When it comes to love, your mindset matters more than you realize. If you’ve been dating and wondering why you keep attracting the wrong type of partner, it’s time to take a hard look in the mirror—literally. The people we attract into our lives are often reflections of who we are internally. This isn’t just a poetic notion; it’s a psychological truth rooted in the way our brains operate and the energy we project.
If you’re ready to break free from old patterns and attract the love of your life, it starts with shifting your mindset and understanding the forces at play beneath the surface of your dating habits. Let’s dive into how your thoughts, patterns, and even your brain’s wiring determine the relationships you draw into your life—and, more importantly, how to change them.
Your Relationships Are a Mirror
Every relationship you’ve ever had, successful or not, reflects your inner world. This concept can feel uncomfortable at first, especially when you think back to relationships that left you feeling drained, unfulfilled, or even heartbroken. But here’s the hard truth: those partners didn’t appear out of thin air. They were mirrors, reflecting your self-worth, beliefs about love, and unresolved emotional wounds.
For example, if you’ve been attracting emotionally unavailable partners, it may be worth exploring whether you’ve been keeping yourself emotionally closed off. Similarly, if you’re meeting people who don’t treat you with respect, ask yourself whether you’ve been tolerating or even expecting disrespect in some form.
Your external relationships are a direct representation of your internal relationship with yourself. That’s why cultivating self-love, setting healthy boundaries, and clearing your emotional baggage are non-negotiables when it comes to finding a soulmate-level partnership.
The Reticular Activating System: Your Brain’s Matchmaker
Let’s take this deeper with a little neuroscience. The Reticular Activating System (RAS) is a network of neurons in your brainstem that acts as a filter for information. Its job is to sift through the overwhelming amount of data your brain encounters daily and highlight what aligns with your current beliefs, goals, and focus.
In essence, the RAS ensures you notice what you’ve trained your brain to see. Ever bought a new car and suddenly started seeing that same make and model everywhere? That’s your RAS in action. When it comes to dating, your RAS works the same way: it seeks out partners who match the beliefs you hold about love and relationships.
If you believe all the “good ones” are taken or that love always ends in pain, your RAS will dutifully filter your experiences to confirm those beliefs. This means you’ll unconsciously overlook healthy, loving individuals and zero in on people who reinforce your existing narrative.
Your Reticular Activating System (RAS) doesn’t just filter information—it also plays a crucial role in forming and sustaining Love Blocks®. These blocks are subconscious barriers that keep you stuck in unhealthy patterns, even when you consciously want to break free.
For example, let’s say you’ve been repeatedly attracted to “players,” liars, or emotionally unavailable men, even though you know they aren’t what you truly want. On a conscious level, you’re probably thinking, Why do I keep picking the wrong guys? But on a subconscious level, your RAS is operating based on deep-seated beliefs and emotional programming from your past.
If you grew up witnessing or experiencing unreliable or inconsistent love—whether through a caregiver, a past partner, or cultural narratives—your RAS learned to prioritize these traits because they feel familiar. It’s not that you consciously want a “player” or a man who doesn’t treat you well; it’s that your RAS is hardwired to recognize and seek out what it has been conditioned to see as normal.
Even when you actively try to choose differently, the RAS is still filtering your world through the lens of your subconscious beliefs. You might notice red flags but dismiss them, or feel inexplicably drawn to someone who isn’t good for you because your brain associates those traits with “connection.”
Breaking the Cycle
To break this cycle, you have to retrain your RAS to recognize and prioritize healthier patterns. For instance, instead of being drawn to emotionally unavailable men, your RAS can be reprogrammed to seek out qualities like stability, honesty, and emotional openness. This requires doing the inner work to identify the beliefs and experiences that shaped your current Love Blocks® and replacing them with new, empowering narratives.
Visualization, affirmations, and mindful dating practices are all tools to help reprogram your RAS. For example, if you’ve told yourself, All the good ones are taken or "love always ends in heartbreak," you can replace those beliefs with statements like, "I am attracting a partner who cherishes and respects me" or "Healthy, loving relationships are abundant and available to me.
By actively reconditioning your RAS, you’ll start to notice and prioritize healthier connections—and just as importantly, you’ll become less interested in the old patterns that once held you back. This is how you dismantle Love Blocks® and open the door to the kind of love you’ve always desired.
Reprogramming Your RAS for Love
Here’s the good news: you can reprogram your RAS to align with the love life you desire. This isn’t magic—it’s neuroscience paired with intentionality. Here’s how you can start:
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Clarify Your Vision of Love: Define what a healthy, fulfilling relationship looks like to you. Be specific. Your RAS can’t filter for vague desires like “I want a good partner.” Write down traits, values, and behaviors you want in your soulmate.
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Challenge Negative Beliefs: Identify limiting beliefs about love and actively work to replace them with empowering ones. Instead of “I’ll never find someone who gets me,” tell yourself, “I am worthy of a partner who truly understands and cherishes me.”
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Daily Affirmations and Visualization: Affirmations and visualization are powerful tools for retraining your brain. Visualize yourself in a loving, supportive relationship every day. This helps your RAS recognize and prioritize experiences that align with this vision.
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Expand Your Comfort Zone: If you’ve been dating the same type of person over and over, it’s time to step outside your comfort zone. Give people who don’t fit your usual “type” a chance, especially if they align with the qualities you’ve identified in your ideal partner.
How Long Does It Take to Change Dating Patterns?
Traditional methods like therapy or coaching can take years to produce significant results. This is because deep-seated beliefs about love often stem from childhood experiences and require time to unpack and reframe. The slow and steady approach of weekly sessions over months or years works well for some, but it isn’t for everyone.
Here’s where expedited approaches like Shay Better Coaching, my concierge-style love coaching business, stand apart. By combining neuroscience-backed techniques like Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) with tailored strategies, we help you target subconscious blocks and rewrite your love story in a fraction of the time. The focus isn’t just on healing but on equipping you with actionable tools to attract the love you’ve been seeking.
Love Is Already Within Reach
Shifting your mindset is the most powerful step you can take to transform your dating life. When you understand that your relationships are mirrors and that your brain is working to confirm your deepest beliefs, you can take back control of your love life.
Reprogram your RAS to align with your vision, cultivate self-love, and adopt a growth-oriented mindset. By doing this, you’ll not only attract someone who reflects your best self—you’ll build the kind of partnership that amplifies joy, fulfillment, and growth. Love isn’t just out there waiting for you; it’s already within you, ready to shine when you align your thoughts, beliefs, and actions.
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