When you look around the dating scene, often times people will ask "what's your type?" Most will respond with a laundry list of parameters of their ideal mate, and specific red flags of people they won't mesh with at all. Then people will follow through with several stories about who would and wouldn't work, or that one time with the really bad date who wasn't up to snuff.
I do have a relatively small, lax list for my requirements (it's mildly tongue-in-cheek at the start), but that's not the point of this post. What I wanted to talk about here is turning those lists back on to yourself.
Many times behind closed doors people will complain about how silly those other people are. You know the ones. Those who think it's always everyone else's fault. It's their fault they didn't have the backbone to ask you out. Why is everyone around me such jerks? How could you be so stupid to miss that detail and ruin our whole project! I'm pretty sure you're one of these complainers. I know I often complain about everyone else. But how often do you look at yourself and wonder if it's your fault? That perhaps if you were a little different, perhaps if you explained things better, perhaps if you were more caring things could work out better?
This is the kind of evaluation I'm talking about. Here's a quick example.
I often play online games with some friends. We learned these games in college, and have since progressed to a modicum of competency. Since we play on the same team, we share the awesome victories and gripe about the defeats. I will say I am definitely the weakest player on our team at this point. And many times I end up being the weak link that loses us the game because I didn't play my character properly or I lost our lane or I didn't save our more important teammates when I was supposed to. But heck, I've been playing this game for over 6 years! I'm relatively competent! It was just that our opponents were too good! It's because they came and put so much pressure on us, there was nothing I could do! It's not all MY fault. Right?
Sounds nice. Maybe helps ease my ego and the fact I let down my team. But it's not the truth. The truth is most of the time I screw it up. And I continue to lag as the rest get better because I don't put in the time to learn from better players, to follow the latest trends in the game, and increase my skills.
As an aside: that's not to say my teammates should have free reign at pointing out every single instance I screwed up. After all, if it's my fault, I should get all the blame and every pointer to expose every time I messed it up so I can learn and do better next time. Right? Well, perhaps, but please do it with some compassion. I know in my head it's my fault already, no need to kick me while I'm down.
Let's bring it back to dating.
Everyone has their list of wants. But how many people evaluate how well they fit others' lists? Can you say that you're caring? That you're honest and trusting? Will to put the others' needs above your own? Are you interested in investing into their lives? Or are you just a giant vacuum of wants and needs and only interested in locking in a wonderful prize who will serve you and make your life complete? Do you measure up to your own list of credentials you want in your dating partner?
I'm not saying go out and remake yourself. Being someone you're not just to attract your imaginary perfect ideal person can make you miserable as you try to maintain the lie. Unless you do it enough it becomes who you are. But that's a whole other can of worms on whether people can change or not.
Anyways, I've rambled on enough here. Point being, don't be that person who just gripes about everyone else. Take a few moments every now and then and apply your list of positive and negatives to yourself and see how you stack up. And be honest. You know you're not perfect, I know I'm not perfect, so find some stuff to improve on and become a little bit more the person you want to be around.
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