Back when I first started reading, like really really reading and getting into the whole personal development world, I read something about “become deserving of the life you want.” At this time in my life, I thought this could be extrapolated out to just about anything. The idea being that you prepare yourself and when the opportunity arises, you’ll be ready for it and seize the moment. Similar blurbs are things about greatness favors the prepared.
The biggest mistake I’ve made was extrapolating this theory out to what type of relationship I wanted, as in, I would imagine my ideal woman and then think about what type of man I should be to “deserve” her. For about a year, this was my north star – I’m ashamed that I let this happen – I was fully motivated to become someone for someone else who didn’t even exist. How shallow. Well, to be fair it’s not all that bad since my ideal woman could be said to be a reflection of my ideal self. But you get the point, I should be thinking first about my ideal self.
How I came to realize the errors of my ways was when I watched the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty after it was recommended by a few of my friends. I thought the premise was greatly inspiring – a boring office-bound man breaks out and explores the world on an adventure. Then I thought more about the premise – a man likes a woman, fantasizes about being interesting to her, and then begins to take risks/adventure with her in mind (they didn’t get together until the end of it all and she hardly knew him until the end). Sorry for the spoilers. This general premise is prevalent in a lot of movies. If you don’t pay attention, you will passively accept this. I think it’s one of the worst ideas to be so subtly imbued. The idea of the one-sided pursuit, being motivated by someone who may not know you exist, putting in effort before you even truly know someone all for the chance of a fade-to-black happily ever after.
As a caveat: putting in effort to build a relationship is necessary, no doubt about it. But that effort should be mutually founded after both people agree to build the relationship together.
If you’re going to break out of your comfort zone, do it for yourself. Do what you’re interested in, do what excites you. Don’t think about some real or imaginary person and have your life decisions, energy, and money, all based on impressing them. I’ve heard so many stories of people learning a language or a skill just to get closer to someone else without knowing if that person is interested in them before embarking. Then, when it doesn’t work out, they complain as if they deserved the person. That they were entitled. You’ll see in movies the man works hard to get the woman to fall in love, or he likes her a lot and feels a sense of entitlement to her reciprocation, if only he worked hard enough or became the man she deserves. This is also the whole premise of The Phantom of the Opera, by the way (sorry, spoilers). In the end, the lesson learned is that you should be true to yourself and your interests because we live with ourselves everyday. If you like someone, you should not change to become more to their liking, and especially not before they even know you and have expressed interest.
Wheelchair DNA 