Creating Your Boss List to Find True Love

I call the 17 months before I found true love my preparation season. I was preparing to be the person I needed to be in order to attract the person I wanted to be with. Preparation! And the preparation season can be so awesome. At my best friend’s wedding I realized I wasn’t going to attract a badass unless I walked out the door feeling like a badass. So the first thing I did was write a list of everything I needed to do or take care of in order to feel more confident about myself. I asked myself, “Why DON’T I feel like a badass? What do I need to accomplish in order to feel like I am?” Writing them down and working towards each item are some of the secrets to finding love. I wrote them all down and I call it my boss list.

I realized I wasn’t going to find love unless I loved myself

First draft of my boss list:

1. I needed dental work I had been procrastinating.
2. My back yard was an overgrown jungle of embarrassment.
3. I had disgusting carpets most likely installed in 1990
4. I had $30,000 in IRS Debt.
5. My fitness wasn’t where I wanted. I knew I would feel better if I dropped a few, but I wanted to make sure I still loved myself the way I WAS, WHILE I was improving in these areas.
6. I wanted to strengthen my relationship with my kids even more. I wanted to be able to say to myself that I was doing a good job at the end of every day when my head hit my pillow at night.

I believe working towards accomplishing the things on our boss list we KNOW will make us feel better is one of the ways we grow our self-worth, and raise our standards of who we will allow into our life. It’s an entire chapter of my book because it’s was a crucial pivot in my life. Once I got busy crossing off the items on my boss list and just worked little by little on it every day, I changed little by little.

Making progress towards any goal on our boss list helps us find love

These are the four areas in my life that I considered to be important, and the ones I paid close attention to making improvements: Health, Environment (also an entire chapter by itself), Finances, and Family. What I did was investigate each of these areas and asked myself what gives me that feeling like “I really would prefer this to be different but I am avoiding this because I really don’t want to deal with it.” or, “I’m embarrassed about _________.” That’s how you know that for sure when that one thing is done, no matter how small, if you just got it handled, you would feel LIKE A BOSS!

Accomplishing goals on our boss list increases our self-worth and helps us find reasons to find love again

In order to accomplish a goal, it has to be quantifiable, otherwise how do you know you’ve done it?

My health, for example, I wanted to lose a few and have more energy. I talk more about some of the ways I kept things from controlling my worth in that blog article, but I believe the key is working toward a goal and making any progress towards it. So I threw away my scale and just did yoga or a hike most days. I stopped putting so many rules on myself. It just doesn’t work long term. Because it takes time for weight to go down, looking at that number every day didn’t help me. I want everything to go FASTER than it does! But I focused on what I CAN control, and became more active doing the things that I wanted to do. Let go of the timeline. Let go of a specific number, and just worked toward it every day. That’s the only thing that works for me. But a goal has to be quantifiable, so my goal was do something active 5 times a week.

The dental work I had been procrastinating (because it was so expensive and I just didn’t want to deal with it) was because of a weird genetic thing we have in our family where we’re born missing some adult teeth….it’s a long story but bottom line is I got braces first to straighten my teeth, and then I had to get screws in my jaw and dental implants – three of them over several years time! Getting braces is not about feeling like I wasn’t beautiful or lovable with my teeth the way they were. It was about DOING what I felt I wanted to do for me to feel good. I like everything to be straight. Teeth included! I did it for me! It was the best thing I have ever done because of the way I feel when I look at my smile now. That is the key. One way I know that can be done is consistently doing things that just plain ‘ol need to be done. It feels great!

Creating harmony in your home is an entire chapter in my book because it’s so important. But those two items were on my list because I was most embarrassed by them. I asked myself, if the love of my life knocked on my door right this second, what would I be embarrassed about? I worked on my house the entire preparation season, and I created a sanctuary for myself in my room, but the first two things I did were cleaning up my back yard and buying lots of rugs to cover up my old carpets. It was a rental so I couldn’t do anything about the current flooring, except cover it up! So I did! Focus on what you can control, and not what you can’t!

Finances

I used to feel like I wasn’t worthy of a badass husband because I had debt. Then I shifted my thinking. I am worthy, even with that debt, because I am working to pay it off and I will be debt-free. I realized that when I focused on that number, I felt like crap and I felt unworthy of attracting an awesome husband. But when I focused on that number being ZERO, I felt great. I put an automatic payment plan in place and never looked at the statements. I didn’t open any notices, I just filed them all and focused on that day when it would be zero. You’re no less worthy of finding love if you have credit card debt or IRS Debt, or you don’t have as much in savings as you’d like. But if you put some kind of plan in place and make baby steps toward a goal, you will feel better and more worthy.

Find true love after 40 by working towards your goals

I’m no financial planner or guru or anything, I just had a goal to be debt-free and this is how I accomplished it. The best part is, I had NOT accomplished all of my goals when I started dating John, and I had to tell him about my debt right from the get-go. You don’t have have to have 100% of your goals accomplished in order to find true love. But I have experienced that if I just work towards them a little bit every day, feel proud of my progress, and pay attention to the accomplishments every day, my happiness and joy improves in all areas, and that’s what makes you a magnet for real love.

Family

You can’t measure “I want to be a better mom.” or “I want stronger relationships”. So it’s hard to accomplish them. We also find ourselves measuring ourselves against what others feel makes you good mom. Like you’re only a good mom if you bake cookies from scratch, or attend PTA meetings. I don’t give a shit about I appeared or what people saw me do in public. I only cared about my son and my daughter and doing the best job I could possibly do. So I made a list a quantifiable goals that if I did them most of the time, no matter what kind of a shit show it was that day and even if we ate cereal for dinner at 10pm, I was still doin OK. There were several, but to give you an example, I wanted to read an hour every night. I get tired early, and I’d start bedtime routine too late, and then only give us 10 minutes to read. That’s not enough. So I moved up the time where we’d do baths and brush teeth and jammas, so we could start reading around 7:30 and have an hour and still be in bed by 8:30. That’s a quantifable goal! Read for an hour most days, it’s awesome for me and for the kids, and I feel like yes, I am doing ok!

So let’s get started on your boss list! Here’s a review:

Examine each area of your life and ask yourself these questions and put the answers on your boss list:

I really would prefer ___________ to be different that it is now.

If ________ were done or completed, I would feel accomplished or proud.

If I improved __________, or worked to get better on __________, I would celebrate.

Divide them into these categories if it helps:

1. Health
2. What is one thing could you do to improve your health just a little bit? East less fast food, or go for a walk, or ________________ what could be your attainable goal here in this area? Write it: Walk 30 minutes a day. Make dinner at home 6 days a week.
3. How have you been sleeping? How could you get more sleep? How can you prioritize sleep more? Write: 8 hours of sleep
4. What could you do to take more care of your self and give some love to that body of yours? Write: Take an epsom salt bath, practice yoga, meditate 10 minutes a day, listen to an uplifting podcast once a week
5. Finances
6. If you want to be debt free, write “DEBT FREE”
7. Do you have a savings goal you’d like to achieve? Write down the number: $5,000 in savings, $10,000 in savings
8. Do you have a trip you’d like to take with your family? Figure out how much it will cost and write it down: I will save $2000 so I can take the kids to Disneyland.
9. Do you have an idea for a side business or would like to get a different job? Perhaps your goal is to: create your website, update your resume and send it to indeed, etc.
10. Environment
11. What are a few things around the house that you have been procrastinating that you could get done and feel accomplished?
12. Do you have room in your closet for your new lover? clean one closet per week
13. Do you have drawers that are disorganized? organize one drawer today 
14. Do you have two of everything in your room? Get more ideas on the creating a sanctuary space blog post.
15. Do you have lots of items or clothing that you never wear and never use? Put them in your car and take them to Goodwill.
16. Family
17. What family goals do you have? one outing a week, park on Saturdays, visit a new museum, read for 30 minutes at bedtime
18. If you did one thing this week that would strengthen your relationships, what would it be? Do one-on-one dates with each child, wake one up 15 minutes earlier than the other to spend quality time, volunteer in their classroom once a month, meet them at school for lunch

Then just work towards them each day! As I worked towards accomplishing everything on my boss list, I felt more confident. I felt happier. I felt more like myself. I felt more confident. I felt more worthy of that badass husband that I had been dreaming about. So why don’t you start that list and just work towards it? If I found true love within myself, and manifest my husband at age 40, and he was 58, why couldn’t you? I don’t see any reason.

#PreparingtoFindLove #BossList #FindingMySoulmate #HowtoFindLoveafter40 #attractyoursoulmate #FindLoveAfterDivorce #FindLoveAgain #SelfWorth