Customer Reviews

Dating from the Inside Out: How to Use the Law of Attraction in Matters of the Heart

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Dating from the Inside Out, by Paulette Kouffman Sherman, is all about making sure YOU are ready to date before you head out there and attempt it. Its core message is that you need to be at least reasonably happy and content with yourself if you're going to have dates work out well.

Think of it in this way. If you went out on a date with someone and they were mopey, grumpy and self-bashing all evening long, you probably wouldn't want to go on a second date with them, right? If on the other hand they were happy, fun to talk with and friendly to people around them, you would be quite interested in a second date. This is true for pretty much everybody. We want to be with people who are happy. So in order to succeed on dates (and in life!!) we need to be happy. That doesn't mean we have to find someone TO make us happy. Rather, we need to BE happy and then we will find someone who will enjoy sharing that happy life.

So Paulette's book goes step by step about how to build up your self esteem and escape from bad habits which have made you unhappy in the past. She suggests you start journalling, to keep track of your progress and watch out for problems. Programming that you've built up for years can be very hard to change - but it CAN be done. If your family teased you for your entire childhood about being heavy, it can be very hard to accept yourself as an adult. It really can be done though.

She brings up many good points that are important to take to heart. For example, if you rant to your friends all the time that men are all losers, you probably will end up dating losers. It's the way the human brain works. Bikers tell you all the time that if you stare at a wall as you go around the curve, focusing on it and worrying about hitting it, you are likely to hit it. What you focus on is what you tend to go towards. If on the other hand you focus on the road ahead, and focus on following the road, that is where you tend to go. Rather than concentrating on the negative, and complaining / focusing on the negative, you have to focus on what you want. Build up friends who have happy relationships, talk about happy relationships, and get into situations where happy people are. You will then find yourself in a happy relationship!

It's not easy, if you've gotten into the habit of bashing others or ending up with negative people. Paulette talks about an experiment where rats were put into a sealed cage and then cheese was shown to them. The rats kept jumping for the cheese but could not get to it. They finally gave up. Later even when they were out of the cage, they would not jump for the cheese. They had gotten too frustrated. Humans are like this too - they will give up after a while. Don't give up. Reset your mind to be positive, and focus on that.

Paulette points out that people dedicate a lot of time, money and energy to finding a job. They perfect their resume, spend months searching for the job and make sure they have made the right decision. But then these people might put no effort at all into finding a mate - they just want someone to "appear". Finding a great mate is far more important than finding a job. Put the same effort into researching your own needs and desires, making yourself as happy as possible, finding peace in your own world and then putting yourself into situations where people with common interests will be.

The key again is that you need to BE happy, honestly, for this to work. Yes, we all have issues that we want to work on. We want to be thinner or a better cook or whatever. You can't expect your partner to "fix" you, to validate you, to fix your problems. It is important for you to work on being happy with you and being the best you that you can be. You want to have positive, encouraging friends around you - but you also want to be happy being on your own too. Both are very important to being well rounded.

I like the idea of creating a "marriage ceremony" for yourself - to dedicate yourself to taking good care of yourself. We have many ceremonies in life - graduating from school, getting married, having a baby - but we don't have a ceremony really for "being an adult" and resolving to take good care of yourself. We really should. This is one of the most important things any person can do. It is really hard to care properly for others if you're not taking good care of yourself in the first place.

So with all of this great advice, are there any issues in the book? I did find a few things that struck me as odd. Pauline wants you to call up your exs and rant or yell or talk to them, to clear your mind. That seems REALLY unfair to me. Write them a letter maybe - that way they can open it or not. I don't think it's fair or healthy to force another human being to sit there and listen to your anger or sadness or whatever just because you feel like venting.

The book is very heavily leant towards women reading it. It does occasionally talk about men, but most of the examples are women, most of the references are about women. The family section talks about relating to dad - not to mom.

The book likes to drive you to therapy (or to signing up for her online classes). In one example there is a series of questions along the lines of "any man would be lucky to have me!" If you cannot say YES to 8 out of 10 of these questions, you should look into therapy. I don't think so! I don't *agree* that any man would be lucky to have a given woman. I think that for each person there is a *group* of partners that would work really well - but there is also a group of partners who would NOT work well.

Plus, in the dating in midlife section, it says a key benefit is that you "always wanted to be Mrs. Robinson". What?

Still, the core message here is very meaningful. Dating isn't about tricking another person into liking you. It is about being honestly content with what you are, and drawing in - naturally - people who want to be with you. I have really seen this approach work with so many of my friends. It works. It can be hard, yes! Many of us have self esteem issues. But if you take the time and energy to work on them, you will find that wonderful dating partners will follow quite naturally.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is actually more of a workbook and the exercises in it help guide you through the thorny world of dating. Though some of the advice has been covered before in other books, the exercises are new to me. They can help you look inside of yourself to find out what may be blocking you in your love life. The book also helps you define what you are really looking for in a mate.

If you are willing to do the sometimes difficult work of introspection, I think this book can help you achieve your dreams and if you don't meet that special someone, it will at least uplift you and give you clarity around who you are as a person.

At first glance, I thought that this dating book was written by a woman for women. It ain't so. The principles espoused apply to men as well as women. In the future, know yourself, like yourself and be yourself will be the golden rule for all of my relationships.

A good read. Well worthwhile.

MK

"Dating From the Inside Out" is a profound and important book. Unlike most relationship books out there, this book identifies the real reasons why so many relationships burn and crash.

As we grow, we form unconscious ideas of who we are, of who people are in general, and of how we understand the world, We use these patterns to pick mates without even knowing what the patterns really are.

Dr. Sherman helps you identify the patterns, change them when they are counterproductive, and combine these new productive patterns with the practical strategies that will make healthy relationships bloom. BRAVO!

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

I really liked this book! It got me back into the dating world. It is a light read--deceptively so, since it makes some profound, valuable and helpful points. Some examples:

Many dating books tell you how to act or dress or what to do to get the guy or gal--in essence, to be something different from who you are. Dr. Sherman points out that if you want someone who really wants to be with you, you're better off truly being yourself, rather than try to act like someone else!

Often times we look at dates as a win/lose or sucess/failure activity. She suggests instead approaching each date as something to learn from, something to grow from. What a great idea! Then dating can be a series of sucesses, rather than a string of failures until we finally get to the "right" person.

She also suggests learning to truly appreciate yourself. If we're not loving ourselves, how can we realistically expect someone else to love us?

I'm probably not doing her book justice with the above snippets, but her book is truly full of little gems. It's more than just a book, however. Intersperced throughout the pages are useful exercises to help the reader apply the principles and discover how they work for them. So it's a workbook, too!

I showed the book to my (single) roommate--she got so caught up in it that she didn't give it back all evening. The book inspired me to take a chance and I went out on a series of dates with someone I might not have otherwise. And because of what I learned through reading it, I didn't get caught up in focusing soley on "is this the one" and I had a wonderful time, growing in self-confidence in the process.

It's a friendly, fun, and truly helpful book for anyone looking for a better approach to dating. Enjoy!

This book is great for those who are trying to find that special someone but keep attracting the wrong person. Dr. Sherman takes the dating process to a whole new level by getting to the core of the issue- ourselves. She teaches us how we often get in our own way when it comes to dating and that we must begin the process by first knowing ourselves. Her clever approach allows us to date consciously to attract the one we are most looking for.

This was one of the best dating books I have ever read. Not only was it so easy to read, but there were so many very good suggestions that just made sense to me. I am back out there having fun again. Thanks for such a great read, when is the next one coming?

I had recently returned to the scary world of dating - this book was just

what I needed to get off the couch and into the world again!