Settling vs Selecting: How to Start CHOOSING Better Friendships and Relationships

Up until this point of my life I never realized the importance of being intentional with the people that I let into my life. In this episode I talk about why it's so important to start choosing people based on your own values and the things you desire in relationships and friendships rather than settling for anyone who comes your way. I also talk about how we can start choosing consciously rather than passively and how moving with intention helps us choose better people and relationships that really serve us. 

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Transcript

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Had I known that I actually had the choice to choose rather than just settling for anything that came my way sooner, I would have saved myself from so many years of bullshit. Hey guys, I'm Lore and welcome back to Learn to Love You, a show all about self-love and personal wellness and learning how to heal the most important relationship that you have in your life, which is the one between you and yourself. Together we'll unlearn all the conditioning that has kept us down over the years as we learn how to have happier, healthier, more secure, and loving relationships with ourselves. Whether you're a new listener or returning listener, welcome. So grateful to have you here today. I have a huge update for you guys. I am going to Costa Rica this month. If you've been following the podcast for a while, you will have known that my 2026 has been all over the place. And nowhere in the plans for my 2026 involved going overseas. And you will have known that I had a whole linear plan for this year. I thought my whole year was gonna look one way, but it ended up taking a drastic turn a few months ago, and now it looks a completely different way. And since all of my linear plans kind of crumbled for this year, I'm just throwing myself at life. I'm just going with the flow. I'm just seeing what life will bring me, and I'm actually doing things that I really want to do. And traveling is something that I really do desire doing. So I'm finally letting myself just enter into a surrendered state and I'm learning how to follow my heart more and learning what feels right to me. Because up until this point, I was kind of just following this linear trajectory of how I felt like life should go. But since that whole plan crumbled, I kind of just decided to fuck it, you know, like do what I want to do. So once I return from Costa Rica, I will definitely update you guys on how it went. I'm going to a women's retreat in the jungle, so I'm so excited about that. It's gonna be so nice to be around other women who are also learning how to embody themselves and learning about healing and love and self-love and all those things. I'm just super thrilled to be around those types of women. So I will definitely pop back in after my travels and update you guys about how that whole experience went and what I learned from it. And I also wanted to let you guys know that this might be the only episode for the month of June, but I will see if I can post one more by the end of this month. It's just that my travels might take up a lot of my time, so I might not have enough time to record another episode this month. But don't worry, July is going to be full of episodes back in full swing. But let's get into the topic of today's episode. In today's episode, we're gonna talk about being intentional with the people that you let into your life, as well as being selective on the types of people that you want in your life, rather than just settling for anyone who comes your way or settling for relationships and friendships that no longer fulfill you. And I'm mostly gonna place an episode on platonic friendships here, but this can honestly apply to any type of relationship dynamic, romantic or otherwise. And for so long, I've kind of just been doing this on autopilot, coasting through life, being friends with anybody based off of proximity or convenience or whoever seemed cool, and not actually being selective or discerning or intentional about the types of people that I actually want in my life and those who actually make me feel good. And this whole not choosing has honestly led me into some not so great friendship dynamics. So it's really important that we do choose who we want in our lives. Because not everyone who comes into our life is meant to be our friend, and not everyone who is in our lives now is meant to stay our friends. But this is what I'm currently working on in therapy, being more intentional about the people that I'm letting into my life. So let's talk about it together. First, let's talk about the myth of attraction. There's so many people online these days that say things like, you attract what you are. Whatever comes your way is what's meant to be. You will magnetize what is meant for you. And there's nothing wrong with these statements. I definitely agree with them to some extent. However, they take you away from recognizing that you actually have the ability to choose the things that you attract rather than just settling for the things that you attract. And for so long I was operating off of these ideas of just letting life bring whatever it's meant to bring me and whatever finds its way to me, oh, it's just fate. That's just the universe giving me what it is that I need. That's just God doing its thing and giving me the people that I'm meant to have in my life. And I just have to go with the flow of it. I can't resist it. I can't say no to it. Because if I say no to it, then that means that I'm resisting life. But I recently realized that my not choosing, my not being intentional, was the main problem here when it came to the types of people that were entering into my life. And had I known that I actually had the choice to choose, I would have saved myself from so many years of bullshit. Just telling you, I would have saved myself from so many years of BS. And this is because attracting is a passive thing, but selecting is an active thing. Life, God, whatever you believe in, is going to present things your way. Things are going to come to you. An abundance of options are going to come to you, especially when it comes to people. But you also have to understand that God gives you the ability and the freedom to choose the things that you attract into your life. You don't have to take every single option that presents itself to you because you have a right to choose. And where there is abundance lies the freedom of choice. And a lot of us have this idea, especially when it comes to other people, that we are obligated to give them our time, our energy, and our attention. And we think that just because they want access to us means that we have to give them access to us, or else that would make us a rude person. And let's just be real, the reason why we feel so obligated is because of a people-pleasing tendency. We want to be nice people, we don't want to let people down, and we don't want to be rude. And we don't want to be selective because we think it's going to offend people. And trust me, I have been so guilty of this. So, so, so guilty. And I've been doing this whole people-pleasing thing for such a long time without actually checking in with myself and how I'm actually feeling around these people that I'm giving my energy to. Now let's imagine that you're going grocery shopping. There's an abundance of food to choose from, an abundance of items on the shelves. But you're not gonna pick every single item to buy, right? You're going to select the foods that you actually want to eat. Why? Because you know that these are the foods that you like, and the ones that you don't pick are the ones that you don't like. And if you were to buy all the food on the shelf because you felt like you had to buy all the food on the shelf because it's there, that would be a fat grocery bill and a lot of bags to carry home. You realize that in this scenario, you only want to spend your money on the things that you actually want to eat. When you become more discerning and you start actively making choices rather than just passively settling, then life starts to curate to give you the things that you actually want because you are putting out the energy that these are the things that I actually desire. This is why intention is so powerful, because we create our lives through intention. But just because someone wants your time or your energy doesn't mean that you're obligated to give it to them because you feel like you just attracted it and that's what's meant to be. I mean, shoot, you attract mosquitoes, but just because a mosquito lands on you and starts sucking your blood doesn't mean you have to just sit there and let it and be like, oh, I attracted this. That's what's meant to be. No, you can swat it off and be like, I don't want this on me. And so attracting people doesn't automatically mean that these people are meant to be with you, especially if they're not making you feel like a better version of yourself. And if you end up attracting someone into your life that doesn't resonate with you, you don't have to be mean about it. You can simply be like, you know, thank you for your time, but unfortunately, I must look elsewhere. And by doing this, you actually open yourself up to receiving those people who actually do resonate with you instead. Now let's talk about the reasons why we settle for relationships and friendships that are not aligned with us and why we don't end up choosing better for ourselves. And I discovered that there are three primary reasons why we do this. One, we simply just don't know that we can choose better. Two, we don't believe that there's anyone better out there for us. And three, we don't feel like we're deserving enough of what we actually want in relationships. And I know that these things might have been hard to hear, but don't worry, I will hold your hand through this section of the video. So let's break them down. Number one is that we don't always realize that we actually can choose better. And this is the biggest thing that I was running into. I just simply didn't know the fact that I was choosing. I thought I was just magnetizing who was meant for me, but I didn't realize that every single time I was settling for someone that I didn't feel in alignment with, I was actually making the choice to do so. But I just wasn't aware that I was making that choice. And every single person that you have in your life today is someone that you've chosen to have in your life. And sometimes those choices are conscious, but a lot of the times we choose from an unconscious place, from a place of not knowing that we're actually choosing these people. And when I say an unconscious place, I'm not saying that we're just blindly choosing random people to come into our lives and just be friends with us. But we're not choosing from a place of intention. We're not choosing from a place of discernment. We're not choosing from a place based off of our own value system. We're just kind of selecting people based off of convenience, people we've known for a while, people who have a similar aesthetic or vibe even. But we're not choosing based off of our own value system of what we truly desire when it comes to the people that we interact with. And there's so many people online encouraging you to make an ideal list of traits that you want in a romantic partner. But you can also do this for friendships as well. And it's okay to have standards for friendships. A lot of us think that we can't be too picky when it comes to the friends that we have, or that we can't choose people based off of the standards that we have or the values we have. But in order to start consciously choosing our friends and our relationships, we have to be discerning. We have to go off of our values and the things that we truly desire when it comes to the people that we interact with. For me, I can't stand people who don't listen to what I have to say. But guess who I was choosing before? People who didn't listen to what I had to say. And why was I choosing these people? Because I wasn't consciously choosing these people. I wasn't actively going off of my own value system and my own discernment and how I actually felt around people. I was just choosing them because they were available, because they were convenient, and that's what I was conditioned that friendship was about. But now that I'm aware that I'm actively always choosing whether I realize it or not, I can finally make the conscious choice to stop selecting people who don't listen to what I have to say. And so now that we know that we're always choosing, it's important to ask yourself have I been choosing friends from a conscious place or from an unconscious place? The second reason that we often settle is because we feel like there's nobody else out there for us. A lot of us have this mindset that the people that we know now are the only people that we're ever gonna be friends with, the only person we're ever gonna date, the only people that we're ever gonna have in our lives, and if we were to let go of them, if we were to stop being friends with them, then we'd never make any other better friends again. But when we start thinking in this way, it causes us to enter into a state of scarcity. And when we're in scarcity, what does that cause us to do? That's right. Not exercise our conscious choice to choose. Because remember, you're always choosing, but is it conscious? Whenever we have a scarcity mindset that there's nobody else out there for us, it really causes us to just select anybody. Like, hey, come here, because you're the only person out there for me. So I need you here or else I'm gonna be all alone. And when we choose from a state of fear, we're not really being discerning about what we actually desire. Because if we feel like that's it for us, then we're always gonna cling to whatever is available to us. Even if it's toxic, even if it's unfulfilling, even if it's not serving us, we'll just settle for it anyway because we don't think that there's anything else out there for us. And especially when we get close and comfortable to people, it can be really hard to want to find other better people. Even if these people are not serving you, or they're not adding value to your life, or they're toxic, these are familiar people. And our brains love familiarity rather than doing what's actually right for us. And the third reason why we often settle is because we feel like we're not deserving of what we actually desire. And this is a really sad reason, and one that I was operating off of for a long time when it came to friendships. I didn't feel like I was deserving of better friendships because I felt like I wasn't good enough to have better friendships. And when we start believing that we're not deserving of the friendships and relationships that we want in our lives, then that's when we just settle for anything. If we believe that we can only have low quality friendships or relationships, that's the only thing that we're ever going to have. That's the only thing that we're ever going to choose because we've put ourselves at that limit. So therefore, we can't have anything better than that because this is where we feel like we are. And so when someone better does come along, we'll often sabotage it. Because if we feel like we are worth low quality friendships and relationships, we're just going to keep choosing low quality people, even if higher quality people come our way. And so it really comes down to healing your self-concept and healing your idea of self-worth, which is something they'll make a whole other episode on. Because when you start to believe that you are worth more, you are going to start raising the bar on what you're going to choose. And that's when higher quality people and higher quality relationships will start to enter your life because you'll be choosing from a high quality place of I deserve this thing because I am high quality too. Well, lore, what if all this picking and choosing causes me to be too selective to the point where I'm too discerning and I don't have any friends left? Then I'm all alone to die with nothing left but just my plants and my fur babies. Well, I am so glad that you asked this question because I ask myself the same thing all the time. The more selective that you are, is the less people that you're going to have in your life. But this doesn't have to be a bad thing. When you start to choose off of your own value system, you'll slowly start to recognize that not everyone is going to meet you where you're at. But that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you for being selective. That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you for not being able to meet other people where they're at. This just means that the people who are actually aligned to you can find you better. And there's this huge fear that we're never gonna find these people. Especially as an adult making friends, it's really easy to start believing that adult friendships are so rare and so hard to find that if I'm not happy in my current friendships, I just have to have them for the rest of my life. Because if I let go of these people who aren't serving me, oh my gosh, making friends as an adult, it's nearly impossible. But I'm telling you, the more that you stay true to who you are and you start going off of your own value system when it comes to selecting people, you might not have that many people around you, but you will find quality friendships and quality relationships to invest your time into. And honestly, at this point in my life, I would rather have four quarters than a hundred pennies. So now let's talk about how we can start actively choosing better and more aligned people. First off, it really starts with listening to your feelings. I know that for so long we've been conditioned to believe that don't listen to your feelings, don't listen to your heart. Your feelings are just lying to you. Feelings aren't facts. Listen to logic, just push your feelings under the rug and ignore them. But our feelings are our greatest communicator on where we are aligned or we're misaligned. And right now I've been reading this book called Conversations with God, and it's honestly such a beautiful and phenomenal text where it's God basically communicating with someone who's channeling the words of God. And if you're interested in reading it, I highly recommend it. It's not a religious text, it's not a religious book. It doesn't define God in a Christian lens or a Muslim lens or whatever it might be. It's just more of a universal picture of God. But I'm gonna read this part of the book that I highlighted when it comes to listening to your feelings because it's super revolutionary in the way that I'm learning how to listen to my feelings. So this is God speaking, this is God communicating to the author of this book. So God said, I do not communicate by words alone. In fact, I rarely do so. My most common form of communication is through feeling. Feeling is the language of the soul. If you want to know what's true for you about something, look to how you're feeling about it. Yet, hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth. Mic drop, God. Mic drop. Hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth. Can we get an amen to that? Because that is so true. Every single time that you look to yourself about how you're actually feeling, it is trying to give you a communication. It is trying to give you a message. It's not telling you to just brush me under the rug, ignore me, tune me out. These feelings that you have about people or about anything at all are trying to lead you somewhere, or else they wouldn't be here. If you feel off around someone or you feel drained, or you feel anxious, or something about this person just makes you have a bad gut feeling, listen to it. Listen. I realized that if I had just listened to how I felt around people sooner, I could have saved myself from so many years of bullshit. And every single time I felt off around someone, that was just my soul communicating with me. And I was just tuned out to it. I was just like, oh, feelings are feelings, they'll pass, they'll fade. No, these feelings have a message for you. So tune your ears to listen to them. If you don't feel good or connected or inspired or even excited to be around someone, you don't have to entertain this relationship. You will know when something is right for you, when you feel at ease about it, when you feel at peace about it, when it feels like a full-body yes, then that means that this person is aligned for you. The second way we can choose better is to choose off of our value system. And I know I mentioned this earlier in the video, but we're gonna go more in depth on it now. When we choose people based off of our own value system, this can help us to grow deeper into those things that we value as well. Like say you value taking care of your health and fitness. Let's find other friends who also value taking care of their health and fitness. If you value human rights activism, let's find other people to join us in that. If you value learning new things, let's learn things with some other people who are also open-minded. And as someone who is alcohol free, I really want to start being more intentional about choosing other people who are sober or sober curious and start hanging out with people who want to do things in sober environments. Even though finding sober people in your 20s is like finding a needle in a haystack. But they're out there. They're definitely out there, and I've met people who are in their 20s who are also alcohol free. And when we don't choose off of our values, we don't actually find what inspires us, what helps us to grow as an individual. And it's also really important to choose people based on how they treat other people as well. Because a huge giveaway about who somebody is is by how they treat other people. Someone might be really nice to you, but they might be an asshole to other people. Someone might not judge you to your face, but they always make judgmental comments about other people. Someone might sweet talk you, but they talk shit about everybody else. Are you seeing what I'm getting at here? Noticing traits like these is very important when it comes to selecting people because people are always showing you who they are, whether it be blatantly and directly to your face or indirectly. And even if someone is not mean or directly offensive to you, you gotta still ask yourself, do I really want someone who's willing to tear other people down in my life? Because that says a lot about someone's character. Especially if you value treating people with kindness, choosing people who are unkind to others, that goes against your value system, babe. And you don't have to sell yourself short on what you actually want. Because if people can't meet you where you're at, remember what I told you before. You will meet other people who are able to match you if you open yourself up to that. And a lot of us choose people who can't meet us where we're at because we feel like we could either change them or we do anything not to be alone. But you can't change anybody. This person has to change on their own. But what you can do is choose other people who can meet you at the place that you're at. And you also have to find peace with the fact that you might be alone for some time. But just because you are alone doesn't mean that you won't ever find better people for you. And another way that we can choose better is to start recognizing patterns. This involves recognizing patterns within yourself as well as recognizing patterns in the friends and partners that you've had. And yes, it really is hard to take a look at yourself and take a look at your patterns. But if you're listening to this podcast right now, I know that you are a person who is doing the inner work. So we're gonna look at ourselves. That's it's just gonna happen. That is just what's going to happen on this show because I know that you are someone who wants to make Positive change in your life, or else you wouldn't be here. It's really important to look at the place that we're choosing people from. For a long time, I was choosing people from a place of not feeling good about myself, from a place of insecurity and desperation. And this would cause me to choose not so great people. And I was also choosing from a place of not knowing what I truly wanted in friendships and relationships. And that would make me not choose consciously. And so I realized that we're either choosing people from one of two primary places, from a place of feeling like people are going to complete me, or from a place of knowing that I'm already complete, and these people are just here to add value to my life. And so it's really important to look at where you're choosing people from. Are you choosing people to make your life valuable? Or are you choosing people to add value to your already valuable life? And it's also really important to notice the red flags and the patterns in other people when you start consciously choosing people to be friends with. And typically the signs aren't blatantly obvious at first. I mean, sometimes they are, but typically it takes a couple times of getting to know someone before you're able to determine what the red flags are. Maybe an old friend of yours was constantly flaky, they couldn't commit to plans, and they never showed up when they said they would. And you just absolutely hated that. And you're swearing never to choose other people who are also flaky like that. And so now it's important when you're meeting someone to look for signs of if they show up, if they're consistent, if they stay true to their word. And if they don't, then Sayanara. And a huge red flag for me is when I'm meeting someone and they automatically deem me their best friend in the entire world. They tell me everything about themselves. They shower me in love and affection, and they say that I'm the most important connection in their entire life when I just got to know them like two minutes ago. Now, this is some people's dream friendship, so why is it a red flag to me? So I've had this happen to me before, and I would choose people like this because you know, yeah, it feels good to feel like somebody's best friend right away. But I slowly started to realize that it was always built on a false sense of intimacy. We didn't actually get to know each other. They didn't know anything about me. There was no effort put into the friendship, there was no building of trust, there was no going through things together. So how are we really best friends if we haven't done any of those things together? And ultimately when the cards crumbled in those friendships, do you know what happened to those people? They fell off the face of the earth. Why? Because there was no foundation to begin with. And now I know that real intimacy and friendship take time to build. It takes trust, it takes commitment, it takes dedication. It's not just a poof in your face overnight tapping. And I recognize that real friendships and real intimacy and connections take time to actually develop and to build. And if someone is just immediately pulling you into their best friendship label right away, that is a red flag. In a way, it could even be love-balming. So really just spend time getting to know people and their traits before you truly lock in on them and say that this is someone I really, really, really, really, really want in my life. Because this will give you some time to actually feel things out and to make judgments based off of your values and the things that you desire. And remember, if something makes you raise an eyebrow or second guess or makes you feel anxious, remember what I said? Run. Okay, maybe not run, but trust your gut, trust your judgment. And lastly, to wrap things up, a great sign that someone is a good person for you is that they're going to help you love yourself more. The right people are going to help you love yourself more. The right people are going to help you connect deeper to yourself and they wouldn't take you away from yourself. You won't have to abandon yourself for them. They won't make you second guess your worth. You won't feel like you're not good enough around them. They will uplift you, they will support you, and they will help you tap into a healthier and more secure version of yourself. And I promise that they will encourage you to love yourself more. They will even be thrilled if you start loving yourself more. Because if someone doesn't help you love yourself more, or they're threatened by your self-love, or being with this person takes you away from self-love, that is just a sign that this connection is not going to lead you anywhere good. The right people are going to help you to connect deeper to yourself. The right people are going to mirror back to you the beauty that you are. The right people are going to point you to a deeper place within yourself and show you how to connect to yourself deeper. They would not want to make you feel insecure or like a worse version of yourself or would want you to hate or destroy yourself. So you have to ask yourself the question: do the people in my life right now help me to love myself more? Because someone who really loves you would want you to also love yourself, would want you to take care of yourself and feel like the best version of yourself and be a healthy version of yourself. So you gotta ask yourself the question, do these people help me love myself deeper? I hope that you guys enjoyed this podcast episode. If you guys enjoyed it, please rate the podcast five stars on whatever streaming platform that you're on. And also make sure to drop a comment saying hello to me if you're listening to this on Spotify or on Apple. But just remember that we do not have to select every single item in the grocery store. No, we can be selective, we can choose the foods that we actually want for dinner. And by being intentional, we actually create the dishes and the relationships, of course, that we actually desire having. So I will see you guys hopefully later this month. And if not, I will see you guys again in July, where I'll update you all about Costa Rica. So I hope that you guys have a great one, great rest of your month. Just remember that I believe in you, but I just want you to believe in yourself. I'll see you guys next time.