love

Creating Space in My Life, For Love

It had been a long and difficult 5 years, living in LA pursuing my career as a professional actor. I knew things had to change.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You’re going to need to know a little bit about the life I was living before I can introduce you to the life that I knew I needed to create.

Think of a laser beam. A single, solitary, ultra high-focused, pinpoint of light. That was the type of precision, accuracy and dedication that I brought to my acting career. Laser beam focus. Almost everything that I did, and I mean almost everything, was directly linked or related in some way to furthering and pursuing a professional career as an actor in Hollywood–and I was maniacally focused on being able to financially support myself that way. I knew it would take some time, but I was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that through persistence, focus, and dedication, it would happen eventually.

As the years passed, the feeling of imbalance in my life that started out as an occasional thought became more and more persistent. Early on I often dismissed this thought as a weakness, something that was pulling me away from my destiny, something that at best would distract me from, or worse, derail, the vision for my life that I’d had since I was a young boy. However, I quickly began to realize that this thought wasn’t going to go away, and that I was going to have to tackle it head on. Because of this laser beam focus on my career, I began to realize that there were other aspects of my life–namely my love life–that were lacking or, more accurately, atrophying, because I was devoting so much of my energy to this one component of who I was. I knew I had to make some adjustments. I had to figure out what I wanted out of love. It took some time and some serious contemplation, but ultimately I knew that I eventually wanted a relationship to lead to marriage and a family.

Let me be absolutely clear: This didn’t just happen. It took me a long time to figure this out. I really had to sort through some relationships that weren’t right for me to then finally meet my wife. The important component, however, was that I made a conscious decision to broaden my focus. I made a conscious decision to take some of the energy that I was utilizing for my career, and shift it to looking for a healthy, committed and loving relationship with a woman. More importantly, I realized that I needed to actually create space in my life for love.

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve got some magic five-step process that will lead you to find the perfect relationship. All I can do here is summarize what I did and the process that worked for me.

First, I stepped back from my life. It was difficult. I was fully invested in the path that I was on, but I forced myself to stop and really take stock of what my life was and how I felt about it. When I was finally able to slow myself down and see the forest for the trees, I saw a very unbalanced and incomplete human being.

Next, as I began to date more, I got very specific about what I did, and more importantly, didn’t, want in a relationship. That specificity ultimately helped me to refine the qualities that I was looking for in a partner and become very clear about the type of person that I wanted to attract into my life.

Finally, I trusted myself. I knew that I was doing something healthy for me, and that it would lead to a more satisfied and balanced life. There were ups and downs, there were good dates and bad dates, healthy relationships and unhealthy ones, but I knew that I was on the right path. I knew that I had made a decision to become a more complete person and pursue another aspect of my life that I had always known was important to me, and it all started with realizing that I needed to actually devote some energy to creating space in my life for love.

Then it happened. I met the woman who would become my wife. I can’t promise you the same outcome, but if you can ask yourself the hard questions about what you want your life to be, and answer honestly, I’m confident that you will be on the right path, too. Wherever that path may lead you.

Yours,

Tony