I love simple food rules. One of my favorites comes from culinary anthropologist and author, Michael Pollan: “Eat real food. Mostly plants. Not too much.” But I have my own, too. A number of them, which now that I think of it, might actually defeat the purpose of simplicity. Anyhow, here’s one decision rule I have about food. I require the food items I eat to fit one of the following items:

1. It must be filling
2. It must be nutritious, or
3. It must be truly, intensely delectable.

But no one food item needs to be all of these things. This is how I come to have a daily diet that consists 90% of hemp protein powder, avocado, eggs, kale smoothies, french fries and a collagen drink my friend Alice tasted, then immediately deemed “wet dog soup.”

My food rules work for me.

And they came to mind this morning when I met with an old friend I’ll keep nameless unless and until he tells me it’s okay to do otherwise. He and I worked together at the best company ever. He’s a super smart dude and one of those generally wonderful human beings you’re glad to know type folks.

My food rules came to mind when my friend told me how he thinks about companies. He said, when we worked together we had the complete trifecta: a product we loved, a mission we were on fire about, and a CEO and team we were devoted to. But after looking at and talking to literally dozens of companies, I’ve realized what my Most Important Criterion is: for me, if the CEO and team are smart and coachable and engaged, that’s good enough for me. I can help with or be okay with the rest.

This, I found fascinating. It was like simple food rules, but for work and leadership and, really, for people. Part of the reason I found it fascinating was that I’ve been doing a lot of work recently with my coach to rehabilitate some of my dysfunctional and, frankly, inaccurate, long-held beliefs about men and relationships. After spotting and calling me out on some of these deep-down, beliefs, we actually put together an affirmation: that there are abundant caring, capable, dependable men who are attracted to and available to me.

Three simple rules.

Sounds great, right? The problem is that I quickly corrupted this affirmation, tacking on a bunch of other criteria. I thought, hmmm, I have met and know a bunch of guys who are caring, capable and dependable, who are attracted to and available to me, but I’m not really into them. So I need to narrow this down a bit more. Be more specific. So I bolted a bunch of criteria onto this affirmation, and it became:

There are abundant sexy (to me), caring, capable, dependable, trustworthy, active men who are attracted to and available to me.

It has come to my attention that this is just too many things. It’s a little like in leadership, when you see companies try to focus on six things a year, and they end up focusing on nothing. A couple of my friends even mentioned it: hey, that’s too many things to be looking for. You’ve gotta decide which 3 things are really critical to you. That’s all you can really ask someone to be.

This required some emotional and intellectual rigor. And in the process of meeting people, trying relationships on and feeling into what I’m really attracted to, in both friends and romantic partners, I realized something: that I had been creating this laundry list of things by thinking about what I didn’t have or what didn’t work in previous relationships, then listing the opposite of those traits as what I really wanted.

Once I had that insight, it hit me like a bolt of lightning that I was doing it all wrong. not the way to create what you want, to get clear on what you don’t want and move to the opposite of that. Sometime the contrast between what you don’t want clarifies what you want, but more often, it keeps you stuck in the energy of struggle and scarcity. It keeps you stuck in a focus on what doesn’t work.

After years of practice, I’ve now (mostly) released the stressful approach of focusing on what I don’t want. I was only really able to do this after I cultivated the skills of setting good boundaries, speaking my own truth in every situation and identifying red flags that signal a person or relationship is not right for me.

But it still took some emotional discipline to listen to that still, small voice in my spirit closely enough to identify just three characteristics I consistently find attractive. These are the three things I feel so strongly about that I am willing to put a stake in the ground around them, when it comes to deciding who to partner up with, date, hang out with and share a life with. Here are the three I selected.

I want to be in relationship with people who are intentional.

I want to be in relationships with people who are caring.

And I want to be in relationships with people who are resilient.

Intentional carries a connotation of integrity to me. Intentional people are principled and purpose-driven. They are thoughtful and deep. They are active, and take actions with deliberation. They don’t let life happen to them. They move through the world with clarity, wisdom and consciousness, even if they shift the direction of that motion in different seasons of their lives.

Caring people just give a shit. They are engaged and listen, but also are willing to pour themselves into the specific people and causes and projects and work and play that trigger their personal or spiritual mental frames for “Things I care about.” They don’t act bored or like they’re too cool for school about everything. When something is important to them, they act or feel or engage with bold enthusiasm, love and even joy. With care. They think about how their actions or inactions impact others, and they factor that into their calculus of how to act and be in the world.

Resilient people carry a testimony about how they got from the deep, dark nights of the soul to the beautiful vibrance of today. Part of that testimony is the faith that they can handle what may come. I love resilient people because of the triumph of spirit they represent, and because things happen in life, so it’s really game-changing to know that the people in your life have your back and won’t flip out when shit gets real, because they’ve already been there and lived to tell the tale. Resilient people also have a glow of brilliant perspective about them. They don’t major in the minors, because ain’t nobody got time for that when you’ve been on death’s door or lived in misery and came back or got out. And they do major in the majors, like loving the people in their lives and having adventures, and making bold life decisions in the direction of their highest purpose and joy, because they count every day as the precious blessing it is.

Maybe one day I’ll get it down to one. One simple people rule I send out into the vortex and connect with people around. For now, I’ll stick with these three. And I’ll work on developing tolerance and communications skills and appreciation for the varying ways humanity shows up in the form of individual people.

P.S.: I issued a 30 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders a few weeks back, and over 150 brilliant souls signed up! I decided to take the Challenge right along with them, and it’s been a profound journey for many of us. Most people are journaling or free-writing every day, privately. But I wrote this post on Day 3 of the Challenge. I’ll be doing another writing Challenge in January; click here to get on the list for the January Challenge.