How I Learned to Date Myself

“You teach people how to treat you”

I was meandering the street of Mykonos, Greece by myself after having just watched the sun go down amongst a swarm of people, selfie-sticks in hand ready to capture the moment, and had a dance of what I should do versus what I wanted to do.

What I really wanted to do was go back to my hotel and dress up and go out for a beautiful dinner. Mykonos has some gorgeous restaurants, which, in the comfort of my apartment back home, I had diligently been researching on Trip Advisor prior to my trip, ensuring that my hotel was walking distance to those that I wanted to experience.

Then I got stuck.

As my first evening in Mykonos approached, all my mind wanted me to do was stay in my day clothes and just have a gyro in a casual shop hidden in a twisted road and call it a day because I was alone.

It was the normal thing to do, I thought. Mykonos is an electric town vibrating with the energy of groups of friends and the romance of couples. I had been around it all day, but I was immersed in my book and the ocean and didn’t mind. However as the evening neared and the possibilities for my evening plans began to reveal themselves, my mind said it would simply be too uncomfortable to show up without any of my day time distractions in a restaurant buzzing with that type of energy and connection around me, and yet to be an outsider, and

To really allow myself to witness my aloneness, deeply.

Then I remembered what my beautiful friend Lori Harder taught at her workshop in LA last winter that always resonated with me “you teach people how to treat you.”

In that moment I had the choice — to choose fear and listen to my mind’s story about how alone I would feel in the image my mind flashed for me of all the tables of couples and groups around me laughing and chatting and clinking champagne glasses over candlelight — or to choose love. To choose to trust what my heart wanted to do, and to lean into where the deeper, wiser, most loving part of me was guiding me

And so I did it. I showed up for myself. My true self. My higher self. I took myself out for a delicious dinner. I dressed up for myself. I wore my most beautiful jewelry. I sat with myself in a fancy restaurant. I absorbed my food with all of my senses. I spent time with myself. I showed up for the other people at the restaurant who were not so surreptitiously glancing at me and questioning why a person would be alone at a restaurant in a state peace without a companion, even though I watched many be glued to their iPhone screens despite sitting across from one another.

I did it because I knew we always have a choice: to choose love or to choose fear, and I know to choose love. To trust the mind or trust the heart.

I did it because I LOVE gorgeous dinners out and dressing up, and how could I put the pressure upon or call forth a partner who makes me feel this way and does these things with me without embodying it first? How could I expect another person to show up for me in such a powerful way if I couldn’t show up for myself first? And while I’ve had partners that have done this in the past, why wait to have these experiences until they’re here?

It’s up to us to be the light, for ourselves and then for others. As we do, others observe. As we are, others are inspired. Keep shining, love warriors.