Part I:
Accept Who You Are and Who You Can Be
You can’t be a true magnetic attraction if, at the first sign of stress or trouble, you give up on yourself and fold up.
Being a magnetic person means so much, much more than merely looking sexy and confident! It goes beyond having an effervescent or pleasing personality.
You must have a strong core character.
Personality vs. character
Personality is just a particular combination of personal likes and dislikes (i.e. clothes, music, food, hobbies) or a preferred range of emotions and behavior (i.e. being bubbly or vivacious; or being formal and reserved). If we were to describe what a particular person is like, we usually that person in terms of outward personality features. However, it says very little about the inner character of that person.
Character is who you are and what you stand for. It’s about the quality of your spirituality, your integrity, and inner strength. What do you value? What are the things you believe are good, and how far are you willing to go to uphold and defend what you believe in? Your answers to these questions summarize your character.
You could have a very flashy, bright personality, yet be weak in character. Or, someone could seem quiet and sedate, but have a steely tenacity. While looking beautiful and acting confident does help you gain other people’s admiration, it’s the quality of your character that makes them stay long after the first throes of attraction.
To become truly attractive, you need to work on having a strong character first. Don’t worry too much about developing a pleasing, amusing personality—if you focus on developing a strong character, a great personality will spring naturally from it, no problem. Think of character as the foundation of what makes you handsome or beautiful. If you’re not a strong, beautiful character within, no matter how physically gorgeous or amiable you are on the outside, when the going gets tough you’ll crack and an ugly side of you will develop!
The foundation of a beautiful character
But what creates a strong and beautiful character? The foundation of such a character lies in two principles:
a.) An unbreakable belief in the good within one’s self. You must believe in your own worth as a person. Believing in the good you can contribute to the world and to others means you are willing to work hard to bring that good out. You will not
let anything (or anyone) prevent or abuse the good you can give. You won’t let yourself get lazy or presumptuous about how good you are, either. It’s being good and realistic about your own self.
b.) A deep respect and empathy for life in general and the dignity of other human beings. Your respect and empathy for life and other people must run as deeply as your own self- respect. Self-respect and respect for others go hand-in-hand, and you can’t have one without the other. You must be willing to help others realize their own goodness. And just like self- respect, your respect for others will lead you to abhor any form of abuse or laziness that will diminish other people’s capacity to be good.
If it all sounds like a restatement of the age-old Golden Rule, it is. It’s that ancient wisdom that should form the foundation of what’s universally considered attractive in a human being.
Can you imagine how someone can be considered truly attractive without a character deeply rooted in these two principles? You really can’t. Think about a few physically attractive people you know in your own life, who seem to display a lack of one or both of these principles—and you’ll see what I mean!
Of course, a gorgeous stud or bombshell with a “winning” personality will always grab the attention of people they meet for the first few hours. But a few days (or dates) later, if they don’t have the right character, people either get tired of them or see them as two-dimensional caricatures. Unless you are perfectly content to live with that kind of shallow attention from people for the rest of your life (which I doubt), you’re going to have to dig much deeper.
So, ground yourself in the truth contained in these two principles.
If you commit yourself to these two principles, no matter what life might throw into your path to challenge you, you’ll essentially remain the same strong and beautiful character.
Beautiful character = self-knowledge
Grounding your character in the Golden Rule has its benefits. First of all, the two principles of the Golden Rule make it very clear what “self-esteem” and an “open world view” mean.
When you have the right self-esteem and an open world view, it becomes easy to discern who you really are. (Just imagine how difficult it would be for someone with low self- esteem, or a narrow-minded view of things.) You won’t under- or overestimate your assets and abilities. You’ll have an inkling of where you fit in this world. You can actually live with yourself!
You’ll be able to accept without shame what you cannot change about yourself. At the same time, you’ll accept that you must change what you can about yourself for the better.
Attractiveness requires self-knowledge
Armed with this sort of clear self-knowledge, you’ll be able to work with your “givens” to create an irresistible version of yourself.
Do you know what your “givens” are? These are your strengths and weaknesses, your talents and clumsy areas, and your natural temperament. It’s what makes you incorrigibly you. And yes, it includes your desirable and not-so desirable physical attributes.
Do you know which of your “givens” can be changed or improved? Do you know how to make yourself change for the better, despite your weaknesses or limitations? And do you know when it’s time to say, “No, it’s time to give it up and work with what I have?”
There’s so much soul-searching to do! But if you don’t dig and build deeply enough, you will never become a truly magnetic character. You need that much detailed knowledge of yourself in order to map out in detail your strategy for improvement.
Best cures for not knowing
Some of you might look in the mirror and gasp, “I will admit—I don’t really know who I am!” If this is you, don’t fret. It simply means you’re at a point in your life where you must prioritize soul-searching.
I mean it when I say you have to prioritize it. You can’t be running about chasing “dream mates” if you don’t know who you are. What if you happen to chase after the wrong kind of person for you? You won’t know enough about yourself to realize he or she is the wrong choice! You could find your desire or love for that person unreciprocated. You could end up together, but you’ll both end up wasting so much time and resources trying to prevent yourselves from hating one another. Life is too short to make important decisions carelessly this way!
So if you feel you don’t know yourself well enough, or feel you need to go out into the world to find yourself, focus on finding yourself first. Don’t muddle things up by trying to get into relationships or pining after people you’re attracted to. You should look into dating and serious relationships only when you’re ready.
However, finding out who you are takes much more than contemplating yourself in a mirror. If your scope of experience and mindset are narrow, your view of self will be hopelessly skewed. You’ll either short-change yourself, or have an over- inflated ego. And you won’t even be aware of it.
To avoid this, you need to take off any “blinders”, and stay grounded in truth. You’ve most likely heard of the saying, “Everyday, do something that scares you.” No, it doesn’t mean doing something foolish every day. Don’t go running off for a painful experience! What this saying simply means is you must constantly push yourself slightly outside your current comfort zone, to learn something new.
By stepping outside your familiar box, you’ll learn to see more opportunities in life and love that you’ve never noticed before.
Here are some effective ways of broadening your perspective on yourself:
1. Travel the world
One way of getting out of your current mindset is to take yourself outside your usual environment. So grab a map of the world or your entire country, consider your budget, and go!
• Regardless of where your budget will allow you to go, make sure you travel to a place you’ve never been to before—it doesn’t matter exactly where, as long as it’s new territory for you.
• When planning a trip, be realistic. Depending on your budget, you can go on a 3-4 day backpacking trip, or a long cruise. Taking trips is about observing yourself and other people.
• Plan to take this trip alone. (Fight the temptation of inviting friends along.) This way, you can focus on yourself, and plan your entire lineup of activities for the entire purpose of self-discovery. It’ll force you to be more self-reliant and more introspective.
• Try not to remain a tourist (someone who simply takes pictures). You must be a traveler as well. That’s someone who sincerely leaves something of himself with people he or she meets, while receiving or learning something from the people encountered. Being a traveler is better than being a mere tourist, because it invites you to learn from the sort of people you’ve never encountered before.
• If you have the time before or during your vacation, take a short training class in a new skill, like scuba diving, white water rafting, sky diving, or pottery making.
2. Get educated
A college education, a master’s degree or doctorate aren’t just good achievements to list in your resumé. When paired with streetwise or hands-on experience, formal education deepens your wisdom.
You can always distinguish someone who has higher education from the rest of the pack. Answers from an educated person are more well-informed, and are better communicated to others. Such a person tends to have more self-confidence—a key ingredient in creating a more magnetic character.
• If you can’t afford formal education, you can still take certificate courses to augment what you already know. Think about what sort of expertise you’d like to develop, then invest what time and money you can spare to take these courses.
• If you’ve already amassed a lot of educational and life experience points, it still doesn’t mean you know it all. You never will, so you must remain humble (without being overly self-deprecating). Allow both books and Real Life to educate you continuously, or you’ll become boastful, vain, neurotic or narrow-minded.
3. Work and help others
There are people who find themselves only by going away to live and work for years in a totally different country. You could be one of them.
This is a more immersive, drastic experience compared to being a traveler on a trip. This sort of experience is especially good for you if you have certain “issues” or emotional baggage from the past. Surrounded by a totally different milieu, you will appreciate the wonderful things about home which you took for granted. You’ll also wonder how certain “challenges” back home seemed like huge issues to you—for when you compare them against your new environment, they’ll seem small. You’ll begin to question why you carried some old hurts and fears for so long.
• You may have a certain “calling” or passion for helping others that’s so strong, denying it will actually do you serious emotional or psychological harm in the long run. If so, you’re not alone. Many people actually get this “calling” at some point in their lives—and quite a number of them are relatively young people still in search of themselves. If this is your case, use your soul-searching time to fulfill your need to help others as well. You can go to poverty-stricken place to live and work there for a time as a part-time student or relief worker.
• The rest of us usually seek a new environment which we feel will nurture our growth better than the one we grew up in. If you’re from New York, you may feel the urge to move to a more conservative city like Singapore; if you’re from West Virginia you could try a more liberated place in France. If you come from a home or town where eccentric artists are somewhat out of place, for instance, choosing a city like Berlin or Rio de Janeiro might be a breath of fresh air. Living temporarily in a new place naturally makes you shed some psychological baggage, and develop a previously unexplored aspect of yourself.
Go on retreats
When you carry invisible baggage from the past—fears, assumptions and distracting memories that hinder you from moving on—sometimes, subjecting yourself to complete isolation for short periods is needed.
Some places are desolate and good for silent retreats, where there’s very little around you that can drown out that “little voice” in your mind. Perhaps, in the isolation, this is where you can draw enough strength from within to ditch painful memories.
• While you may want to go on such retreats alone, sometimes you literally need the help of others to think alone. Some of the best spiritual retreat places in the world are in isolated mountain tops, forests, deserts or islands, with special retreat houses run by different religious clergy or licensed psychologists.
• If you are particularly troubled, or are prone to retreat from the world, don’t overdo it. Isolation is good only for certain occasions. You’re not supposed to damage your relationships with friends, families, or other acquaintances as a result.
Forgive
By focusing on things that help you grow and be happy, you avoid feeding painful, old memories.
Fears and grudges need attention and energy to stay alive in your mind. Starve them by keeping yourself busy with better things to do! This way you can move towards forgiving yourself and others of past mistakes.
Most people have ambivalent feelings towards the concept of “forgiveness”. They think it means letting people who hurt you off the hook. Not quite!
Forgiveness means finding new, positive meaning or purpose to hurts you’ve suffered in the past. It may or may not involve a choice to forget the wrong that’s been done to you—and if it does, as much as possible it ought to be after the person who’s wronged you has done some form of restitution or compensation to you. It’s all in line with your conscious choice to focus more on the bigger picture: your overall plan for your life.
• I know forgiveness is one of the hardest things to achieve in life! Nobody said it was easy. But trust me, it’s an essential way to personal calm and peace, and all of us need to practice it.
I will give special mention here to “inner demons”. Often, your greatest offenders aren’t other people; it’s your own self. If you are currently in trouble because of a debilitating addiction, a habit or psychological problem preventing you from reaching your full potential, you must admit it and seek professional help. That way you can proceed with living your life and forgive yourself for having “failed”.
• There is no shame in having failed yourself. Having a problem and needing help does not mean there is something fundamentally “wrong” or monstrous about you. We’re all human; we all create our own problems every now and then which require the help of others to solve. Real failures in life are born out of giving up on life itself, and stubbornly refusing to help where you need it most.
• Regardless of who hurt you (whether it’s you or someone else), give yourself time to heal! Don’t expect to achieve forgiveness overnight. It is hard work but you need to do it if you want to move forward in life—and become that confident, magnetic person you’ve always wanted to be.