Survivor's Francesca Hogi knows how to manifest love
The love coach explains why "the one" is a fantasy we should unlearn
✨Gather round for a new episode, lovers.✨
Love coach Francesca Hogi lovingly calls herself the biggest loser in Survivor history—she was the first one voted off the island not once, but twice. Francesca took the strange fame and shame that came along with her losses and decided to change her whole life.
She quit her job as a lawyer to become an entrepreneur, and built her own business as a matchmaker, then love coach. She ended relationships and deadend dating patterns that weren’t working for her and manifested her current great love. She wrote out a short love vision detailing what she wanted her next relationship to feel like, and she read it everyday, until it felt “emotionally resonant.” One day, she woke up and just knew she was going to meet her next partner soon; within a week, she met her current boyfriend by bumping into him on the streets of Los Angeles.
On this episode, Francesca talks with me about her Survivor experience (the good, the bad and the ugly), the power of manifestation, and the importance of self-worth in dating. Plus, we discuss our shared philosophy that the idea of “the one” is a sham, and how the scarcity mindset around dating is one of the biggest ways we hold ourselves back from finding love. Give it a listen.
Below, read a part of my conversation with Francesca where she asks everyone to challenge the concept of “the one” and take a long, hard look at how we think about love.
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Jillian Anthony [JA]: So you manifested your current love, which sounds amazing. And I definitely want to talk more about manifestation in a second because I feel like that's a really big part of what you do now, especially in your rooms at Clubhouse. But first, I just want to go back to a couple of really important things you said when you were just speaking about all this. You had mentioned, there's more than one person for all of us. And you had also said that if you hadn't met your current boyfriend, you would have met someone else.
Francesca Hogi [FH]: Yes. That might sound unromantic but that is how I feel.
JA: I love to hear that because I completely agree with that belief system, because we're just so thoroughly taught that the one exists, and we need to find that person from the minute we're born. So I'd love to hear more about your thoughts about that.
FH: I think that it when it comes to the way that we talk about romance and relationships culturally, it's one of the last bastions of a mindset that people need to challenge on a massive scale. The idea that love is a fantasy, and there's one perfect person, and when you meet that perfect person, then your life is magically fulfilled, and you live happily ever after. That is an extremely pervasive message that we get told over and over and over again. Even though we all know from our actual life experience, that's not how love works. And yet, so many people still date just chasing that instant chemistry, because instant chemistry means that they're the one.
So I think the first thing to do for anybody who's struggling with this and feeling like, Okay, there's one person, I've got to meet that person—just take a step back, and consider the source of that philosophy. And just think about the world. Is there only one person who would be your best friend? Is there only one person who you'd like to hang out with? Of course, there's always multiples, and we have this very pervasive scarcity mindset when it comes to love. And it serves no one. And it's not true. And it just doesn't even make sense. I'm sure there's been more than one person who you've loved. There's been more than one person that I've loved. And I would say that's the case for most people, right?
But also, it's predicated on this idea that when we meet the person, then everything works. Everything is magical, and we never have struggle, and it's happily ever after. So that's why we feel like, Oh, I haven't met the person because I've never met anyone who magically solves all of my problems and fulfills my life. It's like, Well, yeah, because that's not how it works, right? The standard is wrong. So it takes a mindset shift to approach romantic relationships from a much more reality-based and spirit-based place, because if you're a person who believes in the universe—the spiritual idea of a universal intelligence—and you know that manifestation is real, then do you also believe that the universe is one that has set you up to really, really want love, but there's only one person, and it's just like a needle in a haystack, and good luck scouring the globe? And hopefully, you'll get lucky and meet that one person. Like, do you really think that's how the universe works?
JA: So, so much pressure!
It's so much pressure! Like, oh wow, you're really lucky that you happen to run into the one person on the whole planet, and they happen to live, like, a mile away from you, or you went to school with them. Of course it doesn't make sense. It's just the one that you met that was the closest at that time, and that's what you were looking for.
JA: Yeah, I completely agree. In a previous episode, we were speaking of monogamy, and I was talking about how disillusioned I am with the fact that you are taught—You must find a relationship, you must find only one relationship, that is how you're going to be happy, especially for women, and how that's all bound up in patriarchy and heteronormativity. So it's really great to hear you say that, because I just don't hear that very much. And it is reality-based. That is life. And I feel like we're set up to fail.
FH: Oh, totally. I 100% agree. And it comes from a time and a mindset where it was all about women as property. The majority of the people that I work with are women who date men. And so I see this all the time, where it's someone who is so smart, she's so powerful, she's so creative, she's so amazing, and so progressive when it comes to every other part of her life. And then when it comes to love, it's like, she still has this "pick me," I need to be chosen by a man in order to feel worthy. And it's still this idea that it's all just supposed to be this magical fantasy, and it's one person, and then you'll meet that person, and then you'll be happy forever.
We need to really take a long, hard look about, What are the assumptions and the beliefs that we have about relationships? Are they true? Do we want them to be true? Do they serve us? Is this a disempowering belief, or is this an empowering one? Because if you want to manifest love, the first order of business is to believe that the love that you want is possible for you. The only way that you won't get the love that you want is if you settle for less.
Further resources:
If you’re interested in manifestation, Francesca hosts #ManifestationMondays conversations every Monday on the Clubhouse app—I listened in and it’s an extremely uplifting, supportive space. You can find plenty more of her wisdom on love on her Dear Franny podcast, plus you can book a love coaching session with Francesca and take her dating archetype quiz.
Extra special thanks to the team who helped bring the CSBC podcast to life:
My producer, Dave Kushner (Instagram, Twitter), co-host of the Wrestling with Friends podcast
My editor, Shawn DePasquale (Instagram, Twitter), co-host of The Nanny Podcast
Logo artist Jaymie de los Reyes
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