The Soulmate Secret
An interview with Arielle Ford
A little over a decade ago, La Jollan Arielle Ford was fantastically successful in her professional life—her PR firm, the Ford Group, helped launch the careers of Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch, and Chicken Soup for the Soul authors Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen; and she handled publicity for a host of top-notch New Thought writers like Louise Hay and Marianne Williamson, eleven of whom hit the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Still, the kind of love she sought in her personal life continued to elude her. At age 44, she decided to take seriously her journey to find love and began to apply the methods that had given wings to her career to her love life. Within six months she met and fell in love with her now husband Brian Hilliard.
In a new book, the soulmate secret , she shares her story and teaches others how she accomplished her long-cherished goal.
TLC: Tell us, Arielle, what was it that led you to write this book?
Arielle Ford: I never actually intended to write this book; what happened was a couple of years ago my sister Debbie was taking a couple hundred of her students on a cruise and she asked me to give a forty-five minute talk about how I manifested my husband Brian eleven years ago. So I started making notes about all the different prayers, rituals, projects and techniques that I used, and then I shared it with her group and after the talk, a whole bunch of them came up to me and said “Wow, that's really great; when can I buy the book?”
I said,”I'm not doing any more books, I'm done doing books”—but there was a demand for this information so I put it together in an online product, which is at soulmatekit.com, that turned out to be a workbook and a DVD and several audios. Then about a year ago some folks at HarperCollins saw the soulmate kit and asked me to turn it into a book and it was impossible to say no so now I have the book— the soulmate secret .
In a certain sense the book is an application of the principles of the popular film and book The Secret to the issue of finding one's perfect mate.
I would say that's partially correct. I never read the book The Secret ; I saw part of the movie once. The things that I did, I did eleven years ago—long before The Secret came out.
So they share a perspective but it wasn't really the cause of your own work…
Right. I learned about visualization techniques in the mid-1980s and started using them for my career and found them very effective…
…from reading Shakti Gawain on the plane to California, right?
Exactly, yeah. Creative Visualization was one of the first books I read and there was another book that's out of print now called Key to Yourself by Dr. Venice Bloodworth. Then along the way the thing that I learned was that the key to making a visualization happen is the emotion you put behind it, and I felt like that was really left out of the film The Secret . That's why I say there's some difference. The juice that really makes a visualization manifest is really being able to put yourself into a feeling state of knowing that what your asking for is already yours, and that's a really critical component.
Throughout the book I share a large variety of manifestation techniques and prayers and rituals and what I call “feelingizations,” so you can experience in every cell of your body that what you are asking for is already yours. Does that make sense?
Yes, absolutely. Your book asserts that we often have beliefs that block our ability to attract our perfect partner.
Yeah, and so the first thing that we work on in the soulmate secret is to let go of our past wounds, heal our heart, do forgiveness processes—so that we can manifest from a clean space. Because if you're living in the belief system “I'm too old, I'm too fat, I'm too damaged, I'm too whatever,” how can the Universe give you what you're asking for, if your belief is that you don't deserve it? So we have to first clear out the clutter of your heart and the clutter in your home and heal the old wounds in order to manifest Big Love.
Then there are also what you call feelingizations about how you can attract what you want to fill in those spaces that you have cleaned up and emptied out, right?
Exactly.
The book is also filled with first-person accounts of people who have used your techniques successfully.
There are twelve what we call “real people stories” in there of friends of mine who have actually used these manifestation techniques to manifest their soulmate. Three of the teachers who are in the movie The Secret share their stories in the book, and the director of that film shares his story. It's a way to inspire people, no matter what your situation, of what worked for them—so there are stories of people who have suffered abuse, people who have been divorced, people who had given up who found a way to align their beliefs and their feeling-state to manifest the love of their life.
What are some of the most important things for people to bear in mind when they're in this process?
Once you get past healing the past and the forgiveness release techniques, you have to have a very clear intention. Now to a lot of people I'll say “What are looking for in a man?” or “What are you looking for in a woman?” and the first thing they do is give me five things that they don't want. You can't go around to God or the Universe or whatever you call it saying, “Well, I don't want a cheapskate.” What you have to do is turn that around and say, “I would like a man who is very generous, very giving.”
You have to make a long list of the positive qualities and traits that you're looking to manifest. On top of that, you've also got to describe the lifestyle that you want to lead. So if you want somebody who's physically fit and active—let's say you like to hike, bike, run and swim—then you're going to want to include that on your list. On the other hand, if you're a total couch potato, and you want somebody who's going to sit around and watch old movies with you, you want to ask for that too, so you can be very specific.
A lot of times, people don't ask for what they really want; they think they have to settle. I was talking to one woman one day who was in her mid-forties and wanting to manifest new love, and I said to her, “Do you want children?” She didn't currently have any. And she said, “Well, any guy of my age is going to already have kids, so I'm going to have to be a stepmother.” And I said,”“No! Who said that? I'm asking you a yes-or-no question— Do you want children ?”
And she kept coming back with “Well, I'm going to have to be a stepparent.” She thought she would limit the possibilities of her being able to find somebody if she were going to tell the truth, and her truth was that she didn't want to be anybody's mother.
So you're encouraging people not to settle before they've even…
Right, before they've even looked! Even though I was forty-four before I married Brian, I was very clear I did not want children. I didn't want to give birth to children and I didn't want to stepparent any children. I didn't have anything around that said, “Oh, well, maybe I'll never find anybody;” I was just really clear. On the day that I met Brian, by the end of our first day together, I said to him, “I don't want to have any children.” And he said, “That's great. I don't want to have any children either.” Had he said to me, “That's too bad ‘cause I'm looking forward to being a father,” we wouldn't have had a second date, because I was really clear about what I wanted—and I also expected to get what I wanted. So that's one of things I find people coming up against: They don't believe they can have the ideal person that they want.
Now I'm not saying you need to go in and put in 300 items on your wish list including their height, weight and eye color—and I'm also not saying that you can't do that because on my list I said that I wanted somebody with gray hair, and Brian does have gray hair. I didn't put anything more specific than that—for some whatever reason, I'm very attracted to men with gray hair (laughs)—so you need to be specific, make a list, have your best friend check it, and then, once you have your list, I suggest doing a ritual to release it to the universe.
There are several ways to do this. I burned my list in a sacred ceremony, and then I took the ashes and released them into the ocean at La Jolla Cove and took myself out for a celebration lunch and had a glass of champagne. If you don't want to burn your list, you can write it out on a beautiful piece of stationery and put it in a favorite spiritual book or a Bible, or you can put it in a beautiful envelope and stick it under your mattress or put it on your altar, or you can fold it up in a little square and put it inside a pink helium balloon and release it to the heavens—but the idea is to physically release your wishes to the Universe and trust that they'll be answered.
There are also other ways to do the list thing. You can turn your list into an affirmation that you read to yourself every day. You can make a Treasure Map or a Vision Board where you cut out pictures and words from magazines and paste them onto a piece of poster board so that you have a daily visual reminder of the life that you are creating. I'm a big fan of Treasure Maps: I have three in my office right now; I always use them. I find that they work totally brilliantly and they're lots and lots of fun to do.
I have one friend whose success story is in the book, Sean, who travels all the time; he couldn't carry his Treasure map with him, so he took his favorite images from his Treasure Map and used them as wallpaper images on his cell phone, so that every time he picked up his cell phone, he was looking at images that were a reminder of what he was creating. He just got engaged two weeks ago.
This stuff really really works. It's lots of fun to do—the only thing that could get in your way is your limiting, negative beliefs about yourself, and there are lots of processes in the book to push you through those if you can't do it by yourself.
I have dozens of success stories of people who are doing this and then e-mailing and calling and sending me letters with pictures of their new beloveds.
It even worked for my eighty-year-old mother-in-law, who after fifty-five years of marriage and five years of widowhood decided she was ready for new love and within a very short time met a widower named John, and they have now been madly in love and living together for the past two years.
So it seems like, in a way, you're encouraging people to be both active and receptive at the same time…
Yes, and that's a dichotomy some people have a hard time with because they're saying to me,'“OK, well I was supposed to write a list, but then you told me to burn it, but then you told me to make a Treasure Map…”
Actually, it's both at the same time. So you want to have a visual reminder, but at the same time you don't want to be obsessing, and you want to be trusting that it's happening. So it's both.
You also stress how important it is for people to really savor the process itself…
…yeah! savor the waiting…
…instead of being in a state of anxiety over “Oh, when's he going to show up?…”
Right. It's like this. When you go to the coffee shop and you've placed your order for the cup of coffee, you totally trust that in three minutes the barista is going to hand you the exact cup of coffee that you wanted and you're not sitting there stressing out. It's really the same process, only it just takes a little bit longer. It's like when you're going to plant a garden. You toil the soil, get it ready, put the seeds in, water them, put in some fertilizer—but you're not out there at three in the morning tugging on the leaves to make them grow faster. You know that in the divine timing of the Universe, those flowers are going to sprout. It's the same way with Love. Once you trust that it's out there, it's going to come.
Now one of the things I do recommend is “acting as if .” By that I mean, you start acting as if you know with absolute certainty he or she is going to be walking through the door in thirty, sixty, ninety days. How would you be acting differently if you really believed that? Would you be smiling more? Would you be buying tickets to concerts and plays coming up in the future? When you go to buy greeting cards, would you be buying extra cards to give to them some day in the future? I know one woman who decided that every night when she cooked dinner for herself, she would cook dinner for two, set a beautiful table, light candles, play nice music, and within a short amount of time, her soulmate was at the table, because she was trusting that he would be there, she was acting as if .
Would you like to say a word or two by the way about the Spiritual Cinema Circle that is also one of your projects?
Yes, I love the Spiritual Cinema Circle; thanks for asking. Four years ago, I got together with some really good friends of mine, Gay Hendricks and Stephen Simon and a few others, and we created this DVD club that is dedicated to distributing movies that are about Love, Compassion and Inspiration; its called spiritualcinemacircle.com. Every month we send our members a DVD with four films on it, usually two shorts, a feature and a documentary. These are films that will make you feel really good about being a human being. It costs only twenty-one dollars a month; you get to keep all the movies, and you can invite your friends over, watch them together, have conversations about them, and really use the art of film to enliven, enrich and nourish your soul.
Can you name a few titles that have been included up to now?
A couple of months ago, we had the Louise Hay film You Can Heal Your Life , which is a really beautiful film. Last summer, we had the film One , a documentary about transformation, and currently we're shipping a film by Barbara Marx Hubbard called Humanity Ascending , which is about the evolution of human beings. It's one of the most inspiring films I've seen in a long time. According to her research, human beings are getting better; the world isn't going to disappear; and things are really headed in the right direction.
That's a good perspective to have around, isn't it?
At least, we get to choose what we watch. You could watch Fox-News and get totally depressed, or you could choose to watch our movies and feel good.
Anything else you'd like to tell TLC readers?
I'd like to encourage them to go to my website, soulmatesecret.com. There is lots of good information on there, and if they buy the book, there are special bonuses for book buyers that are a lot of fun. And I just really want to encourage people that no matter what your history has been, no matter what age or weight you're at, my grandmother always said, “There's a lid for every pot,” and I know that to be true.
The Soulmate Secret: Manifest the Love of Your Life with the Law of Attraction by Arielle Ford was available in late January 2009 and published by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers . Visit www.soulmatesecret.com. Arielle Ford is the sister of author Debbie Ford and is the Director of Publicity for Spiritual Cinema Circle and Earth Cinema Circle (bought by Giam).
Are you still looking for your soulmate? Wondering why you haven't found that special someone yet? Take this quiz to find out if you're ready to meet the love of your life!
1. Do you believe the perfect partner exists for everyone?
a. Yes.
b. Yes, but it requires a lot of compromise.
c. Not sure.
d. No.
2. Do you believe you are lovable?
a. Yes, definitely.
b. Most of the time I believe it.
c. Possibly, maybe.
d. No.
3. If your soulmate knocked on your door right now, how prepared are you emotionally and physically?
a. 100%
b. 85%
c. 50%
d. Not at all.
4. Do you have an ex-lover that you are still pining for?
a. I am totally complete with my past lovers.
b. Not really, I'm in pretty good shape.
c. I am currently working on letting go of an ex.
d. Yes. I'm obsessed.
5. I have not yet met my soulmate because:
a. I believe in divine timing and I am savoring the waiting.
b. I haven't been 100% ready.
c. All the good ones are taken.
d. I'm too old/fat/broke/damaged or some other reason.
6. If my soulmate could observe my life today, he/she would see that:
a. I have a great life and I'm ready to share it.
b. I'm almost ready, but could use a breakthrough or two in a few areas of my life.
c. I'd like to find love, but there are still big obstacles in my life.
d. I'm a basket case.
7. The real reason I want a soulmate is:
a. To share my love and life with a partner in a deeply committed, loving relationship.
b. To experience being loved, cherished and adored.
c. I don't want to be alone anymore.
d. I want someone to fix me and take care of me.
8. Is there room in your home for your soulmate?
a. Yes. There's room in my closets and in my heart
b. Depends, how much room do they need?
c. If they show up, I'll make room.
d. No.
9. Do you truly believe your soulmate is out there, somewhere?
a. Yes, absolutely.
b. Most of the time I believe it.
c. Possibly, but I'm not convinced.
d. No.
Please add up how many of your answers are:
A's _____
B's _____
C's _____
D's _____
And Click Here for the Results
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