I think the majority of us have a little bit of over-analyzing within us. Perhaps some more than others. I have a friend that is currently jumping into the Mormon dating scene and is slightly nervous about it. He likes a girl, then he obsesses about her, then he analyzes it till there’s nothing left of it, and finally- he’s over the girl cause it’s just easier that way. This sort of attempt at dating has got to be exhausting and anxiety provoking…perhaps even debilitating.
But I sooo understand. Frankly it’s easier for me to just not allow things to even start if I find myself thinking about someone too much. I’m real real good at just cutting it off. Well for obvious reasons that’s a horrible habit and if I ever wanna get married…it’s gotta change. (Just like my website…I’m a work in progress;) So how do you allow a mini-crush to even evolve into a date and a potential future? You get busy!
The moment you find yourself with a new crush -pick up a new hobby, enroll in a class, make a new friend, fill up your time! To allow things to evolve you have got to stop thinking about your crush all the time. But… simply telling yourself to stop thinking about them isn’t going to work. Try this little exercise:
Don’t think about a yellow school bus
What’d you think about? A yellow school bus right? (Sheldon Martin taught this little trick in his class at Education Week last summer.) So the trick is – you can’t tell yourself to stop thinking about something and have it work. But you can switch the thought. You have to replace that thought with other things. Your focus has to be on something else. Hence the need to bring LOTS and LOTS of other things into your life when you get a new crush!
If you can learn to control and redirect your thoughts you will lessen your anxiety. You will stop being a self-sabotager and ending things before they start just to relieve you of the pressure you’ve put on a simple little mini-crush! Seriously…we are a bunch of crazies trying to get ourselves married!!! It will also help you avoid creating a fairy-tale (and it’s not just the girls that do this…plenty of boys dream up a fantasy long ahead of reality!) and thinking it’s something that it’s not. Let’s get back to reality singles and start seeing things for what they really are.
