Turn on your TV. You will quickly determine that you don't have what it takes to find and keep a man. You're too thick in the waist to find Mr. Right. You need a boob job. Your legs are covered in revolting cottage cheese. You're not girly enough. You're too girly. You don't talk enough. You talk too much. You always seem to get the wrong man.

Turn off your TV.

The truth of the matter is that guys, the desirable men, don't care all that much about what you look like. They don't care if you're shy, or if you occasionally ramble on about nothing. Instead, they tend to gravitate toward women who possess a valuable, seemingly elusive, quality:

Happiness. Its like a pheromone to men. Its no secret.

Oh, yes. Happy women get men with ease. What man in his right mind wouldn't want to be around a happy woman?

Think I'm being silly? I'm not, and I'll prove it to you.

Like a lot of people, my weight used to fluctuate. At one point I was 30 pounds heavier than I am today, and some friends had invited me out for dinner and drinks.

I certainly didn't relish the idea of being the fat chick at the bar, but I agreed to go. While trying on 3,000 outfits in an attempt to find something that made me look thin, I had an epiphany: I wasn't going to lose 30 pounds in two hours. My best bet was to forget about feeling fat and put a smile on my face. I set a goal to focus on whomever spoke to me, to look him or her in the eye, and to forget about myself.

The result? One very attractive guy (whom I previously considered completely out of my league) asked me out that night, starting a fun and memorable summer romance.