As you work, imagine you’re a movie director or a photographer with all the freedom in the world. It’s your job to come up with a series of images that represents the life you see yourself living with your new partner. Keep in mind that it’s easy enough to envision yourself finding a millionaire with a fancy house and lounging by the pool all day, being waited on hand and foot by servants, but be realistic. With your matched opposites checklist (see page 59) in hand to guide you, let your imagination wander. Focus on what you really want. Perhaps a feeling will come over you, or a single word or two, or maybe an image or movie clip will spring into your mind. Whatever it is, enjoy it for the moment, then let it unfold and see where it takes you. If nothing comes, perhaps your iPod will help. Listen to some of your favorite tunes and see if that inspires you.
Begin by cutting out images and words that strike you–anything that helps create a picture of your ideal relationship. Don’t glue anything at this stage, just merrily make a pile of anything that tickles your fancy. Next, lay the pictures out on the board, editing them as you go. Set aside anything that doesn’t feel right. You might want to consider breaking your vision board down into different areas: perhaps romance, family, adventure—but it’s your board and your relationship, so do whatever feels right. That said, no matter how you lay it out, leave a space in the middle for an awesome happy picture of yourself (just you).
Once you’ve got it arranged as you like, carefully glue it all down on the board. Feel free to write or draw on it as well, if it helps clarify your vision. Hang the finished board proudly on a wall where you will see it every single day.
Your Matched Opposite’s Imagination
We human beings live by stories. We also dream about them, worry about them, and die by them. And, most important, we fall in love with, and by, them. As we tell stories to ourselves and others the romance and the magic grows.
Storytelling is in our genes. We learn the basics as soon as we learn to talk. By the end of our childhood, we use stories to wangle, cajole, and get what we want. But for most it ends there. As we grow up we may still tell stories, but often without the structure to make much of an impact on other people. Stories are powerful, they are how we make sense of the world. If we can tell our own stories well, we can capture hearts and imaginations.
These exercises are designed to help you write the stories of your own life, which you can then use to hold other people’s attention. These are the stories you’ll be drawing upon to create your online dating profile, to accelerate emotional intimacy through mutual self-disclosure, and, eventually, to build romance within your relationship.
1 An Image Is Worth a Thousand Words
For starters, here’s a very effective way to make yourself memorable and at the same time make an emotional impression. Have you heard Paul Simon sing “Like a Bridge over Troubled Water?” Or Mick Jagger squeeze out “I’m a King Bee?” Or Bob Dylan sing “Like a Rolling Stone” (a real one, not Mick, the king bee)? Of course you remember. Those performances stick in your mind because they make pictures you can see in your mind. A mental image is worth a thousand words. Great songwriters use “things” (king bees, bridges, rolling stones) to represent themselves and their feelings. You can do the same.
At a recent workshop I asked the participants to write down the first thing that came into their heads to complete the phrase “I am kind of like a …” It could’ve been an eagle, a carrot, a Formula One race car–but it doesn’t matter. The only condition was that it had to be the very first thing that jumped into their heads. Next, they were asked to take two minutes to extend the comparison. Again, just to jot down whatever came to mind. The participants were surprised and pleased with the results. One woman said, “I have no idea where this came from. I put down ‘I am kind of like a Rubik’s Cube.’” Picking up her notes, she read out what she’d written. “I’m a puzzle to some people, but easy to solve when you know how. I’m colorful, and have different sides to my personality.” A young man went next. “I’m kind of like an ocean–sometimes calm, sometimes stormy.” Another said, “I’m kind of like a cup of coffee–warm and energetic.”
Try this for yourself. Write down the first thing that comes into your head to complete the sentences below. It must be a thing (a noun: a farm, a boat, a nudist beach, a rubber ball, etc.). You can’t use people-words like person, friend, or doctor.
Get your pen ready now because I want you to do it as fast as you can without thinking.
I am kind of like a______.
My best friend is kind of like a______.
Love is kind of like a______.
My life is kind of like a______.
My future is kind of like a______.
What do your answers reveal about you? Just one simple image tells a lot about a person. When you talk in images, you immediately get other people’s emotions, senses, and memory involved.
Now take it a stage further. Write a sentence or two explaining why you are like the image you chose. Do the same for your best friend and love.
1. I am kind of like a ______ because …
2. My best friend is kind of like a ______ because …
3. Love is kind of like a ______ because …
The idea is to use images from your own life to give a picture they can hold in their head. Instead of saying, “I really enjoy traveling and have been to lots of interesting places. I love the ocean, mountains, and thunderstorms. …” try saying, “I’m kind of like an eagle. I love to soar up high mountains and feel the rain on my wings.” Taking inspiration from your answers above, come up with a simple image about yourself, your dream date, or your ideal relationship, and then slip the odd hint into your chats and e-mail conversations with new acquaintances. Facts and figures and lists fade fast, but a picture lasts forever.
2 What’s Your Story?
Of course, you are much more than an image. You are a unique, well-intentioned individual with a heart–and a story to tell. When you can capture someone’s imagination with your words, you can set off a reaction that creates all sorts of pictures, sounds, feelings, smells, and tastes–a sensory reaction that brings things alive and makes them real. Stories make you real and human and memorable fast. Stories bind people together. That’s why your stories must be true.
Take a minute to look back at Olivia’s dating profile in chapter 4. It’s the one that begins with the hook, “On a good day, I’ve been told I resemble Uma Thurman. …” It started off as an essay Olivia wrote for herself. When she finished it she went back and harvested the interesting parts and arranged them into a very effective profile. This exercise will help you delve into what makes you you and bring out material that will help you connect with your matched opposite.
Set aside at least 15 minutes and jot down whatever pops into your mind about your life–from birth up to today–in the third person. In other words, as if you’re telling the story about someone else. Tip: If you’re having trouble getting started, try beginning with “Once upon a time, there was a little boy/girl called …” You can always drop the “Once upon a time” later. You may end up with several pages. That’s fine.
Next, go through your story and focus on the really important points. What mattered more, winning that Little League game when you were 11 or beating out 15 applicants for your first job? Your dog dying when you were 15 or being dumped by your big crush in tenth grade? (Don’t be afraid to admit it if the dog’s death hurt more!) Keep whittling away until you can read or tell your story in 90 seconds or less (about 200 words) without your notes. By doing this, you’ll find that key experiences come into focus, and certain patterns may emerge. You’ll have a sense of the essential “you” in a nutshell.
Once you’ve honed your story, change the story back into the first person: “I was born in Wyoming, but my family kept moving till I was 12. …” And so on.
3 Low-Risk Self-Disclosure
As I discussed in chapter 10, self-disclosure is an important part of creating intimac
y. Different levels of self-disclosure are appropriate for different situations. In this exercise, you’ll focus on crafting a story that offers low-risk disclosure–appropriate for telling people with whom you aren’t yet very well-acquainted.
Start crafting your story by thinking of a success you’ve had. It could be at home, at school, at work, five years ago, last week. It’s not important how big or small the success is. Perhaps you won the bugle player of the year award in high school or hold the Guinness World Record for counting tadpoles. Or maybe you simply biked home from work and caught all the green lights. What’s important this time, though, is to make sure your story has a beginning, a middle, and an end—as all good stories do. An incomplete story just frustrates your listener, so be sure to finish up by saying what you learned about yourself from your success.
Here’s an example: “I’ve always loved singing, but I’ve also always been really shy. For years, I sang along to CDs whenever I was alone. I was pretty sure I wasn’t a bad singer. Last week my friends insisted I go with them to a karaoke bar. They each did a number and then told me it was my turn. They literally had to drag me up to the stage. I ended up singing Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love.” People clapped and cheered—a lot! I amazed my friends, and I amazed myself. I learned that I’m not as shy as I thought and that I love singing for an audience—so much so that I’m going back to that karaoke bar next week!”
Play with your story until you know it well and can tell it in 90 seconds or less–and it makes you feel good. Practice telling the story to a friend or family member (or even your cat), and make sure you feel, sound, and look upbeat while you’re telling it.
4 Medium-Risk Self-Disclosure
Now it’s time to create a story that offers a more personal disclosure—something you might reveal to someone with whom you’ve grown a bit more comfortable. Prepare this story in the same way you did in Exercise 3. Except this time, think of a time when you made a good decision. Use the form below to guide your story’s development.
Problem/situation:
Resolution/outcome:
Beginning:
Middle:
End:
Moral/What did you learn?:
5 High-Risk Self-Disclosure
Once you’ve gotten past the initial stages of knowing someone, you begin to build trust and rapport through high-risk self-disclosure.
Using what you’ve learned in the previous exercises, come up with a story about a time in your life when you made a bad decision.
Problem/situation:
Resolution/Outcome:
Beginning:
Middle:
End:
Moral/What did you learn?:
6 A Magic Moment
This exercise is designed to help you move someone emotionally. Conjure up a memory of a single magic moment in your life, and then take just five minutes to turn it into a moving, uplifting story. Once again, make sure your story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Focus on the who, the where, and the when.
7 A Burning Ambition
This book begins with a quote by Luciano de Crescenzo: “We are each of us angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another.” This is the whole concept of matched opposites. Look at your hands as they hold this book. They too are matched opposites, as are your eyes and your legs. Both work seamlessly in harmony doing things they could never do alone. They are a matched pair with much in common while at the same time they are opposites. If you are to share your dreams with your matched opposite and come together in harmony you’ll need to share energy, drive, and motivation.
Use this final exercise to focus your dreams, this time not of love but of other things, and put them into words: not just words that make sense, but words that stir up energy and excitement.
Look back at the story of you, the stories of your successes, your good decisions, your bad decisions, your magic moments, and all you’ve learned about life so far. Take away your mask, turn off your fears, abandon any excuses, banish your negative self talk and your self-imposed limitations for a just few minutes. Let the burning ambition, that something special you’ve always wanted to do, that special something you care about and don’t even know why, that’s been glowing inside since you were a child, come out and dance in your mind.
When you are ready, take five minutes and turn what you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste into a moving, uplifting story. Give it whatever story form you choose, for this is your unique gift to the world.
epilogue
it all begins with you
Once upon a time, you couldn’t swim, and swimming didn’t make sense. You thought, “If I take my foot off the bottom of the pool, I’ll sink.” But you’d seen other people swimming, so you knew that even if it seemed impossible, it could actually be done. At some point your imagination worked with you instead of against you, and eventually you learned how to swim. Now you can do it without thinking, as naturally as a fish.
Once upon a time you couldn’t ride a bike. You thought, “If I put both feet on the pedals, I’ll fall over.” But what the heck, you had faith that it was possible because you saw others doing it. Once again, your imagination spurred you on and now you can ride that bike without thinking. It’s as easy as pie.
With both swimming and bike riding you had to practice. At first you couldn’t float; at first you couldn’t balance. Then, one magical day, you realized no one was holding you up in the water, and no one was steadying the bicycle. You were swimming or pedaling all by yourself, moving freely and confidently under your own steam.
It’s the same with finding your matched opposite. Once upon a time, you couldn’t understand why some people seemed to sail through life and have amazing relationships without any effort and you couldn’t. But that was then. Now you have faith in the methodologies you’ve embraced in these pages because they make sense. You’ve seen other people find their soul mates and you know that the magic moment will come for you, too.
Just as with swimming or riding a bike, you can’t really learn how to fall in love from reading a book, not even this one. Sure, you can read about the different swimming strokes or the parts of a bicycle; you can learn the theory and physics behind the sport. But to get to the heart of the matter you’ve got to leap in and learn by doing.
So it is with love. I went out and looked at what’s going on when people find and remain deeply in love, and I put what I learned in this book. I’ve talked to people who consistently got relationships wrong and had to learn from their mistakes. I’ve given you the theory, I’ve given you the techniques, but if you want the chemistry, you’ve just got to make the leap and start practicing. Mere wishing or hoping you’ll find the person of your dreams isn’t good enough. No matter how persuasive or optimistic you are, you have to get up, go out into the world, and have some experiences. And that’s where faith comes in to motivate you—faith in yourself and faith that the person who’s going to sweep you off your feet and keep you buzzed forever is out there and will find you when you least expect it.
It all begins and ends with your self-talk, the way you explain to yourself what’s happening around you. Focus on the positive and you’ll get it. Focus on the negative and you will get that, too. If true love is to be in your destiny, you must embrace and accentuate the positive. The moment will come when you realize you’ve found someone you click with so well that love just unfolds—as naturally and easily as swimming across a pool or cruising on a bike. Are you ready? You have all the tools you need to ignite the flames of love in your life—I’ve given you the kindling, the firewood, and the matches—but only you can light it. You’re on your own now and you’ll be fine. When true love comes, it will come as a surprise and an enormous relief. It always does—out of the blue. That’s part of the dizzying mystery of love and the giddy rush of romance. So go ahead and strike a match—and be ready for the best surprise of your life.
about the author
Nicholas Boothman, author
of How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less, learned how to establish instant rapport with strangers while working as a fashion and advertising photographer. A licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, he is a consultant to individuals, groups, and corporations who want to learn the communication skills needed to connect with others. He lives outside of Toronto.
Copyright © 2004, 2009 by Nicholas Boothman
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced—mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying—without written permission of the publisher. Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
This work was originally published in hardcover in 2004 as How to Make Someone Love You Forever in 90 Minutes or Less.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
eISBN 9780761175124
Workman books are available at special discount when purchased in bulk for premiums and sales promotions as well as for fund-raising or educational use. Special editions or book excerpts also can be created to specification. For details, contact the Special Sales Director at the address below.
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How to Make Someone Fall in Love With You in 90 Minutes or Less Page 22
