242. 2026: Dating without Distractions

You know all about red flags and what men want. That information fills every dating coach's feed. But here's what nobody talks about: where your attention goes during your dating journey.

Your attention determines everything. When you focus on the 99% of guys who aren't right for you, your mental energy flows there instead of toward your vision. When you obsess over your ex's new girlfriend or rehearse angry texts, you drain the energy you need to create what you want.

Think about it like this: imagine a room filled with puppies and kittens—everything you love. But a rattlesnake sits in the corner. You won't enjoy a single puppy because your eye stays locked on that snake. That's how your brain works with dating. One wrong thing captures all your focus while opportunities pass you by.

Women tell me they do everything right, yet feel stuck. I always find their attention lives somewhere else—on past hurt, on people's opinions, on what's not working. Your surface actions don't matter when your mind swirls with fear and frustration underneath.

This year, learn to direct your attention consciously. Stop the exhausting mental loops. Create space for the love life you want.

Ready to redirect your attention and momentum in 2026? Schedule a 90-minute Life Momentum Planning Session at sadecurry.com/info. Limited spots available before the holidays.

Transcript

But if your attention gets hijacked by all the 99% guys that you will inevitably meet along the way, then your attention is no longer on your journey. And that’s what wastes people’s time. That’s why year after year after year, you’re not meeting the guy. You’re breaking up, or it fizzles.

When you go on social media, when you listen to a lot of dating coaches, they are talking about the guys. They’re talking about the men. We already know all that. You already know all that.

In my program, we don’t talk a lot about men. We don’t talk a lot about men and their characteristics and what they want and what they’re looking for. A lot of our work is on the woman’s vision. Like, is this vision right for you?

When it’s crystallized and I can get a client to focus on that vision, it’s so easy for them to not be with the wrong guy. It’s so easy because their attention is on the vision. So the minute something doesn’t match the vision, they’re out. You don’t have to waste a whole bunch of time on that.

Whatever is really on your mind is where your mental, emotional, and even physical energy is going to go—even if your actions don’t look like that’s what’s happening. So people tell me, “I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing.” I know that somewhere in here, their attention is on something else. They’re frustrated about something else. They’re in despair about something else. They’re not in perfect alignment with their vision.

When you think about dating—whether it’s time to date, or the kind of people you’re dating, or your results with dating—I want you to think about: Where is your attention?

Right now, like just today, before you listened to this podcast episode, what were you thinking about? If you were thinking about the fact that you didn’t have a partner, and you’ve been trying so hard, and all those things—those things may be technically true. I will never invalidate your true experience. Your true experience is what it is.

But if your attention is on all the things that are not working in your dating journey, then your attention is also not on problem-solving. Your attention is not on the opportunities you have. Your attention is not on, “How do I build my capacity? How do I create more opportunities? How do I improve the quality of the people that I’m dating? How do I move from this level of dating, this level of guy, to dating the next level of guy?”

The key to that is to first of all become aware of where your attention is. I can’t do that. I can’t get into your head and do that for you. I can’t go in there physically and do it. It’s something that I do together with my clients. I’m asking the questions and going line by line. This is a very focused process to be able to do that.

Another example I like to use with my clients is what I call the “puppy vs. rattlesnake dilemma.” Imagine you are in a room. For those of you who like pets, think of the kind of animal you like. If you don’t like animals, think of cotton candy—whatever it is you love.

The room is filled with the thing that you love. I like puppies, I like kittens, so I’m thinking of a room filled with puppies and kittens. It’s just delightful, all the fur and petting and all that is going on.

But now imagine that in the corner of the same room, there is a rattlesnake. It’s a small one. It’s a baby rattlesnake. But it’s got a rattle. Snakes have all the venom they’re going to have when they’re born. So a baby rattlesnake potentially will kill you faster than an old, decrepit rattlesnake—because they actually have more venom.

If you are in that situation, it doesn’t matter how much cotton candy is in the room. It doesn’t matter how many puppies are in the room. It doesn’t matter what wonderful thing is happening around you. Your eye is going to be on that rattlesnake. You’re going to be looking at it. There could be this whole wonderful experience that you could potentially have—you’re not going to pay attention to that.

There could be all of these opportunities for your next level and for your guy, or your wonderful romantic experience—you’re not going to pay attention to that. Because you’re like, “I don’t care how wonderful this is. I need to make sure I’m not bit by that rattlesnake.” Right?

That is the principle of your attention, your energy, and your focus flowing where your attention goes. So if your attention is on the thing that does not create what you want, you won’t create what you want.

Sometimes I’m talking to my clients and we’re doing the part of my program that is the partner profile, where we are developing their vision for their partner. Many women come to me and they’re telling me, “Well, my ex was this way, so I don’t want this. My ex was a sales guy, and I don’t want a sales guy. My ex was an attorney, and I don’t want that.”

They are actively in the action of trying to create a partner profile, but their attention is on their past experience. Their attention is on their ex. Their attention is on what went wrong. Let’s say their ex had 100 characteristics. So they are focused on the “not my ex” characteristics. Because of that, they miss the millions of wonderful qualities that are available in the person who would be right for them.

They miss even looking at their own values and their own experience and their own desire and their own vision and creating the life that’s going to be right for them, because they are so focused on not having the same experience with their ex.

Often, when I’ve talked to women who come with that, what has happened before they start working with me is that they’ve had a series of experiences of people who were not their ex, but also not the right guy for them—because their attention was just on, “Whatever is not the ex.” Just because a person wasn’t like your ex doesn’t mean that person is right for you.

What you want is to have your eyes and your mind and your thoughts and your energy and your attention and your actions—everything has to come together in this strategy and plan and movement that creates the thing that you actually want.

Final part coming up next...

Here is the concluding portion of the cleaned-up transcript:

Another example that might help is when you’re working. Sometimes when you sit down to work on something—you want to write an article, you want to create a podcast—like even for me, because these are things that I use in my daily life every single day. I want to script a podcast, write an article, or write an email to my clients or whatever.

You're sitting at the desk in your office, supposed to be doing something, and you just find that you can’t get it going. You can’t get started. You can’t move it forward. You just feel stuck. That’s the catch-all term for that feeling.

Next time that happens, I want you to ask yourself: What am I really thinking about?

So, let’s say you were trying—here’s a good one. I have a client who is building a coaching business. We work on her procrastination and things that come up. I remember one session where we were talking about the procrastination that had happened before she started working with me and how long it was taking her to even be willing to come back and work on this.

She wanted my help with all of that. I asked, “Okay, what’s been going on?” Come to find out, she’s had this business before, but her ex-husband got involved in the business and basically created a lot of situations that ruined her reputation with clients.

So whenever she sat down to market, to sell, or to create—even though at the forefront of her mind, and what was on her calendar, was, “I’m going to do this”—she would get there and feel stuck. Because unconsciously, somewhere in her mind, the pain of putting herself out there again after everything that had happened was what was really on her mind.

That anxiety, fear, shame, and embarrassment—those things were swirling. But she wasn’t aware of it. She wasn’t aware that was what was holding her back. It wasn’t like she was sitting there thinking about her ex and what had happened. That was just what was happening under the surface. That was where her attention was.

Even though consciously she wanted her attention here, she was trying. She thought her attention would be on this. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t move forward. So she thought, “Maybe it’s the stage of life I’m in,” and all these things.

If you’re working on something or working on dating and you're worried about what people are going to think about you—and this is another one I run into, where clients are more worried about what their friends will think about the person they date than they are about the experience they’re going to have—or if you’re ruminating on what your ex did and all the things that happened, the fact that he’s moved on and there’s this young girl that he’s with, and all of those things, that’s what’s swirling inside.

You’re worried about the person you have a date with on Friday—whether they’re going to approve of you or reject you. You’re rehashing the last time someone ghosted you. You’re practicing the text message you’re going to send to that guy to tell him what’s what. All that is where your attention is going—even though, on the surface, you think you’re dating, you think you’re creating a new relationship.

On the surface, you think you’re doing all these things, but your attention is really going to something else. And when that happens, you won’t have enough capacity to bring your goal to life.

When that happens, you’ll be exhausted. Sometimes people wonder why they’re so exhausted, even though they haven’t gotten the important things in their lives done. They didn’t bring their goals to life. Like, we look back at 2025 and it’s like, “A lot of the things I wanted to get done didn’t get done.” It’s because you were expending a lot of mental and emotional energy on the things that were taking up your attention—not on your actual goals.

I’m not going to dive really deep into this today, but when you’re socialized as a woman to focus on relationships—which many of us were—relationships can be a bigger distraction than actual logistics, like taking the kids here and there, working, getting things done.

What’s going on in here—about our relationships, phone calls we’re taking, boundaries that need to be set—all those things to do with relationships—I’ve realized through coaching hundreds of women that that is a huge source of distractions for women.

I’ll probably talk about that on a separate podcast episode—the sources of the distraction. Right now, this is just a general thing about where is your attention really going?

So now, when I’m working—when I want to create a podcast episode, when I want to create a program or whatever—and I find that there’s a gap between the energy I have toward it and my desire for it, I’m like, “That means my attention is somewhere else.” What is that? I take the time to figure out what that is, and I either redirect or I resolve it.

I have a ton of tools that I use to examine where my attention is and then to consciously direct it. This is not a willpower kind of thing. It’s a conscious direction based on working through whatever I need to work through.

I stop. I don’t try to stress myself. I don’t get down on myself. I don’t beat myself up. I don’t criticize myself for having a gap. That’s just how the human brain works. We’re designed to focus on problems and fix them. Our brain just believes that the problem is going to kill you.

Sometimes I don’t resolve the problem physically. I resolve it through coaching my mind, reframing it, or creating a new perspective or direction. Sometimes it’s postponing it consciously. There are all kinds of ways to do that. But it needs to be done. Otherwise, my energy isn’t freed up to think through the actual work I want to do, to think through the places I want to go, people I want to connect with.

If my energy is tied up with someone over here because of something chaotic going on, it’s really hard to have emotional energy available for connection elsewhere.

So making sure your attention is consciously directed in a way that feels good—it’s not a disciplinary kind of thing. Making sure your attention is directed to the things you actually want to accomplish is key to achieving your goals.

What I’d like to offer you, if this sounds like something you’re like, “Yeah, I would love to curate my attention for 2026,” whether it’s your attention for dating, wrapping up your divorce, or other areas of your life—my consultation calls, which you’ve heard me talk about on the podcast, have changed.

They are now called a Life Momentum Planning Session. I’m doing these for people who want to use these methods in 2026. Over the next two weeks, before the Christmas holiday rolls around, I am making these single 90-minute Life Momentum Sessions available. This is happening now. We’re going to wrap these up probably a few days before Christmas.

So I opened my calendar to make those available. If you would like to become aware of where your attention is going, set your goals for 2026 in a sustainable way that allows you to create the life, love, dating experience, impact project, or business you want—without stress—this is for you.

The key is: when your attention is flowing where you want it to go, you can do the thing without stress.

And this is not to say you need to ignore the people that you love—we all love people. Relationships can be messy. This is not to say you need to cut everyone off so you can focus. No, that’s not it either.

Your conscious direction of attention is something you do internally. It’s not about telling people, “Don’t talk to me now.” It’s about internally directing your attention. You are creating things in your mind, and you are curating your energy inside your body so that automatically, it flows to the thing that you want. That can happen in so many ways.

If this sounds interesting to you, I have a lot more detail about this method on my consultation page. You can go to sadecurry.com/info. That’s S-A-D-E C-U-R-R-Y dot com forward slash info. You can grab one of the limited sessions available and read about the Life Momentum Method.

See if that sounds like something that’s going to fix some of the gaps you’ve had in your execution this year—execution of your goals at work, in parenting, in your relationships with your children, friends, community, money, or anything else you set out at the beginning of the year to accomplish.

Was your energy hijacked along the way? Was your attention hijacked?

If it was, you really want to learn this method. The beauty is that this is a one-time session. It’s not like my private coaching, which is six months. If you’re interested in that, of course we can talk about that as well. However, this is one session—90 minutes—where you can really explore this idea that you can take more powerful control of your ability to implement and execute on your goals, dating or otherwise, with these tools.

So I want you to check that out. See where your attention is going. Even just practicing that during the day today—“Where is my attention going? What am I thinking about?”—that’s it.

It’s metacognition. You’re thinking about what you’re thinking about, and you’re going deeper. Not just on the surface—like, “Right now I’m thinking about recording this podcast episode”—but there are several layers of what I’m thinking about that are happening at the same time.

So check that out. sadecurry.com/info. Thank you, as always, for your time and attention. I have appreciated you hanging with me this year. I love hearing from you. If you have enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on whatever platform you’re listening on. I’ll see you on the next episode.