CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: How Do You Own Your Life?
Part I: Become Aware of Your Emotional Fingerprint
Chapter 1: Discover Your Emotional Fingerprint
What Is an Emotional Fingerprint?
Identifying Your Emotional Fingerprint
Seven Simple Aspects of Importance, One Complex Emotional Fingerprint
Your Emotional Fingerprint and Love
Your Emotional Fingerprint and Work
When Something Isn’t Going Right
Which Type Are You?
How Your Emotional Fingerprint Is Created
Chapter 2: Master Your Emotional Highs and Lows
Understanding Your Emotional Highs and Lows
Taking Charge of Your Emotional Highs and Lows
Discover Your Untapped Power
Follow the Platinum Rule
Making the Other Person Feel Important
Living Consciously
Chapter 3: Embrace Your Emotional Compass
Understanding Your Emotional Compass
Validating Your Emotional Fingerprint: How Far Will You Go?
We Don’t All Have the Same “North Star”
Part II: Internalize Your Emotional Fingerprint
Chapter 4: Discover Your Emotional Reserves
What Does Internalizing Your Emotional Fingerprint Mean?
What Are Emotional Reserves?
Ordinary Circumstances, Extraordinary Lives
Filling Up the Tank
Which Wolf Do You Feed?
Acceptance versus Resignation
Chapter 5: Protect Your Emotional Fingerprint
When Aspects of Your Emotional Fingerprint Conflict
What Happens When You Don’t Protect Your Emotional Fingerprint
Protecting Your Emotional Fingerprint
Chapter 6: Validate Your Emotional Fingerprint
Association and Reassociation
Creating Internal Reassociations
Creating Internal Validations
Part III: Maximize Your Emotional Fingerprint
Chapter 7: Clear Your Path
Maximizing Your Emotional Fingerprint
Fear Is Always in the Future
The Two Types of Fear
The Power of Fear
Overcome Fear by Living in the Present
Fear and Your Emotional Fingerprint
Internalizing Your Emotional Fingerprint to Overcome Your Fears
Other Ways to Overcome Your Fears
When Your Path Is Clear
Chapter 8: Clarify Your Standards
Expectations versus Standards
Desired Outcomes versus Positive Outcomes
Excitement versus Enthusiasm
Changing Your Dreams
Standards and the Emotional Fingerprint
Chapter 9: Sharpen Your Resolve
Keeping Your Eye on What Matters to You Most
What Kind of Experience Do You Want?
Choosing Your Response
Celebrate Your Emotional Fingerprint
Conclusion: Own Your Life
Index
Praise for Your Emotional Fingerprint
“Your Emotional Fingerprint is a wonderful tool to discover who you really are at the core, essence level. Life is about self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-expression, which lead to fulfillment. Your Emotional Fingerprint will help you become self-aware and fully express who you are, which will allow you to have more love, wealth, health, and joy in your life. I highly recommend it.”
—Jack Canfield, New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and author of The Success Principles
“The more time I spend with the smartest people and learn their deepest strategies, it all comes back to their Emotional Fingerprint. Woody Woodward has clarified why people do what they do and what makes them successful. This book will show you how to tap into your own Emotional Fingerprint to reach success.”
—Garrett B. Gunderson, New York Times bestselling author of Killing Sacred Cows
“Understanding your Emotional Fingerprint is the source of all extraordinary achievement and will help you achieve your impossible dream.”
—Mary Louise Zeller, seventeen-time U.S. national gold medalist in tae kwon do
“As you begin to understand your Emotional Fingerprint and gain insight into yourself, it gives you a greater insight into others. Insight allows you to make a greater impact in life.”
—Les Brown, bestselling author of Live Your Dreams and The Power of Purpose
“Being able to connect on a deep, intimate level by understanding your Emotional Fingerprint will allow you to create wealth in your life, relationships, and business.”
—Greg S. Reid, Wall Street Journal bestselling coauthor of Three Feet from Gold
“In this excellent book, Woody Woodward powerfully clarifies how to positively influence outcomes and behaviors through a richer understanding of a person’s Emotional Fingerprint.”
—Gary W. Goldstein, producer of Pretty Woman and Under Siege
“Within five minutes of learning my Emotional Fingerprint I understood why my relationships worked or didn’t. It helped me get really clear about what inspired me in my life.”
—James Malinchak, coauthor of Chicken Soup for the Athlete’s Soul
“When you are marketing to someone you must understand his or her Emotional Fingerprint to trigger their buy buttons. Woody Woodward will teach you how to discover your buyer’s Emotional Fingerprint and find out what causes him or her to buy more.”
—Joel Comm, New York Times bestselling author of Twitter Power
“By understanding your Emotional Fingerprint you will be able to tap into your inner strength to overcome your challenges, better your relationships, and be more profitable.”
—Andrew Hewitt, coauthor of The Power of Focus for College Students
“The benefits of discovering and applying the Emotional Fingerprint are almost endless. This book helps readers gain needed insight to overcome personal challenges, improve meaningful relationships, have difficult conversations (without the difficulty), and take the necessary initiative to move forward and achieve their personal and financial goals. It is a book you will read more than once and one you will give to others time and time again.”
—Tom Smith, New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Oz Principle, How Did That Happen?, and Change the Culture, Change the Game
Copyright © 2011 by Woody Woodward. All rights reserved
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Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Woodward, Woody, date.
Your emotional fingerprint : 7 secrets that will transform your life / Woody Woodward. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-64011-1 (paper); ISBN 978-1-118-09315-3 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-09358-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-09359-7 (ebk)
1. Emotions. 2. Success. 3. Self-actualization (Psychology) 4. Self-help techniques. I. Title.
BF531.W663 2011
152.4—dc23
2011036450
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Publicly I want to acknowledge the hand of my Heavenly Father in this work. For without his inspiration and guiding influence none of this work would have been accomplished. Personally I want to thank my devoted and inspired wife. My name may be on the cover, but many of these experiences and words came from her. She is my constant and true north. To my kids, who prayed that I may finish early so we could play, may this work be an inspiration to you. To my parents, who have been the greatest example of how to make other people feel important, especially my saintly mother. You are the reason this book came to be. To my other mother and father, I was fortunate enough to be yours after marrying your daughter. Your support over the years has been nothing short of a miracle. To my siblings on both sides of the family, I pull from your example and strength. D.R., without your constant, challenging, and thought-provoking inquiries this message could never have come to pass. You are too internal to have your name in print, but you know where you stand with me and this work. Jeff Roldan, without your gifted talents and commitment to this work I would not be here today. Lindi Stoler, without your constant guiding influence and patience I never would have made this book. Steve Troha, your enthusiasm nurtured this idea from a concept to a worldwide book.
I want to thank everyone at Folio Literary Management, especially Celeste Fine. Rachel Kranz, you were the magic behind the scenes. Your commitment to this message made this book what it is today. To Stefanie Lien, for her contributions in editing and brainstorming. Lori LeBeau-Walsh has been the design maven behind all of my branding. Thank you for understanding me and all of my crazy requests.
It has been a pleasure to work with such an honorable publishing house as John Wiley & Sons. I am grateful for Tom Miller and his long hours of dedication and Lisa Burstiner for her inspired words and insightful editing. In closing, I would like to thank all of my past, present, and future clients. I do this work for you. Thank you for opening your life, heart, and smiles to me.
To learn more about me, visit www.MeetWoody.com. To maximize your emotional fingerprint visit my website www.MyEmotionalFingerprint.com.
INTRODUCTION
How Do You Own Your Life?
I dropped out of high school when I was sixteen. By the time I was twenty-six, I was a millionaire. By age twenty-seven, I was flat broke, living in my parents’ basement with my wife and our infant son, three frustrated casualties of the dot-com boom. My wife and I weren’t ready to give up, though. During the next five years we created a multimillion-dollar mortgage and real estate firm and did business in seven states. By 2005, we were closing more than thirty million dollars in transactions annually.
Then I saw the writing on the wall: the real estate bubble was going to burst. My wife and I closed our business and sold all of our rental properties. Having gone broke and then making even more money back got me thinking about other people who overcame heart-wrenching trials. I began to research people who had surmounted obstacles in their lives; I was looking for their secrets—not just of their success but also of their extraordinary persistence in the face of hardship. Although my family and I were secure for the time being, I wanted to learn how to handle future ups and downs as well as find some clarity and closure for our past. We had worked hard and were persistent, but I suspected that there was more to lifelong success than that, and I wanted to know what it was.
I ended up reading more than a thousand biographies, from which I wrote a seven-volume series called Millionaire Dropouts: Inspiring Stories of the World’s Most Successful Failures. The series catalogs the lives of hundreds of men and women who, like me, had dropped out of school at some point and then gone on to achieve measurable success. I was beginning to put together a picture of the kind of person who managed to succeed against all odds—someone committed, flexible, enthusiastic, and patient—but I kept sensing that something was missing.
Then one day my wife came to me in excitement and said, “I’ve just finished a book that you have to read. It’s called How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
“Honey, come on,” I said. “I can’t read one more book.”
Nevertheless, my wife, in her infinite wisdom insisted—and thank heavens she did, because that one suggestion changed the rest of our lives. On the first page of the book’s second chapter was a quote from the American philosopher and educator John Dewey: “The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.”
It’s hard to express the multitude of feelings that welled up in me as I stared at those words: shock, elation, bewilderment, curiosity. I had a lot of conflicting thoughts, too: “That’s ridiculous! I don’t want to be important!” “What does he mean by ‘important,’ exactly?” “It sounds like he’s saying everyone’s an egotist. What about Gandhi? Or Harriet Tubman? Did they want to be important?” Underneath my resistance was another, smaller voice that continued to grow: “This is it! This is the missing link I’ve been searching for.”
Even though I didn’t quite understand what Dewey meant, somehow I knew that he was on to something. I realized that the desire to be important was indeed behind all of the success stories I had studied and written about, but I also understood that when Dewey talked about people wanting to be important, he wasn’t saying that they needed to be praised, honored, or even recognized for their good qualities. He wasn’t talking about being the best, winning a gold medal, or becoming famous. He was saying that people need to believe that they matter, that they are significant. People need to believe that they have found their place in the world, that they are exactly where they belong and are doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing.
Each of us acquires a sense of importance in a different way. Some of us get it from relationships with a romantic partner, friends, and/or family. Some of us get it from looking our best, from working out, or from visiting a place we’ve never been before and learning something new. Some of us achieve a sense of importance from extraordinary public accomplishments. Some of us get it from simply being good parents.
“The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.” At the time, I didn’t know what Dewey meant, but I was suddenly on fire with the need to find out. I got up from my chair, dashed to my car, and called my wife on my cell phone. “Honey, I’m going to be late tonight,” I told her. “There’s something I have to do.”
I drove to the local university and started interviewing anyone I could find: students, professors, librarians, anybody who was willing to talk to me. “What makes you feel important?” I asked each person, and I wrote down their answers.
That hectic day of interviewing led to another, then another, then still another. I eventually traveled to find people in more unusual situations and in vastly different walks of life. I sought out all types of people, from prisoners to priests, doctors to dancers, businesspeople to bricklayers. I spoke with celebrities and homeless people, PhDs and high school dropouts, entrepreneurs and union members. No matter whom I talked to or where I went, I kept finding more and more evidence for the same point: Dewey was right. The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to feel important.
I discovered something else, too. When you reduce the feeling to its basics, there are always seven characteristics, or aspects of importance, that make someone feel important. My seven may be different from your seven, but we each have seven aspects of importance. These seven aspects make up your emotional fingerprint.
Your emotional fingerprint is the driving force behind why you do what you do. It is what influences your emotional highs and lows and thus creates your good days and your bad days. Have you ever wondered what makes you feel on top of the world one day and completely depressed the next? Why do some people drive you completely crazy whereas others are so easy to be around? Why are you attracted to one person and turned off by someone else? Why do you enjoy doing some things and hate doing others?
The answers to each of these questions is a reflection of your unique emotional fingerprint. Your emotional fingerprint affects your moods, your decisions, the outcome of your relationships, and, ultimately, your failures and your successes. In fact, understanding your emotional fingerprint is the key to owning your life.
When I discovered the concept of the emotional fingerprint, a whole new world opened up to me. I realized that becoming aware of your emotional fingerprint enables you to master your emotional highs and lows. I learned that your emotional compass guides you in choosing to validate aspects of your emotional fingerprint. I understood that becoming aware of your emotional fingerprint is the key to creating a happy, successful life.
When you are aware of your emotional fingerprint, you can ask yourself to acknowledge—with rigorous, ruthless honesty—exactly what choices you’re making and why you’re making them. Not having this type of self-awareness always gets us into trouble. For example, a woman might believe that she’s spontaneous and independent, someone who values her freedom above anything else. But if she understood her emotional fingerprint, she might realize that it is only the idea of freedom and independence that she likes, that what really makes her feel important is security and commitment. This awareness might lead her to choose a romantic partner who also values security and commitment, rather than running after the free-spirited types who inevitably disappoint her. As I explain in chapters 1, 2, and 3, becoming aware of your emotional fingerprint can help you to make better decisions. In fact, that awareness is the first step to owning our lives.
Being aware of your emotional fingerprint is not enough, however. Both the people I interviewed and the ones whose biographies I read had taken another important step: internalizing their emotional fingerprints.
Internalizing your emotional fingerprint means understanding that no matter what your situation, you always have a choice. Suppose your boss tells you that you have to do something that is borderline unethical or risk losing your job. That’s a lousy spot to be in, but it does include a choice. You might not like either alternative, but you still have the power to choose between them. Or suppose that the spouse you love informs you that he or she wants a divorce. You may not have the choice to hold on to your beloved, but you can choose how you’ll handle the breakup. The psychotherapist and concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl said, “Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
There’s more to internalizing your emotional fingerprint. You must also understand that no matter how the external world treats you, you can always choose to validate yourself. The most effective way to validate yourself is to understand your emotional fingerprint and actively affirm your seven aspects of importance.
If you are a person who feels important when in a loving relationship, for example, rather than looking to your spouse or romantic partner whom you love for validation, look to yourself. Become someone who does a good job of giving and receiving love, and feel important because of your own relationship skills rather than because of your partner’s response. If you are a person who feels important when being praised, find ways to praise yourself. Seek ways to affirm your seven aspects of importance yourself so that you are never dependent on the outside world for validation.
The choice to rely on internal rather than external validation is what gives successful people their extraordinary emotional reserves. The people I studied each had a depth of strength and fortitude that kept them on their paths despite enormous obstacles. Entrepreneurs weathered bankruptcies and recessions, political leaders survived lost elections and changing times, and spiritual figures persevered despite scorn and persecution. What made them so resilient was the capacity to internalize their emotional fingerprints through the processes I explain in chapters 4, 5, and 6.
Once you have internalized your emotional fingerprint, there’s only one more step: to maximize it. Learn to clear your path of fears and anxieties by letting go of the future and living in the present. Clarify your standards so that you are making decisions you can be proud of, regardless of the results. Sharpen your resolve so that you see clearly what you can affect in a situation, then take positive targeted action to get what you want.
Once you follow these three steps—becoming aware of, internalizing, and maximizing your emotional fingerprint—you will own your life, because you will always know what makes you feel important, how to validate yourself, and which actions will serve your best self.
Living this way inevitably produces extraordinary results. After I developed the concept of the emotional fingerprint, I began a successful coaching business, and I’ve helped thousands of clients find success—in their personal lives, in their relationships, and in their careers. I’ve helped my clients find new love, revitalize old relationships, earn promotions, negotiate deals, and start new businesses. Some of my clients develop their hobbies and avocations into successful new careers. Others find new ways to become better parents. Still others say that they’ve regained their enthusiasm for a life that had grown dull and flat.
To better understand how your emotional fingerprint affects your life, consider Sarah, a woman who is in dire straits. She has lost her job or is afraid that she’s likely to lose it soon. Her current relationship is in jeopardy, and she’s trying to imagine how she’ll face life as a single woman. Her brother has just been laid off from his job, has defaulted on his mortgage, and has moved in with their parents, who have just lost a big chunk of their retirement income and are facing severe medical problems. Sarah’s oldest son has learning disabilities, and she can’t afford a tutor. Her youngest daughter is starting to run with a bad crowd and is maybe having unsafe sex or doing dangerous drugs. Sarah is dogged by a persistent sense of failure in all areas: relationships, work, and family life. “How did everything turn out so badly?” she wonders. “And what do I do now?”
Understanding her emotional fingerprint and internalizing it will give Sarah the emotional reserves to triumph over tragedy. No matter how painful her circumstances, she can make the choices that will enable her to change some parts of her situation, accept others, and emerge a stronger, more successful person. By maximizing her emotional fingerprint, Sarah will find a way to make it through the hard times and maybe even create something good from them: stronger and deeper relationships, a more satisfying job, or a new faith in herself.
Also consider Paul, a man whose life seems stale. He’s been married for about ten years, and although he and his wife don’t fight much, he’s not attracted to her the way he once was, and they don’t seem to have much to talk about. He has a five-year-old son, whom he loves, but he rarely sees him because of all the long hours Paul spends at work, which he doesn’t enjoy but which he feels he must put in to keep his job. He used to love to play tennis, but now he can’t find the time to get to the courts. He was once a very good amateur photographer, but lately he hasn’t felt like taking pictures, either.
Becoming aware of his emotional fingerprint, internalizing it, and maximizing it will enable Paul to turn an ordinary life into an extraordinary life. He can renew his relationship with his wife, reconnect to his son, and make choices about balancing work and family life that fit his own standards for the man he wants to be. He can also rediscover his enthusiasm for the activities that used to nourish him, or discover new activities and new passions. Instead of feeling like a boring burden, Paul’s “ordinary” life will come to feel like an extraordinary gift.
Does this sound like a lot to expect? It is, and I encourage you to expect it. I’ve seen this approach work with the clients I coach and with the thousands of people who attend my seminars and training sessions. I’ve seen it work for the great men and women I wrote about, and I’ve seen it work for me and my family. Understanding, internalizing, and maximizing your emotional fingerprint will launch you on a journey that may be the most thrilling trip you ever take. So let’s get started. All you have to do is be open to the possibility that you can own your life.
2 “The deepest urge in human nature” Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York: Pocket Books, 1982), 19.
5 “Everything can be taken from a man or a woman” “Viktor Frankl, from Man’s Search for Meaning: Part 1,” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/frankl.html.
