Years of coaching thousands of people to reach their
goals has taught me that there is one factor that makes all
the difference in attracting and maintaining great relationships.
People who have great relationships have fi gured this out consciously
or unconsciously. The secret to being irresistibly attractive
to your current or potential mate is to fulfi ll your unmet
emotional needs and live your top core values.
After working on her personal and emotional needs, one
of my clients, a senior executive at a major fi nancial institution,
was completely and utterly astounded and asked, “Why hasn’t
anyone ever mentioned emotional needs before? Why isn’t this
common knowledge?” She couldn’t believe that something
so essential to her happiness and success in life, not to mention
in love, was something she had never heard about before.
Why is this a big secret? I had to agree that very few people
talk about their personal and emotional needs, for two reasons:
(1) they aren’t aware they have them, or (2) if they are aware,
they don’t want anyone to know about them. We think that if
we don’t talk about our needs, no one will notice them. Ha!
In this book, you’ll learn not only what your top four personal and emotional needs are, but also how to fulfi ll them so that
they effectively disappear.
The Law of Attraction is that thoughts manifest reality. What
you think about is what you attract. Like attracts like. As Henry
Ford wisely said, “If you think you can or if you think you can’t,
you are right.” The fl ip side to that is that if you are focusing
on lack you’ll attract more lack because what you focus on
expands. And if you resist your situation by denying it, ignoring
it, or simply being unconscious or unaware of it, it will get
worse because what you resist persists. You can’t ignore your
debt and expect it to magically disappear. These are the fundamental
laws of attraction. Like attracts like. The obvious corollary
to that law is this: If you don’t need it, you are more likely to attract
it. Any form of neediness is incredibly repellent—the greater
your sense of lack, the greater your need, the more likely you
are to repel the thing you want most.
We all know at some level that neediness in any form is
inherently repellent. Have you ever been at a party where
someone was chatting with you and you couldn’t wait to get
away from him? You probably made up some excuse like having
to get a drink in an effort to get away. You couldn’t say precisely,
but something about this person makes you want to end
the conversation as quickly as possible. Well, that something is
usually an unmet need.
I know what you are thinking: “I’m not like that. I’m not
needy.” But what you may not realize is that all human beings
have personal and emotional needs and unless you know what
your specifi c needs are, you are probably walking around with
some unfulfi lled needs. Most of us are. I certainly was.
Even incredibly smart and successful people have unmet
needs. I remember reading an article about Jane Fonda’s divorce
from Ted Turner, one of the wealthiest and most successful people
in the world. She said he was “too needy.” It doesn’t matter
how successful you are; if you don’t know what your needs are and how to fulfi ll them, you will be, at some level, emotionally
needy. And although people who don’t know you well might
not notice, your partner or mate will. So even the happily married
will benefi t from working this program and discovering
their personal and emotional needs. If you are unhappily married,
this book could very well be your salvation. In fact, one of
my clients, a recently divorced business consultant and mother
of two children, said, “If I had only known about my emotional
needs sooner, I could have saved my marriage.”
Most of my clients are very successful people (high-level
corporate executives, business owners, government offi cials),
and many of them have been happily married for years. They
couldn’t believe the difference that knowing and fulfi lling their
needs made in all their relationships, especially with their loved
ones and families. It is the secret to being irresistibly attractive.
It is the law of attraction: when we don’t need someone, we are
more likely to attract someone. The more you need someone
or something, the more likely you are to repel that person or
thing. Not fair, but defi nitely true.
If you have unfulfi lled needs, you can’t be irresistibly attractive
no matter how good-looking you are or how much money
you have. Remember, even Ted Turner with his good looks and
money couldn’t hang on to Jane Fonda. Fortunately, the reverse
is also true. People who have fulfi lled their personal and emotional
needs are very attractive even if they don’t have much in
the looks or money department. They radiate a sense of confi -
dence and self-awareness. We want to be around them. They are
confi dent and emotionally mature. They don’t need us, so they
are around simply because they want or choose to be.
As a culture we have collapsed the notions of love and needs
into one entity. Most people think that if someone needs you,
that is good. That means they love you. Not true. Love can
only be freely given. You can’t force or require someone to
love you. You can only attract love. Our needs, on the other hand, are requirements. We must get them fulfi lled in order to
be our best. For that reason, needs and love are incompatible.
The best way to attract a man or woman is to not need them.
How do you do that if you are a lonely singleton? You work
this program until you completely fulfi ll your needs and are living
your top values and passions on a regular basis. Then, you’ll
be irresistible. You’ll also be more likely to attract the mate that
you really want, not the one you think you need.
By the way, these principles apply to business as well. If you
want to attract better people and opportunities, get your needs
met. It really is that simple. However, I’ll warn you right now,
this program is not easy. It is the hardest coaching work my clients
have to tackle. Once they’ve done it, however, they never
go back to living the old way. Life is so much easier and more
satisfying when our needs are fulfi lled. In this book, I’ve made
the rather diffi cult process of identifying and fulfi lling our personal
and emotional needs as simple as possible. There is even
a quiz that you can take in about twenty minutes that will tell
you what your top four needs are. And I’ve provided numerous
examples of how my clients have fulfi lled the most common
twenty-one needs, which you can use to fi nd ways to meet
your own needs.
This isn’t the sort of book you can just read and expect to
reap all the benefi t. You will have to do the exercises to get the
results. And, at some point in the program, you will probably
bump into resistance. You won’t want to do it and you’ll have
all sorts of good reasons why these assignments don’t apply to
you. This is the challenge: it is precisely because you don’t want
to do the work that you have the unfulfi lled need in the fi rst
place. If you didn’t resist, then you would have satisfi ed that
particular need ages ago. Resistance is actually a good sign that
you’ve hit on a real need. So rejoice at the point when you are
ready to toss this book out the window. That is when you need it the most! And, of course, I’ve included some advice on how
to break through resistance.
The good news is that you can fulfi ll all your personal and
emotional needs once and for all. And, contrary to popular
opinion, you don’t need your partner or mate to do it for you.
In fact, the best way to attract and keep a mate is not to need
one.
Once you fulfi ll your emotional needs, you’ll be ready for
the fun part of the program—discovering and living your top
values and passions in life. This is when life gets really exciting
and interesting. Let me guess, you’re thinking you’ll just skip
the needs bit and go right for the fun stuff. Wrong! You can do
this, of course, but here is the danger: your unmet needs could
very well come back and bite you in the butt. Or, they simply
might deprive you of feeling satisfi ed in life. One client, a retired
CEO, happily married with grown kids, confessed that in spite
of all his success in life, he was never really satisfi ed. It never felt
like enough. Underneath it all lurked a rankling discontent. He
had it all—money, career success, a good, happy family, a loving
wife, travel—but for some reason, he still wasn’t satisfi ed. He
didn’t realize that he had never fulfi lled his emotional needs.
Being unaware of his needs, they ran his life. One of his needs
was to be the best, so he used to be the fi rst one in the offi ce
and the last to leave, even if that meant waking up every morning
at four o’clock to get to the offi ce by six. Needless to say, he
wished he had learned about his personal needs earlier. For one
thing, he would have gotten a lot more sleep!
While many people struggle to get through the personal
and emotional needs work, they all love doing the values work.
We are naturally drawn to our values. Most people dream about
having the time one day to fully express their values and passions.
In this book you’ll learn how to identify your core values
and passions in life—the things you can’t wait to wake up to do each day, whether that is creating, leading, managing, inspiring,
peace, spirituality, beauty, adventure, fun, or play. Ideally, you
want to restructure your life so that every day you can fully
express at least one of your top four values. Your values are
related to your purpose in life. It is what you were born to do
and what you love to do. They give you energy, immense joy,
and a profound sense of fulfi llment. If you aren’t aware of your
values or haven’t set up your life to live them, your life is halflived.
It is like having the cake without the frosting—not nearly
as good as it could be. Don’t make the mistake of waiting for a
mate to start really living your life. When you are fully expressing
your values, you are incredibly attractive—downright irresistible,
in fact.
Once you are living your life to the fullest and your needs
are met, you’ll fi nd that you will attract all sorts of great people
and interesting opportunities. You’ll need to learn how to
handle the power of irresistible attraction and how to accept all
the good things coming your way. Most people unconsciously
block the very things they say they most want. You might fi nd
that you sabotage your success in subtle ways. One recently
unemployed client said he wanted more money. Yet, when he
found a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk of New York City,
he felt so uncomfortable about accepting this gift from the
universe that he gave it to his roommate. That same week, he
was house-sitting for some friends and they left him an envelope
with some cash as a thank-you. He told them thanks for
the kind offer, but he couldn’t accept it. I guarantee you that
if you do the work of this program, good things will come
your way, but you must also learn to say yes to the things you
want. You can sit right next to your future mate and miss him
or her altogether for the same reason. We are so used to having
to work hard for everything we have in our lives that we think
if it comes to us easily, we aren’t meant to have it. Or it is “too
good to be true” so we don’t trust it. Contrary to what you may believe, life is meant to be easy. It doesn’t have to be such
a struggle, but you must learn to accept graciously when you
start effortlessly attracting what you’ve always wanted.
In the last part of the book, I’ll share some tips on being
simply irresistible that work for everyone—married or single,
male or female. And, for those single women who are eager to
fi nd a mate and procreate, Chapter 10 contains the basic rules
of dating and a time line so that you fi nd your mate sooner
rather than later, especially for women with an eye on the biological
clock ticking relentlessly away.
The best way to attract and maintain a great relationship is
to not need one and to be living a glorious life with or without
the person. If you aren’t totally thrilled with your life, then
there is work to do!