How to get what you want

I relied heavily on my family and confided in a few close friends with whom I was happy to share my outburst of insanity.

My 4-year-old niece reaffirmed my need to do this, and amid my sobs, she gave me a hug and said simply, "It's okay. We are your family and we will always take care of you."

At that moment, nothing seemed more true.

Once I began to heal, I began to expand my world again, to meet and reach out to people who allowed me to reconnect with parts of myself I had forgotten.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I had a team, a steady collection of like-minded souls who knew how to get the best out of me.

Then there was the decision to start dating, which triggered the same fear and excitement (perhaps more of the former than the latter).

An either/or proposition

The process of dating is easy - I can take a few hours off for dinner and feel totally at ease. But, in my mind, the act of opening up my world to other people was infuriating.

I will give my time, but only if it is not taken up by other "more important" things. I will open up my space, but only for a short time. I will share a part of myself, but not enough to knock down any walls or create any significant forward movement.

I firmly believed that any relationship I entered meant depriving myself of the wonderful life I had created. I think it's an either-or proposition -- I don't think there is an "and" situation.

I can articulate what I want, but my actions, attitudes and underlying beliefs say something else entirely.

Then I read this clip from the book Calling in the One:

"... He said 'that' never came into his life until he let go of his obsession with what he thought she should be... When I asked him how he did it, he smiled shyly and leaned in to tell me his secret.

"I really cleaned out my closet," he admitted. "I literally created a space in the bedroom closet and cleaned out a drawer so that when she showed up, she had a place to put her stuff." "

To create a space

We can create a space in our mind for the possibilities we want, but sometimes creating physical space in our environment and schedule for that person or thing to appear is the final step in demonstrating our readiness.

That doesn't mean giving up on what's working -- it means integrating, pushing it, creating Spaces where all good things can work together. The act itself is a giant leap of faith.

These four steps have become my preparation process.

1. Get rid of things and thoughts that aren't yours

Sometimes the physical, emotional, and mental baggage we carry isn't necessarily ours to begin with -- it's what we carry from family members and past relationships. Recognize that you have claimed things for yourself that you don't want or aren't serving you and your growth.

For me, this has always been something in my physical space - bedding that I didn't choose, mementos that are more painful than uplifting and so on.

2. Think carefully about your time, space, and energy

Part of my process of making room for the things I want in my life (and I do want the vast majority of them at this point) is saying "no" to the things I can do - the things that don't speak to me.

In the process of deliberation, you are living and breathing the clarity you seek. You may think you don't have a clear picture of what you want, but by carefully choosing what your world consists of, you're actually creating that clarity.

3. Clean up your conversations

When I am alone, I can convince myself that I am open and positive about meeting people with whom I am connected. Then, when it came up in conversation, I began to see where I really stood - that I was closed off, not communicative, independent of mistakes, and pessimistic about the outcome.

After talking about it created an "aha" moment, I needed to change the way I talked about the situation in order to align with what I really wanted.

Clean up your conversation like you clean up your space -- make it easy for you to want to find what you have and settle down with.

4. Don't rely on appearances

It's easy to get a door deadlocked when the person on the other side doesn't look like who you think he is. But we never know what anyone or anything is supposed to look like, do we?

The first leap of faith is to clean up; The second is to be open to recognizing beautiful things suddenly appearing on your doorstep.