Top Ten Ways to Enjoy a Fabulous Single Life Until You Meet The One, # 6

Published in the Idaho State Journal and Blackfoot Morning News week of November
28, 2010


During my long and progressively less neurotic days (thank heavens) of being single, I developed a list called “Top Ten Ways to Enjoy a Fabulous Single Life Until You Meet The One.” This list helped me keep focus on the positive aspects of my life, and helped fill in the empty space that a life-partner did eventually occupy.

Number ten on the list is “Take every opportunity there is to go out, or stay in, even if it’s by yourself,” number nine is, “Get adopted by happy healthy couples,” and number eight asks the question “How well does the romantic partner fit in with your amazing friends and family who love you and want you to be happy?” Number seven is, in summary, “Don’t require more than an hour to welcome people into a neat, tidy home,” and since the best gift you can give to yourself this holiday season is the gift of your authentic self, number six is “Be yourself unabashedly.”

Part of the challenge of being single, if you don’t want to be single, is really shoring up who you are, and loving every bit of it. Do you have unusual or arcane hobbies? That’s great! Is your family tree twisted, broken, or fresh off the traveling sideshow circuit? How colorful!

In many ways, the early stages of dating in my past have felt like job interviews—trying to be the perfect person that the total stranger sitting across from me has in mind. It’s exhausting and ingenuine, and it’s best to love and show-off who you truly are from the very beginning.

Part of dating and being single is dealing with rejection. It seems there are two factors that cause rejection distress in the single life—dealing with feelings of loneliness and loss, and shredding yourself to pieces trying to find what’s wrong with you that explains why you are still single. Loneliness, sadness, and loss are normal, occasional feelings to have when you are on the quest for something that eludes you. However, beating yourself up and obsessing over perceived flaws is not healthy, not productive, and causes undeserved and unnecessary additional pain. If you commit to loving your imperfect, quirky self, hopefully you can reduce the sad times and minimize the damage that comes with rejection, when it occurs.

Being yourself unabashedly does have its limits, in my mind. We all have areas of improvement that dating experiences might be shining a spotlight on. Maybe you drink too much or have other socially frowned-upon habits. Maybe your home is a constant disaster area. Maybe you’re dysfunctionally disorganized, negative, needy, judgmental, ungroomed, or angry. It can sometimes be a lot to expect that someone new in your life will accommodate habits and traits that fall outside of what might be considered healthy or appropriate. If you want to be in a relationship with a bright, positive person, focusing some attention on more glaring areas of development will help increase your confidence, and reduce the barriers that might be standing in the way of a sustainable love connection.

Maybe the hardest step to being yourself unabashedly is figuring out who you are in the first place. This can be a process that involves introspection, list-making, or accepting positive feedback from others. Not every romantic interest will appreciate or feel connected to you, and that’s OK. What’s most important is fully being who you are, and knowing how much you have to offer the person who does. Onward!

Nancy Goodman is a licensed counselor with an emphasis on life and career coaching. For questions, please contact Nancy at 208-406-3234 or goodnanc@yahoo.com. http://vocatusidaho.blogspot.com.

Thanks-giving rituals

Published in the Idaho State Journal and Blackfoot Morning News week of November 21, 2010

Gobble gobble, turkey hangover wobble. It’s interesting to me that a holiday with such a strong name—“Thanksgiving,” doesn’t have a lot of built-in traditions or meaningful rituals. With other holidays this time of year, there is at least the pretense of ceremony. You go to midnight mass on Christmas, you light candles on Channukah. But what do we do on Thanksgiving—the day, supposedly, to give thanks, to express gratitude, to consider the blessings in your life?

We cook a huge, over-the-top meal, watch football, and strategize the best Black Friday shopping route.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, necessarily. But in general, aside from a quick go-round at the table expressing what you are thankful for, what emotional or spiritual substance is built into this holiday? Maybe not much.

What I love about situations that lack ritual or have rituals that lack true significance is, we can make up anything that suits us personally. I like ritual--slowing down and honoring a concept through a planful ceremony or activity. Rituals can easily be made up; and here are some that might bring more meaning to your Thanksgiving gathering.

Give thanks for your health by getting out and taking a walk, run, or hike on Thanksgiving day. 5K Turkey Trots are held all over the country, and Southeast Idaho is no exception. For more information on the 2010 Portneuf Valley Turkey Trot, visit the United Way website at www.unitedwaysei.org. A simple stroll through the neighborhood with your holiday guests can be a great reminder that, given a shaky economy, uncertain job prospects, and ever-changing governance, our greatest asset is the health of our physical body. Maybe find some nice fall leaves and foliage to take home and use as décor on your Thanksgiving table.

Give thanks for Mother Nature by planting flower bulbs. Providing the ground isn’t frozen, tulip, daffodil, crocus, or hyacinth bulbs can be planted with abandon on Thanksgiving day. This individual or group activity can be a way to give thanks for the warm days behind us, and a way to honor with anticipation the warm, colorful days ahead. Thanksgiving might also be a great day to get indoor plants started; snip off and plant the babies from your spider plants or transfer your mature plants to larger pots before digging into the green bean casserole.

Give thanks for your friends and family by creating affirmation books for everyone gathered around the Thanksgiving table. The simplest way is to fold a few pages of blank paper in half and stapling the folded edge, creating a blank booklet. Each guest writes their name on the front of a book, and passes their blank book around to everyone else. Everyone then spends a few minutes writing positive thoughts, observations, gratitude statements, or well-wishes about the person whose name is on the front cover. So, while you are writing in someone’s booklet, someone is writing in yours, and so on, until each guest has written in each book. The end result is a group of happy and validated people who leave with a keepsake filled with wonderful thoughts written just for them.

Thanksgiving is a holiday with ethically and ethnically questionable origins, and it doesn’t have to be more than a way to carbo-load before the official holiday shopping season. But, if you want to infuse a little more meaning into the day of Thanks-giving, there are as many ways to do so as there will be side dishes on your holiday table. Onward!

Nancy Goodman is a licensed counselor with an emphasis on life and career coaching. For questions, please contact Nancy at 208-406-3234 or goodnanc@yahoo.com. http://vocatusidaho.blogspot.com.