10 Simple Steps to Meet The Right One This Year
February is almost over and for many people, their New Year resolutions are distant memories. If you set a resolution to meet a new partner on January 1 and you’re nowhere near achieving that by now, it might feel a bit uncomfortable.
The good news is that it doesn’t actually need to be that difficult. It’s not going to be as simple as just opening Tinder and hoping for the best. After watching The Tinder Swindler on Netflix, you might not even want to use Tinder!
Regardless of dating apps, there are things you can do to make this your year for meeting the right person for you.
Our ten-step process doesn’t involve scammy formulas, cheesy scripts, or playing games. It only requires authenticity, honesty, and a bit of bravery. But you’ll end up with a much stronger and healthier relationship than you’d get with the ‘Say these 10 things to make him fall for you!’ nonsense!
Let’s dig into these ten steps then, shall we?
1. Take Time to Heal
You might have seen a motivational quote on Instagram that reads “If you don't heal what hurt you, you'll bleed on people who didn't cut you”. Put simply, if you go into a new relationship without healing from past trauma, you’ll take it out on people who didn’t cause it in the first place.
Look at it this way. Imagine your baggage from previous relationships is all held in literal, physical suitcases. Now imagine you’ve turned up at your new partner’s house and brought all those suitcases in with you. Is there even be room for you to sit down? Probably not. You can’t create something new when you’re surrounded by the past.
Heal your past trauma and you can start a new relationship with a blank slate.
2. Build the Relationship With Yourself
Few people realise this but the most important relationship you’ll ever have is with yourself. All the dating strategies and apps in the world are useless if you haven’t done the foundational work on yourself.
Without a positive relationship with yourself, you’ll find it hard to connect with others. But a lot of people just aren’t comfortable being with themselves. They try to overcome the fear of being alone with themselves by being in a relationship with someone else. This is an attempt to block your feelings from bubbling up.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Can you sit on your own (no phone) for 10 minutes and enjoy your own company?
- Do you always find yourself trying to cram your time so you’re too busy to notice your feelings?
- Do you actually know what makes you happy?
Building your relationship with yourself means you know exactly what makes you happy…which means you can go in search of that. You’ll also be comfortable handling your feelings—which means you’re able to handle those of others.
3. How's Your Life?
Being happy with your life as it is before you add a partner to it is also crucial to meeting the right one. That’s not because you need to be happy single, but rather a partner will amplify all areas of your life. So the less-than-perfect parts will only get worse.
External experiences can often replicate internal situations. By getting to grips with those internal situations, the external experiences can often improve.
Ask yourself what’s going well and what’s not going well. How can you do more of what’s going well? Is there anything within your control for what isn’t going well? How can you improve this?
Doing this work will impact other parts of your life which can be the difference between enjoying a fantastic relationship and being unhappy.
4. What's Important to You?
Once you’ve done the first three steps, you can finally start to think about your future partner! But not so fast—you need to know what you’re looking for.
Start by asking what qualities you value in yourself, a friend, and a partner. Is it kindness? Thoughtfulness? Being resourceful?
These qualities become easier to notice when you know what you're looking for. That’s down to confirmation bias. This is the psychological quirk in which the brain looks for information that it’s right (because being right means you’re likely to be safe).
So when you decide to buy a car, you’ll start seeing that make or model everywhere. It’s not that more people have them, it’s just that your brain adjusts its filters to perceive what you’ve placed a value on.
If you do this with personal qualities, it will be much easier to find people with those qualities because your brain is actively looking for them. People you might have previously overlooked will suddenly appear from nowhere, which increases your chances of meeting the right one!
5. Compatibility
This is often the part that people try to skip because they base their attraction on how much they fancy the other person. Trouble is, you can fancy someone who is completely wrong for you!
But by getting the compatibility match right, you’ll be able to build a lasting relationship more easily.
Does this person have similar goals to you? Can you talk to them about things that are deeply important to you? Are they easy to spend time with? What can you talk about for hours at a time?
Compatibility is so important that we’ve created the compatibility matrix to help you find the right one. You can find it in our Meet the One guide on our website!
6. Meeting The Right One
You really need to look at compatibility before you start trying to meet people. That’s because knowing who you’re looking for gives you a good idea of where to look.
Let me give you an example. One of my clients is an absolute bookworm and it’s really important to her that a partner also loves and appreciates books. So for her, she’s more likely to find a compatible partner at book stores, book clubs, or events at her local library. This also gives her a low-pressure environment in which to get to know someone.
So figure out what you want and the type of person you’re looking for to guide where you should look!
7. What Do You Want Them to Understand About You?
We all have something about us that we want our partners to understand and appreciate. The best relationships are built when people see us for who we really are…and love us based on what they see.
You can use this to help guide you towards meeting the right people. I had a client who was really into history and literature. She wanted to meet someone who shared her interests and enthusiasm.
We advised her to put that on her dating profile—which up to that point had been vague and generic. Once she changed her bio, she started getting matches with people who shared her interests.
Remember, when you’re dating, you’re not trying to attract the masses. It’s not a numbers game. You’re only trying to attract the people who are right for you.
Once you filter out the wrong ones, you can enjoy getting to know the right ones. This stops dating from being draining and boring. Besides, shared interests make both of you more interesting to each other!
8. Have Standards
People often default to excuses when they're not being treated the way they want to be treated. They let their partner off the hook because they’re tired, busy at work, or stressed.
Yes, we're all human. But we all have needs, and having standards are our way of making sure that people meet those needs. If it becomes a pattern that your partner isn’t meeting your standards, then they aren’t meeting your needs.
If you notice that you're not being treated well, or you're feeling uneasy, at the beginning of your relationship, let it go. This will make space for the person who can give you what you're looking for.
9. Know Your Love Language
People tend to show love in the way they prefer to receive love. This is known as your love language. There are five to choose from: Acts of Service, Physical Touch, Gifts, Words of Affirmation, and Quality Time. You can have more than one language, but you’ll have a way you prefer your partner to show their love.
The trouble here is that if you're showing love through words of affirmation but your partner prefers to receive gifts? Those words of affirmation will go in one ear and out the other. You’re not speaking their love language. Likewise, a partner’s love language might be quality time, so their efforts to spend quality time with you are their way of showing love. But if you prefer words of affirmation and they don’t give you any? You won’t receive their love.
This is something to explore with a partner once you’ve settled into a rhythm together. Find out your love language here.
10. Maintain Your Boundaries
Finally, a lot of people talk about boundaries online now, which is great! Boundaries are essentially just your way of teaching people how to treat you.
If your boundaries are low, or non-existent, people show up and treat you differently because they can get away with more. We often let people cross our boundaries because we’re afraid to say no, in case we look mean. Women especially are conditioned to say yes so we don’t get called cold or bitchy. But I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile”. A person who pushes across your boundaries will do so as long as you let them.
With better boundaries, they'll show up to treat you the way that you want to be treated. And if you’re not feeling resentful, taken for granted, or unappreciated, you’ll be in a much better place to give love to your partner. Everyone wins!
It goes without saying that anyone who ignores your boundaries is a massive red flag.
Yes, You Can Meet the Right One
The first three steps of this process are crucial if you want to meet the right one. Without this healing and inner work, you’re trying to build on a foundation of sand.
But once you’ve nailed these, the other 7 steps become a lot easier to follow. And then you can treat this process as a pathway to lead you to the right one for you.
If you’d like more direction on this process, check out our free guide, Meet the One, available from our website.
You'll learn where to meet the right one, how to use our exclusive compatibility matrix to find the person who will enrich your life, and what red flags to look out for!
