How Your Focus Can Sabotage Your Relationships

If you're looking to attract love, it's a good idea to pay attention to where you're putting your focus when you're dating. Without understanding the Law of Attraction, it can be easy to focus on the wrong thing.

Law of Attraction is the idea that ‘like attracts like’. To attract the kind of relationship you'd like to have into your life, it's important to focus on what you want, rather than what you don’t want.

Why is it so hard to focus on the positive?

However, positive focus is not something that comes naturally to us. Our brains are actually hardwired to focus more on the negative than the positive.

If you think about it, it makes sense. In caveman times if you heard a rustling in the bushes, you better be more sensitive to that than to the beautiful sunset, or you wouldn’t live to see the sun rise the next day. Our negative focus has served a purpose - it's how we've survived for millions of years.

In the book Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson says

The brain is like velcro for negative experiences and teflon for positive ones.

– Rick Hanson

So if you find yourself focusing on the negative, don’t give yourself a hard time. But if you want to attract and keep a healthy relationship, it’s really important to evolve out of this pattern.

Focus on the Positive to Attract Love | Julie-Anne Graham Law of Attraction Coaching | www.jgrahamcoaching.co.uk

Bad experiences can make you want to protect yourself

Often, in relationships we go through difficult experiences that make us clear on what we do and do not want to experience in the future. When we’re dating, these negative experiences can be at the back of our minds. Without realising it, you can be on the look out for warning signs that this person is the same as the last. This focus can sabotage your dating life and relationships without you even noticing it.

Say you date someone for a while, and you discover that he only thinks about himself, so you split up with him. When you're dating after that experience, you may be unconsciously looking out for selfish traits in the people you date, so you don’t experience it again.

This makes perfect sense from the mind’s point of view, as it’s looking to protect you against repeating the same pattern. However, in practice, what actually happens is that you begin to notice and magnify the selfish behaviour of whoever you’re dating. It can even cause you to interpret behaviour that was not selfish, as selfish, because that’s what you’re looking out for.

Focus on the positive to attract love 2 | Julie-Anne Graham - Law of Attraction Coaching | www.jgrahamcoaching.co.uk

Focus on what you DO want

To attract someone who is NOT selfish, you need to focus on what you want, rather than what you don’t want. So have a think about it. What is the opposite of selfish? It could be selfless, caring, kindhearted, giving… Identify whatever word feels the best to you, and then begin to look for that quality in the people that you’re dating.

As you notice that person’s caring behaviour, you’ll see more of it. As you tune yourself to his caring nature, you’ll expect that from him, and he will rise to your expectation. Your expectation is not private, you’re constantly broadcasting your thoughts to the people you’re with, and they can pick up on it through your body language, behaviour and reactions in a thousand almost invisible ways.

Try it out for yourself

Think about the people you’ve dated in the past. What traits are you worried about attracting again? Then instead of focusing on the negative, flip it to the positive and start to look for evidence of that instead e.g.

Negative	Positive
selfish	cares about others
critical	kind
untrustworthy	trustworthy

There’s a big difference between trying to protect yourself from someone who might be selfish and looking for evidence that the person you’re with is caring. Focus on the positive and see how it changes the dynamic.

What has your experience been?

If this has struck a chord with you I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you noticed that you've been focusing on what you don't want when you're dating? What would you like to focus on instead? Please comment below.

If you'd like insight into your patterns in love, check out the Breakthrough to Love Quiz which can help you figure out why you keep attracting the wrong guys.

Comment

There is no comment on this post. Be the first one.