The first step in making meaningful changes in your life involves gaining a better understanding of yourself in essential areas that impact your life. This self-knowledge can provide you with direction as you try to maximize your efforts at change. Self-knowledge can also help you be more efficient and focused — and more effective — in producing change because you’ll know precisely what you need to work on.
What I find very strange is that people have no problem working on, say, their Spanish or their writing skills. But in the realm of their personal life, they just sit there expecting things to happen magically on their own. And even the fact that nothing all too positive (or nothing at all) has happened on its own for almost a decade is not an indication to them that maybe something needs to be done.
I know quite a few people who keep whining and whining and whining about how they are lonely and miserable and everybody they meet turns out to be a jerk. Yet, do they do anything to figure out what’s wrong? Oh, no. In the realm of their personal lives, things need to happen on their own.
If a person goes to 20 job interviews but gets rejected every single time, chances are s/he will work hard on figuring out what it is that s/he is doing wrong, will work on his or her CV, try to pick up useful skills, etc. Will this hypothetical person keep going to interviews without even trying to understand why they aren’t working out? Better yet, will s/he just sit at home, waiting for an employer to find him or her through some miraculous intervention of benevolent forces?
The stupid romance novels and movies are to blame, folks. That and this horrible “everybody is special” and “love yourself the way you are” slogans. And this other one that goes something like “there is someone for every one”, or whatever. Brrrrrr.
I used to know this guy who was permanently alone and “there is someone for every one” was his favorite expression. His second favorite expression was “all women are bitches.” Of course, it was very obvious to everybody around him that had he resolved the issue making him want to denigrate women, he would not have needed to console himself with fantasies of some hypothetical woman appreciating him in spite of everything. But who needs all that hard work when you can just sit there, hoping that things will work out somehow in the end?
Clarissa's Blog 
What I find strange to the point of being unfathomable are bourgeois soap operas where the main source of the drama is that one doesn’t even know if the betrothed will turn up for the wedding at all.
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And then when he doesn’t, she beats him with her bouquet in the middle of the street. Bleh.
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The difference between improving your spanish and your personal life is that with spanish, you won’t have a million of authors, corporations, movie directors, religious morons and activists giving you tens of thousands of conflicting messages, all of them more or less just trying to push their (personal/political) agenda unto you instead of genuinely offering help.
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All the more reason to ignore advice and do your own thing.
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And still it’s a lot harder and more time-consuming to learn Spanish than to achieve personal happiness. If only I had such an easy algorithm to help my students with their Spanish. 🙂
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Well, Spanish is one language. So, once you’ve learned it you just keep practicing. But each person is an individual and just because you’ve learned how to deal with one individum does not mean you can deal with the rest. This means instead of just keeping up your practice, you need to learn new systems all the time. Then, people vanish from your life after a while. It’s like learning one dying language (with one single speaker at the age of 97) after the other (which only makes sense if you are a linguist).
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My suggestions have nothing to do with how to deal with OTHER people. They are all about solving one’s own issues. The individual one really needs to learn to understand here is oneself. Miserable personal lives have nothing whatsoever to do with other people. They have to do with one’s own issues.
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Not to mention that people change over time. So somebody might have been Latin in the beginning, which you learned because of him/her, and now that he/she has become Italian you do not understand him/her anymore.
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Once again: when that happens, the only useful thing to do is to look at what is changing in you. We cannot control other people. The only person who is under our control is ourselves.
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I do not see a point in changing myself to find a partner. The way I am right now might even be what somebody will find attractive. 🙂 That’s what I meant when I pointed out that people are different. I wouldn’t change myself to suit a potential partner because whatever I would do it might be the wrong thing. So, it’s better to just be myself. However, I am trying to be less shy since it will improve my teaching and help me to find a new flat whenever I need one. 😀
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“I wouldn’t change myself to suit a potential partner because whatever I would do it might be the wrong thing.”
– When on Earth did I suggest that??? I’m suggesting that people solve their psychological issues to improve the quality of their lives, that’s all. It is very possible that they decide to remain single forever after they solve those problems because then they will be able to see clearly what it is they want.
My posts are so not about changing yourself to find a partner. I find the very suggestion upsetting. The point is to look at your life and figure out why you are not living the life of your dreams and why you are not ecstatically happy right now (the “you” here is collective, not personal). And then start working on the reasons that are preventing you from being ecstatically happy. For your own sake, not for some potential partner’s.
Like I would change to please anybody but myself. Right.
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Alright, maybe I misunderstood you. Of course I am trying to work on my issues in order to lead a happier, less stressful life. I do not intend a partner to solve them for me. However, if I find a partner before I solve all my issues, then I hope my partner will be understanding and supportive (which is different from expecting that person to take care of my problems).
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