In this episode of 'Finding the Guardian of Your Soul,' Lisa Shield discusses the impact of fear on personal and love life, especially during uncertain times. She emphasizes the importance of confronting fears like rejection, intimacy, and vulnerability to move forward. Lisa shares personal experiences and encourages viewers to acknowledge and name their fears. She introduces the concept of 'emotionally naked dating' as a method to help individuals become authentic and secure. Practical steps and examples, like improving self-confidence through small actionable steps and reframing fear as an opportunity, are provided to help listeners face their fears and grow. The episode concludes with an invitation to explore more through Lisa Shield's free presentation and offers additional resources for overcoming dating fears.
Summary:
In this episode, Lisa Shield addresses the fundamental fears that hold people back from finding true love. She emphasizes the importance of facing these fears head-on rather than running from them. Lisa draws from her own experiences and provides practical suggestions and tools, including her "emotionally naked dating" approach, to help listeners work through their fears and gain confidence in their dating lives. She also discusses how fear can manifest in various ways, such as fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, and not feeling good enough, and offers ways to reframe these fears as opportunities for growth.
Highlights:
Personal Reflection:
Impact of Fear in Personal Lives:
Practical Steps to Face Fear:
Emotionally Naked Dating Approach:
Building Confidence:
Handling Fear of Rejection:
Final Advice:
Call to Action:
Here are just a few highlights you won’t want to miss:
This conversation is packed with insights that can transform how you approach dating and relationships. Whether you’re single and searching or looking to deepen your current relationship, this episode is full of valuable perspectives and actionable advice.
Hello everybody and welcome to finding the Guardian of Your Soul. I'm Lisa Shield and I am so happy to be here with you today. I am going to do a quick tip and we are going to talk about what's really holding you back in love. Maybe it's time to face your fears, so. These are tough times. Let's be honest.
I know everybody wants to come, you know, put on this positive spin. We've had many, many years of blind optimism that things would just work out, but now you know, there's a lot going on in the world and. I think that many, many, many people are facing a lot of fear in their life, a lot of uncertainty with AI and global warming, political upheaval.
War is breaking out, and it's the truth is becoming harder and harder to ignore. So the same is true in our personal lives, especially in love. So fear shows up. Fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, the fear of being truly seen and instead of facing our fear, we run from it. But here's the thing that you have to know.
If you keep running from your fears, all that does is keep you stuck. Facing our fears is how we move forward. I've had a lot of things going on in my own life. A lot of uncertainty, a lot of upheaval. And the other day I, my husband was away, he was visiting his brother, and I had a few days to myself and I just.
Said, Lisa, you've gotta sit with these things. You've gotta look at what's going on in your life and pay attention to what's not working. And I could feel all this anxiety in my gut. My, you know, my stomach was in knots, and I don't know if some of you are feeling that right now. But everybody and welcome to finding the Guardian of Your Soul. I'm Lisa Shield and I am so happy to be here with you today. I am going to do a quick tip and we are going to talk about what's really holding you back in love. Maybe it's time to face your fears, so. These are tough times. Let's be honest.
I know everybody wants to come, you know, put on this positive spin. We've had many, many years of blind optimism that things would just work out, but now you know, there's a lot going on in the world and. I think that many, many, many people are facing a lot of fear in their life, a lot of uncertainty with AI and global warming, political upheaval.
War is breaking out, and it's the truth is becoming harder and harder to ignore. So the same is true in our personal lives, especially in love. So fear shows up. Fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, the fear of being truly seen and instead of facing our fear, we run from it. But here's the thing that you have to know.
If you keep running from your fears, all that does is keep you stuck. Facing our fears is how we move forward. I've had a lot of things going on in my own life. A lot of uncertainty, a lot of upheaval. And the other day I, my husband was away, he was visiting his brother, and I had a few days to myself and I just.
Said, Lisa, you've gotta sit with these things. You've gotta look at what's going on in your life and pay attention to what's not working. And I could feel all this anxiety in my gut. My, my stomach was in knots, and I don't know if some of you are feeling that right now. But my stomach was in knots and I just said, Lisa, you've gotta sit with these feelings.
Because what I wanted to do was push them away, work, go see friends, keep myself busy, and none of that was helping the situation. And the truth is that by sitting with it. Allowing myself to feel these very uncomfortable feelings. Once I started to allow those feelings to subside and I just breathed through it, I was able to start getting some clarity around what to do next.
Does that make sense? Does that resonate with anybody who's listening? Have you ever been there where all you wanna do is push your fear away? Maybe you wanna drink or eat, or. Do some online shopping or keep yourself busy going on the apps and swiping, just to get your mind off of what's really going on in your life when the thing you most need to do is just be still and sit with your feelings.
And allow them to come up. So today I'm gonna show you how fear might be holding you back in love and why it's essential to face it and how my naked, emotionally naked dating approach can help you stop running so that you can. Work through your fears and your insecurities. And when you do that, you start to get to the other side and you can experience hope and possibilities.
So fear doesn't just protect you, it isolates you. And in dating it can show up as. Perfectionism, playing it cool. Or, hiding parts of yourself. Not being genuine and real, but putting on an act for men or for your friends and pretending that everything's okay. But when you're not being authentic, how can someone connect with the real you in emotionally naked dating?
Vulnerability is the foundation of connection. I. So being vulnerable, being real, being authentic. And when I talk about vulnerability, I'm not just talking about all the bad things. I'm talking about also being playful and in the moment because when we're playful, where our guard is down. We're not thinking about what we're doing.
We're not second guessing ourselves. We're in the moment, we're saying whatever comes to mind and we're not thinking about outcomes. So vulnerability is really the art of being open and unguarded, and many people think that. Being unguarded means just, exposing our flaws and our imperfections, all the negative things about us, but it really just means taking down our walls and being authentic, secure, relationship ready.
Men are drawn to women who are unguarded and authentic. So if fear builds walls. No one can see the incredible person behind them. Real confidence isn't the absence of fear. It's proving to yourself that you can face it and grow past it. So every time you take a risk, every time you do something scary, you expand what's possible for you.
So what happens is our fears when we have a fear and it's blocking us, every time we hit up against that fear we, we capitulate. So you have to face the fear and walk through it. So that it doesn't keep stopping you. I'll give you a great example of this. One of my biggest fears when I was looking at my, when I was in my first marriage was that if my ex-husband left me, I would be alone.
And I was terrified that he was going to leave me, and I couldn't even think past that. I couldn't even conceive of a world without him. And one day I decided to face that fear and I said, Lisa, you have got to look at the unthinkable. You've got to start to consider what a life without him would look like.
I. I have to say that once I began that process of really, being able to think of a life beyond my ex-husband, I actually started to see how he was holding me back. That the marriage wasn't working, that the relationship was like a life raft that I had been clinging to, but that we really were not good partners, that we were not growing together as individuals or as a couple, and that.
I needed to leave him so that I could stand on my own two feet, take responsibility for my own life, and start to grow up, which is what I wound up doing. But if I hadn't faced my deep, deep fear. Of a life without him, I would never have been able to take those steps. So when you stop running from fear and you start working through it, you begin to feel stronger.
Possibilities beyond where you are right now. You can start to come up with a solution, with a plan for moving forward instead of letting your fear stop you. Let's start to talk about how to face your fears in dating. The first thing that you wanna do is name your fear. So I had to name my fear that I was afraid that my husband was going to leave me and that I was a afraid to face a life.
Alone without a partner. So the first thing you have to do in dating is name your fear. What are you truly afraid of? Is it rejection, repeating old patterns, attracting another avoidant or another narcissist? Is it that you're afraid of being judged? Maybe you are in a relationship with somebody who gaslit you and you.
We're constantly walking on eggshells and or maybe it's facing the fear that you're not good enough to have the kind of relationship you truly want. Just naming your fear allows you to start to take control, I know that one of my big fears was that I wasn't enough, that I wasn't good enough to have the kind of man I truly wanted, the co, the caliber of man, because I saw those men wanting other women and not wanting me.
So none of those men were coming toward me, and so the first thing I had to admit was that I had been settling in all my previous relationships, and I'm sure many of you are doing this. I'd love to see who's done that, who's settled in past relationships because you were afraid that you wouldn't find a man.
Was truly on your level that those men were not looking for women like you. I know so many of you do this. You find a guy, he's not really what you want, but you keep dating him, or you get into a relationship with these men, and you do this because you're terrified that you're going to be alone. That's why so many of us settle and stay in the wrong relationship for years, every single day.
For 13 years when I was with my ex-husband, I told myself I could do better, but I didn't leave him because I was afraid that I really couldn't. And so you have to name your fear. You have to look at it. In naked dating, we look at fear as a guide. It's uncomfortable, but it's also showing you where you need to grow.
And if you don't, if you're unwilling to face these fears. Walk through them. You can't grow. So when you face a fear like, I'm not good enough, then you have to ask yourself how do I start to feel better about myself? What are the things that I'm unhappy about that I can do something about? For me, one of the biggest things was I wasn't happy about my weight, my physical appearance, and so I decided that in order to attract, to feel confident enough to attract the kind of man I really wanted, I needed to do something about my weight, which had been a chronic, lifelong issue.
And I knew that I hated myself because. I couldn't get a handle on my eating, and so I decided to take that on and transform that part of my life. And in doing that, I felt so good about myself. I got down to the lowest weight I'd ever been in my adult life. I did it in a very healthy way. I did it not just by dieting, but also having emotional support to understand why I was using food.
For comfort. For comfort. And once I did that, I felt more confident, more able to go out and date and attract the kind of men I really wanted. So you just wanna take small, brave steps. You don't need to leap into the deep end. You don't have to change everything about your life. I chose one thing, the one thing that had been the biggest obstacle for me, right?
Which was my weight. And then you start with taking small, actionable steps. So a little bit over time. I didn't lose weight overnight. It was a process. And just by committing to this process and showing up for myself, I was able to gain the confidence I had been looking for my whole life in this area. I felt so empowered and so good about my ability to show up for Lisa, and I proved to myself that I could do this, and it was empowering.
So you have to look at one part of your life, one thing that you are dissatisfied with. Maybe it's your finances, maybe you need to work out and, go to the gym and work out. Maybe you need a makeover. I don't know what that thing is. Maybe you wanna pick up a hobby or take dancing lessons, study the tango and move your body.
Get in your body, feel more feminine. There are so many ways you can start to tackle one part of your life that will have a ripple effect in your dating life. So if you're afraid of rejection, which is a big one, right? For so many of you. So if you're afraid of rejection. Put yourself on a dating app and start messaging five people a day and just see what happens.
Send some playful responses, send some more serious ones, and just start to see what works and doesn't work. Maybe you don't even go on a date yet. Maybe you don't go out with a single guy, but you just spend some time on the apps online, on a dating site, just messaging and getting the hang of it and working through your feelings.
Maybe you start messaging with a guy and then he disappears. That's okay 'cause you're messaging with a bunch of other guys and so you just say you learn how not to take that personally and you remind yourself that, you know what? He doesn't know me. He's probably communicating with five other women. And maybe he'll circle back around.
You learn how to navigate your feelings, your fear of rejection, to talk yourself through it and to let go and not allow these men that you don't even know to affect you. And you look at, maybe I could have been funnier, maybe I didn't respond quickly enough. Maybe, whatever, fill in the blank, but you just keep throwing mud at the wall.
And this is something the women experience in my course, when they do the dating, when in the first month of the course there's no dating, and then they get back out and they start dating and we give them tips about how to navigate. The fear of rejection and not take it personally and let go and what to say and what not to say.
We give them very real concrete tools and all kinds of scripts and ways to navigate this and 90% of the women who go through the course will come back and say, oh my God, I can't believe it. I am actually having. Fun dating and I'm not taking it so seriously. And the less seriously I take it, the more fun the guys are having and the more responsive they are.
And this is really working. So by learning tips and tricks and tools for how to communicate with these guys and what to say, what not to say, what you know, how to get them from. Messaging on the app to a phone call or a zoom call to a date, the women gain confidence and they no longer that fear of rejection starts to subside.
You also can start to reframe fear as an opportunity. So when my husband was gone last weekend and I was sitting with my. Fear and looking at what was going on in my business and I had to confront some very real fears I was having. I saw it as an opportunity. I saw it as a sign to stop and a chance to grow.
So every time you face a fear, you get closer to being able to see answers and possibilities. And I came up with some wonderful solutions that if I had just been paralyzed by fear, I wouldn't have seen these opportunities. And I actually, I. Made some tremendous progress in my business this past week because I faced my fear and I was able to make some important decisions that I just wasn't clear about.
And if I hadn't seen my fear as an opportunity and a sign to stop, that wouldn't have happened. So if you are running into rejection and it's paralyzing you. You can, if you reframe that as an opportunity, then what? What happens if you start to reframe it as an opportunity?
You start to see possibilities. What am I afraid of? How can I look at this differently? How can I grow? Are there things I might be missing that I'm doing wrong that I could change? Should I be lighter, funnier, keep my messages shorter? What do I need to do in order to face this fear of rejection? You can also ask yourself what's.
The worst thing that could happen, and what's the best thing that could happen? When you weigh the possibilities, the potential reward is often worth the risk. So let's say a guy that you were texting with stopped messaging you and you. Were really upset. It was upsetting because you really liked him and you thought it was going well, and you thought he was about ready to ask you for a date, and instead of just being upset and telling yourself you got ghosted, when you weigh the possibility of reaching out to him, the risk is that he may not message you back, but he has already ghosted or he is already stopped messaging anyway.
And if you were to send him a funny little message, the reward is that he might respond, so why not? Maybe there was a miscommunication. Maybe he didn't think that you were that into him. Maybe your messages weren't that playful and he couldn't tell if you really liked him or not, and so he just disappeared.
So by you reaching out and just saying, Hey, where did you go? I was having so much fun communicating with you, and I was looking forward to connecting. Maybe he needed some acknowledgement that you were having a good time and that you were interested in getting to know him. Look, everybody's got fear.
It's happening on both sides of the equation. So maybe the potential reward is greater than the risk of just dropping the ball and, and feeling horrible and thinking, oh another guy that ghosted me. I have heard so many stories. Of women who read the rules and put all the power in the guy's hands and just, followed it to the letter and thought he's supposed to message and he's supposed to reach out and I'm not supposed to initiate, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I have heard so many instances from women who did that, and later they may have run into the guy at a party or in a coffee shop, and the guy said I didn't think you were interested. There you weren't. There was no initiation on your side. I was doing all the initiating. I wasn't really getting much back from you, and so I didn't think you were interested.
So a lot of times, you may think that you're putting out all these cues and whatever, and the guys just are not getting it. So I want you to think about one fear you've been avoiding in your dating life. Just one small fear. Then I want you to think about one brave step you can take today to face it.
Maybe there's a guy you've been communicating with who dropped the ball, who you really wanna get a date with, and so you're going to send him a message that says, what's a girl like me gotta do to get a date with a guy like you? Or maybe your pipeline is running dry and you decide that you're going to reach out to 10 guys.
There are always things you can do at your end. Maybe you call up a photographer, a professional photographer, and you get some new photos. Maybe your photos are old, they're over a year old, or maybe you never had professional pictures taken. And you wanna put yourself out there in the best light. There's all kinds of things you can do to take a brave step.
Maybe there's a guy that dropped the ball and you just wanna say, look, I had such a great date and I understand that maybe we're not a match. I was wondering what it was or why you decided not to reach out to me again. I won't ask you again, but I really wanna learn from this experience. So anything you could share with me, you're the kind of guy that I would love to get to know and anything you could share with me would be valuable.
There are so many ways you can use the dating processes and opportunity to face your fears and grow. The focus, you really need to take the focus off just finding your guy, because a lot of dating is really about becoming the person who's ready for your guy. So if this resonated with you, I want you to go to lisa shield.com.
I want you to click the button all over the page to watch my free presentation. If you wanna dive deeper into how emotionally naked dating can help you transform your love life, let's connect. This is where the journey begins, and if you're sick and tired of wasting precious years of your life, trying to figure this out on your own, and you really want a proven step-by-step roadmap for getting this.
Solve now so that you, that one that takes all the guesswork out of this process and shows you how to find the guardian of your soul, then please again, go to lisa shield.com. Watch my free presentation. Stay to the end. That's where you can book a call with a member of my team. I look forward to seeing you on the other side.
Also, if you have suggestions for future topics, send them to hello@lisashield.com. Thank you for listening. I will see you again soon. I do a broadcast with my husband called Getting Inside the Right Male Mind. You don't wanna miss that. My husband has the most beautiful insights on how men think and feel about all of this.
So please, if you wanna hear the male perspective, check that out. Enjoy the rest of your day, and I will see you soon. Bye-bye.