Becoming the Heroine (or Hero) of your Own Story to Find Love, and Improving your Conversation Skills
Women see few models for heroines culturally. Almost every hero in books, movies, and on TV is male. Strong, noble, and courageous, these are many of the attributes we look up to in these men. The female figures we see alongside them more often tend to be damsels in distress. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, but this is the general pattern.
There are many shy, quiet women out there, fantasizing about one day getting the hero. Although in reality, often they don’t think it will ever happen to them. But it is possible to get the hero, by becoming a heroine yourself, the heroine of your own story. By loving yourself, accepting yourself completely, and working on being the best person you can possibly be. And the first step to this can be by overcoming what you previously thought possible for yourself, overcoming your shyness, and improving your communication skills.
Feeling Complete By Yourself
An ironic thing about finding love, is that going out and desperately looking for it, is not really how to attract the best types of it. It tends to find you when you are ready for it. When I say this, I don’t mean that you shouldn’t try dating, or never initiate the first move. Initiating things with people and getting out there is great. This also doesn’t mean that you should just sit back, and stay at home all the time, and expect the love of your life to show up at your door, because that isn’t really how things work either. And that’s certainly not living your life to the fullest, or overcoming very much.
I mean this more about feeling incomplete as a person, being desperate to be in a relationship. It is easy for women especially to feel that way. We receive so many messages that we are damaged goods if a man doesn’t accept us, that there’s something wrong with being single. But the more desperate energy you’re putting out, and signaling to people that you don’t feel complete without them, the more you’re being needy and insecure, the more you’re actually pushing people away.
It can be really difficult to change these things, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s fine to still want a relationship, and strive for that one day. However, accepting yourself whether or not you are in a relationship, and being secure with yourself is an important part of being the heroine of your own story.
Self-Love
Self-love is an extremely important component of being ready for a relationship with others. This is not to say that nobody will love you, or you can’t have a relationship at all, if you do not love yourself, because some people still will love you anyway (fortunately).
In general though, people who deeply love themselves, tend to attract the highest forms of unconditional love from others. It is like a mirror that we’re reflecting at the world, through ourselves. You shouldn’t just see this as a bar to getting in a relationship though, it is an important thing to work on throughout life, of course, no matter whether you’re in a relationship or not.
In addition to self-love, more love and compassion for all humans, and all living creatures, will help attract more love into your life. This happens both in a direct way, and indirect ways. I won’t explain the indirect ways. In terms of the direct way, just think about the sorts of people you want to be around. They tend to usually be kind, generous people, right? A lot of that comes from love. People (and animals too) can sense the love coming from you, it shows up in many different ways, in your words and actions and your energy, and the more love you have in you, the more others will want to be around you.
The Heroine Gets the Hero
If a woman does want to get a real hero in her life, (or a man wants to get a hero or heroine too, although obviously I’ve targeted this more heavily at women) it’s not going to happen by sitting and home and watching movies and reading books about them, and hoping that they come along one day.
The reality is, that a hero will want a heroine. Yes, there may be “traditional” cultural heroes, a highly masculine firefighter say (not that I have anything against firefighters of course, just using this profession as an example of something our culture generally considers to be heroic) who just wants a quiet, mousy woman who will stay at home and do the dishes. Do you want a cultural hero though, or a cosmic hero beyond the bounds of culture?
Cosmic Heroism
There is another model of heroism, that transcends the traditional model of culture. This can be referred to as cosmic heroism, and some of the criteria would include surpassing culturally imposed assumptions of heroism to achieve a state of awe and wonder. Shedding the comforts of the life of security for a life of adventure, insecurity, and vulnerability, and liberating yourself from the status quo. Constantly opening yourself to new possibility, transcending yourself, breaking your spirit out of it’s conditioned prison.
I’m not saying that rescuing cats out of burning buildings isn’t heroic in it’s own way, because it certainly is, and highly admirable, but just to be clear, I’m talking about a different type of heroism here. Although somebody could certainly be both a firefighter and a cosmic hero as well, and I’m sure some are. Cosmic heroes are generally (maybe not always, but generally) going to seek others like them, and because they are so far beyond traditional cultural convention compared to most people, they rarely think in terms of “men do things like this, ladies don’t”.
Who doesn’t want to be a hero or heroine, at the end of the day? Most people would probably say that they don’t because it seems like too much responsibility, or just seems too far out of reach. I believe that the reality however, is that far more of us actually do, than would admit it. It seems so impossible, how could I, little Jane Doe, be a real heroine? Everybody has their own definition, but I don’t think you have to necessarily wear a cape or run around throwing yourself in incredibly dangerous situations. Although you could. Start with self-overcoming.
Self-Overcoming
What do I mean when I say overcome yourself? I mean go beyond the limits of what you previously thought possible for yourself. Do difficult, challenging things, every day. Get out of your comfort zone constantly. Never settle for mediocrity for any sort in your life. Explore, learn, grow. Do things that scare you. Constantly work on bettering your best. Work harder, run faster, get smarter. Set meaningful goals and work towards them. Have a mission and a powerful sense of purpose in life.
I don’t want to give people the wrong impression that you need to be perfect, or to overcome yourself, completely, in order to be worthy of love. Because everyone is always worthy of love, no matter what. Self-overcoming is also a never ending process, there is always more to be overcome, more to improve on. Attracting love should also not be your only reason for overcoming yourself, because it is a noble aim in and of itself.
Overcoming ourselves is one of the noblest things we can do in life, and the solution to virtually every problem, at the end of the day. Life is hard, and painful, and full of endless suffering. What’s the best way to cope at the end of the day? Become a hero, despite everything life throws at you, all the horrendous pain and trauma and misfortune.
Overcome everything in your path, and keep moving forward, no matter what. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and keep making positive progress, every single day. Always, no matter how hard it is, be a victor, instead of a victim, the choice is yours, at the end of the day. Yes, it’s painful, It’s excruciatingly, agonizingly, unbearably painful sometimes, most of the time. But it is the only way for humanity to move forward. Self-pity and mediocrity will get us nowhere, as individuals, or as a species.
Conversation Skills
How do conversation skills fit into all this? Part of overcoming ourselves is to be the best us that we can possibly be, which means improving all of our competencies. Competencies involving other humans are especially important, especially for finding love. When you think about it, why should somebody want spend time with you, if you have nothing to offer them? Always think about what is in it for the other person.
If you can carry on a conversation well, speak comfortably about a wide variety of topics, and are fun to talk to and make people feel at ease, then they are much more likely to want to talk to you, and spend time with you. I don’t mean to say that people with poor social skills will never find love, because that’s certainly not the case, and it happens all the time. But having smooth social skills helps in any social endeavor, including dating of course. And it’s also just about working on yourself, and improving yourself in general.
It might be hard to see it this way, but working on your communication skills is in a sense showing other people that you value them. We are social creatures, and we don’t live in a vacuum, so it’s not all about us. It’s also about the way we make the people around us feel. Somebody with very good communication skills naturally puts others at ease. They are pleasant and enjoyable to talk to. They can listen well to problems, empathize, and carry on an enjoyable conversation about a wide variety of different topics. Not to mention, they know how to comfortably engage potential romantic partners in the first place. People with poor conversation skills can be much more of a strain to talk to.
Of course there are conditions like Autism where people have a very difficult time reading social cues, and I don’t want to disparage that at all, there are some things that are out of our control, and there’s certainly nothing wrong or shameful with having one of those conditions, and many of those people have lots of other wonderful traits to make up for any social skills they make lack.
Even most people with Autism though, can learn much better social functioning with practice and training, they are just not things that come as naturally. However, there are a lot of people who don’t have any underlying neurological conditions, who just never put in the effort to learn to communicate as well as they could. If you don’t make an effort with others, why should they make an effort with you?
Essentially, if you want great things in your life, you need to be great. While it’s true that opposite personalities attract in a lot of ways, and the reason why people say opposites attract, these are more a matter of surface level characteristics. In a deeper sense, you will attract somebody at roughly the same place in their lives that you are at in terms of self-overcoming.
Not always, sometimes relationships at much different levels come into our lives, but they don’t tend to stay around for very long, or if they do, it will probably be very unbalanced and unfulfilling for at least one of you. This is why, if you want to draw a hero into your life, you need to be a heroine. And yes, part if it does involve improving your conversation skills, it involves improving a lot of skills really.
Conclusion
Some people may say that they don’t need a hero, and that is fine. That they’re content with anyone who loves them, and just being happy and content. But look yourself in the mirror, really ask yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself if you want to settle for less in life, less than is out there, and less than you can get.
Because there are amazing people out there, and you can be amazing yourself. Anyone can, it’s not reserved just for a chosen few. Anybody can lead an amazing, fantastic life beyond their wildest dreams, find a partner better than they ever imagined, and be a hero, or heroine. Even if you don’t believe me, I promise you, it’s truly possible. It’s not easy, it’s incredibly difficult, which is why most people never do it. I think it’s worth it though, if you have one shot to live this life, why not be the heroine of your own story?
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Sign up to receive HelloSocial’s free 5 day email video course, with topics ranging from “How to Talk to Anyone”, “Making Friends(Even in COVID times) to “Moving Past Small Talk to Incredible Relationships”
