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5 Ways To Be More Confident On A Date

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5 ways to be more confident on a dateWe've all been there, those nervous hours (and for some of us that are more anxiety prone, days) before a date with a guy you either just met or recently started dating that you're just so, well, into. You want to make a good impression and you start obsessing about everything from your hair, to what on earth you're going to wear, to those extra few pounds that you want to lose so badly. It's enough to drive a beautiful single girl crazy, and for most of us that's exactly what it does.

Well, I've got good news for you – I'm going to give you a handful of go-to tools that you can use before that big date to get you ready to present him with your best, most confident, and, most importantly, calm self!

1. Make plans with friends or family.

Make sure you have plans for the hours before the date so that you will be distracted from over thinking things. So if your date is for Saturday night, connect up with a friend and head out for the afternoon so that you don't have too much time to stress about your upcoming date. Worst case, Mom always loves to see you – invite her out for brunch, shopping, or to check out that new art gallery you heard about. Make sure that whatever you're doing together leaves you with just a bit more time than it takes you to get ready for the date, so you won't be stressed getting ready but you also won't have time to obsess over the little things.

If you're stuck and everyone you know is otherwise engaged, then spend the time on your own enjoying something you love doing. You'll get a bonus if the activity involves exercising – the endorphin rush will give you a mood boost to last throughout the date. The point is that being busy and spending time with friends or doing something you love will elevate your mood and put you in the right mindset to feel relaxed and happy during your date, and that's very attractive.

2. Picture it going well.

While you're getting ready for the date, imagine yourself with him feeling very relaxed and comfortable like being out with one of your longtime friends. The two of you are talking easily, laughing together, he enjoys being with you and you're really connecting. Think of a great time you had with a good friend and picture it feeling just like that (only better). The better you can visualize the date, the better it will be.

3. Focus on something other than yourself.

When we focus on ourselves, how we're speaking, what we're saying, where our hands are, etc., we become overly self-conscious and this tends to make us nervous. Instead focus on him; if he's talking really hear what he's saying, and make sure your response has nothing to do with you. For example, if he's telling you a story about his dog acknowledge his story first (Oh, that's such a cute story!) then ask him more details – what kind of dog? How long has he had it? etc. before delving into the story about your own dog or the one you had as a kid.

We're all guilty of thinking about what we can tell someone about ourselves while they're in the middle of telling us their story (many times we're even scripting our own story in our head while he's talking – don't worry, it's natural). If you spend your time focusing on him and what he's saying instead of yourself, you'll learn more about him and you'll be less nervous – a win-win. Once he's clearly through with talking, or better yet, asks you about yourself, then you can tell him your own cute dog stories.

4. Remember it's supposed to be fun.

Remind yourself that dating is supposed to be fun, and if you're so worried about every little thing you say or every little detail about how you look or what you're wearing, then it's not fun. So spend some time looking and feeling your best, know that you are looking and feeling your best, then stop worrying about it. You did everything you can do. Now it's just a matter of seeing if the date is actually fun and if there's enough compatibility to justify date number two (hint: there always should be, unless there was one of these dealbreakers).

The point is, just be yourself and know that if he's not that into you then it's a blessing. You only want to be with men that are into you the way you really are. Otherwise, you have to be something different your entire life, and that's no fun.

5. Remember that you're doing the choosing.

Last but not least, always remember that you're in the position of doing the choosing. He may seem like he's the perfect guy for you, but remind yourself that you really don't know much about him yet. Tell yourself that he still has to prove himself to you in order to win your precious heart – after all, you're not going to give it away to just anyone. Not to the point of making it seem like an interview or being standoffish -  but enough to make sure that you aren't putting him up on such an unrealistic pedestal that you feel like he's out of your league. He isn't; he's just a person, just like you are, and that's why you're here – to get to know more about each other so you can both decide if you are a good match.

With this type of healthy mindset you'll be much more confident going into and during the date. Being confident and self-assured is not only very attractive, but it's essential to keep yourself from falling for a guy who is actually not right for you.

What do you do to ease the pre-date jitters? Tell us about it in the comments!

Filling the Void

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A beautiful woman sids under a tree in autumn feeling sad and lonely.
It's like an awkward silence.

Frequently, whether we're currently in a relationship or we're single, we find ourselves looking for something, longing for something, and we're not sure exactly what it is. We're feeling empty inside, like there's a hollow space within us that we are desperately looking to fill in any way that we can.

So often what we’re really looking for is ourselves.  We’ve gone so far away from our true selves that we don’t even know who we are anymore, much less that we are anything worth being with. We've done so much changing to fit what he wanted us to be, or what we thought he wanted us to be, that we don't even know who we are anymore.

We’ve drifted so far away from who we really are that it’s uncomfortable, like an awkward silence, when we’re alone with no one to make us feel worthy.  Without someone else in our lives to make us feel validated, to make us feel chosen, to make us feel worthy, we find ourselves searching for that missing piece of us, for something to fill that void, something to make us feel whole, complete.

The point that we're completely missing is that we are whole; we are complete, in and of ourselves, without anyone else, without a guy. We don’t need anyone else to make us ok.

But that’s not how we feel.  Whether it’s how we’re brought up or from the messages we receive from our culture, from our peer groups, from our families, from our schools, we’re given the opposite message: that there is something wrong with us.

And then all it takes is a relationship or two with someone who wasn’t a whole person himself to confirm that message so deep within us that we’re not worthy, that there is indeed something wrong with us, and that rejection further cements our unconscious belief that we need something outside of ourselves to complete us.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is we don’t need anyone to complete us. We don’t need anyone or anything outside of ourselves to validate us, make us a whole, to prove our worthiness. The reality is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with us. We’re not damaged goods.

It may be difficult to believe this, at first, but if you keep reminding yourself you will finally begin to believe the truth – that you are beautiful, you have so much worth, and you deserve to be loved and treated with respect and kindness.

And you are complete within yourself.

Because it's only when we really understand this truth, that we are complete within ourselves, that we are able to be a part of a healthy relationship with someone else.

Finding Your Best Self

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Concept of a woman freeing herself from the chains of bondage
It begins with this.

We hear it all the time: be your best self!  But what does that really mean?  How do we be our best selves?  We may spend a small fortune on a new wardrobe of all of the latest trendy styles, buy a membership to the best fitness club, or get a sporty new car.  But we still feel the same.  We might have changed some things but we don’t feel any different.  We’re still our same old selves. So why don’t we feel any different?  Because that’s not what it’s about.Continue Reading

You Deserve to be Loved!

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A beautiful woman is being hugged
We all do.

We all have inherent belief systems, as a result of our early programming, that greatly affect us throughout our lives into adulthood. For a variety of reasons, one of the most prevalent is that we don’t deserve to be loved, and it's this particular one that has the most negative effect on the quality of the relationships that we have.

It’s the belief system that you might not even realize is playing in the back of your mind, in your subconscious, as it subtly reminds you day after day that you are bad, there's something wrong with you, don’t deserve to be happy, and, worst of all, you don’t deserve to be loved!Continue Reading

Stop Being So Hard on Yourself!

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Don't be so hard on yourself.
Be gentle with yourself.

There’s one thing we women do better than anything else - we beat ourselves up.

It doesn’t matter how far we’ve come or what we’ve learned along the way, no one else is harder on us than we are.

We know all too well exactly what we should have done, could have done, would have done differently, and we’re so good at letting ourselves know just exactly how far we’ve fallen short of the mark.

We blame ourselves.

It doesn’t seem to matter what he’s done; we have so much grace for him, all too much understanding for him, and every possible excuse ready for his behavior that deserves just as much if not more of a critique than we give ourselves.

But if it’s him and what he’s done or didn’t do, we’ll forgive him. And understand and even sympathize with him. Continue Reading

Stop Trying To Be Something You're Not!

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Don't hide your true personality
Don't hide your true personality

Bending and twisting yourself like a pretzel to fit what you think the person you're attracted to wants might get him interested, but here's why he won't stick around for long.

This is the eighth and final post in our series 8 Signs You Aren’t Ready for a Relationship.

If you often find that you're trying to change something about yourself thinking it will make you more attractive to the guy you just met, or just started dating, then you are, like I was, lacking in self-esteem and confidence. Don't be too hard on yourself, this is very common but it means that you need to work on finding and loving the real you before trying to love someone else.

This was my dating pitfall: I used to think it was all about showing a guy that I really was all that.  I felt that I had to show him just how wonderful I was, and make him realize that I was everything he had ever wanted in a woman.  And I mistakenly thought that I could do that by loving everything that he loved, by wanting to do everything that he wanted to do, and by showing him just how much we had in common (even when we really didn’t.)

What I didn’t realize back then was that it all just set the stage for a relationship that wasn’t authentic, wasn’t truly honest, and wasn’t about two real people bringing their own true selves into the relationship.  I also didn't understand that any potential the relationship might have had would come to a striking halt because I wasn’t being true to myself.  Ironically, it was the exact opposite of what I was hoping to get – a real relationship.

It was a pattern I repeated over and over again, and I just couldn't figure out how he could be so interested in the beginning and then suddenly not interested at all. What I didn’t understand then that I finally understood much later was that I was just fluff.  I was only giving him that part of me that I thought was what he wanted, what I thought that most guys wanted.  But the problem was that I really didn’t know how to be anything else after that.  I was so intent on being the perfect package, that I wasn’t my own person.  I was just a mirror of him.

While that might work in the beginning, and get him interested, it doesn't last because any true relationship requires both give and take. Both partners have to complement the other in order for each, and the relationship, to grow.

One of my favorite books from my dating years that helped me to understand this problem and to work through it was Marianne Williamson's A Woman's Worth. The copyright on it is 1993, making it now considered a classic, but her words are just as true today as they ever were. I still have my dog-eared copy with its yellowing, note-riddled pages on my bookshelf.

I think this excerpt makes the point very well:

"There is a difference between getting a partner and attracting a partner. Getting implies that our hooks work; attracting means that our light is bright and appears like a beacon to one who is meant to see it. When we try to get a partner, we increase our chances of getting the wrong one. Yes, we can hook one perhaps, but a hook in him is a hook in us. We either end up neurotically obsessed, or he figures out it's a hook and does his own casting off. When we attract love by an  intensified connection to the spirit inside, we take responsibility for the energy around us, harmonizing it in such a way that those who come forward – who we sense are meant to be with us – connect with us out of similarly pure intent."

Her words woke me up to the reality that by trying to be something I wasn't, trying to be something that I thought these guys wanted that I didn't have naturally, something that I'd have to fake, that this trying was exactly what was causing me to continue to have failing relationships! And this realization created such a calming, peaceful, zen-like feeling that washed over me, and for the first time in my dating life I felt like I could just relax. Stop trying so hard. Just be. Live. Love life.

It was then that I finally realized that I could just be the person I wanted to be, without worrying that I wasn't hip enough or wasn't into things that guys might like. It didn't matter. I would just be who I was, and do what I loved doing, and I trusted that there would be someone out there who would love me for everything that I really was (or at least love most of me, and tolerate the rest.)

So if you find yourself like I was, trying hard to get a guy to like you, trying to be what you think he wants, just stop. Breathe. Relax. Stop trying so hard. And then be yourself. If you don't know who she is, then go find her – that's what I had to do. It's understandable, after trying to be someone different for so long, probably even someone different for each guy, that you don't even know the real you anymore.

Spend some time getting to know that gorgeous, wonderful woman that is you. Let your light shine for the world to see, and let your light be a beacon so that equally gorgeous, wonderful guy can find you in this crazy ocean fog of modern life. You won't know what he looks like, in fact he might be completely different, physically, from what you expected, but you'll know him when you meet him.

And he'll know you because of your beautiful, bright, shining light.

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About Jane Garapick

Hi, I'm Jane Garapick. I'm here to provide inspiration, support and empowerment on the journey to true love. I know what it’s like to have a broken heart, a broken dream, and a broken you. And I know for a fact, that your dreams can still come true! Read more...
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