Are you seeking your true love or soulmate?

“When the soul is ready, its mate will appear.” – Unknown

Before too long in life, we get bombarded with messages in movies and advertisements persuading us to believe that our soulmate will come to sweep us off our feet and save us from ourselves. The seemingly perfect, fairytale relationships portrayed make us get our hopes up and have unrealistic expectations about what a relationship should really be like. We try so hard to attract our soulmates into our lives because society tells us that we will become whole once we find that person.

However, what happens is that we wager our entire happiness on a person we haven’t even met yet because ultimately, we want someone else to take away our pain and loneliness. In this reality, the illusion of separation can still seem very real, so we just want some way to escape that. Don’t beat yourself up for feeling this way; it happens to the best of us.

But, if you really want to find your soulmate, it will take effort, some personal soul searching, and not getting too attached to outcomes. Many people long to find their soulmate, but unknowingly do more to push them away than attract them into their lives.

When searching for your soulmate, make sure you don’t make these common mistakes:

1. Searching and asking for a soulmate before you have searched within your own soul.

If you only look outwardly for answers and acceptance, you will miss out on the true power you have within yourself to stand on your own two feet. You must first take a journey deep within your soul and learn to understand yourself. Without this understanding and awareness of yourself, a relationship with anyone else will be sorely lacking. You will look to them to understand when you don’t even know yourself. Remember that soulmates will never complete you; they can only add value to your life and help you grow as a person.

You have to block out all the noise from society telling you that you need all these things in order to become your best self and be truly happy. YOU are your own happiness, sadness, comfort, compassion, understanding, and well of knowledge. Once you complete yourself, you will attract others who are complete, too. Two complete people coming together as one will create a life of sheer bliss and abundance. However, you must make a commitment to yourself first. Be in a relationship with yourself first, and learn to love your own company.

2. You haven’t cultivated a love for yourself first.

This sort of stems from our last point; you cannot find love outside yourself. Only will you recognize it once you have such an abundance of it that it has no choice but to spill out of your heart and touch other’s lives. You must totally fall head over heels for yourself if you expect anyone else to feel the same about you. We all have probably been in relationships where our partner didn’t truly love themselves – they expected us to do all the dirty work for them.

But, how rewarding and fulfilling was that? Being in a relationship with someone who doesn’t have confidence in themselves will only drain you. So, if you don’t absolutely love yourself right now, as you are, no one else can possibly offer you that love you seek.

Also, you must learn to love all of yourself, both the shadows and the light. This article by Sheila Prakash on Tiny Buddha says it best:

“I don’t think we will ever be able to love ourselves until we acknowledge all our different aspects—the “strong” and the “weak”— and start giving ourselves compassion instead of judgment. A puzzle needs all its pieces in order to be complete.”

3. You have no idea what you want in a soulmate or relationship.

If you don’t know what you want, how can you attract it? Think about it this way: what if you went to buy a new car, but had no idea what you wanted? Would you leave the dealership with a car, or just stare at all the cars in a state of confusion? Probably the latter, because you went into the situation blindly, not giving any thought to what you desired.

If you wouldn’t make a big decision like that without first thinking about what you wanted, then why treat relationships any differently? Soulmates should be given even more consideration because they will share their life with you, and rent a room in your heart. Something that serious requires a lot of your energy, time, and emotions, which means you need to have some idea of who you’d ideally like to share your life with.

You could either make a list, visualize, or create a vision board for what kind of partner you’d like to attract into your life. However, make sure when you do this that you focus on what you DO want in a relationship rather than what you DON’T want. Any thought we give our attention to creates our reality, so make sure you’re actively creating the world and the soulmate you wish to see in your life.