When we are constantly bombarded with outsiders’ opinions on how we can be our truest selves, it is all too easy to dampen the parts of ourselves that make us the most authentic version of ourselves and, subsequently, the most magnetic to others.

Today I offer tips for developing and expanding our authentic personal magnetism. In this episode, I touch on common falsehoods that we are told about love and explain how to move from the Zone of Protection to the Gift Zone. 

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Show Notes:

• How to increase your personal magnetism
• What are the falsehoods we are told about love
• What is the Gift Zone
• How to define the Zone of Disconnection
• How to move from the Zone of Protection to the Gift Zone

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All the dating advice that tells you you need to change this, and fix this, and shift this, and be more this, and be less that blurs your authenticity and your personal power and your sense of magnetism. It is an authenticity that your true magnetism lives. In this episode we’re going to learn how to deepen your authentic magnetism in your intimacy journey, so stay to the Deeper Dating® podcast.

Hi folks, and welcome to the Deeper Dating® Podcast. I think we are just about to hit a million downloads, which is really exciting. I’m Ken Page and I’m a psychotherapist, I’m the author of the best-selling book Deeper Dating, the host of this podcast, and the creator of the Deeper Dating® Intensive, and I’m so glad to be here with you and so excited to talk about this subject, which is how to deepen and increase your authentic sense of personal magnetism.

Really excited about this and we’ll be talking about that in a minute. So in this episode and every episode my commitment is to share the greatest tools and insights I know to help you find love and keep it flourishing and heal your life in the process. Because the skills of dating are the skills of intimacy, which are the greatest skills of life.

And if you want to learn more about the Deeper Dating® path to real intimacy, just go to deeperdatingpodcast.com. You can sign up for my mailing list, get some really wonderful free gifts, and learn more about how to use these ideas to transform your intimacy journey.

And you’ll also find complete transcripts of every episode. And let me just say that if you like what you’re learning here, I would love it if you could subscribe and leave me a review. People do that and write the most beautiful things, and it means a lot and it really supports the podcast. So thank you so much for that and let us jump in.

 

The two things we do with our authenticity when we don't know how to hold it with honor, is we either suppress it or we act it out in ways that don't create connection. Click To Tweet

 

So in this episode, we’re going to be talking about how you can increase your personal sense of magnetism for people who get you, who are right for you, the right kind of connections for you.

But it’s not a forced magnetism, it’s not a put-on magnetism. It’s the magnetism that comes from the beauty and the heart and the genius of your authenticity, which is the real magnetism. And when we learn these lessons of being able to recognize our deep radical authenticity, the true experience of our heart, and develop the skills to express that, we develop our magic.

We actually start noticing people who are right for us and appreciating them more because we’ve made this brave decision to invest in our authenticity, which is scary and risky, and charged. When we do that, we realize how much it’s worth and how valuable it is, and we are so much less likely to waste it or dissipate it in the wrong environments.

 

 

And when we lead with the authenticity of our heart, and our thinking, and our being, and our experience, there is a kind of magic that gets created in our interaction. We become more skin-to-skin with our true self and the world. And there is a chemistry that happens in that friction, in that truth, in that reality, that with the right people is like the definition of magic.

So in preparing this podcast, I came back to something I really love, which is Emerson’s essay on self-reliance. And I’m just going to quote some of the things he says because here he’s speaking to us as thinkers and artists and creators and visionaries and saying the scary stuff is where your genius lies. The stuff that’s scary because it feels so deeply personally you is going to be the stuff that is resonant with a kind of quality of power and universality for the right people.

He says, “to believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you and your private heart might be true for all,” well, he says men, I’m going to say people, “to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for other people, that is genius”. And it is also true that in our intimacy journey, trusting the nitty gritty of what we’re feeling and experiencing and sensing and thinking about, and then being able to express that, that’s intimacy genius. And he said something about when we don’t do it, but then we see other people do it, he said, “in every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

And that’s the experience of seeing somebody who is saying this stuff that we’ve been afraid to say. It’s very exciting and we’re in awe of them, and there’s that wonderful feeling of them putting into words something that we didn’t let ourselves put into words yet.

 

Common Magnetism Falsehoods:

 

But let’s talk about the kind of crap that we get taught about love that guides us away from this authentic power. So first of all, there are all of these messages that just… All the messages of you need to fix yourself, you need to change yourself, you need to act confident, you need to play hard to get. Women, you need to be more feminine. Men, you need to be more masculine. Here’s how to make yourself irresistible. Here’s how to make yourself more seductive. Here’s how to get a quality mate.

And all of this stuff is the outside-in approach to dating and finding love, which is the compare-and-despair path. It’s the carrot in front of a stick path. It’s the path to self-torture, pain, and bad relationship choices.

And we know there is so much of that dating advice out there, but then it gets a little worse because there’s a hook added in. People say you need to be this and be this and be this, but you must be authentic. You’ve got to be your real self. Well, that’s just about impossible. That is a crazy-making message. It’s like be different than who you are, but be who you are, which makes us crazy.

And then we think we have to do that, that we have to be both eternally confident and eternally authentic. Well, it’s not going to happen. Because when we’re authentic, we touch places where we are not sure, where we’re learning, where we’re discovering, where we don’t quite have words yet, where there’s a pain that we don’t know how to put words on, but we feel it and it needs something, or there’s a joy or a sense of love that we’re embarrassed to share, but we want to share it. But we haven’t really done that yet.

There are places of deep vulnerability and the task is not to put on some kind of confident armor and then share it. It’s to hold and cradle and make space for the originality, the beauty, the truth of those things. And when we do that, that’s dignity and vulnerability, and that’s a kind of confidence that is deep and rich and beautiful and very experimental.

So when we learn to do that, and I’m going to teach you some practices for being able to do that, and I’m going to talk about what gets in the way and what kind of gifts and rewards and fruits of that practice you will experience as you do this in your intimacy life. Well, the first, most important one is that when you practice authenticity and hold yourself with a sense of compassion around that, your magnetism increases, your sense of self increases.

 

The Zone of Protection is where we create this blurred airbrushed sense expression of who we are. It's where we're disconnected from the electricity of our deeper truth. Click To Tweet

 

And I’ve talked about this before, but in physics, we learn that the greater an object’s mass, the greater its gravity. And gravity is defined as a force that pulls outside things to the center of an object. That is our magnetism. And the mass is the experience of alignment with self, the experience of authentic self.

Because when we’re a false self, there’s an emptiness. It’s like climbing a wobbly ladder. We may get a lot of gratification from that false self which sustains us for a while, but there’s a wobbliness, there’s an insecurity, there’s a defensiveness, there’s a prickliness that comes with that, that is opposite to what happens when we rest in who we are and we express that in real ways.

And God, is that scary. But that fear actually generates aliveness, Eros, electricity, and magnetism for the right people. God knows not for everybody. But that’s the act of living like an intimacy artist. Because the act of creating art is to be able to go to the most authentic self and then express from there. And that’s the art of intimacy as well.

And when we do that, with the knowledge that not everybody is going to like it, that it’s going to not work in different environments, but it works for us and it works for people who get it, and those are the people that we want to be with.

So that mass is the sense of self which creates this gravity, this magnetism, and we find that sense of self, that weight, that truth in being authentic. And when we do this, when we make the commitment to honor what we’re feeling and make a container, make a space inside that allows it breathing room, and dignity, and care, and an honoring of what’s there, when we do that, it calms our inner self, because finally someone is taking care of who we really are in this world. And in some ways, that’s the heart of a secure attachment style.

 

 

And that kind of authenticity is different, that kind of secure attachment style is different than a secure attachment style that’s based on lots and lots of compromises of authenticity just to keep the peace, which I spoke about a few episodes ago. That’s a kind of false, secure attachment style.

So I’m going to give you in a moment a framework for how to do this, and we’re going to think about what this looks like in your own intimacy life, and you’re going to get to practice in your head about that.

But I just want to share one more thing first. I want to go back to what Emerson has to say about what happens, the cost of not doing this, the cost of taking the outside in road, the cost of suppressing our authenticity, or another kind of… Like the two things we do with our authenticity when we don’t know how to hold it with honor, is we either suppress it or we act it out in ways that don’t create connection.

 

The cost of conforming:

 

But here’s the quote that Emerson says about the cost of doing this, and I’m just going to make a little bit of editing change, but it’s essentially his words. “The objection to conforming”, in this case to that outside in approach instead of being your authentic self, “the objection to that kind of conforming is that it scatters your force, it loses your time, and it blurs the impression of your character.”

So that means that when you do this, you become an airbrushed version of yourself and the people who would be thrilled at a being like you, who thinks like you and feels like you and acts like you, won’t see that because the vividness of it will all be blurred by your desire to stay safe and to conform.

So I think Emerson captured how we waste so much time in dating by not being our authentic self and then being discriminating about who gets that and who doesn’t, who makes space for it and who doesn’t.

 

If you picture holding a little baby mouse or...something really very valuable, and you hold it in cupped hands, there's this sense of cherishing, but there's this sense of space and allowing too. And that is a magic combination. Click To Tweet

 

That’s the kind of exciting, adventurous way to pursue your search for love and your search for a soulmate. And the same thing is true in intimate relationships too. We waste so much time by not doing that.

So here’s this concept that I want to give you and this practice that I want to give you that you can think about and we’re going to work with together that I really love. Okay, so picture a target image, and there are three circles in this target.

And basically the closer you get in toward the center, the more you are living in the beating heart of your humanity, the more you are living in your truth, your creative self, your authentic, authentic self. That’s what I call the Gift Zone. It’s when you are living so that you are somehow connected to the warmth and the aliveness and the authenticity of your true self. You are warmed by it. You are heated by it. You are electrified by it. You are made alive by it.

 

 

But it’s not an easy space to be. It’s a very, very brave space to be, like we’re talking about, and it’s leaving behind all of that crap that tells you who you have to be in order to find love and saying, “No, who actually am I?”

So because that’s scary, because the stuff that lives in the center, in the bullseye, in this place of the Gift Zone is usually the stuff where we can feel the most insecure, the most wounded, where people have taken advantage of us, where people…

This is our inner sanctum, and when it gets trampled, it hurts even worse. So often we express that part of ourselves when we’re young, but we do it kind of rashly and we get really hurt and then we say, “I got to protect myself,” and we cover those parts of ourselves up. But they’re our inner sanctum, they’re our treasure. They’re the parts of ourselves that we ultimately in this wisdom journey need to go back to.

 

From the Zone of Protection to the Gift Zone:

 

So when we separate from that part because its heat is too intense, its originality is too intense, its tenderness, its sensitivity is too much, when we do that, we move into the second ring. That’s the Zone of Protection. That’s one ring out from that bullseye of your Gift Zone. The Zone of Protection is where we create this blurred airbrushed sense expression of who we are. It’s where we’re disconnected from the electricity of our deeper truth.

So we’re not as electric anymore. We are not as colorful anymore. We are not as real anymore.

I think part of the joy of intoxication is that we get back to that self, but the problem is we do it without the skills and the tools to make it real and solid and consistent. So we do it in ways that are immature and of less character quality than if we really actually earn that and chose that ourselves, which is why that kind of excitement and electricity that we might feel when we’re intoxicated ends up biting us in the butt because it’s not earned, it’s not real.

And when I talk about that, I’m not talking about things like guided plant medicine or medication, et cetera. I’m not talking about those things.

So then the next zone out is the Zone of Disconnection. That’s where we’ve moved so far from our authentic self that there’s a sense of emptiness, and that’s a really painful place to be.

So here’s the practice right now. Just take a minute and picture this circle with the Gift Zone where you are connected to the warmth and the truth of your heart, and the next zone out, which is the Zone of Protection where you’re numb to that.

And then the next zone out is the Zone of Disconnection, where you have kind of really pushed the world away, where there’s a deep sense of isolation. So if you had a push pin, where would you place it right now?

And let’s think about this in a few different ways. Let’s say you are someone who is looking for a relationship and you’re dating different people. When you’re in a first date, when you meet someone, are you living in your Gift Zone? Are you living from that alive place of authenticity and experimentalness and presentness? Sober. When you write your profile, do you write it from that place of authenticity, truth, and heart?

What would it be like to have an intention for all of your dating that you are going to take the risk of showing the warmth of your heart, the originalness of your thinking, the heart and the power of your authentic passions for life, the things you care about. What would it be like if your intention for dating was simply to show those parts of yourself, to live those parts of yourself in skin to skin connection with the other person and to see if this is someone with whom that lands in a way that there’s a sense of home?

Now, when you do this, you will be scaring yourself. You’ll be taking risks. But those risks are the raw material of healthy Eros because when you take those risks and the other person sees you and meets you, it creates a beautiful…

They say that Eros is a spark that needs to jump a gap. This is the gap that it needs to jump. Not someone’s unavailability, but you being brave enough to show who you are and then being with someone who holds that, who gets that, who appreciates it.

And in my intensives, people who do this work deeply and intensely over a period of months and months see… And I’ve seen this and I’ve gotten so many letters from people that have described that when they do this work, they find themselves meeting people who are more likely to be able to do that, and being more attracted to them. This is a magic. I think it’s the greatest magic of the wisdom path to finding love.

Let’s say you’re in early dating with someone, like things are moving along and progressing. Where do you live from? How can you move more from the Zone of Protection into your Gift Zone, where you are really being your authentic self? Because you will be more magnetic there.

Now, I want to say one other thing about this, about the risk of this, is that when we do this, it’s scary because our needs get expressed. I mean, we have to be real about this. Needs get expressed, dependence gets expressed, vulnerability, insecurity, a desire that we worry maybe we’re feeling more of that desire than the other person. These are real and scary things.

And an image that I use for how we need to hold these parts of ourselves is the image of cupped hands. And when you hold something with cupped hands, it’s like you’re treasuring it. Like if you picture holding a little baby mouse or a little baby bird or something really very valuable, and you hold it in cupped hands, there’s this sense of cherishing, but there’s this sense of space and allowing, too.

And that is a magic combination. I remember at one point I got a really bad, bad, bad, bad, really bad case of poison ivy, and I had to live on steroids for months and months. Really months and months. So in my private practice as a therapist, the steroids kind of changed me, but they changed me in a way that made me a better therapist.

And here’s what they did. They helped me develop what I experienced as a two-step process of being a better therapist. The first step was I would think, “What am I afraid to say in this session? What am I afraid to point out? What am I afraid to talk about but feels really real and authentic to me?”

That would be step one. I would admit that, I would acknowledge it, and I would picture saying it. Step two would be, “How can I hold that with cupped hands? How can I take this and hold it with cherishing and kindness for my client and honoring?”

And then when I did step one and step two, I would have a way to express it. And that is a beautiful, beautiful practice, that two-step practice for expressing what is authentically ours that might be hard or scary to express in a relationship. So I want to offer that practice as well.

So I think that you can see that the commitment to date in this way, to be intimate in this way, to be intimate with the world in this way, I think it’s pretty easy to see how you live with a greater charge. Yes, with greater risk, but with greater truth, with greater creativity, with bigger heart.

It’s obvious how that is true. But when you do this, your sense of personal magnetism, your sense of self increases, and the degree to which then you become intoxicatingly attractive in so many ways to someone who’s looking for someone like you is absolute magic.

So I invite each one of you to work on junking all of the advice that tells you that you’re supposed to be authentic, but also this and this and this and this at the same time, or the advice that just tells you to be this and this and this and this, which might be very different from who you are.

And to say, “My authenticity is going to trump all of those shoulds, and I’m going to express my authenticity with cupped hands, with kindness toward me, with kindness toward the other person, but with the cherishing of the gem of truth, my personal truth that lies at its center.” And watch what happens when you do that.

We can see how the intimacy journey becomes a journey of such adventure and love as well because when we do that and we’re seen and met, that’s just a very, very exciting and wonderful place to be.

And I ask people to write to me, let me know, is this working for you? How is it working? What are your stories? What are your experiences? Because I just love hearing those. Thank you all, and I look forward to connecting on the next episode of the Deeper Dating® Podcast.

 

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