Have people, upon hearing your dating woes, given you the oh-so-helpful advice to “just be yourself!”?

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And then you tried it, and it didn’t work?

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It’s the right advice, but it’s not really clear about what it means to be yourself.

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Most people who hear “be yourself” understand that to mean “do whatever you would normally do in any moment, with no analysis or intention behind it.” This is reactivity. This is not authenticity.

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Authenticity requires that you have *chosen* the program you are running in your thoughts and emotions. Who you are when you’re in a program you didn’t design isn’t yourSELF.

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(There is no option to not be running a program. Either you’re running the program society and your life experience randomly gave you, or you’re running a program you designed.)

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Decide who you want to be, how you want to feel, based on what you and you alone want. Explore the roadblocks to your embodiment of this. Do the work to truly understand yourself and approve of yourself.

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This doesn’t work if you do it for other people, to conform to social standards, or for what a future love-interest may want. This has to be about what you want to do with your one and only life.

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Then you can just be yourself, and your dream partner(s) will find you.