Welcome back to "Finding the Guardian of Your Soul," the podcast where we unlock the secrets of the heart and discover true love in our lives. I'm your host, Lisa Shield, and in today’s episode, we're going to tackle the challenging topic of being single during a time when it feels like the whole world is paired up. Join me as I share not only my personal journey of self-discovery and love post-divorce but also practical advice on how to navigate the festive season with an open heart. We'll delve into the art of socializing, the unexpected benefits of online dating during the winter festivities, and how to approach potential partners with confidence and emotional intelligence. With a sprinkle of anecdotes and tried-and-tested strategies, we will explore how to make the most of holiday parties, foster connections, and why speaking to strangers might just lead to meeting someone special. From introducing yourself boldly to engaging in playful, connected conversations, I'll guide you on embracing every opportunity the holiday season offers. Continue On Your Journey: Lisa Shield | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Book a Call With Lisa Email the podcast at: podcast@lisashield.com
What You'll Hear In This Episode:
- Personal anecdotes to support holiday socializing as a means to find love
- Advantages of seeking love through dating platforms during the holidays
- Maintaining a positive self-talk and mindset while online dating
- The importance of taking initiative in dating
- The journey to self-appreciation and learning to value men
- Practice and the necessity of cultivating skills for emotional connection at social events
- The transformative experience of practicing emotional connectivity at a party
- Moving away from analytical thinking to emotional presence
- Expanding one's personal limits to prepare for potential relationships
Key quotes:
Continue On Your Journey:
Lisa Shield | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Book a Call With Lisa
Email the podcast at: podcast@lisashield.com
Lisa Shield [00:00:02]:
Hello everybody, and welcome to finding the guardian of your soul. I'm Lisa Shield and it is lovely to be here. I want to talk today about forgetting the mistletoe and finding love this holiday season. So why did we pick this topic? Well, first of all, Chris, Christmas is just a few days away. Hard to believe. At least for me, it is every year that Christmas comes around. I'm always thinking, how did that happen again? And it always seems to come up faster and faster and faster. I don't know about the rest of you, but for me that's how it feels.
Lisa Shield [00:00:48]:
It feels like 1 minute I'm saying hello to the new year and the next minute it's like, what the heck? It's Christmas again. Oh man. Well, here we are. And I know that for some of you it's really tough around the holidays. Christmas and New Year's can be very challenging when you're single. I know they were for me. I think I just often tried to grin and bear it and just get through the whole holiday season, starting with Thanksgiving. And I just breathed a sigh of relief after the new year because it felt like things would go back to normal.
Lisa Shield [00:01:39]:
I don't know if any of you feel that way, but I know I do. Or I did. It's important to realize that during the holidays it's a great time to get online, to go out and meet people, to make sure, as much as you want to avoid holiday parties and gatherings because you are single and it does bring up some feelings of sadness. You may not want to go to parties because you don't have somebody to go with, but my best suggestion to everybody is to get out there and go to parties. Accept those invitations, get dressed up. You never know who you'll meet. In fact, I'll tell you a story. Didn't have a great ending, but it'll illustrate my point nonetheless.
Lisa Shield [00:02:41]:
I remember I went once to a Halloween party and I met a man there. We stood and talked for almost an hour. Very handsome guy. And it was about a year later, I think, that he broke up with his girlfriend. And he remembered me from that party. We were at the house of a mutual friend and he actually reached out to me and wanted to invite me on a date and we wound up dating for a little while. He wasn't my guy, but the fact that I was at that party and we did meet and he remembered me all that time later. So you just don't know.
Lisa Shield [00:03:29]:
You don't know when or where or how you're going to meet somebody. But it really is a great time to get out and to get dressed up and to keep an open mind. It's also important to talk, even to friends of yours that you see at the party and let them know that you're out dating and tell them, hey, I would love to meet somebody. And if you know of anybody, people are always getting together and breaking up. And I have a girlfriend who met. That's how she met her husband. She had been dating a man, and they broke up right before the holidays. And she had a girlfriend who was in town.
Lisa Shield [00:04:18]:
They got together, and over the holidays, they had lunch, and she told this girlfriend what had happened. Her friend was staying with another friend, and his friend, actually, the wife had died, and he had told his friend that he was ready to start dating again. And this woman who was visiting and staying with him said, my girlfriend just asked me if I knew anybody who's single, who's available that she really wanted to date. She had just broken up with this guy. And so these two people got them together, and they're married, happily married. They're a wonderful, wonderful couple. So getting out and talking to people and letting your friends know. One of my friends was getting her nails done, or one of my clients actually was getting her nails done over the holidays.
Lisa Shield [00:05:24]:
And she mentioned to her manicurist that she was single. And the manicurist said, I think I know somebody who would be perfect for you. And he was. So you don't know where you're going to meet somebody. But we can look at the holidays as this awful time where we just want to sequester ourselves and not get out and not have to deal with being single and being around family and other couples and people who are in relationships. But it's so important to remember that this can be one of the most social times of the year and one of the best times to get out and meet people, especially to meet new people. A lot of times when you're single, especially at Thanksgiving, but even over the holidays, you're going to be exposed to a lot more people than you normally are. So you may find that you meet some new people in your social circle, at a gathering, at a gathering, and your friend may bring a friend or again, have a visitor in town.
Lisa Shield [00:06:51]:
It's all how you choose to look at it. So we can go into this holiday season feeling sad and feeling badly about being without a partner, or we can choose to see it as an opportunity, right? You can see it as an opportunity, a way to get out, especially think about all the parties and all the events you can go to, even a work event, you never know who you're going to meet there. You never know who will be at that event. You want to talk to everybody you know, and especially talk to as many men as you can. A lot of times we go into a party or an event and we'll stick with a friend or with people we know. But it's also wonderful just to go up to the bar or to the food table and start talking to other people. Start talking, especially to men, even if they're in relationships. People know people who know people.
Lisa Shield [00:08:04]:
So that's always a great thing. We have a comment here from one of our listeners. It says, I can't stay on as I have another commitment, but I love it when I catch a moment of your inspiration. Lisa. Bless you, sister. You have given me a huge gift of hope this year, and I may even have met my keeper. Oh, my. Oh, I wish I knew who this was from.
Lisa Shield [00:08:33]:
But thank you, thank you, thank you. I love hearing that. I love hearing from our clients. But you have to really know it is so easy to fall into this negative vortex of holiday despair. One of the things I remember the very first time I went online, so this was over 23 years ago now. I was visiting my brother and my niece and nephew were there, and I was checking out online dating for the very first time. My niece and nephew were going through profiles with me. It was actually quite funny.
Lisa Shield [00:09:20]:
And the sweetest thing, I was thinking when I did this, I thought, oh, no, who's going to be online? It's the holidays. Everybody's busy. Nobody's going to be interested in connecting. And I actually posted my profile and my pictures for the first time. And it was so uplifting because I got a lot of responses and it made me feel so hopeful. I started communicating with some men, and by the time I got back to Los Angeles, I actually had a bunch of dates lined up for the new year, which was wonderful. And I could have sat there and felt sorry for myself, and I could have taken that as an opportunity to feel badly or to tell myself that nobody would be online and that it wouldn't be a great time to date and all. But you know what? It's all, in many ways about the story we're telling ourselves.
Lisa Shield [00:10:29]:
We can create a negative scenario about anything, and then that's the experience that we will live into. In fact, I see so many people, I hear so many women. If you look at any of my ads that may appear in your Facebook feed before we actually get to them. There's so many of them out there right now that we can't stay on top of all of them. But in the comments section below, a lot of my ads for my work, there will be so many heartbreaking responses from the women who get triggered by my ads or by my posts. And they will attack me. They will attack men. They'll talk about what bullshit all of this is.
Lisa Shield [00:11:27]:
And my heart just breaks when I read some of these comments because I realize that it is so easy for us to spiral into this very negative self talk around men and dating and relationships and all. And I get it. I went through my own share of heartache. I was married to my ex husband for, well, we weren't married for 13 years, but we were together for 13 years and it was rough. He was a pathological liar and I was very hooked in at the time and I put up with all of that. I could have walked away from that relationship and just said, screw it, I'm done. There's no good men and I'm done with dating. I'm done with men.
Lisa Shield [00:12:23]:
I'm just going to be alone for the rest of my life like a lot of women do. And I could have felt like a victim. And I'm really happy because I didn't do that. I didn't want to stay single. I figured, look, I played a part in that. I picked him as a partner. Of all the men on the planet, he's the one I chose and nobody made me stay in that relationship. I stayed with him for 13 years because I was afraid to be alone.
Lisa Shield [00:12:56]:
Dating was really hard for me. I never felt like men found me attractive. When I was younger, I always felt like other women had something I was missing. And so I really married the first man who paid attention to me and he turned out to be a lot like my dad and I stayed with him for as long as I did and that was my choice. I didn't have to do that. So when I came out of that marriage, even though I know he is a pathological liar and he's got to figure out himself, luckily, we didn't have kids together. So when I ended the relationship, I was free and clear and I never looked back. I looked forward.
Lisa Shield [00:13:48]:
I did a ton of work on myself and I met the guardian of my soul. It took me about eight years of really hardcore therapy and interpersonal work. I did one personal growth workshop after another. And then I came out of all of that and I looked around and I said, okay, I like who I am. I'm pretty clear about what is possible in terms of relationships and all. And I'm ready to get out and date and find my guy. And so Christmas 23, 24 years ago, I posted that first profile on JDate, and I wouldn't post on JDate today. It's not a very good site, but it was at the time.
Lisa Shield [00:14:46]:
And I wound up going on almost 101st dates. And eventually I met my husband, Benjamin. The cool thing was I also didn't expect it to be an overnight thing. I was willing to go on a lot of dates. I felt like I needed to do that. I needed to learn how to feel confident with men. I needed to learn how to talk to men, how to connect with them, how not to have sex with them, which was a big problem for me when I was younger. And I learned how I really found my self esteem, and I learned to really love and appreciate men.
Lisa Shield [00:15:33]:
And I learned how to find good men. There are great men out there. And it all started literally at Christmas time, 24, 23 years ago. That's when I started my journey. I figured I had plenty of time over the Christmas holidays. I wasn't working and I was with family, and it was a great time to actually be proactive and I got the support of my family. It was fun to go online and sit there with my niece and nephew and get their feedback and see what they had to say. They were really cute.
Lisa Shield [00:16:16]:
They were actually quite little at the time. But my brother came and he looked in and saw some of the guys I was looking at, and it really was a great time to do that. So I encourage you not to take this time and feel badly. It's very easy to do that. I encourage you. Life is really about the story we're telling ourselves in any moment. We are creating the narrative. The narrative is up to us.
Lisa Shield [00:16:54]:
We can't change certain things about our lives. I can't go back in time and get back the 13 years that I spent with my ex husband. I can't change things in the past, but I can change my mindset. I can change my perspective. I can change the story I'm telling myself. I can make it a positive story or a negative one. I can go into parties, and even if I don't find men that are single or that are dateable, one of the things that I used to love to do when I'd go to parties is I'd love to go into a party and actually stand and talk to men and get them to open up to me and really be playful. I wasn't a very playful person when I was younger, and so I wanted to lighten up.
Lisa Shield [00:17:53]:
I figured I wanted a fun, playful relationship and I needed to do that. Many women are out there thinking, oh, well, I want a man who I have chemistry with, and he'll bring out that playful, feminine side of me. Well, if you haven't explored that side of yourself, nobody can bring it out in you. So over the holidays, go out, go to a party and just talk to men. And I'm not talking about those of you. There's a lot of you who will say, well, I don't have any trouble talking to men. That's not what I mean. Many of you can be interested or interesting.
Lisa Shield [00:18:45]:
I'm talking about really creating playful, fun conversation with men where you can be a little flirtatious and feminine and not just having an intellectual, heady conversation. A lot of you think that, oh, I'm talking to a guy and we're having an interesting conversation, so he must find me interesting. I was great at being interesting. That was really my thing. I could be interesting to men, but that didn't make men want to date me. That didn't make men want to take me on a second 3rd date or spend the rest of their lives with me. They found me interesting. They'd sit and they'd talk and they'd go on a first date or a second date because I was interesting in the conversation, but they were waiting for chemistry.
Lisa Shield [00:19:51]:
Chemistry. I don't know how many of you have ever gone on dates. Probably a lot of you with men who will say, I just didn't feel chemistry with you. Well, the reason they say that is because they don't feel an emotional connection with you. They feel like the whole evening or the whole date was up here, the conversation flowed. Maybe you had a couple of cocktails and you had a great conversation, but there wasn't any emotional connection. And I'm not talking about even being emotional. You could talk about an emotional situation or something emotional that's happening in your life, but that is not the same as making an emotional connection with somebody.
Lisa Shield [00:20:52]:
And an emotional connection isn't about being necessarily being deep or serious. An emotional connection is when two people feel, I don't know how else to say it, but they get emotionally naked with one another, and they talk about the kinds of things that a man and a woman would only share with each other in an intimate way. Now, it could be laughing and playful. An emotional connection can be two people just really vibing and connecting and laughing and sharing humor and feeling a common vibe in a fun, playful way. An emotional connection might be opening up and sharing something more intimate that they wouldn't normally open up and share about with just anybody. But all of this was something that I actually had to learn how to do. I was so up in my head and I was so intellectual and I was so trying so hard to impress men. It wasn't even until I read, believe it or not, how to win friends and influence people.
Lisa Shield [00:22:24]:
I don't know how many of you have read that book, but that was a revelation for me. I was trying so hard to be interesting that I wasn't really interested in other people. So the game I would play with myself over the holidays was to go to parties. I remember once before my husband and I, I was married already, but I still used to do this just for fun and research for my work. I went to the party, to a holiday party at one of his clients houses. And I decided to just practice making an emotional connection with men. And there was one guy who stood there and he talked to me for a good 30, 45 minutes. And he was so engaged and I was so fascinated by him and I was getting him to open up to me.
Lisa Shield [00:23:27]:
And eventually his wife looked over and saw the two of us still talking. And she literally came over and grabbed him and pulled him away. And the funniest thing was that she knew my husband, she knew Benjamin, and she knew I was married to him. I wasn't trying to pick up on her husband, but these are skills that many of us just don't come by naturally. And the funniest thing was when Benjamin and I were leaving the party, he actually paused a conversation he was having and came over to say goodbye to me and to tell me how much he enjoyed talking with me. And yeah, it was pretty funny. So don't just think that this is something that just happens. If you really want to have the kind of deep, emotionally naked connection that we talk about and teach women how to find in my twelve week program, then this is something that you want to get out and practice.
Lisa Shield [00:24:44]:
And the holidays are one of the best times to do that. You're going to be going to a lot of parties. Hopefully you've got lots of invitations. Walk up to strangers, talk to them. In fact, a wonderful technique that I absolutely love is when you walk into a party, especially if it's a party with people you don't know, walk into the door, and as you walk in, introduce yourself to several, say, hi, you know, I'm Annette, and it's so nice to meet you. And don't stand there and talk. Just say hello. And then move on and introduce yourself to the next person and the next person and then come back around.
Lisa Shield [00:25:32]:
Come back around. And later, after you've already introduced yourself to those people, you can actually come back because now you've said hello and you've made their acquaintance and it's much easier to then connect with them and actually have a conversation. And you can say, oh, I met you on the way in. Hello, it's so nice to see you again. And that way you've already broken the ice. Talk to men. Talk to as many men as you can. Talk to young ones and old ones and all kinds of men.
Lisa Shield [00:26:13]:
See if you can connect with them. Make them feel like you're interested in them. See if you can laugh at their jokes and be playful and get them to open up with you. Try to get out of your head and into your heart. Go online. Be flirtatious. Have some holiday fun. Ask the guys online.
Lisa Shield [00:26:42]:
How are your holidays? Tell me a funny story. Are you meeting any wonderful women? Have you been going on any dates? It would be so much fun to set a date and compare our holiday stories. You can take initiative. So much of this journey has to do with what's going on up here and how you are creating the narrative, how much fun you're having. It can be awful or you can make it wonderful. It's all the story that you're telling yourself in your own mind. So go out there, have fun, challenge yourself. Meet as many men as you can.
Lisa Shield [00:27:33]:
Even make yourself a challenge. Right? Like, I'm going to be playful with 20 men. I am going to find 20 men at these parties, and I am going to talk and connect and just have a wonderful time. Whether or not they're single, I can still practice opening my heart, connecting, enjoying the company of men. I can mirror their masculinity back to them. I can get them to open up to me. I can practice being out of my head and in my heart. There is so much you can do to expand yourself and take advantage of the holidays so that when you do meet the guardian of your soul, your heart will be open, you'll be playful.
Lisa Shield [00:28:29]:
You'll know how to make these connections. And the truth is, life is happening right now, right here, right in front of you. It's up to you to create these opportunities to expand yourself so that when the guardian of your soul sits down in front of you on a date, you will be ready and you can step into that wonderful relationship with an open heart. I'm Lisa Shield. Thank you so much for joining me. I wish you the most wonderful holiday season. Come back and see me again. I do this broadcast, and I also do a Sunday broadcast with my husband, Benjamin, called getting inside the right male mind.
Lisa Shield [00:29:17]:
All of these episodes can be found on my podcast, finding the Guardian of your soul. And if you're interested in finding more about more about the work I do, you can do that by going to Lisashield Comreserve. That's where you can book a call with a member of my team. We'll hop on with you and tell you all about what we do. Have a very merry Christmas, happy holiday, and I will see you all soon. Bye bye, and thank you for listening.