COACHING LOVE
This Valentine’s Day, let me let you in on a secret: everyone is hung up about love! It’s one of the top concerns I hear from my clients. Yes, even the hugely successful feel like they are utterly failing at it. Luckily, I love coaching people about love, unraveling their thought patterns, sorting through all of the competing “voices” in their heads, and helping them face the truth, so they can make the change they so deeply desire.
The process I devised to do this isn’t complicated; in fact, it’s so straightforward that I find I can apply it to many different types of people at every stage of love – finding it, fixing it or just figuring out what they want from it.
Ready for my cut-to-the-chase method? Want to know how you can measure whether you’re on the right track to finding your dream partner, whether you’ve already found them or simply whether or not you should even go on that third date?
THE THREE H’S:
There are three different parts of you that need to align before you can be fully satisfied in love. They are (be prepared for a little vulgarity!) your head, your heart and your hoo-ha. The voices of these three are equally important to listen to, but they don’t always work together! They compete for dominance, they masquerade around as the truth, and – you guessed it – they shape the patterns you live and love by.
Let me elaborate …
THE HEAD: tells you what looks good on paper, what’s practical, what’s smart. When you meet a new person, your head asks all the right preliminary questions: Do we live in the same city? Have similar beliefs? Do we both want children, make enough money, come from stable families? Your head will draft a good pitch for why this person does or doesn’t make sense for you, and it might often be a hard one with which to argue.
THE HEART: wants you to go deep. Do you truly care about this person? Could you have an intimate conversation for hours and be genuinely interested in what they’re saying? Do you feel intrigued, inspired, and even awed? Do you respect them, believe in their dreams and do YOU feel respected? Do you trust this person? Your heart asks,“am I moved?” and, it will always tell the truth, if you listen closely enough.
THE HOO-HA: wants to be turned on! Your animalistic, physiological preferences can override even the best intentions of the head and the heart, and I’ve seen it happen in different ways: you can’t stop thinking about your hot sex, even though she was a terrible match for you. You care deeply about your amazing friend (and maybe considered taking it further!), but you just can’t stand his teeth, or her hair, or whatever it is. When picking a mate, your hoo-ha wants to know: am I HOT for this person? Do I want to make out in bed with this person, even in the morning with morning breath? Do I think I could always feel turned on by him/her? Is there something I find fundamentally sexy or cute about this person?” The voice of the hoo-ha is speaking up for your physical and sexual needs, and it’s backed (like it or not!) by thousands of years of human evolution.
Get a feel for how The Handel Method® could benefit you.
GETTING TO THE TRUTH
I put the three H’s to work recently on a long-time client of mine – a successful, financially independent, hard-working, small business owner in her mid-30s, who was sexy as hell. When she went through another break up recently, I had her take a written head, heart and hoo-ha inventory of every guy she had ever dated, starting with her very first boyfriend. Her last few boyfriends looked great on paper, turned her on, took her out to dinner, went on great trips – fun times, but, there was no heart connection. She just wasn’t crazy about any of them! So, after a few months of dating, the relationship would fizzle out and she couldn’t figure out why.
We discovered a pattern of her’s – she had been using her financial success as a reason not to get hurt and she had been trying to protect her heart by ignoring its needs. We got down to her truth: she hadn’t had a serious heartfelt connection to a man since college, and she felt it.
Oh, how I do heart a good turning point moment!
It’s where I get to work my mojo. Once we figured out what needed work, I had her write her deepest desires, in the present tense, in the voice of her heart. It sounded a little like this: “I feel butterflies when we kiss. I feel safe in his arms. I am inspired by him; I see myself loving him for a long time. I feel giddy imagining us in 10 years on a beach in St. Barths!”
SETTING UP RULES
After we heard what the heart wanted, we set up new dating rules for her to live by as she started seeing people again. She wasn’t allowed to go on a third date UNLESS her heart felt moved and she felt intrigued, nervous, and flustered. If, however, she didn’t feel a connection to her heart by the second date, she was to promptly cut herself off from having a third date and move on. No more seven-month relationships with men who didn’t pass the test of the three Hs – what’s the point? Now, she understood what she wanted, and she knew how to measure whether or not she was getting it or, better yet, feeling it.
Not long after we set up her new dating rules, my client called me in a little bit of a panic – she’s going on her third date with a guy she met recently through a friend. She had two amazing dates, can’t stop thinking about him, feels crazy about him and more alive than she’s felt in years. She’s nervous, emotional, and a little scared – like a 13-year-old with a mad crush! “Congratulations!” I told her, “it sounds like you just may have found another important H: happy.”
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
THE TRUTH IS, WE ALL KNOW WHAT WE WANT – CONSCIOUSLY OR OTHERWISE.
So often, though, we sell out on ourselves and are easily sidelined by our own subconscious feelings and personal theories about the world that are influencing our thoughts and actions without us even realizing it. You can gain so much insight into yourself through simple methods like investigating the three H’s – an insightful inquiry that draws out the hidden details of what’s missing, what’s not working, and what needs to change in a way that’s easy to understand and hard to ignore.
If you’re searching for a genuine connection this Valentine’s Day, do the test of the three H’s on yourself and look for a pattern. Be honest! If you’re in a relationship and asking questions, the test of the three H’s will tell you the truth about how you’re really feeling. And, chances are if you are wondering, so is your partner!
If you’re swooning over your significant other, feeding each other dark chocolates in bed and counting your blessings, congratulations! Why not use the three H’s as a road map to determine exactly why it’s working so well for you! I promise, this is a profound discussion worth having, even with morning breath, in any intimate relationship, long or short term.
Love,
Lauren
P.S. – Are you still seeing red when it comes to Valentine’s Day? Are you ready to, once and forever, do what it takes to find and sustain a deep, profound and hot relationship? If so, join me this February for my Dating 101 Tele-Talk or, if you’ve already found love and are out to keep it sexy and inspired, come to my 2-hour Hot Monogamy event at the JCC in Manhattan.