Change Your Love Map, Part 1: Identify Your Mental Paradigm

Welcome! This is a new series of talks designed to help you lay the groundwork for deep, lasting love in your life. A conscious partnership with someone who shares your values can be a wonderful part of your evolution, and your path in life. This first talk will help you identify your current mental paradigm for love – the deeply rooted beliefs you have about partnerships and your own prospects for love. We'll also do a guided practice for grounding and filling your energy field with self-love.

Transcript

Welcome,

Everyone.

My name is Christina McMahon,

And I'm so happy to share this time with you today.

This is the first in a series of talks I'm creating that will help you to lay the groundwork for deep,

Lasting love in your life.

A conscious partnership with someone who shares your values can be such a wonderful part of your evolution and of your path in life.

And the good news is that even the act of preparation for that partnership brings so many healing benefits to you right now.

This is a really powerful journey that you are on,

And I am so honored to share the ride in some small way.

In this talk today,

I'll be giving you some questions to reflect on and journal about in your own time after you finish listening,

As well as some practices that you can start to do regularly to go deeper with this work.

So you might want to pause this recording and grab a notebook and something to write with if you'd like to note down those exercises.

I want to begin by sharing a little bit about my story with love.

After years of struggling with dating and hardly ever being in a long-term relationship,

I decided to get serious about finding the love of my life.

For me,

That meant getting very intentional.

So when I turned 39,

I told myself and the universe that I would be with my love by my 40th birthday.

Now for most of that year,

Nothing much was happening on the outside.

I didn't go on that many dates and I didn't so much as kiss anyone.

But on the inside,

There was a lot of transformation going on.

I healed old wounds.

I began to believe in my worthiness for deep love.

And then I learned how to take my newfound belief in love with me when I felt ready to get out there again.

That alone made dating feel differently to me.

And because I felt different,

Dating was different.

It was better.

It was more joyful.

It was more connected.

And guess who appeared just a few short weeks before my 40th birthday?

The best birthday present I have ever received,

My beloved sacred partner,

Darren.

So thank you,

Universe.

And thank you,

Insight Timer.

We met after Darren sent me that now very familiar thank you for meditating with me message on this very app.

Because both of us knew exactly what we wanted in a partnership and we were both ready to act when we saw a wonderful opportunity.

Our relationship unfolded from there with great harmony and ease.

We've been together for over three years now,

Married for over two years,

And we have a beautiful baby girl.

My term for this kind of higher level relationship is sacred partnership.

Sacred partners get each other at the soul level.

You are fully seen and heard in this relationship and valued just for being you.

I believe that sacred partners choose to come together in this lifetime to heal and evolve together.

It's a conscious connection where your heart actually has to expand to let more love in.

You can actually feel your heart and your heart space getting bigger and more expansive.

There's so much joy and excitement and being in each other's company.

And when issues arise,

You'll work them out consciously and in the best possible way for each other's highest growth and learning.

I also believe that a sacred partnership is possible and available to anyone who sets a strong intention for it.

So that means no plan B,

No settling.

I have a saying I like to use,

Which is don't lower your standards for a relationship.

Commit to them.

In my mind,

There are four foundations to preparing for sacred partnership.

It's building belief in sacred love,

Number one,

Owning your worthiness for love,

Number two,

Getting clear on your vision for love and partnership,

Number three.

And the last one is taking inspired action.

And from what I've seen in my work as a sacred love mentor,

This method helps create the optimal groundwork for a spectacular love relationship.

So that's the basic overview of my philosophy on attracting in love and opening to love.

In this series of talks,

We're going to take it very slowly and go step by step.

The idea is to make your next dating experience feel very different.

And the way we're going to do that is to start shifting your mindset toward love and dating.

The first step is to identify your current mental paradigm for love,

The deeply rooted beliefs you have about love and partnership,

And about your own prospects for love in your life.

That's what we'll be talking about together today.

Now in these talks,

I'll be focusing mainly on mindset work,

Because honestly,

I believe that mindset work is about 95% of the work of inviting love into your life.

If you're interested in learning how to combine the mindset work with concrete action steps towards love,

That's something that I cover thoroughly in my audio course for Insight Timer,

How to Attract Love into Your Life.

Before we dive into the content today,

I'd like to do a brief grounding meditation to get you connected to your body and plugged into the earth.

Now this is more than a mindfulness exercise.

Learning how to ground and to fill your own container with love is so important for your journey to sacred partnership.

Oftentimes when dating doesn't feel good to us,

It's because we're seeking for someone else to fill us up.

We don't feel complete on our own.

And that can bring some anxiety into the dating process,

Like I need for this to work out.

Even if at some level,

You know that the person you're dating isn't the right fit for you.

But when you know how to fill yourself up with love and with nourishing earth energy,

You can go out into the dating scene feeling like a full cup.

And that's the best way to attract someone into your life who is a full cup themselves.

And this way the two of you come together by choice and not out of the need to plug a hole in your life.

Staying grounded also keeps you present so that you can fully see the person in front of you when you're dating,

Rather than your own ideas or projections of them.

This allows you to make wise and conscious choices about who to continue to get to know and who to release.

So that's why we're including a grounding and filling your own cup exercise in our session today.

Let's begin with a soft focus on your breathing.

If you like,

And if it's safe to do so,

You can gently close your eyes and relax into the sensations of your body.

Notice what's going on in your body.

What are all the physical sensations that you feel at this moment?

Notice that you have a body,

But you are not your body.

Notice also that you have a mind,

But you are not your mind.

With every out-breath,

Feel your feet sinking further down into the floor or the ground.

On the next out-breath,

Allow your shoulders to drop even more.

On the next out-breath,

Feel your spine plugging into the surface that you're sitting on.

From this more centered place,

Invite nourishing earth energy to travel up through your feet and up through your spine until you feel it flowing throughout your whole body.

There is nothing to do here.

It's nearly an invitation for the earth itself to fill you up.

Allow yourself to be held,

Nourished,

And cared for by this grounding earth energy.

Now find your way to your center,

Your essence,

Which is authentically you.

This is the silent stillness at your core.

Stay there,

Touching into your own soul,

Spirit,

Your own energy.

As you do this,

Allow whatever level of self-love is possible for you today to be here.

Perhaps this is a sense of gratitude for taking time out for yourself today to meditate and to listen to this talk.

Perhaps it's a fierce sense of love and devotion to yourself.

Or maybe it's somewhere in the middle.

Wherever you are today on the spectrum of self-love and self-care,

Allow those warm feelings towards yourself to be there,

Connecting with that quiet stillness at your center,

Which is always there,

Just waiting for you to notice it.

Now begin to move your body around.

Slowly coming back to the present moment and opening your eyes.

Before we continue,

Take a moment now to notice how you feel in your body now compared to before we grounded together.

Can you feel the difference?

Grounding and sensing into your own core with love is a wonderful exercise to do regularly,

Especially at the start of your day,

So that you carry around with you a sense of fullness,

Of being your own full cup.

Let's talk now about mental paradigms for love.

This is a story I heard from Lisa Nichols once when I heard her speak live at a local event.

Lisa Nichols is featured in the movie The Secret.

She's actually one of my favorite teachers featured in that film.

I really like her energy.

And she's also a globally renowned motivational speaker,

A highly successful entrepreneur,

A philanthropist,

And a bestselling author of six books.

Now what's interesting is that when Lisa Nichols was in high school,

Her English teacher said that she was the weakest writer she'd ever known.

Lisa also went to a poor inner city high school in Los Angeles,

So she was subject to a lot of negative cultural messaging about the possibilities for her own success.

So fast forward to years later in Lisa's life,

When she had gotten to know Jack Canfield,

Who was the creator of the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul book series.

Jack Canfield told Lisa that she was a powerful writer,

And he invited her to be not only a contributor to Chicken Soup for the African American Soul,

But one of the editors of the book.

And Lisa Nichols said that the first time Jack said this,

She couldn't even hear it.

This was because,

As she said,

It seemed incongruent with what I knew about myself.

And she told the story that she actually had to drive to Santa Barbara and hear it from Jack Canfield personally.

Her mental paradigm of herself as a writer was flawed.

It hadn't changed since the day her high school English teacher told her she was weak,

Which was why she had a hard time taking in what Jack Canfield said.

And she said that grammatically,

She was a weak writer.

She didn't know where to put the periods and the commas.

But that didn't mean that she didn't have anything to say.

It took her a while to recognize and really own the fact that she did have powerful things to say as an author,

And that the world needed to hear those things.

When I heard Lisa Nichols speak,

It was at a venue in Los Angeles.

And she said that geographically,

She was 8 to 10 miles from her old high school,

But a million miles away from the girl that she used to be.

She said,

I didn't know that I could be dyslexic and still run an international successful business,

That I could still be featured in the New York Times,

Be a guest star on Oprah,

As well as a whole list of other things that she has accomplished in her life,

Despite her earlier mental paradigm for herself.

So why did I tell you this story?

The idea is that you must have a mental paradigm for what you want,

A strong inner knowing that you deserve it and that you belong where you want to go.

Many of us don't get that with love.

Maybe our parents' relationship with each other was not healthy,

Or our relationship with one or more of our early caregivers was not healthy.

And those unhealthy patterns have repeated over and over again in our own love relationships,

Because that's our old paradigm for love.

Maybe we settle for people who can't commit to us the way we would like them to or who don't treat us well.

Or maybe we're afraid to take risks with relationships to truly become vulnerable,

Open up,

Or go after what we want.

And that might be keeping us single.

These are all examples of ways that our old mental paradigms with love can keep us stuck.

It's so easy to feel like I don't belong in a healthy relationship,

Just like Lisa Nichols once felt,

I don't belong in a chicken soup for the soul book.

Even if you're not thinking these kinds of thoughts at a conscious level,

They can still be buried somewhere at a subconscious level.

They can still be driving your feelings and actions.

Usually when we feel stuck with dating,

There's a hidden conflict between our conscious and our unconscious mind.

On the conscious level,

We may be saying,

I'm ready for love,

But our old mental paradigm is still lurking underneath.

And if at the subconscious level,

You believe you're not worthy of love,

Deep down inside,

It's going to feel better to you,

More familiar to you to be safe or to be alone or even to be unhappy in a relationship.

Because that is what aligns with the reality that you have known about love from a very young age.

I want to say that again because it's important.

Being safe,

Being alone,

Or even being in an unhappy relationship could at a subconscious level feel comfortable to you because it's familiar.

It's what aligns with the reality you have always known about love.

And in that case,

You could be making choices with dating that are actually operating to keep you single or in a series of unhappy relationships.

Those choices keep you in alignment with your old mental paradigm for love.

Often it requires all of our intention and attention to shift that mental paradigm.

For example,

My old mental paradigm about love went something like this.

I'm left out of love.

No matter what I do,

I can't get love.

Everyone gets it but me.

That old story got plenty of reinforcement through my childhood.

When I was younger,

I had a deep-seated belief that my father preferred my older sister.

I also believed that my mother preferred my younger sister because she was the baby.

And naturally,

She did require more of my mother's attention.

So from a young age,

I started reacting to this by acting out and throwing tantrums.

I made myself be known as the difficult child in the family.

Now this was a very natural childlike response to not receiving all of the love and attention that I needed.

But my behavior was so extreme that it actually kept me further out of my parents' favor.

Even as a child,

I kept making choices that reinforced my old story of not being lovable.

Now with children,

This is understandable.

We don't know any better.

So we need to have lots of compassion for our younger selves.

Problem comes in when we begin to unconsciously repeat those same patterns in our adult relationships and then we wonder why we haven't yet found love.

And that's exactly what I did.

I repeated those old patterns in some way.

I would choose men who would treat me as disposable or second best.

The good time girl or the one you date while you're waiting for your real love.

And I would put up with it because I thought that was all that I could get.

Even though to my friends,

I would complain about their mistreatment of me.

Or sometimes I chose men that I didn't feel strongly about who didn't actually hold my interest and so eventually I would leave.

Both of those dating patterns left my old mental paradigm for love untouched.

The belief that I was left out of love.

Feeling worthy of relationship where I was deeply loved was,

As Lisa Nichols said,

Incongruent with what I knew about myself.

That's why I first needed to shift how I felt about myself and my prospects for love on the inside.

Then my reality on the outside could shift and I could welcome in the love of my life.

So I'd like to invite you to do the same thing to begin to shift your mental paradigm with love.

And this is a journaling exercise for you to complete after you've listened to this talk.

There are three questions that I'll ask you to focus on.

I'll tell you all of them up front and then we'll go in depth into each question.

So here are the three questions to journal about.

The first one is,

How has your mental paradigm for love been faulty?

How has your mental paradigm for love been faulty?

The second one is,

Where did that old story about love come from?

Where did that old story about love come from?

And the third question is,

How has your old story or your old belief about love been reinforced in your life through your relationships,

Especially the choices that you have made?

How has your old story about love been reinforced in your life through your relationships?

So those are the three questions for journaling.

In this talk,

We're just going to be focusing on identifying your old paradigm for love.

Let's talk more about each one of those questions now.

So the first one,

How has your mental paradigm for love been faulty?

In other words,

Deep down inside,

How have you felt unworthy of the love relationship you are seeking?

What are the hidden stories that you may be carrying around as you make choices with dating and relationships?

Some examples of old stories about love might be,

I don't belong in a healthy relationship.

I don't even know what a healthy relationship looks like.

I don't even believe in soulmates or sacred partners.

I'm left out of love no matter what I do.

Love doesn't stick.

I can't keep it.

Or it could be everyone gets love but me.

I'm too difficult.

I'm too much.

I'm not enough.

Nothing ever works out for me.

Or it's too late for me.

I'm too old.

My chance has passed.

Even something like,

All the good ones are taken,

Is just another version of,

I'm left out of love.

Even though it's painful,

Try to get a handle on the story you've been telling yourself about love.

And when you journal about this,

Do this with a lot of tenderness and compassion,

The way you would treat a young child.

Because these old ideas probably came to you at a very young age.

Now the next question to journal about is,

Where did that old story about love come from?

Try to go back as early as you can for this one.

Was that a message that was reinforced in your family of origin?

Maybe a parent or another caretaker or even a sibling.

Or maybe like Lisa Nichols,

It was a result of something you heard from a teacher or a series of teachers or mentors that you had when you were young.

Now oftentimes the answer to this question will come to you naturally through the process of journaling and reflecting.

And if the answer doesn't come,

Please don't worry about it too much.

Of the three questions in this journaling exercise,

This one is actually the least important.

You don't actually need to know where your old story about love came from in order to heal it.

Sometimes it comes from an age that preceded conscious memory.

While you don't have to know the origin of your old mental paradigm in order to heal it,

Knowing this can help to bring you insight,

Which is something that can help you in shifting your relationship patterns.

That brings me to the last journaling question,

And this one is really important.

How has your old story about love been reinforced in your life through your relationships,

Especially the choices that you have made?

Now that last part is very important,

The part about recognizing the choices that you've made to reinforce that pattern in your relationships.

And that's because it would be very difficult for you to change your circumstances with love if you are blaming your stuckness with outside factors.

So for example,

The city or town that you live in,

If you're blaming men these days or women these days,

Even the dating apps,

I've heard lots of people blaming the dating apps for their negative experiences with dating.

Now I'm not saying that dating apps or any one method for dating is without its pitfalls,

But if you continue to reference outside factors for why you're unhappy in love,

You're not really getting to the heart of the matter,

And you will also miss out on a vital opportunity to heal,

Transform,

And shift.

So if you find yourself blaming others or external factors,

Go deeper.

If the people you've dated haven't treated you right,

Ask yourself why you might have stayed or why you were attracted to them in the first place.

Then you're really getting somewhere.

You can start to discern with wisdom and compassion how you have been reinforcing your old story about love through the choices that you've made.

Or if you've had negative experiences on the dating apps,

Reflect on how you've been using those apps.

What behaviors might you have been repeating within the dating apps that may have reinforced your old story?

Now this isn't about giving anyone a pass if they haven't treated you well,

Because your experience with them and your feelings about the relationship are valid.

It's simply about taking responsibility for your part in your relationship history.

And that's a powerful thing because it allows you to shift and to welcome new circumstances into your life.

Please go easy on yourself here.

It's so easy to fall into self-blame or self-shame when we begin to uncover our long-term patterns.

But you really want to let yourself off the hook.

Those patterns have come from a very tender and hurt part of yourself.

So they require all of your self-compassion and understanding to heal.

You didn't consciously choose those patterns or that old story about love.

What you can do right now is to consciously shift them.

So here are some steps that you can take right now.

The first step is to complete the journaling process that we've talked about today,

Following those three questions that I gave you earlier.

This is all about identifying what your mental paradigm for love has been up until now.

The second thing is that whenever you notice that story,

That old story about love coming up for you in your everyday life,

Practice self-compassion.

Please try not to shame yourself.

Don't resist the story.

Just shower yourself with love and compassion every time you notice that you are buying into your old story of being unworthy.

This is necessary for clearing it out.

And in fact,

You can work with the meditation I have here on Insight Timer that will help you to clear out that old story with self-compassion.

It's called Attract In Sacred Love,

Part 1,

Clearing Out.

And the third step is kind of a bonus step but it's important,

Is to practice grounding and filling your container with self-love every day.

Here in the talk,

I explain why this is important because it helps you to practice receiving love from yourself and from the earth so that you can approach dating in a new way as your own full cup.

This will help prevent early attachment to someone else because you won't be constantly looking for someone else to fill you up.

To do this third step,

You can work with the grounding meditation I've included in this talk.

Once you've gotten the hang of it,

You'll be able to lead yourself through it.

Or you can work with a separate meditation I have on Insight Timer which is called Grounding with Earth Energy.

So very briefly,

Those three steps again are complete the journaling process we've talked about today,

Those three questions.

The second step is whenever you notice that story coming up for you in your everyday life,

You can start to focus on self-compassion.

And the third step is to ground and fill your container with self-love every day.

In this first talk in the series,

We've been focusing on identifying your mental paradigm with love.

In the next talk in the series,

We'll be talking about how you can begin to shift that mental paradigm for love so that it is in alignment with your new highest vision for love in your life.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I know this was a lot to take in.

I'd love to answer any questions you might have about this talk.

So please include them in your comments if you choose to write any.

I'm wishing you a day bursting with love for yourself,

With self-compassion,

And a renewal of your intention for a sacred partnership in your life.

Reviews

I’m very excited for this! It was great to hear your story and Lisa Nichols.

Great way to challenge myself and my old limiting beliefs. I’ll definitely start journaling thanks to you. 🙏

Looking forward to doing a deep dive into uncovering my pattern.

Beautiful and insightful. Thank you, Christina! 🌷

I really needed to hear this today Thank you 😊 for sharing your experience
Namaste 🙏 ❤️

Thank you. Looking forward to my new journey to find the love of my life.

Very helpful. Good journaling exercises. I’m looking forward to doing the work and figuring out where I’m stuck. Thank you!

Excellent meditation with compassion, authenticity and self reflection 💗💗💗

This is just so much needed talk at the Moment.. Thank you so much...

Loved this! Working on the exercises and look forward to the next part of ther series!! Thank you.

Totally nourishing and enlightening. I’m so glad I found this meditation. Exactly what I needed as I proceed on my journey of emotional healing around relationships. Thank you!

Thank you 🙏🏽💕

Take away steps were valuable. Guide was concise, relatable and self reflecting.

I AM so grateful for you, and these wonderful meditations and wise advice, shared lovingly. Thank you x x

I really want to thank you for all the help you have given to me with your posts. I related a lot with your own story and that have renewed my faith in the process of finding my sacred partner. God bless you!

Thank you so much for sharing this! I’m going through the exercises and it’s really helping me work through a lot of things. 🙏🏼💕

Excellent 🙏🙏🙏❤️

Beautiful, thank you! 🙏❤

This is difficult stuff. Thank you for being a compassionate guide.

Amazing talk, resonates with me and I’ll be listening to it very often.

Thank you for your wonderful work.
❤️