C
Singleship is Cool
Singleship is hip. Singleship is cool. For now, cool will mean just feeling good in your own skin and being relaxed as you refine your purpose. As some people transition from a romantic relationship into being single again, they often leave out this key component happy singles naturally know. Being cool is not showing someone you are cool or telling them why you feel relaxed. When you are cool, you are calm and you don't need to tell anyone how you feel.
This relaxed sense of purpose is acquired through a deeper knowledge about self. You don't need new clothes or shoes. You don't need a new car, dress, new golf clubs or a new bowling ball.
You have made some decisions about how you will live your life.
You are going to stick to these decisions.
That's cool.
You have chosen a path to travel. Others may walk with you for a time, but they can never direct or drive your cool. Only you can do this. You have to be cool on your own. Associating with others won't make you cool either. Your associations, as you will learn later, are very important to your happiness, but you have to make sure you have some boundaries that prevent other people from interfering with your purpose or disrupting your path, your coolness, and your new relaxed disposition. Try to avoid people that don't seem to have any purpose for their lives.
To remember prompt C , relax a bit now and contemplate Singleship. Close your eyes, breathe deep, and count to ten as a first step to relaxation.
Imagine what life will be like when you have a completed your purpose. Then imagine a small step toward your purpose. Take your time. Relax and count to ten.
Society is more accepting today of people who want to stay single for a long time. This acceptance flows from the promise of our basic human rights laws and theory, the advantage of self-directed decisions that compliment the goals of humanity in general, and lastly, (the most important part for singles) the pursuit of happiness. It offers modern humans, those with some self-control, the freedom to achieve goals they greatly desire. It's becoming more hip each day.
Once this idea was thought to be extreme or out of the norm. It is still a tall order to ask society as a whole to seek out or accept Singleship as a new relationship status.
The notion of Singleship is already here, but advertisers just don't know how to put a label on it yet. They may call it the single generation or X, Y, or Z, but the reality is that people can adopt this way of thinking at any age.
Non-western cultures have difficulty with the idea of being single for a long time to complete personal goals. People outside of western cultures have fewer options to be happy and is especially true for women in these cultures.
Governments that don't support basic human rights, especially women's rights and equal treatment under law, are worried that our western-style notions of marriage and romance could take hold in their countries. They fear western ideas because it threatens their culture, traditions and religious beliefs which help them manage the instincts to create new families (we get to this later).
In the western world we have an odd blend of influences that shape our concept of love and romance. From the ancient Greeks we get our ideas about love and romantic fate. From the Greeks and Romans, we take our ideas about the rights of the individual or citizen. And finally, Judeo-Christian marriage tradition balances the freedoms we enjoy with our more predictable human instincts and this keeps us in check. To have a secular government crafted on a framework of basic religious values, that gets re-forged periodically to pursue equal opportunity creates a dynamic soup for dating (and politics).
Why is this important to singles? You need to know that just by being a single person and a member of a western culture you have more freedom and opportunity to make the world a better place than most of the rest of the people on the earth. You simply will have more options, more choices to manage your life and impact the world around you. That's pretty cool too.
Ask anyone who spends time with any charity and they will all tell you that there is always more work to do. People generally join charities and service groups not only to help others, but for the experience, the feeling of doing something good. Building hospitals in Africa, repairing nature trails in our National Park systems or cooking in a homeless shelter is hard work. The people who have done stuff like this, as an act of service, usually return to a regular full-time job or career, but they are never the same after the experience of giving of themselves this way.
Being cool is also about taking control of your emotions and feelings too. Some people are deluged and overcome with strong emotions after a breakup or loss. They may have a hard time controlling their thoughts. Take control of the notions in your head by first recognizing which are good thoughts and which are the bad ones.
If your emotions are running amok and making you do some weird stuff like missing work, school or other destructive things, consider contacting someone who is trained to help you correct these behaviors. Be brave enough to seek advice from a trained professional if this ever happens to you and be brave enough to trust their advice even if it makes you uncomfortable at first.
Write something about the coolest person you know. Are they in control of their thoughts? Are you holding on to some issue from a past relationship? Does it seem to stay on the front of your mind or the tip of your tongue?
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