Self Knowledge is a lifetime process and helps you to define your parameters for your lifetime partner.  Ask yourself the following questions in order to help you in the process:

What are your main goals: immediate and long-range?

What are you doing to reach these goals?

What are your five best qualities?  What is your ideal self?  If there were no obstacles in your way, how would you like to be?

What are your five weakest qualities?

What do you consider the main problems in your life? What are you doing about them?

When do you feel most happy?  What motivates you?

When do you feel sad or frustrated?  How do you react to difficult or frustrating situations?  Do you give up or are you motivated to try harder?

To what degree are you a "giver"?  To what degree are you a "taker"?

Do you usually or rarely have peace of mind? Why?

 Would you consider yourself a happy person?  Why?

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King Solomon says, "The person who's found a wife has found good". Your soul mate isn't someone outside of yourself.  He or she is the other half of your true self.  You were separated at birth.  If/when you can recognize your "other half" in your shidduch, it's like recognizing yourself!  That takes practicing living from the "inside-out".  Don't hold out for deep romantic love.  If you want to understand who someone else really is inside, if they're right for you, you first have to divest yourself of preconceptions, expectations and delusions.  You need a spark-but rid yourself of your rules and discover an entire world you never dreamed of or noticed.

 We've been looking for compatibility but not necessarily for marriage.  I often hear: "When I find someone I'm really crazy about, then I'll get married."  In the secular world that's been the mission statement and the system claims some very attractive promises of happy marriages.  For the last 50 years, people married only the ones they were crazy about and the divorce rate skyrocketed.  Today it is higher than ever before.   What happened to all those promises?  They failed because they don't follow Torah's wisdom and we're not working the shidduch system right.  If you do it , it works.

Don't get into a relationship. Get into a marriage.  That means first and foremost define what 's important in your life now, what's precious about it and then find someone who shares  those ideals and values.  Define and describe for yourself your vision of a perfect ideal marriage relationship one year from now and  search for the one you need to share it with.  The "spark" can then be fanned into a full blown love that's based on a solid foundation of mutual respect, G-d willing.  Be real focused and clarify if this is the person for you, your true soulmate.  If yes, don't wait. Get married.  (from the rich Torah wisdom of R. Manis Friedman-N'Shei Chabad Newsletter, June 2012 and Shimona Tzukernik-How to find your soulmate-The Kabbalah Coach)

With blessings for faith-filled "findings"  of your true soul mate.

Devorah