How to kick start your journey of love...

When there is a big change that you want to see happen in your life then setting clear goals are incredibly powerful to help get you from where you are to where you need to be.

But when it comes to your love life, isn’t it a bit un-romantic to plan your future in this way?

Well think of it this way, how can you hit your target when you don’t know where you’re aiming?

Or to put it more eloquently:

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time”

— Zig Ziglar

Maybe goals are just dreams with deadlines?

And by setting deadlines, it helps to focus our energy in positive directions

So when it comes to love, what do you dream of, deep in your heart?

Is it a partner in life who you can have never-ending adventures with? Is it a partner that you can grow a family with? Is it a loving and healthy relationship that you feel both safe and free in?

Now daring to dream and getting clear on what it is you really want is incredibly important when bringing about a change in your life. However, you can have all the dreams in the world, but if you don’t act on them, how will you get to where you want to go?

Well consider goals to be your stepping stones to get there.

Ok, so how do you actually set those goals?

Well this exercise is one that we give to all of our clients when we start working with them.

Go through all of the different levels below and note down where you want to be at each stage. Dream big! It doesn’t matter if they sound wafty because big dreams can be broken down into smaller chunks. We’ll show you how…

Meet Lara, she’s 32, bit of a high flyer in her career, enjoying her success but the stress that comes from the job is starting to become unmanageable.  The sense of purpose that came through work just isn’t enough anymore and it now feels like something is missing. She knows something needs to change. She’s had a history of non-starter relationships and worries that she’s running out of time to meet someone, settle down and start a family…

Where do I want to be in 25 years?

I’ll be happily married with three kids, living in the countryside / by the sea. I’ll be working from home part-time with some side projects. My free time would be spent with my husband and kids, pursuing hobbies and seeing friends.

Where do I want to be in 5 years?

I’ll be married to my best friend – my partner in crime. We’ll be getting to grips with being new parents and enjoying the adventure. I’ll be working less hours and starting to wind down in my career. We would be thinking about moving out of the city for a less hectic life. We’d be in a good place financially

Where do I want to be in 1 year?

I’ll be with someone who really “gets me”. He shows me love and respect. The relationship is healthy and I’m incredibly happy. We don’t yet live together but I think it will happen soon. I’ll own my own place and work will be fulfilling and exciting.

Where do I want to be in 3 months (June)?

I’ll feel positive about my love life and that it’s not a matter of if I meet someone, it’s when. I’ll be enjoying dating and meeting people and I’ll be open to see who I’m attracted to. I’ll know what I want and I’ll feel confident to get out there and start attracting awesome men into my life.

Now the next part is the fun bit and it brings it all to life..

What can I do NOW to put the conditions in place (to get me where I need to be in June)?

I will make a commitment to myself to make love a priority. I will start to figure out how this self-love thing works! I will look at the ways in which I can focus on getting in the right mindset for love and working out what I want from a relationship.

What can I do to get those conditions set up as soon as possible?

I’ll go and find people who can help, coach and teach me about getting into the right mindset for love and all this self-love stuff. I’ll go and see what workshops, coaching programmes, talks etc are out there for women like me who are ready to do something about their love lives and I’ll choose one to attend in the next two weeks!

And that is how you take a dream, bring it out of the realm of fantasy and very much into the real world: by making goals and taking action.

Now as luck would have it for Lara, our Get Ready for Love workshop in London is coming up on the 17th March. A perfect way for her to get started on getting her love life on track!

So if, like Lara, you’re also feeling ready to kick start your journey of love then come and join us. All it takes is turning up next Tuesday evening with an open mind and heart.

We've designed the Get Ready for Love Workshop to share with you what we've discovered to be the most effective and powerful tools to help you get ready for love and transform your love life in 2015.

We can’t wait for this workshop and we’d absolutely love you to join us. To find out more about the workshop and book your place, head over here

And if you have any questions at all that you want to ask us about the workshop and what to expect from it, then shoot your questions over by replying to this email.

x Vicki and Selina

P.S. We might not be running this workshop again for a while so if you really want to come but you have something else on that date, then reschedule your other commitment and come join us!

PODCAST SHOW! Letters to our younger selves (in celebration of International Women's Day)

Today's podcast show is inspired by Women's Day and takes a look at the power of writing letters to your younger self. We take some inspiring examples of letters written by formidable women to their younger selves from the beautiful book 'What I Know Now', we have a go at writing messages to our own younger selves and invite you to do the same. It's powerful stuff!

Have a listen in and let us know below what message you would write to your younger self...

x Selina & Vicki

If you read just ONE book on love, make it this one

This book was given to me by a friend as we lay on a beach in Goa, while I was single and Project Love was in its infancy.

That same copy is now sitting by me as I write. It's now dog-eared with half of the corners turned down, paragraphs underlined throughout and notes in every margin.

It had a profound effect on me.

And since reading it I've recommended it to almost everyone I know.

And now I'm recommending it to you.

The book?

Zen and the Art of Falling in Love by Brenda Shoshana

So what makes this book so special?

Well for me it totally transformed my whole understanding and approach to love.

It offers a deep wisdom about love and the nature of it that I believe we all instinctively know, but have forgotten.

It showed me that I had been doing it all wrong: I had been looking for love on the outside to fill me, when what I actually had to do was to open up to the love that already existed within me, so that it filled me up with love and flowed outwards to connect me with other loving people. It was about opening up to love, not finding it.

It introduced me to so many subtle, gentle and profound new ways of looking at love that's it hard to really summarise it, but what I can say is that it shifted me into a whole new space when it came to love and I've remained there ever since. That is the power of the book.

Throughout the book Brenda Shoshana, a psychologist, relationship expert and Zen practitioner, draws on the principles of Zen practice in a way that offers new insights to love, relationships and communication. You don't have to know anything about Zen practice and she's not telling you to go on a silent retreat to change your love life (although by the sounds of it it does seem to help!). What it does is offers a totally fresh way of looking at love and relationships, grounded in the lessons of a wise and ancient practice, that sets you free from the limited and fear-led way we're brought up to approach love and relationships in modern society.

It's no exaggeration to say that this book set me free. And I have seen it do the same for numerous other people that I've recommended it to.

Here's a little quote from it to leave you with, but what I recommend is that you just order it right now and get stuck in. And if you've read the book, or once you have read it, please come back here and let us know what you think by leaving your comments below!

"Now with a little patience it's only a matter of time before the person who knows how to love starts emerging from within. This person knows how to discover the 'right relationship' and how to thrive in it completely. Isn't it time you let her free?"

x Selina

PODCAST SHOW | Project Love Real Love Stories | Vicki Interviews Selina

Happy Day of Love people!

To celebrate this special day, we've got a juicy real love story as I interview our very own Selina Barker!

Listen in to hear Selina share her beautiful love story as she reflects on Valetine's Day this year to the two preceding Valentine's Days. 

Woven into her story, she reveals the lessons learnt along the way with advice for single women who want to find a happy and healthy relationship.

Plus a very exciting piece of news!!

Leave your comments below and if you loved this podcast please share the love on Facebook, Twitter and beyond!

V x

If you're in London, come and join us on 17th February for our Get Ready for Love workshop!

Find out more and grab your ticket here

An alternative Valentine's Day - the Project Love way

Valentine's Day.  It's a bit like Marmite - you either love it or you hate it. If you're in a relationship, it can be a wonderful time to spoil the one you love or it can feel a little cheesy / OTT to celebrate it. And if you're single and wishing you weren't, it can be a painful reminder of the big relationship-shaped hole in your life and the whole day is spent trying to pretend like it's not happening.

So to be honest, over at Project Love we're not actually big fans of the traditional Valentine's Day.

We do it a little differently...

For us it's THE DAY OF LOVE: A day to celebrate love in all its forms.

In the English language, there is only one word to describe love, but the Greeks had 7 different words for love: romantic love and erotic love (eros), love for family (storge), deep friendship (philia), playful affectionate love (ludus), love for everyone (agape), long-standing love (pragma) and love for self (philautia).

So this Valentine’s Day we want to invite you to join us in ditching the usual focus on romantic love and instead celebrate all forms of love.

Above all, self-love.

Do something this Saturday for you - treat yourself with love.

Buy yourself flowers, take yourself out for brunch at your favourite cafe, buy yourself a little gift, treat yourself to a massage, take yourself off to an art gallery or snuggle in and have a date in with yourself and your favourite film.

Last year Selina, who was single at the time, really embraced this new approach to Valentine's Day. She sent me this message with a photo of a Mexican heart necklace that she bought for herself:

"I am totally living in love today, taking actions from the heart - wait till you see the Valentine’s day gift I got myself AND I booked in a massage for next week. Just waiting for a delicious toasted cake in Brixton market!"

So join us and make Valentine's Day YOUR DAY OF LOVE too and let us know what you get up to by leaving a comment below, share photos with us on Instagram or tweet us!

x Vicki and Selina

P.S. if you haven’t watched it already check out the video interview which Selina did with the fabulous Addictive Daughter on '3 steps to transform your love life’ - she tells the story of her Valentine’s Day ‘Day of Love’ last year and what all that self-loving led to…..!

3 steps to transform your love life - Selina's interview with Addictive Daughters

Selina met up (well virtually) with the gorgeous Addictive Daughters this week to shoot a Valentine-special video.

She shares the story of the transformation of her own love life over the past 2 year, the 3 steps to transform your love life which are at the heart of Project Love and, together with the AD ladies, has set a challenge for you to do this Valentine's day: doing Valentine's Day the Project Love way...

Visit our gorgeous friends at addictivedaughter.com and let us know what you're going to do this Valentine's day.

And if you enjoyed this then share it!

10 alternative ways of looking at rejection

No-one likes rejection. Whether it's not landing your dream job, your dream house falling through or not hearing back from that guy you fancy, it feels pretty shitty when someone tells us "no".

When we experience something that makes us feel bad, our lizard brain (the most primitive part) will make a mental note for us to avoid stuff like this in the future. Because it wants to keep us safe. It wants to protect us from the hurt we feel when we don't get asked out on that second date or the slap in the face when the guy you've been seeing just mysteriously goes off radar and you never hear from him again. Nice.

But is this fear of rejection holding you back? Do you sulk for ages before getting back out there? Or vow never to text back first next time? Or tell yourself to never ever be the one to ask him out on a second date next time - "wait for him to come to you"?

We can wrap ourselves up nice and cosy in cotton wool but there’s no getting around the fact that rejection is inevitable. It's happened to us before and it will happen to us again. No matter how hard we try and avoid it, we can't control it. Grrrreeeeat I hear you say…

But wait… what we can control is our relationship with it. Because it's not the rejection itself that's the problem, it's how we choose to perceive it.

It all starts with our mindset...

Our mindset affects our behaviour and our behaviour determines our outcomes.

So by thinking differently about rejection, we can actually change the course of our lives.

That's why we've pulled together our top 10 alternative ways of looking at rejection.

So the next time you get rejected. And it's not IF it happens it's WHEN it happens, try one of these on for size and see how it makes you feel...

1.  Rejection is redirection
2. Rejection is feedback
3. Every rejection is a stepping stone towards my ideal outcome
4. Rejection is setting me free
5. Rejection is my hearts way of saying no
6. Rejection is my future self thanking me for creating the space for my future to show up
7. Rejection is a part of life
8. Rejection is an invitation to something better
9. Rejection is honesty
10. Rejection is necessary

Tweet your favourite from this list and - as a bonus exercise - ask someone you love if they've ever been thankful of the rejections they've had? We'd love to hear your stories - share them with us on Facebook / Twitter

V x

Get clear on what your dream guy looks like...then dump him

There are a lot of visualisation exercises out there that encourage those of us looking for love to conjure up our future partner to help attract him into our lives.

The idea being that the clearer you are on what you're looking for, the easier it will be to spot him. In fact some suggest that that vision alone has power enough to draw him into your life like some kind of magical love magnet.

I bought into this idea for years and even when Project Love started out we were playing around with these kinds of visualisations.

I loved them. I'm a great visualiser and being able to picture the man I felt sure I'd end up with was both comforting and gave me a sense of control. I felt that the more I could picture him the closer I was getting to him.

But while it might have felt good, like fantasies so often can, spending all your time getting clear on the profile of the guy you're looking for and waiting for him to cross your path is actually working against you and massively limiting your chances of finding the love you long for.

Because here is the thing: the more women we've spoken to and interviewed who are happily in love and partnered up, the more we've found that the majority of them did not end up with the kind of guy they imagined they would end up with. Far from it.

And that very much includes me.

I did a LOT of visualising and mood boarding of the kind of man I thought I wanted to end up with. For years.

And I can safely say that the man I actually am utterly in love with and wake up to every morning is nothing like any of the partners of my visualisations or mood boards. Not only that, he actually ticks a lot of the boxes on my 'not' list.

Had I met him a year before, when I had yet to go through my own Project Love journey, I probably wouldn't have even gone on that first date at all. And all because he didn't match the picture I had in my head.

But luckily by the time our paths crossed I'd dumped those mood board images of the man I was supposed to end up with and had quit the visualising. Instead, having heard from so many happily in love women that they'd ended up with a guy they would never have imagined they'd end up with,  I had fully opened up to being surprised at who I could be attracted to and what kind of guy would turn out to be perfect for me.

And with that I opened up the door for true love to enter into my life.

So consider that you don't know what your type is either and that thinking you do could be the very thing preventing you from finding love.

If you've got a clear picture of the kind of guy you think would be perfect for you, if you've got a list, mood board or an image in your head of what he's like, then it's time to dump him.

LET HIM GO.

Instead be clear on what you want in very basic terms:  eg. a man that you are attracted to and who is attracted to you, who is open and available to having a relationship and who is emotionally healthy, loving and respectful.

Be clear on how you want to feel around him from the offset: eg. safe, relaxed, valued.

You can visualise plenty around that - visualisation is a powerful tool when done in the right way.

But scrap any ideas of what that guy looks like, what he does, what his character is like, where he comes from.

Drop the fantasy and let the real thing show up.

x Selina

P.S. If you liked this, don't forget to spread the love! Share it on facebook or twitter

How to change your life in just 2 minutes

Research shows that most of what we reveal about ourselves comes from our body language. We give clues to what we think and feel through our body postures, use of space, facial expressions and eye movement. And this affects how others see us and it influences their judgement of us. Sometimes, what we communicate is pretty accurate to what we're feeling and the messages we want to give off.

But sometimes it's not accurate and we give off mixed messages. So take a second to stop reading this and just check-in with your body. Maybe you're hunching at your desk, or maybe you're folding your arms on your phone. Whatever you're doing, ask yourself whether this is the kind of message you want to give off? Do you look open / closed? Welcoming / stand-offish? Worried / relaxed?

So we convey what we think and feel through our body language, but this is nothing new. What's interesting is that our body language can affect how we think and feel, leading to changes in our brain chemistry. So it goes both ways. For instance, we smile because we're happy but it's possible to be happy because we're smiling. Even if we don't feel like it, just by faking a smile tells the brain that we're happy.

Amy Cuddy reveals some incredible research findings in this moving TED talk. Her line of study is in power dynamics and she found that tiny tweaks in body position can lead to hormonal changes which influence confidence and our response to stress. So knowing this, we can use our body to configure our brain to be more confident and less stress reactive. And all it takes is two minutes.

So start being mindful of how you use your body and notice what signals you're giving off. Because if you're feeling ready for love then you need to switch on your green light and show you're available. The simplest way to do this is by smiling and opening up your body by relaxing the shoulders and holding your head high. And this isn't just limited to the usual bars / clubs where you think you might meet people. You can do this anywhere - walking down the street, the office, the gym, shopping, on the tube... the list goes on. So the next time you're in a public space and there's some eye candy there, show them you're available. Practice on your journey home from work tonight and have some fun with it - you never know who you might meet...

And if you already have a hot date lined up and you're nervous, then try the Wonder Woman pose for 2 minutes before you go - in the loo / at your desk (not on the date itself, obvs). It might feel ridiculous at first but if you fake it, fake it and fake it then one day you'll become it. 

V x

From not enough to thank you very much

We've all been there. Incredibly overwhelmed by that lurking feeling of not being enough.

"I'm not liked enough", "I'm not loved enough", "I'm not popular enough", "I'm not thin enough", "I'm not asked out enough", "I'm not promoted enough at work"....

You get the picture, you feel that something is lacking.

Leo Babauta of the fabulous Zen Habits, asked his Twitter friends “What fear is holding you back?”. Their responses included:

• Failure
• Abandonment / Rejection
• Intimacy
• Success
• Being broke
• Not being good enough

According to Leo, the fear of not being enough is actually at the root of all the others. And we tend to agree with him.

We're living in a culture of scarcity, focusing on what we lack rather than what we have.

In her book, "Daring Greatly", Brene Brown shows the extent of this on a daily basis. We start our morning thinking that we didn’t get enough sleep, we go through our day worrying about how little time we have to get everything done and then we fall asleep feeling anxious that we failed to tick everything off our to do lists. And it goes on and on.

What if we could wake up and go to sleep with a feeling of gratitide instead? Well we're starting just that with a 30 day gratitude exercise. The Gratitude Journal App is designed to make gratitide a habit, which is perfect because we love our habits.

Basically, you write down 5 things that you're grateful for each day to train your brain to be happier, By practicing awareness of the things we're thankful for (the good stuff), we fight off the brain’s natural tendency to spot the bad stuff. As a result, we train our brains to be more positive and thus happier.

Give it a go and let us know how you get on!

V x

Our top 5 favourite articles on love

Over the past year we have been digging and delving deep online to find the best articles and thought leaders when it comes to finding love and making it last and these are our top 5 favourite articles:

1. How to pick your life partner

This article from waitbutwhy.com is so rich in wisdom, it's worth ready over at least 3 times and taking notes. We did!

2. Are you ready for love?

We can become obsessed with wanting to be in a relationship and find that special person but many of us, when we take a closer look, aren't actually ready for love. This article is short and sweet but makes the point well

3. The habits of supremely happy people

While it's not about love, this is all about happiness and one of our key lessons is that if you want to find yourself in a happy relationship with a happy person then you have to learn how to make yourself happy first.

This article is rich and intelligent and a great starting point if you want to learn how happy people stay that way.

4. The Magical Kitchen

This is actually an extract from the book 'Mastery of Love' by Don Miguel Ruiz. It's a wonderful and powerful analogy of why, when we don't love ourselves enough, we are prone to attracting and inviting people into our lives who are looking to use and control us.

5. Zen and the Art of Falling in Love

There is an entire blog post coming soon, dedicated to the book Zen and the Art of Falling in Love by Brenda Shoshanna. We can't recommend it enough. Here she pulls out some of the key messages from the book and some exercises to go with them.

x Selina

The Power of Vulnerability

We are huge HUGE fans of Brene Brown. Her work has a way of opening you up and reminding you of what it is to really feel alive and human in a way that has long-lasting effects. Just watch this 20 minute TED Talk and see what it does to you.

Let us know below how it made you feel by leaving a comment for us below.