Has finding lasting love made you feel insane?  Have you found yourself attracting the same type of mate and suffering through the same painful prolonged breakups?  Have you vowed never - and I mean never - to date or fall in love again? Supposedly one far wiser than me, Mr. Albert Einstein himself, said, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  I don't know if he really said that, but I do know that it is true in every area of life and especially every area of finding love.

That is really not bad news because there are three easy ways to stop the insanity and find renewed faith in lasting love.

1. Remember, old ways won't open new doors.  Going to the same community meetings, having dinner with the same friends, eating lunch at the same restaurant, exercising at the same gym or park, may not appear insane on the surface.  In fact, when your love life is tremulous, the consistency may even give you a false sense of security.
   
   But when it comes to attracting new opportunities for new relationships, your comfortable, secure daily patterns are a little like spending each day going around in a loveless revolving door and never exiting.  That would be insane, won't it?



2. Make sure you know the hypotenuse of your square.  Love and geometry have a lot in common.  When you are first learning about love, you wonder why you need to learn anything.  Love comes natural, you protest.  Love is something you will know how to do when you need it, you do not need to take a class in love, and you know that even if you took a class, you would forget the lessons when you needed them.
   
   Well recently I purchased a lamp.  Yes, it was a lamp I loved.  The lamp came in two pieces (get my metaphor?) and needed to fit perfectly for the design to work.  I opened the two boxes and it was love at first sight.  The frame was a wire cross that measured 26 inches.  The shade was to fit inside the cross frame and it measured 32 inches.  From the start I was confused.  Clearly the manufacturer had made an error.
   
   How could a 32-inch perfectly square shade fit inside a 26 inch perfectly square frame?  After returning the lamp and reordering three times from the same manufacture and getting the same result, I decided I knew how to stop the insanity.  I would order the same lamp from a different vendor.  Imagine my horror when the lamp arrived and I had a 26-inch frame and a 32-inch shade.  Finally, I said there must be another way to look at this.  I must be doing something wrong. With the help of a friend who did not think geometry class was a waste of time (again, notice the metaphor), we found a solution.  The two pieces did fit perfectly if the hypotenuse of the shade was placed in the frame in a different way.
   
   Well, if you have ever fallen in love, thought it was a perfect match, only to find you just did not fit together, remember this story and remember to check the hypotenuse of your square.



3. Stop bad-mouthing yourself at every turn.  It is insane to think you can love another, while you spend the majority of your day berating yourself for one thing or another.  When you pass a mirror, what are you silently saying to yourself about your reflection?  If you just met someone and they said those same things to you, would you consider them a potential love match? 

Andrea Goeglein is an academically trained Applied Positive Psychologist. Andrea is a counselor, catalyst and personal mentor to CEO's of privately held companies and C-suite executives globally. Over her extensive career, she was a hotel owner and fast food franchisee, event organizer, CEO advisor, community activist, and author and media spokesperson. She is a recognized media expert in the application of positive psychology to daily life, business strategy and goal attainment. Andrea is an accredited Authentic Happiness Coach and authorized to administer Inscape Publishing's DiSC Profile® and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. If you would like to learn more about Andrea and her work go to ServingSuccess.com.  Permission granted for use on  DrLaura.com