It’s been less than a week since a lot of people got their hearts broken. After all, Valentine’s day isn’t happy for everyone…

Fortunately if that’s not you, the fact that you’re reading or listening to this tells us that you still want to improve the number and quality of relationships in your life. 

So our goal with this post is to share with you a strategy that you can use to not only find the one, but to also improve every relationship in your life, both old and new. 

So let’s get into it! 

What Most People Do 

So before we dive into our strategy, let’s address the things that we see most people doing to improve their relationships - whether it’s their dating life, marriage, family or friends, some mistakes are, unfortunately, all too common.

1. They let anyone into their lives. 

They have no standards for filtering out people who don’t add value. And we don’t mean this in a shallow way. 

Relationships are a two-way street; in order for them to work long-term, whether it’s with your partner or your friends, both people in the relationship need to benefit from it. If that’s not happening, then that’s not a good relationship. 

The only exceptions to this that we can think of are the relationships that you have with your kids and the family you’re born into, because you can’t always choose whether they’re a part of your life. But besides these, every other relationship needs to be mutually beneficial. 

And when we say value, we don’t mean buying each other expensive gifts. The most important kind of value is non-materialistic, like someone who’s always ready to listen to you when you need to vent, or someone who believes in you when nobody else does. 

We know from experience that the reason people fall into this trap of letting just anyone into their lives is because they think it’s better than being alone. But here’s the truth: any relationship, especially a romantic one, is a HUGE investment of your time and energy. 

You only have so much to give, and by saying yes to anyone, you’re saying no to those who truly matter. 

2. They indulge in hedonism. 

If a relationship doesn’t work out, the first thing many people turn to is an escape, rather than actually addressing the problem. 

In our previous post, we talked about how every addiction is a coping mechanism for poorly managed stress. Hedonism is where these addictions start, and it comes in many forms: playing games, casual flings, alcohol and drugs, just to name a few. 

No matter who you are or what you’ve been through, every story with hedonism ends the same way: you’ll eventually become desensitized to whatever your vice is, which means your dopamine threshold will be so high that you can no longer derive joy from that activity, or any other aspect of your life. 

For those of you who don’t know, dopamine is the neurotransmitter of more - it basically regulates your internal reward system. The lower your dopamine threshold, the less of it is necessary for you to experience joy. 

For example, if you’ve never eaten sugar before, then the first time you eat a cookie is gonna feel incredible. Fast-forward an hour, and let’s say you’ve now eaten 20 cookies. How good is the next one gonna taste? Probably not as good as the first 5, right? That’s because in the example, the cookie monster raised their dopamine threshold too high by over-indulging in the sugar from the cookies. As a result, eating cookies is no longer enjoyable, and if they try to eat something healthy, like a salad, it’s gonna taste terrible in comparison! Why? Because eating a salad doesn’t release as much dopamine as eating a cookie. Of course, this is just an example and isn’t supported by any data. 

But the point is to illustrate why hedonism is so dangerous: it’s because it raises your dopamine threshold so high that the only way you can experience joy or pleasure is by indulging even more in your vice to the point where it just becomes unhealthy. And the further you raise your dopamine threshold through hedonistic behavior, the harder it’ll be for you to overcome the addiction you’ve buried yourself under. 

3. They just give up. 

This is similar to indulging in hedonism but the difference lies in the mentality. Someone who resorts to hedonism is trying to avoid dealing with their problems. 

Someone who’s given up has accepted that there’s nothing they can do to solve their problems, and stop trying altogether. 

So if you’re in either of these camps, we’re truly sorry you were hurt that badly, but you need to hear this: 

Relationships are one of the BIGGEST predictors of longevity and happiness! 

It might not be intuitive, but one of the reasons research suggests is that maintaining long-lasting, healthy relationships is one of the most powerful ways to manage stress long-term. This is why married couples tend to live longer, happier lives on average. 

Humans are social creatures; it’s how we’ve survived this long!

And we’re not pulling this out of our butts. This has been demonstrated in studies of the world’s blue zones & through Harvard’s 80 year study on happiness and longevity. Both suggest that embracing community is crucial for aging well. 

Our takeaway from this is that if you don’t invest in building and maintaining high-quality relationships, it will literally cost you years of your life that you could be enjoying to the fullest! 

If you give up on relationships altogether, you’re not living life, you’re just waiting to die. And we don’t want that for you, so here’s the strategy we’ve seen work wonders in both our lives and the lives of others. 

We truly hope it’ll help you. 

Here we go!

Our Strategy

1. Figure Out Who You Want

So the first step of our strategy involves writing down who you want in your life. You can do this for a romantic partner, for friends, acquaintances, etc. 

Be VERY detailed. List all of the qualities and attributes you’d like them to have. 

Don’t think about whether you’re being realistic, just write down what you honestly want.

2. Figure Out Who They Want

Write down the attributes of the kind of person that the people you want in your life would want to spend time with. 

Again, you can use this for a romantic partner, a friend, or literally anyone you want to have a relationship with. 

Also again, be VERY detailed. For every attribute that you’d like them to have, try to list an attribute of who they’d want to have a relationship with. 

3. Compare Yourself To Who They Want

Alright, now this is the hard part. 

You need to have an honest conversation with yourself and assess whether you have all the attributes of the kind of person that the person you want in your life would like to have a relationship with. 

Chances are, you’re probably not this version of yourself yet, and that’s okay! 

But now you know what you need to work on. 

4. Become Who They Want

Ok, we know this entire process seems pretty straight-forward, and it is, but here’s where there’s going to be a good amount of variation. 

As always, when there’s not a one-size-fits-all recommendation that we can make, we’re going to give you some general principles you can use to design your life. 

Your goal is to become the ideal version of yourself, the kind of person that the people you want in your life want to have a relationship with. 

And you want to do this in the most social way possible. 

For example, let’s say that the romantic partner you want in your life would like to have a relationship with someone who’s fit and exercises regularly. 

Instead of just signing up for a gym membership, try signing up for a weekly F45 session, or some kind of group-exercise activity where you can not only work on yourself, but also meet like-minded people in the process. 

The point is that you want to become “ideal-you” while simultaneously putting yourself in environments that allow you to meet people with similar values; people who want the same things as you. 

It’s much easier to build any kind of relationship when you have something in common, so participating in group activities that also allow you to work towards your goals is a fantastic way to do this. 

The best part? 

Chances are that, assuming you were detailed enough, the list of attributes of your ideal-self covers every aspect of your life: your physical and mental health, relationships, work, hobbies, adventure, and more. 

Now, as you apply this strategy to every aspect of your life, your dopamine sources will become more varied and healthier. This will lower your stress levels, which will reduce your temptations to indulge in hedonistic coping mechanisms. 

All of this is to say that you will become happier! 

And this brings us to the crux of our strategy. It’s a beautiful concept that our Founder learnt of several years ago, and has been applying it to their life since. 

It’s called being “happy enough.” 

No, you don’t need to be the happiest person in the world when you don’t have a romantic partner, unless of course that’s what you want. 

But, you do need to be happy enough with your own life that you can make better decisions about who you allow into it. 

The more you enjoy your life, the higher your standards will be for who you choose to have a relationship with. 

And as a result of raising your standards, you’ll make better relationship-decisions, which in turn will make you that much happier. 

The way we see it, when you’re happy enough to say no to anyone that doesn’t meet your standards, you can say yes to the ones that do; and when that happens, you’ll truly be the happiest you can possibly be.  

Because enjoying your life is great, but enjoying your life with people you care about is incredible.

That’s A Wrap!

We hope you found this post valuable! 

If you did, then consider sharing this post with someone you think it could help! The bigger our community, the more we can all help each other :) 

Thanks again! 

Your Internet Siblings:

The Healthy Kangaroo Team ;)