Attracting Your Extraordinary Love (3 page)

The time you spend should be consistent and
enjoyable. The new material you approach should be challenging to
grasp so that you expand your learning capacity as you expand your
knowledge. If your interests change, change your study material. A
study buddy will help ensure that this need is filled
successfully.

New knowledge creates sunshine that will
brighten, turbocharger, and surround your day with a halo of
positive energy and enlightenment. It will make you more
interesting to you and of more interest to him.

Living true to your Primary Needs will
transform you. You will look and feel as never before. You will
radiate with a magnetism and joyfulness that will draw others to
you.

When you’re living your life based on your
truest expressions, you will have a certain mindset, go to certain
places, and surround yourself with certain groups of people – among
whom your love mate will be.

If you are focused away from yourself, not
living what you most want and care about, your love mate will be
where he is supposed to be – mentally, emotionally and practically
- but you won’t - because he is living true to himself, and you’re
not.

In fact, you may be sitting right next to him
and not notice him, because you’re thinking about different kind of
person. You’re thinking about the kind of person who is part of the
lifestyle you’ve built- rather than the one you should be
building.

Claim the courage to fill your Primary Need
by finding and living true to you. The way to do so is through a
search for self-knowledge coupled with action.

Filling your Primary Need is a difficult and
complex effort, embedded with challenges that will make great
demands of you. Yet it is the most precious and life affirming of
efforts.

Take small and courageous steps forward. As
you do, life will take giant steps forward.

You need not be “100% you” for extraordinary
things to happen. You just have to begin.

As you are becoming the true you – you’ll
know it. Your self-confidence will be elevated, your charisma will
become more pronounced. You will feel more beautiful because you
will be more beautiful. And you will move dramatically closer to
him.

The key to finding him is to find you
first.

THOUGHT IV

To know it’s him is by knowing him.

THE LOVE MATE:
HAVE YOU FOUND HIM?

Take the time and make the effort to find the
true him, as you did yourself.

The way to know he’s your love mate is to
know him.

To know him:

Observe him, Watch him, Be with him, Ask him
questions.

Then Study him.

Observe him

Anywhere and everywhere, with anybody and
everybody – when he’s at his best, and when he’s had a difficult
day or a sleepless night. Before you excuse his behavior, note it
and assess it.

Observe him

Watch and listen to how he acts and how he
reacts, the tone of his words, and the intensity of his moods. A
person’s tone will define his words and shed a bright light on
what’s going on inside of him. Pay close attention to a tone that
hints at anger and anxiety.

Imagine the daughter you will someday have,
growing up with him - or a fragile friend being in his hands.

Remove your feelings, and be cautious of
rationalizations. Be as objective as you possibly can. Objectivity
brings clarity.

Be with him.

And share experiences that reflect his
sensitivities -what’s important to him - and what he likes
doing.

Be with him

When he works with a learning disabled child,
and in the class he’s taking on the prominent thinkers of his
heritage. Engage the personal growth and expression side of his
world with him. Understand what touches his heart and why, how he
expresses himself in this segment of his life, and what it does to
him.

Be with him.

Go hiking, play charades, blow bubbles on the
beach – be with him when he’s having his fun. Don’t observe it
-participate in it.

Walking the walk is infinitely more
insightful than sharing the talk. Doing so will reveal a side of
the true him otherwise only minimally grasped through
conversation.

Experience the true him with him.

Ask him questions

About what lifts him and strengthens him,
what saddens him and challenges his confidence, what his dreams
are, and how he will build his legacy.

Ask him questions

About whom he looks up to and why, whom he
doesn’t, and why not. Find out what he would do if he could do
anything. And as to his past, what he would change and how he would
change it.

Thoughtfulness about what was, with an honest
association to what is - hopes, dreams, and a plan - are
necessities for someone to understand himself, and relate
successfully to another.

Discover him in this way. It will add
essential insights to your growing and evolving kaleidoscope of
knowledge. Your ability to be rigorous with him, and honest with
yourself, will facilitate the right decision about him.

Study him:

Understand how he is naturally in three
defining areas:

Honesty, Kindness, and his General Approach
to Life.

HONESTY

It’s critical to get a sense of how honest he
is.

You must assess his level of truthfulness in
his personal dealings with friends, strangers, and in career or
business. More important, you must get a crystal-clear sense of how
truthful he is with himself.

It takes courage for a person to look at
himself objectively, particularly when he’s stumbled. It takes
greater courage for a person to acknowledge when he’s stumbled, ask
forgiveness, and correct his actions.

At some point in the future he may cause pain
to you or others. You must get a sense of whether he’ll attempt to
put the situation aside and ignore it, or own up to it and fix
it.

Perseverance and objectivity will be
necessary for you to understand how honest he is. This effort is
essential, in that the extent of his truthfulness will have a
profound impact on you and what you will share with him.

KINDNESS

There are those who do acts of kindness from
time to time, and there are those who have a mindset of kindness.
There are those who do nice things, and there are those who have a
top-of-mind perspective of putting others first.

Kindness as a mindset, is a foundation to a
healthy relationship and is benchmarked by a proactive,
anticipatory approach to the feelings and needs of others. It is
more than an attitude of caring and consideration. It is a daily
vocabulary of giving – in both word and action. Its opposite is not
cruelty or insensitivity but laziness and lack of awareness.

Think about how, and if, he will consider
your needs – well in advance. If he’ll think about and prepare for
something that may affect your feelings –several steps before the
situation develops. If, and to what extent, he will stand squarely
with you through the difficult times, working to understand your
pain and your fears.

This awareness will give you a sense of
whether kindness is something he expresses from time to time or is
how he lives each day.

HIS NATURAL APPROACH

An optimistic or accepting person will see
the good in people and situations. He will be trusting, forgiving
and patient. He will be open and willing to bring others into his
life and learn from them. He will live with a paradigm of
sharing.

A critical or cynical person will be less
trusting and open, and more judgmental.

Your self-esteem can be built or shattered by
the one to whom you’ve dedicated your life. A slight hand motion or
“tisk” from the one you love, can crush you. The right words at the
right time will give you strength and the ability to master, even,
the most daunting of challenges.

You must internalize his natural approach to
life, and understand how it makes you feel - even when he’s not
around.

THOUGHT V

There are things that prevent your eyes
from seeing honestly and your mind
from speaking logically to your heart.

BEWARE OF THE
STUMBLING BLOCKS

LOVE IN YOUR MIND

You may fall in love with a someone you’ve
created, or a personal fantasy of someone you’d love to love.

You may establish an image in your mind of
the person you want to love, someone with outstanding
characteristics - your ideal mate. You may then attach that image
to the man who happens to be in your life -and fall in love with
him - based purely on what you created.

In fact, you don’t love him. The one you love
exists only in your mind.

Prepare a list of the most pronounced
characteristics of the man you love. Share it with someone who
knows him well. Assess, together, whether you love him or something
you turned him into.

LOVE IN MEMORY

You may fall in love with the hope of
replacing something that is gone and cannot be again.

You may try to reclaim the love you’ve lost
from a father, a dear friend, or another love - with a new or
romantic love. It’s innocent, it’s sincere – and it is extremely
difficult to detect.

Be aware: If someone steps out of your life
or is taken from your life, the emptiness created by this person
cannot be filled by another.

Be particularly sensitive to your emotional
needs if you’ve recently lost someone dear to you, or if you lost
someone years ago but never mourned the loss.

Objectively assess what you love about your
lover, and here again make sure that what you love about him is
truly his.

LOVE OF NEEDING LOVE

You may fall in love based on your need to be
needed or your fear of walking away.

You may commit yourself to someone because
you feel sorry for him and want to help him - or because you love
the way he needs you. You may believe you fell in love with him,
but in truth, your love is based either on a sense of
responsibility, or the good feeling that being depended upon
brings.

Don’t let your feelings, which are legitimate
in terms of giving help to another, be confused with those that are
legitimate when building a love relationship with another.

Reach out to one of your soulmates and allow
him to help you clarify: Do you feel love for the person or do you
love the feeling of being loved?

LOVE TO PLEASE OTHERS

You may fall in love as a result of the love
of people who care for you.

Parents – and others who love you dearly -
want you to be happy. Sometimes they want it so badly that they may
not see your true needs or the long term implications of their
actions. They may subtly push you to be with someone you shouldn’t
be with, or pull you away from someone you should.

They may mistakenly assume that their wants
are the same as yours, and what made them happy in their
relationships, will make you happy in yours.

They understand you better than most – but
not as well as you understand yourself. Your ability to live true
to you, by fulfilling your Foundational and Primary Needs, will
enable you to be more objective and clear minded. Your greater
sense of self confidence and self-expression will enable your
judgment to be more sound and truthful.

Consider the advice of others, but remember -
it’s just that.

LOVE OF THE LOVING

Physical expression has the power to cloud
your thoughts and color your feelings.

Sexual relations are the meeting point of
both worlds of beauty – the physical and the spiritual. A lifetime
commitment allows sex to be what it was meant to be, a supernatural
expression delivered in an earthly medium.

If, however, sex is simply the next step in
your relationship, it may cause confusion – in you and in him.

It may cause an opaqueness about your
judgment and not allow you to understand why you feel what you feel
- or from where your love flows. It may derail your thought
processes and give you the impression that you love him – when in
fact, you love the loving.

Time won’t change this.

If you wait an “appropriate” amount of time
before giving yourself to him, that time may create the impression
that your love with him is a forever love and, therefore, sex is
okay.

This may not be so.

In fact, the relationship may have gone as
far as it could, and would have begun to falter, had sex not pushed
it further along.

Many relationships end with sadness and
ruptured lives because they’re built on sexual expression
masquerading as emotional expression.

Sex: The Biggest Stumbling Block of All