Being Jewish (oh my God, did I shock anyone with that?), I don’t really know too much about Lent. I am actually not really a religious person. I am a spiritual person who believes in spirits. I have no idea in what I believe, but that is a topic for another day’s blog.

Anyway, I heard it’s Lent right now for all the Christian folk out there. Do you know what the Jewish version is of Lent? It’s called Lend. That is the time when we go to our banker, borrow some money to start a new business or build up a current business, and then we have forty days to pay it back.

I understand that you have to give something up during the forty days of Lent. So I was thinking about what I could give up for Lent.

I was thinking of giving up my life for Lent. No, I’m not going to kill myself. I’m just going to give up my life to someone else. Does anyone want it?

Does anyone want to be me for forty days and forty nights? We can trade lives. I’ll be you and you can be me.

You can be a dating expert and give relationship advice. You can yell at my employees. You can walk my dog. You can drive my car — actually, no, you can’t do that.

There are some limitations. As I said, you can’t drive my car. You also can’t have sex with my girl.

In exchange, I get your life for those forty days and forty nights. Let me tell you something, I would love to get inside some of your heads and totally change your mindset. Give me forty days inside your body and your mind, and your life would be very different when you got it back on Easter.

So for Lent, I may give up my life. Then again, maybe I won’t. I may give up something else.

Maybe I’ll give up sex for forty days and forty nights. If I did, I think my balls would be as big as a rat’s by the end of it. So I think sex is something I won’t give up for Lent.

I would give up drugs, but I don’t do them anymore. I’ll give up alcohol. Yes, that sounds like a great idea . . . except that I don’t drink. What about smoking? No, I don’t smoke either.

I could give up driving. Nah, I live in Los Angeles so if I gave up driving I would be stuck!

How about if I give up speaking to my mother for forty days? I could do that, and in fact I think I have done that during certain parts of my life. Yes, I have been a bad son at times.

How about if I give up reading ESPN online? Football is finished, and I really don’t care about any of the sports that are being played between now and Easter anyway. I couldn’t care less about basketball, and baseball is a yawn-fest of 162 boring games.

Let’s see what else I can give up for Lent. I just don’t know. I’m trying really hard to think of something.

I could give up giving advice for forty days and let you guys write the blog. No, I don’t think so.

How about I give up getting aggravated at all the L.A. drivers, and promise to just smile at all of them and give them love? Not sure I can make it for forty days doing that.

Do any of you have suggestions of anything I can give up for Lent? Maybe I should just become Jewish again and go back to celebrating Lend. Then I can just borrow some money, pay it back in forty days and see what happens.

Well, that’s my version of Lent. What’s your version of Lent?

This blog has sounded like an Andy Rooney segment. So this is Andy saying goodbye and happy Lent.

Why can’t you say “Merry Christmas” anymore? Does it rub Jewish people the wrong way? I am Jewish, and it doesn’t offend me at all.

When someone says Merry Christmas to me, I don’t correct them. I wish them a Merry Christmas (and maybe a Happy Hanukkah) right back.

Somewhere along the line, we have all gotten so screwed up. We aren’t allowed to wish people a Merry Christmas anymore . . . even if you know the person you’re saying it to celebrates Christmas!

You have to sound like a Hallmark card and say “Happy Holidays” or like a Lexus car commercial and say “Seasons Greetings.” Maybe we should all wear a big red bow on our head too.

So if you see me, I will wish you a Merry Christmas. I am Jewish and I am going to say it. I think it’s fun.

If someone gets insulted when they hear Merry Christmas, they need to think why they are insulted. Virtually everyone who says it, intends it to be a friendly sentiment. So, lighten up! It’s the holiday time after all.

You can say “Happy New Year.” That is allowed.

Why don’t we find one greeting that combines these together. We will market the heck out of it in the coming years.

So how does this relate to dating and meeting people? Well, isn’t this a great topic of conversation to have with people while you’re standing in shopping lines or waiting for your food somewhere?

You can say, “Wow, no one says Merry Christmas anymore…” See, you just started a conversation. I can always turn a topic around and apply it to dating.

So from me to you, may I wish you all a Merry Seasons Greetings and Happy Dating Holidays!

Also, for all of you who are on my email list, be sure to check your email inbox today because I sent you a very special offer. (If you’re not on my email list and would like to get on it, all you’ve got to do is put your name and email address in at the top of the page)

Have a great Sunday!!!

I have wanted to write this blog for so long, I really have. And I know that each of you is going to either completely agree with me on this or totally disagree. And those of you that disagree with me are going to be so pissed – I can feel it already! As you’re reading this you’re wondering why you are going to be pissed at me, and I’ll tell you why in a second.

I’m about to tell you something that is just going to blow you away:

Soulmates are bullshit.

Here’s the thing – before you get your panties in a knot – let’s say you live in Seattle, and your soulmate lives in Rome. And you have a fear of flying. You’ll spend the rest of your life never finding your soulmate.

Let’s say you live in New York, and your “soulmate” lives in Florida. The problem is that your Jewish grandparents tortured you as a child by taking you to Florida way too many times and you never want to set foot in that state again. So you only vacation now in the Caribbean.

If you believe that there is one soulmate for you out there in the world, then you’d better start traveling to find that person!

But if you’re like me – and you believe that you can have soul connections with people, then you are far more evolved than the person who believes there is one perfect partner for everyone.

I don’t believe that there is one person for everybody, and I never have. (That’s not entirely true, I’ll take that back – my mother tortured me with the whole soulmate idea for a long time and throughout my life I thought I had found mine – I thought Ellen was my soulmate, I thought Karen was my soulmate, then Jessica, then Sonya…)

I never thought of Alison (my recent girlfriend) as my soulmate, I thought of her as an equal. That is probably the reason why that relationship was the best I’ve ever had.

I’ve had women tell me – some even recently – that they thought we were soulmates. I looked at them and said, “we might have a soul connection, but we’re not soulmates.”

I believe that your soul is meant to mate with many different people. You can have soul connections – I think Daphne and I have a soul connection. Wherever I go, that dog follows. The minute I met Daphne – she looked at me and she stuck by my side like glue. That’s a soul connection.

If you want to go even deeper into lala-ville (because I do live in Los Angeles) I do believe in past lives and everything else, and I do believe that souls can come back and find each other. I believe that friends will come back and find each other as different things. I could have been a little girl in another life.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Defending Your Life with Albert Brooks – which is one of the funniest movies ever – there is this scene where this big chunky guy is doing past life regression and sees himself licking a lollipop and jumping around like a little girl. It was the funniest scene in the entire world – he absolutely freaked out.

But I do believe that souls come back. There are certain people that you meet – male or female – that you know you are going to be friends with them instantly. It’s your souls connecting with each other.

There are women that I’ve dated that I’ve had instant soul connections with. Some of those connections were more lustful than others, and some were just on a friendship level.

So I do believe that you can have soul connections. If there was one person in the world for you, and you screw up that relationship by the time you are 30, does that mean you have to spend the rest of your life alone? Absolutely not.

I could move to Russia tomorrow – not speaking any of the language – and find soul connections with some of the most amazing women. I bet I could make some great friends. But I’ll never drink the vodka because I’m just not a drinker!

But your soulmate is a farce. It’s bullshit. You can have lots of soulmates and many soul connections, but there is not just one person for you. If there were, there would be a ton of people running around the world accumulating many more frequent flier miles trying to find their soulmate.

Here’s another interesting tidbit for all of you: in different parts of your life, you’ll have different soul connections. You are ready for different types of relationships at different periods of your life.

So you might have had an intense soul connection – or you might have thought someone was your soulmate – but maybe you weren’t ready for that relationship.

Right now, I’m ready to meet my bootymates!

That’s a new term that nobody uses – do you know what a bootymate is? It’s an incredible sexual connection with somebody who doesn’t aggravate you at all. All you do is have amazing sex and you feel like your bodies were made for each other. You feel like your bodies know each other. But you don’t have the aggravation of maintaining a relationship.

You don’t have to say “I love you” – hell, you don’t even have to say, “I like you!” All you have to do is respect each other’s bodies and respect each other’s space. Respect everything. And know that when you get together, your souls are going to connect because you and she are bootymates!

Craig: The concept of soulmate came from Greek mythology. Back then, people believed that once upon a time everyone had two heads, four arms, and four legs – but just one soul.

Then the gods threw down lightning bolts and split everybody in half, so now each person had one head, two arms, and two legs – but only half of a soul. You were supposed to spend the rest of your life looking for the other half of your soul.

The problem with this is, just as David said, what if in this huge world, your soulmate lives far away? You might never find them. Or worse yet, what if your soulmate lives in your city and you were having a really shitty day on the day that you first met them? Now you’re still doomed to live the rest of your life alone.

I’m convinced that we meet a potential “soulmate” once or twice a month, but we’re not ready to meet them yet and they just pass us by. I’m convinced that serendipity plays a much bigger role in us finding somebody that is right for us. There are just groups of people out there that are right for each of us, and we end up finding one of those people only when we are ready for it.

David: That’s really interesting, I agree with you. It’s so true it’s unbelievable. I’m going to requote you on that: we probably do run into our soulmate at so many different times over the course of a month – except we’re not aware of it, or we’re not ready, or we’re not open for it.

They make a left, you make a right, but you were supposed to meet in the middle. Or you’re in the market and you get a Blackberry text message. As you look down, your soulmate walks right by you. It’s very interesting. I don’t think we spend enough time out there engaging everybody.

I think that if you really follow the stuff that I talk about in the Mastery Series, in the bootcamps, and everything else – you could probably find a soulmate once a week. You would be so much more in tune with your environment and with who you are as a person – you would know yourself inside and out. You’d be so open to things that you would connect with people just like yourself.

This weekend was really interesting. I was telling one of the guys (Allan actually) that he’s going to date exactly who he is right now – shy, quiet, very sweet, very nice, great personality. He’s going to meet a woman who has the same type of qualities yet wants to become a little bit more outgoing. Together they are going to really connect. He’ll make a great husband.

But he has to find enough courage to go out there, open his eyes, and start talking to them. That’s what it takes: courage. People don’t have the courage to talk to each other.

Do you realize that is the biggest fear that most people have: that they don’t have enough courage to go up and talk to people? Yet if they could just walk up to someone and say, “man, I really wanted to come over and talk to you, what’s your name?” the other person would be so receptive, because they feel the same exact way!

Usually people are attracted to people who share the same characteristics that they have. Guys will wish that they could date certain women – every guy wants to date the Maxim magazine model – but they won’t. And they know that.

So that’s an interesting topic, and an interesting thought – and it’s 100% true.

Todays video is a lesson on how to attract large groups by being entertaining. This is not what you think.