Love Logik’s Rule #1: Know thyself

Don’t Date Until You Do!

Rule:

Know your wants and needs and turn them into your goals with measurable objectives.

If you cannot list 10 wants and 10 needs for yourself right now then you are not ready for a relationship. Take a piece of paper and draw a line in the middle.

Wants | Needs

I want [to do this, to be better at…] | I need this to [do it, get there, etc]

Let’s not pretend… this will be very hard to do for many people. If you’re one of them the most important action you should be doing next in your life is figuring this out.

Warning: Those who avoid themselves and always find themselves victims at the end of each relationship, the below link is for your own insight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle

Consequence:

Failure to abide by this this rule will cause you to pathetically placate to the other person in the relationship the entire time. You are not only ignoring yourself (purposely in most cases) but are wasting the other person’s time by not bringing the honest and complete you into the relationship as expected.

This has the typical cause and effect of being stuck in said relationship for much longer than you needed to be… all-the-while wondering why it’s not working out, yet feeling obligated to stay and fight all the time rather than be honest with yourself. Sound familiar? If you established your wants and needs you would know how to measure whether you are in the relationship you want much earlier and you would hurt less people too!

Benefits:

If you know you… you will know what you want. It will be something that gives you focus and you will work hard to achieve. It also makes for perfect dating conversation as it demonstrates that you’re confident, focused, persistence, happy, goal-oriented, and last but not least, an inspiration to others (universally attractive qualities). The next question for your date is to have them tell you their wants and needs. This makes for fair expectations set at the beginning of the ritual, and promotes honesty, and transparency immediately. If they don’t know what they are, maybe for the next date you can encourage them to find out and go from there. Or it can mean that you’ve decided to move on to another person… but in either case, at least you didn’t waste their time and you figure out what you do and don’t want in a potential relationship.

Goals and Objectives:

So you’ve spent some time on establishing your wants and needs. Now we need to then make some long term goals and short term goals.

Step 1: Start with Long Term and Dream Big!

• Using your wants and needs make some big lofty goals from there. Make 5 at most for now… Keep it simple but dream big!

Step 2: Short Term Goals, Practical and Achievable:

• 5 at most and make sure you can do them this year…
• It’s ok if you don’t achieve them all…. they are goals… just set them
• No overthinking… go with what you feel!

Step 3: Measurable Objectives you can cross off!

• Take the short term goals and create 5–10 measurable objectives (set a deadline of these objectives for the current season).

example:

Want: I want to feel like I’m in control of myself

Need: I need to create routines that will allow me to control certain aspects of my life

Long Term Goal: Live a healthy lifestyle.

Short Term Goal: start a fitness plan and execute.

Objective: by fall be in the gym no less than 3 times per week.

I personally have a big visible white board in my home that has these on it and nothing else. I recommend making that investment if you can. Other ideas include puting it as the background of your computer desktop, or simply place sticky notes that are constantly visible until you get into the habit of wanting to address these.

Caveats:

New habits take about two weeks to build and get comfortable with. If it’s getting in the gym for example, you will hate it for at least 2–3 weeks. After awhile you will get used to it and possibly learn to enjoy it, or at least enjoy hating it. If you are trying to kill certain habits, know that habits have to be switched not simply given up. Find an opposite habit that you would prefer in your life based on your wants and needs, and that will make giving up the other one much more possible.

If you’re in a relationship that you want to stay in but you’re wondering why it may be having some instability issues, both of you should establish your wants and needs as soon as possible separately, and present them to each other after and discuss. A want of keeping the relationship doesn’t count, it has to be what you would want for yourself as if the relationship doesn’t exist.

Happiness is not something you find, it’s something you create via a series of usually difficult choices. Good luck!

Sincerely,

Lance