More than 10 years ago, author Katherine Woodward Thomas needed a miracle in her love life. She was 41 years old, had never been married, and wanted to find “the one” for her. She came up with a set of principles to help herself in this process, and six months later she was engaged.

Since then, she has guided more than 100,000 people all over the world through her process, and is about to embark on another seven-week online course to teach others how to manifest love in their lives. She calls this process, ”Calling in the One,” and shared four basic principles in a recent Evolving Wisdom online seminar to help people get started right away.

“The reason it’s so difficult to find love has to do with the approach we are taking,” she said in the seminar. “We look at all these external reasons as to why we can’t find love – there are no good men out there, or all the good ones are taken – instead of looking within to all the internal barriers we have built against love.”

For most people struggling to find love, she says there is a “huge gap between how much we want love, and how much we are open to receiving it,” and this gap needs to be closed or a person will continue to keep love at bay without realizing it. Once these barriers are identified, it is easy to shift, she said.

“The process is about identifying and releasing these inner obstacles to love, and also about empowering you to evolve beyond your old, hurtful patterns in love,” Woodward Thomas shared.

Here are the four basic principles to get started:

Principle 1: Begin to See Yourself as the Source of Your Experiences in Love Up Until Now – It is important to take ownership of our love lives in order to be empowered to create a new experience – one that is different than those in the past. “You need to make conscious the unconscious ways you are showing up for love that are shaping your life,” she said. “Be willing to take responsibility for how you are the creator of your experience.”

Many people are resistant to this idea at first because relationships are a two-way street, and some have dated people who did not treat them properly. But putting our attention on what the other person did or didn’t do is a “dead end,” Woodward Thomas noted. “When you have the attention on another person rather than yourself, you are not accessing the power to create a breakthrough in your own life.”

She also cautions against blaming ourselves, as blame and shame keep us stuck. In order to create a shift, we need to see ourselves as the source of our experience without making ourselves wrong. We need to look at our beliefs about ourselves and love, and find the patterns in our love lives that keep happening over and over again.

“Are you attracting unavailable people, or are you chronically alone and not attracting people at all?” she asked. “There is a way you are showing up in a relationship that is signaling people. How have you been showing up in ways that have been perpetuating this experience and creating the same dynamic?”

Once we uncover this, we need to take 100 percent responsibility for it.

Principle 2: Complete Your Past – Take a look at the ways we are still closed off, mistrustful and carrying the weight of resentment and burden from the past when it comes to our love life. When this is happening, there is not enough of us in the present to create and manifest now, said Woodward Thomas.

There are several incompletions, but she shared three main categories:

1. Old, unresolved resentments carried against someone in a relationship, and being are mistrusting of other people so we are not opening up our heart.

2. Old agreements with ourselves such as, “I’ll never love anyone like that again;” or “I’ll never be happier than my mother was;” or “I’ll always be faithful,” even if we are divorced for 10 years. These agreements have tremendous influence over choices being made in the present, and serve as intentions.

3. Toxic Ties causing us to lose personal power. Some of us experience such deep betrayals it can be hard to process.

“What resentments are you holding from the past? Where do you feel victimized and incomplete? Give up being victimized, and go back to the first principle of taking full responsibility for your role in the dynamic,” Woodward Thomas said. “Even if it’s only 3 percent of you, you want your attention on that 3 percent.”

She continued: “‘How did I give my power away to this person?’ Sit with that question, and look for all the ways you allowed it to happen. Maybe you were more attentive to someone else’s needs than your own. If you were over-giving in order to prove your value, what can you do to reclaim it? How did you collude in your own victimization? Make a vow to yourself to never, ever again betray yourself in this way.”

Until we remove these obstacles in our path, we will mirror them in another relationship and that is not what we want, she noted.

Principle 3: Transform Your Love Identity Core Beliefs – These are our biggest barriers to love, according to Woodward Thomas. The beliefs we have about ourselves; our value; our worthiness to love an be loved; our desirability; our beliefs about men and women; how others feel toward us; how much we are wanted and valued by others; whether or not others choose us – they all play a part in what we are attracting to ourselves. Do we believe we are supported by life and blessed in love, or do we believe we are cursed in love?

The most common are:

—  I am alone, invaluable or not wanted

—  Men always leave

—  Men always disappoint me

—  Women don’t want me

—  Marriage is a trap

—  Relationships never last

—  Love is unpredictable and dangerous

“For the most part, this consciousness is really outside of our awareness, and many of us formed these beliefs before we could speak,” Woodward Thomas shared, asking us to notice the things that come naturally, and struggle-free for us – be it career, money, health, friendships. This means we have a healthy entitlement that these things happen for us, and they come to fruition and are consistent with our sense of self and identity. Where we struggle are the areas we are trying to create something outside of our core sense and beliefs.

“If you believe you are alone, men always leave, and life doesn’t support you in having love, these beliefs live on an energy level in the body like a home base, so no matter how hard you try, you will always come back to this,” she explained, noting it is important to name these beliefs clearly or we will continue to respond in ways that unconsciously generate more of the same story.

“Imagine you are seeing someone you just met, and you have a great connection and date for a couple weeks,” she said. “Then suddenly that person backs up and doesn’t call for a day or two days. Maybe that person is contemplating if they are going to give up their single life and ask you if you want to be in an exclusive relationship, but inside you experience this as dread in your body, and then as a preemptive strike, you pull back, shut down, and send an e-mail that you don’t want to see them anymore. You then fulfill the story and create more evidence that the core belief is true.”

This step is not about clearing out all of our issues, but about identifying and shifting the core sense of who we are – like going from a black and white world to color, Woodward Thomas said.

“The way you shift is to challenge the story and turn your attention to what is really true,” she said, offering these affirmations:

—  I was born to love and be loved.

—  I have the power to create love in my life.

—  I’m not meant to be alone.

“Identify the new ways of showing up that will generate a completely different story after you identify the ways you have been pushing love away,” she said. “When you shift, others begin to respond to you differently, and there is a mirroring of your deeper truths.”

Principle 4: Become a Magnet for Love – Finding the right person is like finding a needle in a haystack – it is something you magnetize to you and your life, Woodward Thomas said. The magnetism happens in our energetic field, and sends a signal out to life that we are ready and available.

“Create a vision, and take steps in line and congruent with the future you are committed to creating,” she explained. “It’s not something you are trying to get or run after, it’s something you are starting to co-create. You connect with your vision, and start to become the woman or man you need to be in order to create the vision.”

When we begin to live from our power center – a place within us where we are deeply connected to ourselves – we can begin to ask the following questions:

— What do I most deeply desire?

— When I’m anchored into the possibility of the deeper truth of who I am, what is possible for me to have?

— What do I desire to experience with my loved one in this relationship?

— What do I hope to contribute to the others in the world through the field of our love?

An example she shared is: “My vision is to create a delicious relationship with a beloved partner where together we are experiencing deep truth, mutual support, and an almost intuitive soul connection.”

Once we become the man or woman we need to be in order to create our vision, we must feel and live as if it already exists – we must live the vision, and set the intention of creating it. Then it will be alive in our energy field, and we will be more likely to manifest it.

“Make a list – ask yourself, ‘who do I need to be in my life to receive the fulfillment of this vision,’” said Woodward Thomas. “This is the most important list you will ever make in the process of being magnetic to your partner. Instead of the who, why, what, when and how, you are focused on preparing yourself and drawing the future to you – and making sure you are ready to receive it.”

For more information, or to sign up for the seven-week course, starting Feb. 5, 2013, visit www.callingintheone.com.