{"id":47136,"date":"2022-06-18T16:50:51","date_gmt":"2022-06-18T16:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=47136"},"modified":"2022-06-18T16:50:57","modified_gmt":"2022-06-18T16:50:57","slug":"lowering-the-love-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/06\/18\/lowering-the-love-bar\/","title":{"rendered":"Lowering the love bar."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A couple of years ago I coached a woman who was desperate for romance.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019d been without someone for a while, and it was becoming a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was taking \u2018too long\u2019, she\u2019d decided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there were helpful tips coming her way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018My girlfriends tell me I\u2019m just too critical\u2019 she told me, \u2018and they\u2019ve urged me to lower the bar when it comes to partners\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because that\u2019s how this works, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We deliberately create love bars and then we\u2019re bound by them, unless we lower them of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day you just start feeling things for people who used to be totally out of your scope, simply because you’ve decided to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like we create personal preferences, just like we\u2019ve decided on our height and our ability to learn a new language and our love for playing the piano.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We obviously love spinach because we\u2019ve chosen to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We never visit Switzerland in the Summer because it looked like a good thing to create an aversion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t get over how ridiculous this is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially when it comes to falling in love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do people even think that this is up to us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since when are we the ones who decide where our love and attention drops, and who will sweep us off our feet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess that if you sit down with an average person and talk about this, they\u2019ll eventually agree on the impossibility of creating a love bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not very difficult to crack these myths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, we hardly ever do it, or even try it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s this mysterious fog where many of our beliefs simply disappear when they turn out to be stupid or wrong, and when we come out on the other side, nothing has changed, and our ideas remained firmly in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my coaching, I come across this ALL the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who KNOW that specific behavior is dumb or dangerous or non-sensical or totally useless, but keep on doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who know that their fears aren\u2019t aimed at something specific, yet keep being anxious all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who know that fantasies about the future are made up and purely imaginary, but still get caught up in them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us never REALLY reflect on the majority of the things we do or avoid, not because we don\u2019t want to, but because the mind runs the show and it doesn’t steer us in that direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mind is not in the business of exposing or debunking itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It tells us where to go and when to stay, what to believe and what to feel, it tells us when it\u2019s time to become angry and frustrated and worried and confused, and it also tells us that we\u2019re really stupid for aiming too high when it comes to lovers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you ever order the mind to lower ANY bar or standard or expectation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How did that work out for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @copperheadphotography, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of years ago I coached a woman who was desperate for romance. She\u2019d been without someone for a while, and it was becoming a problem. It was taking \u2018too long\u2019, she\u2019d decided. But there were helpful tips coming her way. \u2018My girlfriends tell me I\u2019m just too critical\u2019 she told me, \u2018and they\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47137,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[102,97,96,117,100,105,115,116,113,107,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47136"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47138,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47136\/revisions\/47138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}