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To Purchase Winning Points:
Hello everyone. My name is Jaci Rae and this is my true love story. When I first began "serious" dating each one was supposed to be "the one." Or at least that's what everyone told me. ‘He's the one for you.’ ‘When are you two going to get married?’ ‘Has he popped the question yet?’ What many people never saw was the inner turmoil of the relationship and the way the man treated me behind the scenes. Society sees single people as sad and alone, yet whenever I was in a relationship I was deeply lonely. However, the underlying current of feeling lonely when I was in a relationship was much less when I was single, only now I had the added value of feeling rejected too. Why? How could I be lonely when I had "the one" sitting next to me and how, when I was single and alone could I feel less lonely than when I was with “the one?” Other questions constantly raced through my mind such as: Was I always the wrong person? Why wasn't I ever Mrs. Right? To give you more insight into me and how I ended up in a string of wash out relationships with men who broke my heart and my bank account many times you need a little understanding about my background. I grew up poor with the added feeling of being very unwanted. My childhood was not a safe one. My Mom wasn't home much because she had to work to support two children as a single mother without child support so I grew up feeling very rejected and alone. Do you see the pattern? Food was the only thing I could control in my own life and I became very good at controlling it. Sometimes eating nothing and sometimes gorging. Something I still struggle with today. By the age of eight I started on a journey to discover why did harm come to me? Why I was so ugly, stupid, fat and horrible. I ravenously read every book I could find at the school library during lunch and magazines at home. Once I was older and had a job (age 12) I bought books. It started me on a journey that hasn't stopped; my love of what makes people tick and how relationships work or don't. Why was I always the wrong one? Let's move to more recent events. With all my education and studying I still ending up in the "wrong" relationship. Why? I had changed my pattern, or so I thought. I picked people with different backgrounds, different careers, different education, different socio-economic backgrounds and different looks. What was wrong? I always seemed to pick the man who would treat me the worst. The "good" ones only wanted to only be my friends. During that time I was sought after by friends, family and people who were referred to me to help them understand themselves and their relationships and to "fix" things. Why was I able to help them and not myself? I knew the basic rule that I must love myself before anyone else would love me, but I knew that I could never love myself. I was too ugly. Too fat. Too stupid and any other horrible adjectives I could throw at myself. So I hid myself even further. The laws of attraction that most of us have heard, but practically no one adheres too, ruled over me. I only attracted those that would hurt me the most. I hadn’t changed the way I felt about myself, so how could I expect the men in my life to change the way they treated me? One day, while I was sitting with my then boyfriend a revelation came over me. The words I had read about, studied and preached to others hit me full in the face. I deserve better and I am not junk. This man, who had been a dear friend for years, was my boyfriend now and he was horrible to me! He was a great friend but sucked at the boyfriend gig. As I sat in the room with a bunch of NFL people I realized many of these men and women needed to score points with themselves and their “loved” ones and not just put a show on so others thought they did. That’s when the title, “Winning Points With The Woman In Your Life One Touchdown at a Time – How to Score For Men and Women” came to my mind. At first I fought writing this book. How could I possibly mix football and love? I wasn't even a huge football fan! But once I sat down to do so it came out quickly (I learned a lot about football along the way!). The next step I took to write the book was to interview men and women on the street to find out what their thoughts were about relationships and what made them crazy in them. A year and a half of research later I started the real journey of self-discovery. I wasn’t the horrible, awful, ugly person I had always believed deep in my soul I was. I was a kind person who struggled with her weight, but that didn’t mean I didn’t deserve the best. It was also at that point that I realized I was much happier being single than being in a relationship and I started to practice the self-love I always spoke and wrote about. For the next two years I wrote and I was happy, elated actually. People would stop me on the street just to say how much I glowed. It was amazing. They say love comes when you least expect it and that's what happened to me. It was during my time of happy singleness, that I met the man who would turn out to be my soul mate. We talked for hours and I mean truly talked. I had never really had such in-depth conversation with anyone! But I ran scared. A month later I was in a relationship with a man who was fun but a player. After a month with him I realized what I was doing and headed as fast as I could in the other direction. I called up the other man and we went on our first date. He was kind and sensitive (gorgeous to boot) and he even side stepped me from doggy poop on our hike. We spent the entire afternoon and well into the wee hours of the next morning just talking and laughing. However, when I left him for my car I knew I wasn’t going to date him. My mom called me the next day and asked me how the date had gone. I told her what a wonderful time I had and how wonderful he was. I then stated firmly, “…but I am not going to date him.” She said, ‘oh…how sad.’ Something clicked inside me at that moment and I turned around and said, “No way! I am going to date him.” And that’s just what I did. In that instance I made a choice (and you can too) to change my dating pattern. I was going to go for the man I wasn’t attracted too. The man who didn’t have the element of “danger, ” which is what seemed to be underlying in all the other men I had dated. Practicing what I preached That was nearly two years ago and I am still totally in love as he is with me. We literally spend almost all of our time together (we work side by side as well) and while we have occasional disagreements, we always apologize. We are a normal couple after all! He really is the most incredible man I have ever known. So what changed and how can you change your life so you can attract the one person that will treat you like gold? I go over that a lot in “Winning Points With The Woman In Your Life One Touchdown at a Time” (which I originally wrote for women to read, not sure a man would want to read it but it turned out that was untrue. Both men and women read and study it. Despite the title, this book is for both sexes and is not all about Football. While I do use football language in the book, it’s not a football book per se.) TABLE OF CONTENTS FORWARD CHAPTER 1 Stepping Into the Stadium CHAPTER 2 Getting onto the Field - Shedding a Little Light on the Complex CHAPTER 3 Avoiding the Defensive Lineman and the Backfield CHAPTER 4 Learning to Avoid Incomplete Passes - Communication CHAPTER 5 Learning to Key - Women Feel Their Words, Hear Them CHAPTER 6 Hitch and Go Doesn't Work in Relationships - Do What CHAPTER 7 The Huddle - Emotional Word Pictures CHAPTER 8 Getting Benched - the Difference Between a Man's "No" CHAPTER 9 Making the First Round Draft Pick with Romance CHAPTER 10 Learning the Playbook - the Memory Game CHAPTER 11 The Team - True Intimacy, the Road to Becoming Best Friends CHAPTER 12 Recruiting and Stats - Things Women Need You to Know CHAPTER 13 The Chemistry of Love - Scientific Facts CHAPTER 14 Illegal Procedures - Women in the Wallet, Women in the Frames CHAPTER 15 Adding Value to your Team - Spending and Investing Time CHAPTER 16 Looking for a Draw Play - Non-Verbal Communication CHAPTER 17 The Last Pass - How and Where To Meet The Woman or Man In Your Life if You Don't Currently Have Anyone to Score a Touchdown With CHAPTER 18 Getting into the End Zone Consistently - the Final Word CHAPTER 19 Relationship Advice from Legendary NFL Clutch-Kickers CHAPTER 20 Football Definitions, Rules, Penalties and Fun Football Stats CHAPTER 21 Epilogue No. 1 Amazon and Barnes and Noble Best Selling Author Jaci Rae Winning Points With The Woman In Your Life One Touchdown at a Time (Simon and Schuster) |
Successful Dating Tips by Best Selling Author, Jaci Rae
If you've made it into the stadium and you are now stepping onto the playing field for your first day of practice with the Dallas Cowboys, nervous excitement may surge through your veins as the coach talks about the various formations he is going to run the team through and begins to discuss the different play calls and strategies he will be using during this season's games. While much of what the coach talks about initially lies within the realm of football common sense and comes easily to you, there are a few nuances in the game plan that you will be unfamiliar with. Also, some of the plays are new to you and could cause complications and confusion in the season ahead if you don't understand them. A team's language will guide you in how to interact and communicate with your teammates on the playing field. This that each player must learn is full of individual components, called the "plays." For each "play, " there is a "plan." Each of these "plays" and "plans" has been specially formulated through years of research and scientific study, producing entire systems of proven techniques that can make winners out of the players and teams. Once the methods were proven effective, they were gathered together and worked into a playbook for each team to base its "plays" and "plans" on. It is that playbook that each teammate must learn in order to be part of the winning team. This process is much the same as that of the "plays" and "plans" of a relationship. You need to read the manual, learn from those who are already where you want to be in their relationships and listen actively to your partner in order to learn how to speak their language. Once you learn this language, you can enter the game confidently and achieve victory! A woman's perception of her relationship, as well as the language she uses within a relationship may seem very complicated, and sometimes confusing. You may find particular things in her language syntax that are hard to understand and certainly difficult to interpret! And as if that weren't enough, many women have a tendency to turn over and over in their heads most of what is said to them, finding more than what may actually be there. While men tend to go with the flow without over-analyzing things, women try to find out what's behind the words they see and hear when dealing with their loved ones. This process is intuitively part of their naturally protective circuitry, helping them emotionally guard themselves and their loved ones. Have you ever heard the statement, "You don't want to mess with Mother Bear?" This applies here because women are built as nurturers and maintain a natural curiosity about their environment, in order to help them protect themselves and those they love from perceived dangers. This natural curiosity triggers what I like to call the "need to know" gene. Women have the "need to know" or to discover all the "information" about their surroundings and then make judgment calls as to any dangers that may affect those they love. This of course, can lead to any number of natural responses to the perceived dangers of their surroundings and an inherent desire to analyze all causes and effects. Because curiosity (analyzing) is a natural response for women, it tends to bleed over into other areas of their lives, namely their relationships. In addition to analyzing most of what is said to them, women may often have hidden meaning in what they say, even if they don't intend to put it there. Men are not as complicated (in a good way) with their spoken language. What men say is most often what they mean. So, why is it that so many women seem to include hidden messages behind their words? In the same way that women tend to over-analyze things, sometimes they also include hidden meaning in their spoken words. The reasons for this can be partially found by looking at the traditional upbringing and social history of women. Parents and other adults teach women, at a very early age, that they need to be strong, confident and know what they want. They are also told that they need to be assertive and independent in order to succeed at fulfilling their dreams and desires for their future. In reality, though, oftentimes the media image of a woman is much different. Society in general, sees images of successful women on television and in the movies that are more demure and non-aggressive, but still get what they need and desire. The woman on television or in the media, who ends up with the man of her dreams, may have played it "coy, " playing off on her seeming "need" for the man. The media image presented is often in direct conflict with the way that a woman may have been raised. Because of these two conflicting images, women have now received mixed messages and are subjected to confusing images about the way they should behave in society. On top of this, women see the men around them as being intrigued and often fascinated by the media image of a woman, an image that may not always interconnect with the ideals and values that they, as women, were brought up with. Because of this, women may be unsure how to present themselves and may seek to bring forward aspects of both images at the same time. As a result, they may confuse the two images, hiding their true feelings and thoughts deep within their words, all the while struggling to achieve the final goal of communicating their needs or "message" to those that participate in their lives. Our environment has a great deal to do with how we relate and react to each other as well as how we communicate with other people. Another huge factor in our character make-up is the individual chemistry that everyone is born with. While much has been said about how different the sexes are, how much do we actually know? The facts show that men and women are conceived equally in terms of their overall intelligence. However, somewhere between the twelfth and fourteenth weeks of pregnancy, there is a testosterone wash that flows over the brain of a male baby. i This wash does not take place during the formation of a female baby. Let's take a look at how the brain works and try to understand why this is so important. Testosterone is one of the main chemicals that enable the brain to manufacture and create serotonin, which is an important neurotransmitter in the brain, causing certain nerve cells in the brain to activate and become livelier. Serotonin can also act as an inhibitor. Most neurotransmitters can act as both an exciter and an inhibitor. Serotonin affects the brain's interior, known as the ganglia. The ganglia are the network of the brain, which is divided into two cells, the L cell and the R cell. Scientists believe that one of these cells makes serotonin and the other produces dopamine. Dopamine is "a monoamine neurotransmitter formed in the brain and is essential to the normal functioning of the central nervous system. ii" Dopamine acts as an inhibitor in the ganglia, thereby causing a calming effect and dampening activity. It is believed that during the testosterone wash, a balance between the L cells and the R cells are set, determining the amount of serotonin and dopamine that the brain's network will use. This also determines how spatially or temporally aware a person is, with men being born more spatially aware and women more temporally aware. A person who is spatially aware is generally a “left-brain” individual and someone who is temporally aware, is generally a “right-brain” individual. The word "spatial" is defined as "relating to space. iii" As men are generally more spatially aware, they tend to be better at judging distances, which comes in handy during parallel parking! The word "temporal, " meanwhile, is defined as being "of or limited by time. iv” This may explain why women seem to be able to associate time and events without much difficulty. You know what I am talking about here men, that little thing that really bothers men about women -- she remembers everything she thinks you have done wrong and when you did it! I believe this is due in part because of a woman's propensity for temporal awareness. Because of the testosterone wash, men tend to be more "left- brain" oriented and women rely more readily on the "right-brain." "Left-brain" individuals tend to be more interested in facts, inclined to logic and reason. They are more motivated in providing for the home and usually more interested in becoming engineers, mathematicians and scientist. These are just a few career choices that a "left-brain" individual might make. A "right-brain" individual tends to be better at, and more interested in, developing relationships and dealing with emotional issues. They are more inclined to emotions and passions and are generally more motivated by investing in the relationships of the home. Their career choices tend to put them in the roles of caregivers or into jobs where they can use their artistic, investigative and research abilities. This is in contrast to the general tendencies of "left-brained" individual. Again, a clearer picture begins to be revealed when we look at the differences between the sexes in this light. Most men might find a leisurely reading of Popular Mechanics or Programmer's Security Desk Reference fundamentally more interesting than reading Ladies’ Home Journal or Parent Child Magazine, while women are just the opposite. This is simply a matter of one's interest and NOT an intellectual issue, as both men and women can be motivated for various reasons to read on all the subjects mentioned. Remember that both sexes are born equally in terms of intelligence. My uncle gave me a funny example the other day of how men see women's thought patterns when it comes to making decisions. I thought that this insight was a great example of men conquering and women looking for sequence and order before they tackle the matter at hand. Here's what he had to say: "Men rule by action. Women rule by committee. For example: Man sees hill, climbs hill. Woman sees hill, forms discussion group, sets up hill climbing committee, votes for hill climbing team, schedules climb date, checks rain fall charts, does studies to locate best path, sends out scouts, and much, much, much, much later... finally climbs the hill." The facts stated thus far pertain only to our pre-disposition at birth. The things we experience each day, the lessons that we are taught as we move through our daily lives and the personal choices we make along the way will also be determining factors in how "left-brain" or "right-brain" we become. These factors will also directly affect our communication with and relationship to others. The good news is that since each of us has the freedom to make personal choices, we can learn to hear and understand each other's language when we step onto the playing field to begin practice! "Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands." Psalms 119:73 Once you step up and onto the playing field, however, you will need to hear exactly what the coach has to say during practice if you want to make it to your first game. Jaci Rae Copyright Jaci Rae's grit and determination brought her from a poor childhood to a successful singer and performer who tours around the world. She is the recipient of the "Female Vocalist of the Year" award at the Golden Music Awards in Nashville, as well as a Barnes and Noble and Amazon No. 1 Best seller. Jaci is the dating coach for igniteromance.com, on the dating team of Savvymiss.com, the relationship expert for lovingyou.com and is a relationship advisor for loveisgreat.com and singlescafe.net. She is the author of The Indie Guide to Music, Marketing and Money, as well as Winning Points With The Woman In Your Life One Touchdown, Shop for a Day with Jaci Rae and Collista's Search for the True Meaning of Christmas.Jaci spends her spare time working on her music, writing and hanging out with family and friends. For more information, go to http://www.jacirae.com http://www.christmaswithlove.com or http://www.winningromance.com About.com Dating Guide lists Jaci's book, Winning Points With The Woman In Your Life One Touchdown At A Time in the top six of all time dating / relationship books. http://dating.about.com/od/datingadvice/ss/RelateBooks_6.htm To Purchase Winning Points:
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