Becoming the Right Person and Avoiding Reality Checkers

I remember in my 20s being obsessed with looking for The One. My eyes always on high alert like I was searching for an extinct bird. Health food stores became an excuse to find some basil, quinoa, and my soul mate. Church services were spent scanning the rows, my eyes resting on a Possible-Possibility as I let out a “Praise Jesus.”

Oh, and I had some serious run-ins with “this-is-the-one-I-swear-it.” You know the kind. At first, you’re positive it’s the genuine thing. But just like buying that knockoff pair of sunglasses, something always breaks in about a month.

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Why were all the girls I dated all so insecure? Why were they so unsure of who they were and what they wanted? Why couldn’t I find the right person?

I was doing my usual lament of a single song-and-dance with my mentor Erik, when he gave me a piece of advice that changed my whole strategy.

“Stop worrying about finding the right person. Instead, start working on becoming the right person.”

Why were all the girls I dated so insecure? Because I was so insecure. Why were all the girls I dated so unsure of what they wanted? Because I had no clue what I wanted.

Like attracts like. And the girls I liked were a lot like me, and what we both were like, was somewhat unlikable.

I wanted to find someone to heal from my insecurities, when I really needed to heal from my insecurities so that I could find someone.

You can’t meet someone in Hawaii when you’re begrudgingly walking circles around the Los Angeles airport. You can’t find someone on a trip you refuse to go on.

My life was spent walking around with bags filled with rotting stuff that smelled. So I attracted travelers with the same set of luggage on the same journey. Let’s just say we needed a plethora of air fresheners to make it through a date.

JOB OF INNER WORK

So for years I began to intentionally travel down the rocky, scary path that Parker Palmer calls “inner work.” I opened up my closet doors and faced the monsters I’d been harboring for far too long. Scary creatures called insecurity, depression, anxiety, and self-hatred.

Did these monsters tuck-tail and run the first moment I shed light on them? Heck no. They fought for their lives and scared me to death like good monsters do. But through prayer, mentorship, honest conversations, and a few more RelationShipWrecks, the monsters began to shrink as I began to grow.

Stop looking for the right person and focus on becoming the right person.

Sure that doesn’t mean you close your eyes while walking around the grocery store or that you’ll ever be a completely healthy person ready for a relationship. However, right attracts right. And the more right you are, the more right your relationship will be.

If you’ve ever met my wife, you know the strategy paid off for me 1,000 times over.

Reality Checkers are everywhere and they love dishing out doses of reality like they’re a doctor and this is the prescription you need. You know the kind. Where you share with them your Everest-Sized Dream and before you can even finish they rattle off the seven reasons your dream won’t work. They lather you in their own fear and insecurities, and call it sound advice. God bless them, they’re just trying to give you a dose of reality to save you the pain of making a mistake, or so they say. Well yes, God bless them, because sometimes the only things worth pursuing are the things so far beyond what we’re capable of that it’s 100 percent guaranteed we’ll make mistakes along the way. I’m not saying don’t take advice. Sure, sometimes we need some plain good sense. Sometimes we need that wild old sage to get all sage-like on us. But that’s not Reality Checker’s game. No, you’ll know you’ve been Reality Checked when you leave the conversation feeling like you’ve been slammed against the boards by a 250-pound Russian hockey player named Pavel. Instead of Pavel the Reality Checker, give me the person who’s going to take in all the insurmountable facts of my dream and tell me, “That’s awesome. Heck, I say you go for it! What do you have to lose?” Nothing. You have nothing to lose. Reality Checkers want you to believe that your plans will fail. And you know what, they’re probably right. But the point of life is NOT to not fail. Be strategic who you tell about your Everest. If you tell everyone your big dream in order for them to affirm it, your dream will be crushed way before you reach your Everest. Maybe you don’t need a dose of reality. Maybe you need to take a heaping spoonful of a truer reality based on the dreams and vision inside of you. Maybe where you’re headed is more important than where you’re at. Your chosen perspective dictates much of what your “Reality” is. If reality is a scarce, dismal place where opportunities go to die, well get ready to spend a lifetime watching sweet opportunities take their last breath. If reality is this crazy abundant place of opportunities galore where you’re walking through an exotic orchard of hybrid Plum-Mango-Strawberry Trees with this Giant Juicy Fruit just waiting to be picked (even though in reality such a tree doesn’t exist), then by golly, you’re going to be eating opportunities by the mouthful. Maybe reality is really a choice each of us makes: Which reality is going to be more real? I’m taking bites from plum-mango-strawberry trees on top of Everest. I’m done getting reality checked to death.