5 Lessons to Become Magnetic — Stop Chasing and Start Attracting [Lewis Howes SOLO]

0:00What if I told you that chasing love makes you less attractive? The truth is magnetism isn't about clinging or proving your worth. It's actually about being in alignment, healing, and choosing healing daily. I'm sharing five lessons that I've learned from my conversations with my wife, Martha, that will help you stop chasing and start healing and become truly magnetic in love and in life. There's five key lessons. The first lesson for this is a big one. And that is don't make someone your whole world. The fastest way to push someone away is to make them your entire world every day. Real attraction happens when your world is already full.

0:46It's already expansive. You've already got a lot of activities, people in your life, and you're feeling purposeful and you're feeling fully alive. And then you invite the person into that world. A lesson from this is that real attraction comes from having your own world, your own values, your vision, your mission, and letting your partner be one important planet in that universe of your world. Martha told me that she's not my entire world. She said, I'm not your world. I'm your Jupiter in your solar system. You have your family. You have your friends. You have your activities, your hobbies, your purpose.

1:25And I'm a big planet in that. And I really think that's interesting to think about because if you go all in and invest in someone and they become your entire life, 24 seven, you obsess about them, you're texting them, you always want to be with them. There is some cool chemistry and that seems like a beautiful love story to tell people that, hey, we were obsessed with each other for the first few months. In the first year, we couldn't stop being around each other, but you start to lose yourself in another person and that starts to become a repellent after a period of time. And when I built a full vibrant life myself, I became way more attractive because I wasn't in a clinging energy.

2:03I was inviting and I was becoming more magnetic. So some action steps for you right now is to make a list of five things that give your life meaning outside of a relationship. What are those things that give you meaning? What fills you up? And dedicate time weekly to these things. That could be your friends, your passions, your health, learning something new, some type of hobby. See your partner or a future partner as an addition to this world, but not the center of it. That is the end of lesson number one. Don't make someone your whole world. Lesson number two is that values attract more than interest.

2:46Now, chemistry fades, but values last. And that's the difference between a fling and a forever. Because chemistry can spark connection. It can really make you feel like, wow, there's something here. There's this beautiful chemistry and spark. And I feel alive when I'm around this person, when I think about this person. But it's their values that align with your values that hold everything together to make a sustainable relationship last. Relationships can be extremely challenging, even if you have values aligned. But it's even more challenging when you don't have those shared values, at least most of them in alignment.

3:27There just becomes way more friction. And sometimes we think that friction is like this chemistry, like, ah, it's so much friction. It's so explosive. But that can be extremely toxic. I've never heard of a relationship that is explosive that lasts the test of time. Usually when something is explosive, it explodes. Sometimes there's massive breakdowns, there's fights, there's highs, there's lows. Then it's all about the makeup afterwards. And it's like, gosh, that is a bomb for your nervous system. That is your nervous system saying, I'm not safe, but I'm so wounded that I wanna try to make this thing work.

4:05I know, because I've been there in the past. The lesson is that I've learned that shared hobbies, shared interests might create some type of a buzz or some type of a connection, but it's shared values that keeps relationships strong. It's not enough to have similar likes and interests. My wife says, she says we need values, vision, and lifestyle in alignment. And again, I used to think that liking the same music or we like the same movies was going to be enough because, oh, we can go to do activities and actually have something to talk about. That is not enough. Sure, it's a bonus, but if honesty, if family or growth don't line up in a relationship, the attraction will always fade.

4:52The chemistry will explode. And so with Martha, it's been our values that have kept us aligned and honestly kept us peaceful throughout the dating phase, throughout the engagement phase, and now being married. and it's been consistent throughout all those phases so far. So some action steps for you is I want you to write down your top five non-negotiable values. What are those values in your life that you will not negotiate? Whether it's integrity, honesty, how you communicate, health, family, freedom, things around money, whatever it might be, write those things down. And when you start dating someone or if you're in a relationship right now, before you go any further, there, I want you to ask questions that reveal values, not just hobbies, likes, and interests.

5:41Again, it doesn't mean they're a bad person if they don't line up with you and your values, but they may not be the right person for you long-term. Or you just have to come to terms knowing that your values don't align and can you fully accept the other person for their values, even if they don't match yours? Can you love and accept them and can they love and accept you? If so, then it might work out. But if you're always trying to change someone, that means you don't truly love them. So pay attention to actions more than words, because that's where values really show up. And that's the end of lesson two.

6:16Values attract more than interests. Lesson number three, heal the wounds that make you chase. Desire can be deception. Sometimes you're not chasing a person, you're chasing what your wounds are attracted to. Oh man, can I speak into this? I chased what my wounds were attracted to for many years of my life. And I stayed in relationships where I felt wounded still, trying to heal this chasing feeling within a relationship. And I repeated the pattern over and over again. It never worked. It only created more harm for both parties and ended up in sadness. I realized that my chasing behavior came from these childhood wounds of rejection, abandonment, shame, not enoughness.

7:07And I was trying to earn love instead of simply being open to love and loving myself and healing myself for what I'd been through, where I'm at now, and where I'm heading. And Martha, again, my wife says, people are looking for love as a wounded child instead of being open to love as an adult. Something beautiful Martha taught me is that many of us are drawn to partners who trigger old pain because it feels familiar. I don't know if you can relate to that. Have you been in a relationship before where you've been so drawn to this guy or this girl where they're like, man, there's just something that draws me to them.

7:49But it's like there's a wound that you have that your nervous system is like bing and it pokes at the wound and says that's familiar I know that from my dad who treated me this way who never showed up for me I know this from my mom who always needed me to help her out and seeked approval from me I know this from my whatever past relationship where it's a familiar thing but it doesn't mean it's a safe thing it doesn't mean it's a healthy thing but some reason we're attracted to the familiar because it's what we know. So when we know something, we understand it. It's the unfamiliar, it's the healthy, the safe, the comfortable, the calm, that when you've grown up in chaos, that feels unfamiliar, that feels scary, which seems crazy to think that when someone has more safe energy, when someone has more value-driven alignment, sometimes you may not be attracted to that until you start to heal the wounds that trigger you and make you attracted to the other people.

8:52And until I did the work to start healing on my journey, I kept attracting the wrong situations, the wrong relationships, the wrong partners, the wrong people in my life. And it wasn't just romantic as well as in other areas of my life. But the healing journey I went on made me more magnetic, not only to other people, but also made me appreciate the work and the growth that I was doing for myself. It made me have more self-appreciation without the ego. It made me start to eliminate the shame and have more self-love, more self-compassion, more peace about where I was at instead of holding on to shame and needing to prove myself to get worth back in return.

9:36So an action step for you is I'd like you to reflect or journal on this about when you feel unworthy or afraid of rejection in love? When is it that you feel unworthy or afraid of rejection in love? And I want you to notice if you're drawn to partners who trigger old pain, or if you're actually drawn to healthy, conscious, aligned, safe nervous systems in another person that you're drawn to, which ones are you drawn to? Feel free to share in the comments below as well. Are you drawn to more partners in the past? Or are you in a relationship now where you are drawn to someone from a trigger out of a wound or out of a pain?

10:17Or are you drawn to healthy partners that make you a better person, that support your dreams and your goals, that aren't trying to pull you down? And which one are you drawn to? Which one have you been in relationships more in your past? And where are you currently at right now? I want you to practice affirming that you are worthy of love without having to chase. And you can simply just use this mantra, I am worthy of love without needing to chase anyone. I am worthy of love without needing to chase anyone. I am worthy of love without needing to chase anyone. When you say that over and over to yourself and say it out loud right now, You're going to start to feel your heart relax, your nervous system settle in to your body, and you're going to allow yourself to feel more at peace just by saying this affirmation, I am worthy of love without having to chase anyone.

11:23Allow the sound of your voice with those soothing words to wash over any insecurity that you have, to wash over any trauma that you've carried, to wash over any trigger or pain within your body or in your psyche that has held you back from believing that you are worthy of love and deserving of love. But if you feel like you have to chase others to feel some type of love, then you'll always have to change yourself as well to get their approval. and you don't need to change who you are. You just need to continue to be on a healing journey and become a greater version of who you already are so that you can receive love from yourself and others and feel good about it in the process.

12:16I want you to watch that back if you need to and remember that you are worthy of love. You don't need to change who you are, but you do need to continue to heal and get back to wholeness of who you once were. You can do this also by working with a therapist or a coach to help heal deeper childhood wounds and really support you kind of going through this process. One of the books that I'm most proud of that I wrote is called The Greatness Mindset. And it's about unlocking the power of your mind so you can live your best life today. Most of this book is actually interviewing and working with some of the top healing experts in the world to break down how you can process these things in your own life.

13:00You're unable to achieve greatness in your life. You're unable to achieve great things and feel joyful about them unless you feel like you've healed your past wounds. Because when we chase a relationship or we chase goals or we chase achievement from a wound, we achieve that thing and we still don't feel enough because that will never fill the wound that's inside of us. it's not until you heal those wounds, until you process those wounds and you will integrate that into your life, into your relationships and into your nervous system when you accomplish something and you feel actually proud of yourself and good about it.

13:40You don't accomplish something and you still feel good about you. And that's a beautiful place to come from a space of wholeness. And it doesn't mean you're always gonna be perfect in every moment and you're still gonna have sadness and challenges, But if you can get to a place in your nervous system where you feel whole about you, you attract a partner and also opportunities in life that continue to add joy to your wholeness. Again, if you don't feel whole and you're attracting a partner out of a place of a wound, then they're never going to be able to fulfill you. and if you put all of your attention on them choosing you, picking you, making you their person where you get your love and validation from, if they leave you, what does that leave you with?

14:27An empty hole. You're still not whole. And again, it's not about having somebody in your life so you feel whole. It's about being whole and being on the healing journey so that other people can join your solar system. They don't become your whole world, but they join you in the planet of your solar system. And that's what this is all about. Lesson number three is heal the wounds that make you chase. Lesson number four, love is a daily choice, not a chase. Love doesn't just happen to you. It's something that you choose every single day. I learned that magnetism comes when you stop chasing fleeting chemistry and you start choosing consistency and character.

15:13Let me say this one more time for you because I don't know if you caught this. I learned that magnetism, if you want to attract someone in a relationship, a healthy relationship that really builds upon who you are, your dreams, your values, and empowers you to become a better version of you. That's what we all want. I've learned that this type of magnetism comes when you stop chasing fleeting chemistry you stop chasing fleeting desires and you start choosing consistency and character instead. This is a hard thing to do because the mind will play tricks on us. We'll start to get butterflies or start to feel these like chemicals in our stomach around people that are in our lives or people we meet that we feel like there's some excitement here.

16:00There's some attraction here. There's some type of chemistry that's like, it's like this magical feeling because I've never had this feeling. Well, you actually have had that feeling in some other part of your life. And this is reaffirming that trigger, that wound, that trauma, that insecurity, that doubt, that fear that makes you feel like you're not enough. And you are familiar with that feeling. And so therefore you cling to the familiar and you want to try to heal it within that feeling. But if that person doesn't have character and they're not consistent, man, you're going to be continually clinging to someone that just lets you down over and over again.

16:42And again, I don't know if you've ever experienced this. If you have, let me know in the comments below that you have, that you've experienced being attracted to someone that continues to let you down over and over again. Martha shared with me that her mom's advice with herself was that love isn't just a spark. It's a choice that you make daily. And she and her husband have been married for over 40 years. They still have fun and laugh together and dance together and they play and they're invested in their children and their grandchildren. And they're invested in their parents and their families.

17:19They're a beautiful married couple. It's been together for over four decades. And she says that chemistry fades, but choices last. And again, we've got to continue to choose daily. Love isn't just a spark. It's a choice you make daily because chemistry fades, but choices last. So I want you to stop waiting for a spark to define your love with someone. Sure, you want to feel connected to someone. You want to feel an attraction to someone. You want to feel that chemistry in some ways for sure, but it shouldn't be out of a wound. It shouldn't be out of a trigger or a need for someone to choose you or pick you or love you back because then you're clinging for attention.

18:02You're clinging for someone to make you feel better. You should already be feeling good in your life. And if you're not, you should be on a journey of saying, how can I make my life better? How can I improve my feelings about myself, my feelings about the world around me? How can I improve my life. And that's what we do here on the School of Greatness. For almost 13 years, every week, we have been invested in you to give you the tools, the inspiration, the stories, the interviews, the advice, the research, the science to support you on improving the quality of your life. Just like this video, just like this episode here.

18:39Because a lot of people struggle in love. A lot of people struggle in relationships. I am the one that can raise my hand the highest because it's something I struggled for a long time until I said, never again am I gonna deal with this. I need to start working on me, not about the other people I've been with. I need to work on me. I need to improve me. I need to overcome my past pain and traumas and triggers. I need to heal my nervous system. And it took about four years of intensive therapy along with 10 years of different trainings before then to support me in getting to new levels of consciousness, also new levels of integrating healing in my nervous system so that my body felt safer with myself and with others around me and really starting to create a life and a vision for myself where I am safe whether I'm in a relationship or not that I'm going to be okay whether someone wants to be with me or not and once I got to that place of total freedom it doesn't mean I didn't want to be in a relationship.

19:40But once I got to a place where I said, I am okay, and I don't need a relationship for me to love myself and be okay with me. I feel safe with me. That's when I became the most magnetic. And it just, you know, people started really showing up and wanted to, you know, meet me and connect and all these things. And that's literally the moment I started meeting Martha. And there was so much alignment around that. But you just become a magnet when you don't need to be with someone, when you stop looking for it or chasing it, but you're just like being your healthiest version of you, you will attract people.

20:17People will just want to talk to you, whether they want to date you or not. People just want to say, hey, I just want to get to know you. What's your name? And those conversations will spark more interest of a potential partner in the future. So stop waiting for a spark to define love. That's what I'd say for you. And instead ask, do I choose this person's values and character? Because I can't say that for most of the relationships I was in earlier in my life. I can't say that I chose them based on that. There were some of them that had the values and character that I liked, but it wasn't that that I was looking for.

20:52It was out of more of the feeling that I was looking for, the wounded feeling that I was looking to create some type of chemistry around. And that just doesn't last, right? It might be like interesting for a few months, but it doesn't last long-term. And then I want you to show love daily through words, through touch, through presence, and through actions. That's important. In dating, look for consistency over everything. Does this person choose you back? Do their words match their actions? And do their actions, are they consistent day in and day out? If so, they are in integrity with their values.

21:31And if not, and you need a period of time to really see that. You're not gonna see that within the first couple weeks. You're not gonna see that within a month. You need to have experiences with this person. You need to be around this person with their closest friends. You need to be around this person with their closest family members. You need to be around them when you go on a day trip or you go on a two-hour car ride or you go on a flight with them to a different destination. You need to experience multiple different dimensions of their world to get the full picture. And you need to see if their words match their actions and their actions are consistent throughout time.

22:08And you need to see how their actions interact with their entire solar system. Because maybe they have a bad relationship with their parent. Maybe they're disconnected from their siblings. Maybe their friends are alcoholics and they want to spend time with them all the time. Maybe they like to gamble. Maybe they do things that are maybe not the values that you have, but everyone can hide those things in the first couple of weeks. But it's not until you interact with the other planets in their solar system. When you start to learn if this is a universe that you want to be a part of, if you want to put your planet into their solar system and vice versa, is there a toxic energy?

22:48Is there breakdowns that they have constantly that they haven't handled? Do they lack the courage to have courageous conversations with people that have betrayed them or that they feel have walked all over them? Do they know how to create boundaries in their life? Have they taken on unnecessary baggage that they've lacked the courage to let go of? You need to experience this person's world and the planets surrounding them to see if their words and their actions line up. And if so, can they do it consistently? That's when you know maybe there's something here if we have all the other pieces. So the end of lesson four is that love is a daily choice.

23:33It's not a chase. And the fifth thing is magnetism comes from alignment, not performance. You don't need to just prove your worth. you need to own it. You don't need to prove your worth. You just need to own it. You don't need to prove your worth. You just need to own it. I used to chase because I wanted to prove myself. I don't know if you know, if this is familiar with you, but I really wanted to prove myself growing up. And this came from many wounds, memories that created meaning in my psyche and in my nervous system. Memories of being picked last, memories of girls making fun of me when I was younger and kind of tall and goofy looking and all those different things.

24:24Memories of me being, you know, in the bottom of my class and not being able to read and write in middle school when they tested me and having tutors all through middle school, high school, and college just to learn how to read and write while kids would make fun of me. Memories of just whatever, different challenges. Kids getting in fights with me, kids stealing things from me. These different kind of wounded memories that I never learned how to heal. I created meaning from them that I was not enough. I had guilt and shame around who I was. And so with that meaning I created, because every memory, we either can create a meaning from it, and that meaning is stored in our nervous system.

25:06So I used to chase everything to prove myself, to prove that the kid's wrong, to prove the people that picked on me wrong, people that picked me last in games wrong, to prove teachers that didn't support me, coaches that didn't support me, whatever it was, I was like, I'm going to prove everyone. I did this in relationships. I was like, I know this relationship isn't good for me. I know I shouldn't be in this relationship. I know this isn't the person I want to be with, but I'm going to try to prove that I'm a good guy and I'm going to stick this out. I'm going to prove to try to make it work.

25:39I'm going to prove that I'm not a failure. All these things around proving is a waste of time. The only thing you should be proving is yourself right about improving yourself and creating alignment in your life. You shouldn't to be proving anyone else wrong. You should be looking to say, how can I prove myself right for my dreams and my vision and just improving myself. Now I know real magnetism comes when my actions, my words, and my priorities are aligned. And again, this is something Martha has said before, do their words match their actions? And that's where the truth is, not in what they say, but in if their actions match their words.

26:22And that's something I think she was worried about with me early on because she, she had dealt with people in the past who lied to her and she had gone through a lot of pain from different relationships from people who did that. She had to go through her own healing journey. And she kept saying like, the most important thing is if your words match your actions. And so it constantly did. And I was like, all right, can you see, do you need to see more planets in my solar system to see like everything matches up? And, uh, eventually she did, but she wasn't quick to be like, okay, I'm just going to trust you right away.

26:53it was like, I like spending time with you. I like who you are. I like how I feel around you. I feel like your words are matching your actions, but she still needed to see experiences, time, events, meet people in my life to feel emotionally safe with all of it. You don't just give someone your trust and give them your heart overnight or in one week, just because you had chemistry and you think they're a great person, you gotta explore the entire universe around them to get a better understanding of who they are in their world and the people who are in their world. And I've seen it over and over again that people say all the right things, but they live inconsistently.

27:34I've done this in the past. I've never been like this perfect person in every relationship. I've struggled with the different things. The most attractive people aren't performing. They're aligned. They feel healthy. They're not trying to prove anything. And it's amazing when you can just show up and ask questions and listen to someone and you don't have to perform. You don't have to like show off. You don't have to like do a song and dance and like act like you're this really talented, interesting person. But actually, I think what people need more these days is someone who's just a good human being.

28:10Someone who can look in someone else's eyes with generosity, with kindness, and really be genuinely interested in someone else rather than trying to say, hey, look at me. I'm so interesting. Here's why you need to pick me. We shouldn't be creating this chasing game of like, I'm interesting. I'm talented. I'm smart. I have money. Look at me. Choose me. We should show up energetically as the healthiest versions of ourself, having full life, full energy, being excited about life and attracting from that place, not needing someone to choose us to feel liked and loved. And that's one of the biggest thing.