Mindful Dating for Stress-Free Love! 5 Sure-fire Ways To Be More Confident On Your First Date

Worried about your upcoming date? Don’t be. Use these foolproof techniques to really feel confident before your first meetup. It’s all about mindset adjustment. In other words, the same positive attitude you approach the rest of your life with should come along with you on your first dates, agreed?

Speaking of inner and outer obstacles, don’t forget to check out my advice columns this week. We’ve got some pretty necessary conversations going on. On Essence right now, a reader wanted to know ‘is sending sexy text messages cheating‘ and on Mommy Noire the discussion is ‘are single women are too picky or not picky enough when dating?‘ -aa

SO, you have a first date coming up with someone so hot they scorch the ground under their feet.

Score! Lucky you and lucky them. But now that the initial wave of excitement you felt when they said “Yes” has faded, it has been replaced by creeping self-doubt. What if they think I’m lame? What if they don’t want to see me again after the date? Or worse: what if they flake on the date entirely?

While a little anxiety over a first date is natural, it shouldn’t get so bad that it starts to chip away at your self-confidence.

Here are four mindset adjustments you should make if you start worrying that your first date isn’t going to go well.

1. Remember That He Wants to Date You.

The person you are going out with could have spent their evening doing anything. They have friends and family they could hang out with. They have interests and hobbies they could be doing. They might even have a TV show they have been meaning to watch. Yet of all the things they could schedule on their calendar, they opted to spend a couple hours with you.

And do you know why?

BECAUSE YOU’RE AWESOME.

Don’t feel pressure to prove yourself to someone who already thinks you are interesting enough to take a chance on. Your first date is just going to be an opportunity for you to prove what they already believe.

2. Try Mindfulness for Anxiety.

If you are feeling serious anxiety and need an extra boost, you can always try Emotional Freedom Technique, see this EFT Tapping Video, or meditation. This will reduce your stress and remind you that it’s just a date! Your life doesn’t depend on anything that happens in the next 24 hours. Really, it doesn’t.

3. Anticipate Good Things.

If you are scared that you will be a fumbling fool on your first evening together, you are probably imagining all of the ways that you will screw it up. You see yourself stumbling over your words or doing something stupid or offensive. In other words, you are expecting things won’t go smoothly even though you have no reason to believe this.

Stop making yourself nuts and simply expect that things will go over well. Believe this as much as you believe in the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow. That will get you thinking about all the ways that things will go right.

4. Change Your Expectations.

What exactly are you hoping will come of the date? Are you expecting that they will be so incredibly blown away by your overpowering awesomeness that they will forever forsake even looking at another person again? Perhaps you are hoping for love at first sight.

Maybe you should take your lofty projections down a notch and just try to have a fun, friendly time. You are two people who find each interesting going out to try some neat stuff. There’s no reason to be anxious about screwing up a first date any more than there is reason to be anxious about screwing up going to Disneyland. As long as you show up and approach it with a positive, lighthearted attitude you are going to be great.

5. Know That Your Date Is Human, Too.

Feeling self-conscious about dating someone new doesn’t make you special. Everyone, including the person you are dating, suffers from bouts of insecurity. As self-assured and confident as they might appear to be, even your muy caliente date has at least a germ of doubt about how well they will come off to you when you spend more time together.

If you think it’s silly for your date to be worried about how they will appear when you go out, just remember that it’s equally silly for you. No one is expecting you to be perfect. They’re just expecting you to be as interesting as you obviously are.

More often than not, any first date jitters are completely the product of an overactive imagination. As long as you firmly believe that you will have a good time, you will.

So stand up straight, put your shoulders back, and go be the Goddess of Romance you know you can be!

Featured images: license: The African American couple is a public domain image and the white couple dining is a royalty free source.

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