you to just want it without needing it.” There’s a difference. Do you see what I’m saying?

Number two. You only need one person to be in a committed relationship with. My guess is most of you listening to this podcast aren’t looking for the kind of relationship where you’re in relationships with many different people. You’re probably looking for a committed relationship with one person, whether that’s marriage or probably marriage at some point for most people listening to this podcast. You only need one guy or one girl, that’s it.

So this is really good to keep in mind because it might be tempting for your brain to look around and go, “Well, I don’t know. There’s nobody in my area. There’s no good guys here. There’s no good girls here. I already know everyone and there’s no one that I clique with. There’s no one that I’m interested in. Or there’s a lot of people, but everybody seems to be already in a relationship or whatever.” I hear this all the time. I hear this from even divorced people or people who have maybe lost their spouse or people who are in more later stages of life but aren’t married.

And they’ll say, “There’s just no one. I mean everyone, pretty much everybody’s married now.” And I’m like, “What? You only need one. Are you telling me there’s not one out there?” It’s really helpful for your mindset to keep the focus on just, you’re just looking for one because it doesn’t matter what the trends are. It doesn’t matter what the patterns are. It doesn’t matter if the majority of the people aren’t people that you’re interested in or that are interested in you or aren’t available.

The majority doesn’t matter at all because you only are looking for one person. That’s just good to know because it will put your mind back into abundance instead of putting you in scarcity. And here’s why that matters. When we’re in scarcity, when we believe there’s no one here that I’m interested in, guess what happens? Your brain will not even try to look anymore. In fact it will filter out sometimes things that might be useful to help you find the one. Because your brain’s job is to be right about what you’re believing.

And it’s hard sometimes to go from, I don’t think there’s anybody here that I’m going to want to date or be interested in, there’s lots of people, there’s tons of people. I love all the guys in this ward. I love all the girls in this ward. That’s not very believable, but I only need one. I’m only looking for one. And one person could move in here at any day or one person could be on vacation traveling through this area and I could meet them or there could be one person online.

So anyway, you only need one is a thought that, I think it was one of my bishops that offered me that thought in one of my YSA wards, probably Bishop Lang. It really helped me get back into abundance.

The third tip I want to give you is that one of your jobs right now while you’re dating, one of your most important jobs and this is true for everybody. So everyone, listen up, but especially when you’re dating is to work on liking yourself. Because when we’re dating it feels like our main job is to get other people to like us, especially certain people that catch our eye. How do I get their attention? How do I seem interesting to them? Do I look okay?

Am I going to look attractive to them? Are they going to notice me? Are they going to talk to me? Are they going to be interested in getting to know me and maybe want to date? Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that stuff actually, that’s again human nature. But just as important, if not more so, is how am I going to catch my own attention? Am I going to like me? Am I going to find me interesting? Am I going to like what I see when I look in the mirror? Am I going to be curious about me and want to hang out with me? That is your primary job is to like you.

Your secondary job is to connect with other people but you’ve got to practice liking yourself. I did not understand this at all when I was a young adult. I did not understand that a really important component of what would have contributed more to my overall feelings of happiness and joy and fulfillment and worthiness would be to work on liking myself. I spent a lot of time working on trying to get guys to like me. You know what? Sometimes I could do it, but then it wasn’t always consistent. And there wasn’t even always a guy that I was interested in.

So you’ve got to practice liking you. Now, here’s the ironic part. Do you know what human beings are attracted to? Confidence. So the better you get at genuinely loving and embracing yourself, the more attractive you are to other people. But I don’t want you to do it for that reason. I want you to do it just because it feels so good to like yourself. It really is amazing to like yourself. And I say practice it because it doesn’t come easy to most of us. And if you’ve spent a long time not liking yourself, it’s going to be really hard at first but it will get easier as you practice it.

Number four, get out there. Get out there and meet people. I know it doesn’t always sound fun. It sounds easier to stay home, especially in the winter when it’s cold or you’re tired or you’ve had a long day and you’re going to school and you’re working and you’re whatever else you’re doing. I get it but you’ve got to get out there. You’ve got to meet people. Now, here’s the good news. We live in a pretty amazing world. You can meet people online. There are apps nowadays. There are dating apps.

And if I were looking to get into a serious relationship, I would for sure be on the dating apps because dating is a bit like marketing, it’s a numbers game. The more people I can ‘meet’, which might just be seeing their online profile, having them see my online profile. The greater the odds of me finding someone that I’m a match with, someone that I connect with who also connects with me or who wants to get to know me better and who I would like to get to know better.

The more people that you can ‘connect with’, which might be in person, might be online. The higher your odds of finding someone. So get out there in whatever way you want to. Be safe, check out the websites you’re going to, make sure it’s safe, but you’ve got to get out there. You’ve got to go meet people. It’s not comfortable, I get it, for most of us anyway, but it’s the way.

Number five, take a break whenever you want to. So I just said get out there and meet people and I recommend that you do. If you want to find someone to be in a committed relationship with or you’re looking to get married, you’re going to have to go meet people. But also if you decide, I need a break from this, I’m not going to put a lot of effort into meeting people right now. Do it. I’m in. It’s okay. What I don’t want you to do or what I would recommend you avoid anyway is to sit around and get discouraged and sad and feel bad for yourself.

You don’t have to start feeling sorry for yourself. Did you know this? You can choose to just, hey, I think I’m going to get off the websites for a while right now. I’m not going to push myself to go to a bunch of other activities and things I normally wouldn’t want to. I’m going to take a break from trying to meet people. And odds are, I’m not going to be dating a lot then. What I see is people who are taking breaks, whether they officially call it that or not, they’re just not out there trying. And then they’re feeling so sad that they’re not meeting people and they’re not dating.

I’m like, “Well, you’re not trying. So I’d rather you just chalk it up to, I choose not to try to meet someone right now and so odds are I won’t meet someone.” Now, you can, sometimes that is when you meet someone. I think a lot of that has to do with where your head is at when you do that. But the odds go down, the odds of you meeting someone go down when you’re not making an effort. So just tell yourself the truth, I choose not to make an effort right now and I’m okay with that.

And even though maybe yeah, maybe I would like to be in a relationship. I’m not going to do this whole like I don’t understand why I’m not meeting anyone, not meeting anyone if you’re not out there trying to meet people. Are you with me?

Okay, last tip I have for you is, and this circles back a little bit to the first thing I talked about of, don’t be in a rush. Because we don’t want to give our happiness over to external circumstances like a relationship or another person. But the last tip, I want to word it a little bit differently is I want you to remember that it’s always 50/50, Life tends to be 50/50, it settles out at 50/50 in the end. Here’s what I mean. Half the time it’s fun, it’s simple, it’s easy. Things are working. I’m feeling good and confident and happy and life’s going how I want. That’s about half the time.

The other half of the time it’s hard, it’s challenging. Things went the opposite, actually of how I thought they were going to go. It’s not working. It’s failing. I’m mad. I’m frustrated. I’m sad, I’m lonely, I’m anxious, I’m overwhelmed etc. You get the idea. Half the time happy, good, positive, half the time negative, sad, not good. That is true when you’re single. And that is true when you’re married.

I always love when I’m coaching somebody who is let’s say single and they’re talking to me about how much they want to find someone and they want to be in a relationship. And we talk about why. And they’re just like, “It just seems like I’d always have someone there with me and I feel like life would just be better.” And I say, “Are there any married people here who have anything to say about this?” There’s a reason why married people are like, “Yeah, I like being married, but also in some ways it’s a lot harder. In some ways.

I’m like gosh, I’d give anything right now just to have some space and some alone time or to not have this person around me who has whatever challenges it’s creating.” The married people half the time, wish they were single at least half the time. And the single people, at least half of the time, wish they were married. This is the way of it. When you get married or when you end up in a committed relationship, yes, there will be some awesome parts that you don’t have in your life right now maybe. And there will be some challenges that you don’t have in your life right now.

And I’m not telling you not to go for it. I’m telling you not to think that all of a sudden it’s going to be rainbows and daisies because you’re married. The grass isn’t greener. So when you keep that in mind again, it keeps you from being in a rush. It keeps you from being in that sort of desperate energy that doesn’t serve anyone in the end. It allows you to pursue this goal of yours because it’s the next evolution of you.

Getting into a committed relationship is awesome because as human beings we are better together. But it’s challenging as well and that is why it can evolve you to the next version of you. There’s a lot of benefits to being in a relationship. I won’t go into them all right now. But I just want to say it’s definitely worth doing but not because then you’ll always like yourself, then you’ll never be frustrated. Then you’ll never be lonely. It won’t. You’ll just have a different set of challenges. It’s worth it, I want you to go for it but I want you to know it’s 50/50 either way.

So again, I would love to meet you and I would love to talk more about your specific situation. And I would love to teach you a little bit more. We’re going to get a little bit more practical strategies hands-on in the masterclass, so don’t miss it. What did I call this masterclass? I think it’s Dating Confidence for YSAs. That what we called it? Yeah, it’s going to be good and it’s only $59 and you will get a replay if you can’t come live. But I recommend you come live if you want because I want to interact with you. So head to jodymoore.com/masterclass.

There are also a couple of other masterclasses there for those of you that aren’t in the pool of a dating YSA. There’s one to help you with your career. There’s one to help you find your purpose. And they’re all going to be pretty amazing so go check them out. Thanks for joining me today. I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

Coaching changed my life and I’ve watched it change the lives of thousands of men and women since, but is it right for you? You’ll only know by giving it a try. Try it out today at jodymoore.com/trial.