Women In Business Seminar 2021

I want to talk to you today a bit about why you attract what you attract in relationships. And there are, as far as I'm concerned, a few fundamental things that lead us to being attracted to, or put out a certain energy that attracts people towards us in our lives. And when it comes to The field that I work in, which is intimate relationships, it's massively important that we're aware of these types of things when we are going out into the world looking to find someone that we want to have an intimate relationship with. 2 seconds about me because we have no time whatsoever. As you can see on there, I'm a relationship coach. I have a documentary called Forget-Me-Not, which looks at our past and how we put Parts of ourselves aside as kids in order to fit in, and then they can feel quite uncomfortable when we become adults, and we're not our true authentic selves because what we've been taught as children is that those parts of us don't fit into the environment that we were brought up in. It's like when you might have a drink, you're feeling— if you drink in here, you become a bit freer and expressive in yourself. That's generally the stuff that you're repressing. It could be all the way back to your childhood. Author of The People Program book. The People Program helps you to overcome your blocks to success. So it helps you to understand your processes, how you might feel about yourself, the relationship that you have on the inside, and the things that you might do in your life which stop you from moving your life forward. I have The Relationship Guy podcast, which was only launched back in July. So please go to my website, johnkennycoaching.com/podcast, and you can click on a link and listen to The podcast on your favorite podcast provider. And speaker— that's me speaking at one of Desi's conferences in the past, that's the Dating and Relationship Conference a couple of years ago. So the way you do relationships is heavily influenced by the relationships that you have when you enter the world as a newborn baby. That's actually me as a day old. Aww. And I kid. So what happens when we come into the world is we are subject to the things that are going on with our primary caregivers. So the affection that they give us, the time they give us, the security they provide for us will affect how we are, how we become ourselves and how we learn to attach to people. There's a thing called attachment theory, and we all have an attachment style. Now, that's either going to be a secure attachment style, so that means when you're a child, your parents offer you love, affection, time, security, and they empower you to be a healthy human being. And there's about 60% of the population worldwide— it doesn't matter where you live, what culture you come from— about 60% of the population has a secure Secure attachment style. attachment style, whereas 40% of us, including myself, grew up with what's called an insecure attachment style. So when we are children, if we don't receive love and affection, we can do one of two things generally. We can avoid affection, so we become an avoidant attachment style. So if something's too painful for us, we shut down. We move away from it because we don't know how to handle that situation. So our brain says, the best way for me to deal with this situation is just not to face up to it at all. So then as adults, we become what's called an avoidant attachment personality style. So when a relationship comes our way, if it starts to get too fearful— so if we start to connect to people— Then what will happen is our brain will say, I don't really know if I want to do this, and it will start to back off. And that's called a fearful avoidant style. And so if any of you have ever been in a relationship and you've been ghosted, generally you were dating an avoidant personality, a fearful avoidant personality style. There's another avoidant, they're called dismissive, and they just dismiss connection out of hand because it's far too painful for them to even consider being close to someone. So they say, I don't want to do this. So they're the kind of people that might just have casual relationships all the time. So if you've met someone like that, if you are like that yourself, you've probably got a dismissive avoidant style. Someone who has an anxious style will have acted out as a child, so they don't know how to soothe their own emotions. Rather than shutting them down, it becomes exacerbated, so therefore they reach out a lot more. They'll scream, shout, throw a tantrum, be highly emotional. And as an adult, they generally come across as quite clingy, needy type people. If affection is removed from them or they feel uncomfortable in affection, they'll have a tendency to overreact to certain situations and they become quite chaotic. Anxious and avoidant people go together quite well in a very unhealthy way. Avoidant, especially if it's a fearful avoidant, because they give a lot at the start So they love bomb because at the time they really want to be in a relationship, but they don't know how to do it healthily. So they give you a lot at the start and then they retreat. An anxious person then will then start to chase because it triggers their anxiety, and you'll find those push-me kind of pull-you type relationships, a lot of ones with chaos and people arguing quite a lot because there's a lot of insecurity going on. The worst one, I say the worst one, the most damaged kind of attachment style is called a disorganized or an anxious avoidant. That generally comes from quite severe childhood trauma. So for instance, you might have witnessed abuse, you might have been abused yourself, and therefore the relationship you have with your primary caregivers are very fraught with danger. You want to love them, but you don't know how because you're scared of them. It makes you feel massively uncomfortable. So you go for love and then you retreat. You go for love and then you retreat. And you really get disorganized in your emotions and don't know how to handle them. The second thing is your relationship beliefs. Your beliefs are the most powerful thing that you'll ever have because they're the only things that will override your survival mechanism. When we're born, our brain is in survival mode and our primary objective in life is to stay alive. Apart from to generally procreate. So when we have powerful relationship beliefs, they can lead us to keep making choices based on what we believe to be true. So to you, they're your truths. And this is a behavioral system, so these are behavioral beliefs as well. So if you believe certain things about life, if you believe certain things about relationships, you're always going to look to reinforce them. Because if they're not real to you in your life, you'll do something which will then create it for you. So if you think that all the best people in the world have already gone and been taken, you're always going to settle for less. Because you're not going to be looking for what you really want, you're going to be looking for what you believe you can have, or what you believe is available to you. So have a little think about if that's— if you're holding on to anything about relationship belief that could be causing you to keep choosing the wrong type of person. It's something for you to consider, because if you're not— if it doesn't exist in your life, you will be looking to make it true. No choice. Because otherwise your brain isn't very settled in that space. If you're having a healthy relationship with someone, but you have unhealthy relationship beliefs, you'll have a tendency to pick arguments, to cause trouble. You'll find something that will create an issue for you so you can start to back away from that relationship. Fulfill your belief. The third thing is relational patterns. It's the same with beliefs that we ever have behavioral patterns in life. We all like to do things a certain way, and we learn as we experience relationships, we build patterns. So if you build up a pattern of that relationships are painful, that you always choose a certain type of person, that you need to have a certain feeling, that this person will always treat you a certain way. If that's what— something you repeat, that becomes very familiar in your brain. And so your brain then looks for that again the same time. It will go through the same routine with you in order to create the same pattern, because that's where you feel comfortable. So if you're looking for something different, but your brain is telling you, actually, this is not a comfortable space for me to be in, it won't allow you to have it. It'll say, this is what we do, and this is what we're going to continue to do, because this is what you're comfortable with. So if you know people that have a tendency to go into one relationship after the next, after the next, after the next, after the next, they've built up a pattern of not being able to be on their own. So they'll feel lonely, alone, they won't be able to sit in their own space, they don't really know how to have a healthy relationship with themselves, and therefore their relational pattern will play out as they'll keep going into the same types of relationships over and over again, because that's what their brain's telling them they need to do. And again, if that doesn't come from a healthy space, if that comes from, say, an anxious attachment style, or from an unhealthy belief system, Then the patterns that you create will keep following the same type of person all the time. When I was a child, I used to spend quite a lot of time on my own, so I had an avoidant personality. I learnt when I was a child that when things weren't emotionally safe for me, I would go and play by myself. I used to run away from home a lot because I didn't know how to be in that environment. So as an adult, I was always looking for a safe space. What I used to do was go into relationships looking for an escape plan, because my safe space was always to be by myself. So then I would look for relationships, and my brain was already out there looking for somebody with an excuse to get out of it. So I would always look for a problem before the relationship had begun, and— What was the problem? Robbie Williams says it in the song Feel. He says, I'm always looking for an out before I begin. Ah. Because that's your safe space. And if you have an unhealthy safe space, again, you're gonna want to return to that subconsciously. Your brain's trying to keep you safe all the time. It doesn't like danger, it doesn't like pain, and most importantly, it doesn't like loss. And all of this comes from loss. So whether it's— it's always around emotional loss. The most pain that you experience will be around loss. If you have an attachment to something and it's not there any longer, then you experience loss. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be a cat, it could be a family member, it could be your car gets stolen, it could be you can't find something that's important to you. But as soon as you experience that loss, your brain goes into a process to try and manage that. So is that something, again, if you think about for yourself, when you're in a relationship, what is your safe space? Is that healthy? Do you really need to be with somebody all the time? Is that your safe space? So therefore you'll just basically be with anybody because just being with somebody is your safe space. Yes. Or like me, would you be looking at a relationship and saying, well, there's something there that I don't like, so therefore in a few months' time, in a year's time, whatever, I can go, I don't want to be here anymore because of that thing. So if a relationship's going really well, as an avoidant personality, I couldn't deal with that. All of my relational patterns would then fall, so I'd go back into the same types of relationships with people. My relationship beliefs were, relationships are unhealthy, I can't get my needs met, people will hurt me. My self-belief— I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough, would lead to everything I attracted. So the law of attraction, as far as I like to look at it, is what we put out as far as what we want, expect, need in the world will come back to us. There's part of your brain called your reticular activating system, or your RAS, and that's your I will find you what you want part of your brain. So if I said to you, when you leave here later on, just look for as many red cars as possible, Because that's now been put into your awareness, you will start to see a lot of red cars. It's the same with relationships. If you have an idea about what you're putting out into the world— so if I say to you, okay, what you want to do is go out and look for all the people that won't cause you the pain that you caused before. So maybe they cheated on you, maybe there was some abuse, maybe they never gave you enough time, maybe they didn't do enough things for you, and you're walking down the road saying, I want to find someone who doesn't abuse me. I don't want to find someone that doesn't give me any time. I don't want to find someone that never makes me a priority. Your brain is looking for those people. So it's really important to look for what you want and not for what you don't want. So when you're going out into the world, because I know a lot of you put your hand up earlier on when someone asked if you were single, there were a lot of singles in the room. If you're going out looking for a relationship, make sure you look for what you want. And not for what you don't want. So make sure you've got a want list of the people you want to bring into your life. None of this will work, unfortunately, unless you work on yourself. The most important relationship you're ever gonna have is the one you have with yourself, because it dictates all the relationships that you bring in. So amongst everything else I've mentioned, how you see yourself will be massively key to the People that you bring in. So what do you deserve? If I say to you, go and have that relationship that you want, and you go and find that relationship you want, you've broken all your patterns, and all of a sudden you don't deserve to have that in your life, you'll get rid of it. Or you'll do something which needs to prove to you that you're unworthy. Or they need to prove to you that you are worthy. And you're going to keep causing problems for yourself. That means my time is up. And you're gonna keep causing problems for yourself if you don't accept that you're allowed to have the things that you want. So in summary, your relational patterns are created through the experiences of your relationships, and your beliefs about relationships and ourselves and others are massively important to being able to find what you want in your life moving forward. Be aware of what your attachment style might be. How does that influence you in relationships? So when you're close to someone, does it make you feel uncertain? Does it make you feel uneasy? Do you back away? Do you shut down? Or when someone backs away from you, do you then chase them? Or do you just find that relationships just freak you out entirely when you start to have feelings for someone and you don't know what to do with them? And all of these things Including the safe space that we're looking for, will lead you to find the people that you bring into your life. And this isn't just in intimate relationships, this can work in friendships, it works even with your work colleagues, it might even work with some of the clients that you attract towards you as well in the work that you do. I know when I was in a very unhealthy space, a lot of my clients were coming with a lot of their unhealthy issues that I was struggling with myself or were familiar to me as far as my own relationships were So there were a lot of triggers, a lot of problems for me before I got on top of my own stuff with the work I was doing. So I was constantly in this kind of relationship stress space. My relationship coaching program is Relationship Ready in 90 Days. You may have seen it on the sign outside. So I work with people for 3 months to help them, to get them, work through the issues we discuss, plus everything else that they might be bringing to the table. And I've made a video program of that as well.