(See also What Makes This Book Different?)
Conscious Dating: Finding the Love of Your Life in Today’s World
is destined to change the way single men and women view dating, relationships, and, most importantly, themselves. It’s about making informed choices, about saying no to what you don’t want so you can say yes to what you do want. It’s about taking personal responsibility as the architect of your own future and happiness. And, it’s about knowing that you really can find the love of your life and enjoy a happy, fulfilled, and productive relationship.
Conscious Dating teaches you how to make more enlightened relationship choices so you can enjoy the happiness you deserve. As singles, we don’t serve ourselves well by settling for relationships that are less than we really want. We must hold the vision we have for our life as the guiding star toward which we walk our life’s journey.
This isn’t just another dating book filled with tired ideas about how to “get” a man or woman. Nor does it offer manipulative or deceptive practices that compromise who you are. In sharp contrast, Conscious Dating offers sound guidance based upon higher principles of personal truth, integrity, and genuine respect and love for self and others. It offers solid information and strategies that address the complexities of today’s modern relationships.
This comprehensive guide won’t ask you to do anything that isn’t aligned with your values. Instead, you’ll learn how your values can create the foundation upon which you design a relationship plan that meets your personal requirements, needs, and wants. Conscious Dating helps you dispel much of the confusion and frustration around dating by offering you a new approach to relationships.
David Steele guides you through three major areas that comprise the foundation of conscious dating: who we are, what we want, and how to get what we want. In exploring these areas through assessments, exercises, and powerful questions, you can learn how to take a proactive role, perhaps for the first time, in making better relationship choices. You’ll be equipped with new tools, ideas, and principles necessary to achieve success in dating. By learning and implementing these new strategies, you can create new and different relationship outcomes for yourself. Working through this book is guaranteed to change the way you view yourself and the concepts of dating and relating.
As our world grows increasingly complex, personal relationships, the basic building blocks of our society, seem to suffer more. As social beings, we need a strong community, extended family, close friends, and intact marriages and families. Previous generations inherited their family and community ties from their parents. But in today’s world most of us need to intentionally create these supportive relationships for ourselves. First you have the world you are born into, and then you have the life that you choose. This book will help you choose more consciously, wisely, and effectively.
You are not alone. Today, there are more single people than ever in history: 101 million singles in the U.S., 46% of the population. The vast majority of singles desire a committed relationship, but the rules of dating and mating have changed, and we’re left to learn the new rules by trial and error. Our continued high divorce rate suggests that this process is painful, ineffective, and costly.
One unfortunate holdover from the past is a continued stigma about singles being selfish, failures, inadequate, immature, unwanted and/or unlovable. When that stigma converges with impatience and a desire for immediate gratification– unfortunate characteristics of today’s culture–many singles start out believing that getting into a relationship is the path to happiness and that the term “successful single” is an oxymoron. Typically, after experiencing failure many singles become confused about how to make relationships work. They may hesitate to trust themselves and others and fear commitment. Unsatisfying and painful experiences breed discouragement and defensiveness, and this intensifies fear of intimacy and creates barriers to having the relationships we really want.
Single and married, young and old, we all want the same thing: to love and be loved. We all have our strengths and challenges, dreams and fears. We all have the ability to learn and to choose. On the other hand, each of us is unique, and what worked for others won’t necessarily work for you. Today, a whole new world begins, and you are the pioneer of your own life. You can learn from those who went before you, but you can, and must, still find your own unique way.
The good news is that you have many choices. Because we are not bound by the traditions of the past, we are free to have the life and relationships we really want. You’ve heard this before, but it bears repeating: with freedom comes responsibility. There is no quick fix, and you cannot rely on anything or anyone else to make your life and relationships work for you. I hope to support you in meeting this challenge and to help you learn how to consciously create what you really want and deeply need in your life.
Growing up in a single parent family David had no one to show him how to get what he wanted in his life and relationships, and he had to learn by trial and error. He wanted his first marriage to last forever, and one of his hardest life lessons was that a relationship requires two committed adults, and that desperate, heroic intentions and efforts can’t “make” a marriage work. When his second marriage ended as well, he was devastated, humbled, ashamed, and discouraged about ever having a life partnership. In this painful trial and error process, David learned necessary lessons about himself, life, and relationships that helped prepare him for, and finally find, the love of his life.
During his personal journey and in his professional work, David learned that being single is truly an opportunity to create the life that you really want, to prepare for, and to find the relationship that you really want. His hope is that this book will help you recognize this opportunity and take full advantage of it. As your guide, he will help you avoid the many pitfalls and traps that can hold you back, and you will discover effective tools and information you can use to find the love of your life and the life that you love.
What makes this book different?
1. This book is cutting-edge
There are many original tools, concepts and strategies for singles in this book that are available no-where else.
2. This book is comprehensive
Other books for singles have a narrow focus (flirting, how to “get” a man, how to avoid jerks, etc). This book is written to be THE definitive book for today’s singles who want to live the life they love with the love of their life.
3. This book is proven and tested
It took me 8 years to write this book as I have been developing and testing the ideas since 1997, and I have trained over 500 coaches and therapists who have used the tools and concepts in this book to help thousands of singles worldwide, a few of which are featured in the book.
4. This book is written by a credible source
Would you accept relationship information from a real estate agent or marketing consultant who calls themselves a “Dating Coach?” I am appalled at the bad advice provided by self-help books for singles nowadays. I’m a genuine Marriage and Family Therapist, licensed for over 20 years, and specialized in relationships in my private practice. I’m the founder Relationship Coaching Institute and have pioneered the development of Relationship Coaching for singles and couples, have trained over 5,000 coaches and therapists in my introductory program and over 500 have completed my relationship coaching training. I’m well respected in the professional community and this book represents the debut of my work for the public.
