Episode 121 | June 19, 2018

Naked Dating with Lisa Shield


A Personal Note from Orion

Tall, dark, and handsome. Rich, generous, fun. Sexy, silly, and strong. Perhaps this ‘grocery list’ of qualities sound familiar. Are they on your checklist of the “perfect man” ?

Whether you’re 25 or 45, if you are single and looking for love, you may soon realize that those high expectations can be a barrier in finding the right person for you – the one who, according to this week’s guest Lisa Shield – can get emotionally naked with you and be the guardian of your soul.

Lisa is one of the first, and top, dating coaches around. She put up her first dating profile on the web 17 years ago when it was super taboo (and she found her husband 2 years later!) Her number one rule for single ladies looking for love? Never, ever, stop being open to it. Be realistic and open with your dating expectations and remember, he’s out there, searching for you too!

 

In this Episode

  • [03:26] – Lisa talks a bit about herself and how she got to the point where she is today as a love coach.
  • [06:54] – We learn that Lisa’s first husband, who she was with for 13 years, was a pathological liar.
  • [08:14] – When Lisa started coaching, no one else was doing it and she had to do it on her own.
  • [08:34] – What does Lisa think has changed the most between the time she started coaching and now?
  • [10:38] – Lisa talks about whether people are commitment-phobic these days.
  • [12:32] – Orion shares the story of finding her own soulmate, and the total surrender involved in the process.
  • [15:23] – Lisa brings us into the world of a 40-year-old single lady in the big city, whose competition is the young girls, who hangs out with married friends with kids.
  • [20:02] – When you have such a fixed idea of what you think you need, you shut yourself off from possibilities that you haven’t even considered.
  • [23:41] – Lisa shares her thoughts on women who live more in their masculine energy.
  • [27:46] – What are some of Lisa’s top tips for dating?
  • [30:49] – When you meet your soulmate and really fall in love, you’ll never have enough time with him, Lisa explains.
  • [33:45] – Lisa’s work is called “emotionally naked dating,” she reveals, and talks about the process that she walks her clients through.
  • [35:15] – What are some ways of communication that don’t sound needy or desperate?
  • [37:40] – Lisa describes some destructive behaviors.
  • [41:48] – We hear about Lisa’s rules for sleeping with guys, including her theory that you need to share your head before you share your bed.
  • [44:40] – What is “good company” for a man? In her answer, Lisa emphasizes the importance of mirroring a man’s masculinity back to him.
  • [47:21] – Orion shares a tradition that she and her husband do every night before bed.
  • [49:08] – Lisa talks about how she brings the agreement of not taking anything personally into her relationship.
  • [53:35] – What are Lisa’s three top tips to living a stellar life? #1. Do not quit until you find your man. #2. Grow, grow, grow. #3. Gratitude. Be grateful.
  • [56:53] – Where can listeners find Lisa to learn more or work with her?

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hello and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. To all my singles, it’s great to be single, it’s fun, and I know that you are looking for the one. He or she are on their way so keep the hope, keep the faith, it’s going to happen, it’s on its way, and please, all those cliches about all the good ones are gay or taken. Whatever is your belief system or believe that you’ve developed around finding the one, you probably got hurt in the past maybe you think, “This is my second or third chapter in life and I cannot find the one,” don’t worry, it is possible. One of my clients just gave me an amazing testimonial saying that she’s been waiting for a love like this for 50 years. She didn’t even know that this love can exist. Then she sent me a wedding invitation and she got married. It’s so beautiful to know that you can believe in love again. It is possible for you. Keep dreaming, keep aspiring, you probably are so close. Sometimes, we are so close to our destination, we just don’t even know it, and today is going to get you even closer. Today I’m interviewing the extraordinary Lisa Shield. Seventeen years ago, when no one would admit to dating online, she posted her first profile. Two years and a hundred first dates later, she met and married the love of her life. Her success led to her becoming one of the first dating and relationship coaches in the nation. She’s a sought-after relationship expert, she’s been featured on tons of TV shows, and she love helping couples and singles use their emotional nakedness to attract and keep a life partner. Now, without further ado, onto the show. Hey, Lisa. Welcome to Stellar Live Podcast.

‏‏Hi.

‏‏Thank you for being here.

‏‏Thank you, Orion for having me.

‏‏Before we dive in, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and how did you become a love coach, a dating coach, how did you get here?

‏‏First of all, I’m so excited to be here, and I know that you’re a love coach as well, so this is always exciting to get to talk to other love coaches because now it’s the thing we love talking about the most. I will say that 18 years ago now, it seems almost impossible to say that aloud, I was turning 40 and I woke up and realized everybody had said to me, live your life, be the most fabulous version of you, and the right man will just find you, and that did not happen. I was at the best place in my life, I was happier, I looked better, I was just in this amazing place, and I looked around, and I was turning 40, and I thought, “Damn girl, you better get out there and do something about this.” Because 40 is right around the corner and you don’t want to wind up alone. I live in Los Angeles, and there are more gorgeous women in this city than it should be possible. I knew that if I didn’t do something, it wasn’t just going to happen. Internet dating was just getting started, and people wouldn’t even admit to posting something online at the time, we were embarrassed, it was humiliating. I’m sure people still feel that way today, but back then, we were pioneers, and I just looked around and I thought this is my answer, this is the solution. I posted literally one little profile and a single photograph, one picture of just a head shot of me. It never even occurred to me to put up a body shot, and I proceeded to go on 100 first dates. Literally one after another, and they were all first dates. I had been doing Orion, a lot of interpersonal work at the time, I had left my first husband about six years before that. I had gone on this journey of just getting my master’s degree in spiritual psychology, and I was working with a very well-known spiritual teacher named Don Miguel Ruiz, he wrote a book called The Four Agreements. I just had a lot of insight into who I needed to be in order to attract the man that I really wanted. I was able to go through these men very quickly but there were a lot of them. Finally, two years later, I was on a date, and this man walked in and he said, “It is so lovely to meet you.” and I looked up, and the first thing that went through my mind was, this is the kindest person I’ve ever met. I don’t know, 16 years later, we’re married. I am one of the happiest women on the planet and I’d say, if you ask me why I became a coach or how, because nobody was dating at that time, and people didn’t know how to do this. I had such huge success with it. My first husband was a pathological liar, and I was with him for 13 years. Going from him to meeting an angel was really a huge arc. Benjamin, about three months into dating, he said to me, “You should be a life coach or a therapist.” and I said, “Why?” and he said, “Because that’s your passion.” I was importing at the time, I had a beautiful importing business where I brought artwork in from Mexico and Vietnam. So I looked at him and I said, “I think you’re right.” he said, “Yeah, you may have been passionate about importing at one time but that’s not your passion anymore.” and so I sold my business to an ex-boyfriend. I enrolled in coaching training, and the other thing I will share with you is that there were no coaches when I did this. Sixteen years ago when I started coaching, there were no dating coaches. I didn’t know of another dating coach. As far as I know, I was one of the very first people to start doing this work.

Because 40 is right around the corner and you don’t want to wind up alone. Click To Tweet

‏‏I’m very honored to talk to you.

‏‏That’s very sweet. There was nobody doing this at that time. I really had to do it on my own. Here we are, love coach to love coach.

‏‏I bet a lot changed in the last 16 years, what do you think changed the most from the time you’ve started to now?

‏‏I think what really changed is that because so many of the social restrictions that were in place in the past, like not having babies out of wedlock, and not living together before you’re married, and waiting to have sex, I mean all of these things sort of forced people to get married at one point. They forced us to have to have relationships because the humiliation of getting pregnant and having a baby, no respectable woman would have never done that. Here’s a great story, my grandmother had a very good girlfriend, her name was Dora Apple. I remember talking to Dora and she told me the most incredible story. She was the younger sister, I think of three sisters, and in those days, people had to get married, they were supposed to marry in succession. The oldest daughter would get married, then the next one, then the next one. She had met the love of her life when she was a young girl. They secretly married and just didn’t tell anybody. They got married because they were so afraid that if she got pregnant, she would humiliate her family, and so they wanted to have that in place just so that they wouldn’t do that. All of those reasons that made us have committed relationships in the past are gone. Because of that, you can blame the internet, or you can say there’s too much choice, or nobody wants to commit today, everybody’s commitment phobic, but there were real social structures in place in the past that forced us to marry, and all of that stuff is gone now. I think people are really lost. To me, that’s the biggest change.

‏‏Do you think people are committed phobic these days and is it much harder?

‏‏I think that there are people who have commitment issues and I think the biggest problem is that people somehow just think that this is going to magically happen. We have very exalted, fantastical ideas of what we want in a relationship, but most of us really aren’t at a point psychologically, or spiritually, or emotionally where we know how to have the kind of relationship we’re dreaming of. Most people have a fantasy relationship in their mind and they think, when I meet the right person, that’ll just happen because we’ll fall in love, and live happily ever after. That’s really not true, you have to become the person first who’s capable of having that relationship. You’ll naturally attract a partner who can do that with you. That’s certainly the way it was for me, and the way it is for most of my clients. In fact, you know Orion, I have a thing where I say to my clients, every date is not a destination. The goal is not, is this the one, is this the one, is this the one, dating is a spiritual journey and every date is a stepping stone to love. Each date is a stepping stone and it’s taking you if you know how to seize this opportunity, and use the dating process to grow evolve, and to become an amazing, beautiful, attractive woman. You’re going to just draw your soulmate to you.

Most people have a fantasy relationship in their mind and they think, when I meet the right person, that’ll just happen because we’ll fall in love, and live happily ever after.

‏‏I love that. For me it was the same when I found my soulmate. I actually was afraid he won’t show up, and when he did, it was a total surrender, a breakdown and break through, and I prayed. I was like, “God please, I can’t do it on my own.” I tried to control everything and it doesn’t work. I wrote my relationship vision. I didn’t write only what I want, people write a long list. I want him to be tall, handsome, rich, beautiful it goes on and on, they usually don’t stop to think about, what do you bring to the table? Who do you need to become to attract that person, and my other list was, who do I need to become to attract that person? I did a Tony Robbins seminar and 48 hours later, I met the love of my life and nine days later, he proposed to me in a hot air balloon in Vegas.

‏‏I love it, that’s awesome.

‏‏I said no, it was horrible. We were in this little basket in the sky, and then there was nowhere to go, and we were sad because we liked each other, and the hot air balloon operator promised him that he will never have a failed marriage proposal on a hot air balloon, and that didn’t work.

‏‏You broke his record.

‏‏Then nine months later, he proposed to me at the same place where I prayed for him to show up and I said yes. I’m so much aligned with you when it comes to the beingness. Take me into the world of the 40-year-old single lady in the big city, her competition is the young girls, she hangs out with her married friends, they all have kids, she’s like living this beautiful free life and everything looks great on Facebook, but she’s super lonely, and she’s longing for a partner. How would you describe her? What goes on in her psychology?

‏‏Those are a lot of the women that I coach. Many of them are here in Los Angeles. A lot of these women are so accomplished, and they are so successful in L.A. They really do have it all, they’ve got perfect bodies, and botox, and plastic surgery, and designer clothes, and fabulous careers, and they don’t have men. they fill their time with girlfriends, and going out, and drinking, and going on girls trips, some of them have been married and divorced, and they’re single mothers, it’s got branching for them because the man that they want to date aren’t looking at them, they’re looking at much younger women, and so a lot of these women are not, everything Orion feels like settling to them. They feel like if I have all of this and I bring all of this to the table, then I should expect the same in return. They get caught up in superficialities in how tall he is, and how much money he makes, what kind of car he drives, and you and I both know they’re not looking at the internal stuff. They’re not asking themselves how does he make me feel, they’re looking at the pedigree and the portfolio. They have put all this energy and effort into becoming amazing and so they expect the same in return, and they’re not really sitting back and saying, “How does this person make me feel? How does this man make me feel inside?” one of my clients, Liz, she has allowed me to use her name. she was a client of mine who was very successful, I talked to her the other day and she said, “Lisa, I thought that I was going to marry a guy who was rich and I was going to be driving around in my limousine to sum function that I was hosting and whatever. You told me to start instead of looking for my list, my shopping list, you told me to look for the guardian of my soul. That changed everything. when I started to look for the guardian of my soul I really started to listen to these men on dates, and I was thinking that CEO isn’t going to hang out with me in the kitchen while I’m cooking dinner, or go to an art opening with me, or go to some football game. He’s too busy thinking about himself. Now I’m living in a little cabin and Byron, Mississippi with the love of my life. I don’t even have a car. People call us Kim and Kanye because we’re inseparable. we just drive around together all the time.” It’s so sad because I look at these women Orion and I think, you’re 45 years old, and life is passing you by, and you’re held up, you’re stuck on so many petty things. You’re looking for these petty details, “Oh my god, I have to have the instant chemistry, and he’s got to be mind blowing.” All of that stuff will fall into place, but not if that’s the only thing you’re looking for. It’s sad.

‏‏It’s really sad. It’s just living in a world of comparison and expectation. Expectations are so high, they cannot be met in reality because they expect but to perceive reality of what they see is some ideas from books, magazines, movies, movie stars, Instagram accounts, Facebook accounts, they see it and they think, this is the reality, and this is what I should have. In reality, relationships are not easy, they’re so complicated, there’s so many layers, and it’s good, and it’s bad, and it’s so many things, and it needs so much work. Even when you find your dream man, you still need to work on the relationship every day, and it’s deep work, nothing here is superficial when it comes to true love.

‏‏I agree. The other thing too is, when you have such a fixed idea of what you think you have to have, you literally shut yourself off from possibilities, from things you haven’t even considered. When I was working with eHarmony for a little while, they were telling me that if you add one criteria to your list like just as an example, let’s say that you want somebody who doesn’t drink, you literally cut off 75% of their database. Then you add another one, and another one, and another one, and you’re looking literally like you may cut your pool down to a handful of potential people even in a city as big as Los Angeles. If you’re too picky—that’s why when I work with my clients, I think it’s important to sit down and do the exercise of writing down the things that they want because sometimes they haven’t really stopped to consider it, to really get clear about what they really do you need in a partner. But to me, the qualities that you’re looking for, they should be parallel lines. It should be parallel, it shouldn’t be like you’re struggling, and you don’t have a job, and you don’t have any money, and then you’re going to marry a multi millionaire. The more parallel lines you can draw across, like religion, age, all of those things, but the more you can sort of do that, but what I do with my clients is, I have them write that list and then, they were able to pack between 5 and 10 things that they absolutely have to have and then they have to get rid of the rest.

‏‏That’s really powerful.

‏‏That’s all they get.

‏‏This is one way to bring the expectation to meet reality, because I just feel like so many, like you said, women that don’t have a lot of money are expecting to, marry a multimillionaire. Why? Because even like the young ones, because I’m young and beautiful, and so what? Youth and beauty is something that somebody that have money can actually buy and they don’t get it. Just because I am—I deserve it, but who did you become in order to attract that person? I’m not talking about, if you don’t have a lot of money, don’t expect to marry a billionaire, it might happen but, if you don’t have a lot of money then personality wise, how did you work on yourself when it comes to controlling your temper, knowing how to be a great partner, knowing how to support your man. When I work with my ladies, I work a lot about connecting to their femininity, awakening their inner goddess, that’s what I call it. We have similar clienteles which are the alpha type successful women, and they are many times, even though they have a feminine exterior, there’s something really hard about them, really carrying what I call the energy of the masculine which is, driven, too tight, like everything is really controlled. What do you think about that?

‏‏I think that obviously, there’s a very innate natural femininity that comes to all of us that usually is there for us when we’re younger. When we’re children we’re just in that flow and the little girls can be very girly, and little boys are very much boys. It’s sad that women lose that edge, we lose that beautiful essence as we grow older. I remember consciously myself giving it up and saying, when my dad left my mother for another woman I said to myself, I’m never going to let a man do to me what my father did to my mother. I said, I can do anything a man can do, and that became my stance, that became the way I approached my love life, I wasn’t getting the results I wanted. I understand that there’s a huge move to feminine essence, and looking at the goddess and those things, and it’s not the way I approach it in my own personal coaching practice. I feel that men and women at their core at the spiritual level really want the same things, we want passion, and love, and connection, and safety, and forgiveness, and gratitude. All of the things that we want at a spiritual level are really the same. Men and women, we go about getting those things differently on this the physical plane, on the level of personality men and women do. We operate differently, and we go about getting those things differently. I think it can sometimes be very polarizing when get into this is masculine energy and in this feminine energy, because there are some men who are much more feminine, I know women who are attracted to those men. There are men who like women who are dominant and whatever. I have a little bit of a different approach with that and this is what I did when I dated, this was sort of the tool that I used. Look, I’m not that smart and I can only hold so much knowledge in my head at one time, so for me, I have to really simplify things. Orion my approach was this, whenever something came up, like an instance, a conflict, or I felt angry because the guy said, “Let’s get together Saturday night.” And then I didn’t hear from him, and I felt myself getting angry and wanting to lash out, or act out, or build a story that men are jerks, or whatever. I would sit back and I would ask myself, what do you want to do and is this attractive behavior? Is it attractive? Like if I call up a guy or I send an email in those days and I tell him he’s a jerk, is that going to be attractive? No, it’s going to be repellent, it’s going to push him away. Then I would say, what would be attractive? And then the answer would be, well, to give him the benefit of the doubt, to ask him what happened before I accused him. That’s not necessarily being feminine or masculine, it’s just being a thoughtful and caring person. For me, that was really simple.

There’s a very innate natural femininity that comes to all of us that usually is there for us when we’re younger. Click To Tweet

‏‏Yeah, I think we pretty much agree we approach it in just two different ways. I want to talk to you more about dating. What are some of your top tips for dating?

‏‏What are my top tips for dating, work with a coach, find the absolute best person you can find and work with them, because there are so many good mentors and coaches out there. This is an area of our lives that we can spend literally years just floundering, trying to figure it out, and I think everybody has had the experience where you read a book, or you go to a workshop and you have an epiphany, and then you think, “Oh my god, I’ve figured it out. I get it.” or you take a year off of dating and you just focus on yourself, and then you start to feel fabulous, and you get back to who you really are, and then you go right back out there and you do the same thing all over again.

‏‏I had coaches my whole life, I wake up for business, personal, healing childhood wounds, I went to a million seminars, I invested tons of money in coaching and seminars and all that, and it’s just, I don’t think I would have been the person that I am today, or achieved what I achieved without that support system.

‏‏Look Orion, the other thing I was going to add to that is, why is it that people who spend so much money, this is what I don’t get, some other corporate women out there spend a fortune on getting their degrees, they spend a ton of money on childcare, on putting their kids through the fanciest schools, they themselves spent a ton of money on cosmetics, and makeup, and designer clothes, and fancy shoes, but they don’t hire a coach for dating. I don’t get it.

‏‏I think there is maybe a stigma, or fear, I don’t know what it is. If you are listening right now, and you know that you’ve tried so many things and it didn’t work, then give coaching a chance because it might change your life forever. As for me Lisa, the more I invested, and sometimes I invested at times where I did not have money. And it was my last penny, was I like, “Yes.” I’m putting $10,000 in this program, why? Because I know it’s going to change my life, and guess what? It freaking did.

‏‏Exactly.

‏‏Yeah and the return on investment is, people see return on your investment is like, I’m going to put $5 and I’m going to get $20, but on the spiritual and emotional level, there is so much more return on investment when you find your soulmate, when you feel better about yourself, when you are emotionally balanced and happy, that return on investment is just for me, for my value, is so much bigger.

‏‏It’s the most precious gift in life, I know you’ll agree when I say this, when you meet your soul mate, and you really fall in love, and you realize how amazing this can be, you will never have enough time with him, there will never ever be enough time in a lifetime. He is now 65, I’m 56, he’s nine years older than me, those last 16 years went by in a heartbeat. I look at him and I can see he’s getting older, and so am I, but I think my god, time is going by and we only have so much of it. I can’t begin to tell you, the women out there, how important it is, because if you want babies, and you want love, and you want to build a family, time does not go on forever. It is limited, and none of us knows how much of that we have. Don’t waste a second of it. If I could have, and I would have known how sooner I’m in, I would have been out there. I would have been going on a date every single night if that’s what it took. The other thing is and I think you’ll relate to this in terms of your feminine, in terms of your goddess, your work around femininity is you have to learn how to get promotionally naked.

Your work around femininity is you have to learn how to get promotionally naked.

‏‏Yes, that’s the essence of it, the vulnerability. I was so hard because I’ve experienced, a relationship that brought me down to my knees and I was depressed after that one, and that launched me on a beautiful journey of self-discovery, it was looking back to my greatest gift but back then, man, it made me so hard, and I decided, I consciously made the decision to become harder physically, emotionally, I went and I studied martial arts, I trained my body, I became really strong, and I was so tough, I was a kickass, and every time when I approached the men, I had a feminine exterior but the question that ruined my life was, how can I not get hurt? I want to make sure that you’re not going to hurt me. I come into those dates, or do that short-term relationship, trying to prove that I’m better than you, and you’re not going to hurt me, and with this shield on, nobody will hurt you but guess what, you cannot let love in.

‏‏The same walls that protect you also keep the love out. It prevents not just the bad guys from getting in, but the good guys too. My work is called emotionally naked dating, and that’s really the process I walk my clients through is how to safely let down their guard and ask for what they want without sounding needy, or desperate, or insecure, and ask like, “How do you do that? How do you open up to a man? How do you ask him for the things that you need?” I have some very beautiful techniques for creating intimacy and closeness with a partner and how to date and really consciously create that on the dates so that you’re not just going out on a date and just winging it, but you’re really there to consciously learn how to open up that space for deeper connection.

‏‏What are some of those ways of communication that won’t sound needy, because it’s so easy for women to sound needy and I think that in some way, shape, or form they are needy. If a woman gets desperate and she goes on a date every potential mate looks like, “Are you going to marry me? Am I going to marry you? Are you going to marry me?” That’s what’s going on in their head, the man just want to say, “Hey my name is…” and they’re like, “So, when are we getting married? How old are you? Where do you want to live?”

‏‏When I work with clients, the first thing we do is to start sorting out their mindset around just that, because if they’re going out and they’re looking for a man to fill a hole in their soul, it’s not going to work. The very first piece of it is to start to work on the voices in their head, and I have a paradigm for that that I use in my work certainly echoes the ego, the superego, those kinds of things, the parents, the adult and the inner child. I call in terms of dating and naked dating, I call the saboteur or the person that – or the gremlin I refer to as your frenemy, and then the part of you that is kind of, we all date like teenagers. We’re all really out there still dating like we’re in junior high school, with junior high school dating skills except that now you just want the CEO at Morgan Stanley instead of the captain of the football team, but it’s all the same stuff. I call that part of you your madolescent like you’re a mad adolescent. Then the voice of love, and compassion, and caring, and forgiveness, that wise loving voice is called your naked dater. My clients learn how to start to tune out their frenemy, they talk back to their frenemy and they start to tune into the voice of their naked dater, and as they do that, this madolescent part of them can start to calm down and feel supported, and loved, and not get ahead of itself. The clients in my program who work with that paradigm constantly like when we talk in coaching sessions or we’re on a group call, they will talk about their madolescent, and their frenemy, and their naked dater, they can really see these aspects of their personalities. They’ll say to me in a call, yeah I had to really sit down with my naked dater or have to have a conversation with me about how I was behaving. It’s really powerful. That’s how we deal with all the anxiety.

‏‏What are some destructive behaviors?

‏‏Destructive behavior is going out with somebody, getting drunk, and sleeping with them on the first or second date. Like one of my clients, she was doing so great, and she called me up yesterday one of the women in my program and she’s like, “Lisa,” we had an emergency call, I give everybody my cellphone number so they can get in touch with me if they have an emergency, and she was like, “You’re not going to believe what happened.” and I’m like, “Try me.” A couple of days before she had been telling me how she was pacing herself and she wasn’t so sure about this guy and whatever, and sure enough they went out I think on the second or third date and wind up going home together, and then she woke up the next morning and decided he wasn’t the guy for her. The truth was, she really was crazy about him, she was just embarrassed by what happened. That’s not good, obsessing, going on their Facebook page, or going on the dating apps and stalking people—there’s so much. I can’t even like going on a date and sharing too much information. With naked dating, you wouldn’t walk into a date and just start taking your clothes off, you don’t want to just go on a date and just start laying on your stuff out there. You have to know how to do that, there’s an art to this. It’s interesting because when I did this, when I dated, my goal was this, and I feel like we create what we focus on. my goal when I dated because I was really out there and I was going on a lot of dates, I decided that I was going to work through as much of my own stuff as I could while I was dating so I wouldn’t have to carry that into my relationship. It was really a powerful thing because I used to all of the upsets, and all of the drama that would come up for me, I took 100% responsibility for it, and every time I’d get upset, or angry, or hurt, I would do a process with myself to work through my own stuff, and literally when I met my husband, I think I’m quite a bit older, how old are you Orion?

‏‏I just turned 40.

‏‏I’m quite a bit older than you, when I did this, my goal was just to clean out as much of my baggage and garbage as I could. To be honest with you, my husband had zero conflict. We do not argue, and I know lots of couples will say that, we don’t argue, we don’t fight, we are completely honest and transparent with each other. If Benjamin comes in and says, “Babe, something happened, I want to talk to you about it.” We talk about it, it’s five minutes, I don’t take anything personally, I just listen and I say I apologize or I say I’ll really look at that, he does the same thing with me. We’re very straightforward and we keep our relationship clean. I think my intention of working through this stuff and being vigilant about it so that I didn’t carry it into the relationship really worked. It’s just an absolutely magical relationship. My husband said when his clients say to him, “Relationships are hard and we have to work at it.” he said, “I have to bite my tongue because I don’t feel like I have to work at my relationship.” It’s pretty amazing what you can do if you really know how to date and what to do, how to use the dating process to really clean up your side of the street.

‏‏I’m just curious, going back to the sex thing. What are your rules for sleeping with a guy?

‏‏I have a theory that you got to share your head before you share your bed. I think sex is the most amazing thing in the world, and I hope that every single woman or person listening to this podcast winds up in the most incredible, beautiful sexual, just rocking sexual relationship imaginable of your life with the guardian of your soul. My rules around sex are, you need to take it off the table until you can really learn how to make an emotional connection first. It’s not that you have to stop having sex for 10 years before you do this. I don’t know how fast or slow somebody learns. When I dated, sex was my primary way of connecting with men. I didn’t know another way. I didn’t know how to make an emotional connection. I didn’t know what a man wanted from me beside sex. Usually, I would have sex and I did sex very quickly. I also by the way thought that that was cool of me. I thought I was being very cool and modern to do that, but in the end, most of the time, men just wanted me for sex. That’s what I was offering and that’s what they kept coming back for. You can’t jump into sex with men. Here’s the thing, many men and experts say that men don’t really lose respect for women when they have sex right away, it’s not that they’re not going to respect you, a lot of women are having sex today and whatever but men can usually tell if they’re just interested in having sex with you or they really want to get to know you. The problem is, in the beginning, we can’t tell. Part of why you need to wait no matter how much pressure a guy is putting on you is because you don’t know if a guy really wants to get to know you or if he just wants to sleep with. That’s one reason and then the second reason why you need to wait is because, you’ve got to learn other ways of connecting with men. If you really want a man to keep coming back over and over and over again, and love your company, you have to learn how to be a good company for a man.

‏‏What is good company for a man?

‏‏Well I think you need to know how to listen to them. How to mirror back their masculinity, how to make a man feel like a man in your presence and really know how to do that. I know for a fact that most men don’t have as many people to open up to in their lives as most women do. By and large, if you’re somebody’s partner you are going to be his primary emotional connection. That’s a real honor. Women need to know how to listen without giving advice and really encourage a man without mothering him or talking down to him in any way. If you were to hung out in my house, you would see that I adore my husband, I know lots of women do, but I’m also extremely complementary and I’m constantly telling him what an incredible man he is, and I’m always looking for ways to acknowledge that. Just to give you an example, he went to go visit his brother over the weekend, and it’s really stressful for him because his brother is probably somewhere around the scale of Asperger’s, we’re not sure, but there’s something there. It’s a little tedious for Benjamin, it’s a long trip, and he does it out of the goodness of his heart. I know it’s really hard for him and he was telling me “I’ll keep doing this every couple of years.” I said, “Are you sure you want to do that?” and Benjamin said to me, “Larry didn’t do anything bad or wrong to hurt me, this is just who he is. He can’t help it, and he needs the connection, and it means a lot to him, and he’s my only brother.” I just said, “Benjamin, you are such a fine man. You are such a fine man and such a fine human being.” I did that intentionally because I was acknowledging his masculinity his principles. Men are all about principles, so anytime you can validate a man’s ethics, or his principles, or his moral code, that’s one very powerful way of giving a man’s masculinity back to him.

Men are all about principles, so anytime you can validate a man’s ethics, or his principles, or his moral code, that’s one very powerful way of giving a man’s masculinity back to him. Click To Tweet

‏‏I love it. Something that my husband and I do every night before we go to bed, we say to each other three things we appreciate about each other. This is our night ritual, before we go to bed we say at least three things that we appreciate, and it can be the littlest things like thank you for escorting me there, or buying this, or saying something nice to me. It can be something really small but when you focus on what’s good, when you focus on gratitude, it really builds the relationship.

‏‏Yes it does, I wish I could get my couples to do that exercise. I assign it to every one of them and they won’t do it. Orion, I have no idea. They resist it, I think when they’re angry, and they’re hurt, or they get lazy, I mean that’s why you have such a great relationship. You guys love doing those things together, and that’s a ritual of connection. You do that and it strengthens your relationship. Benjamin and I do that all the time just in the course of a day. We just do it very naturally with each other all the time. It would be wonderful to do it ritualistically, we just kind of do it all the time, but my couples just won’t do it, I don’t know. They get lazy but they want great relationships. They notice the difference when they’re doing it. It’s powerful, I really respect you guys for doing that.

‏‏Thank you.

‏‏You’re welcome, I think that’s awesome.

‏‏You spoke about the four agreements. One of them is don’t take anything personally, can you share with me how you bring it into your relationship?

‏‏I worked with Don Miguel for years and years when I was younger as part of my own spiritual journey. We were in a group together when we would meet in San Diego once a month and we did something called dreaming, it was a group that we did every month for some years. That was a big part of what we did. We really practiced the four agreements, and I think because that had been such a huge issue in my life, taking things personally, it became one of the things that I really mastered. Benjamin teases me and he says, “You do don’t take things personally better than Don Miguel.” I think it’s a joke. There is so much safety and trust in our relationship. To be honest with you, I admire my husband, if you can hear how I talk about him, I really do look up to him. I do that intentionally because I want him to be my man. I hold him that way, I defer to him. I found a partner who I feel is the smartest person I know, and the most honorable. When I was looking for a partner, I walk my clients through a process called the final five. My final five, one of those was, I was looking for a man who would be my greatest teacher. In the past, most of the man I was with I felt that I was more evolved or more spiritual than they were. It was bullshit but that’s what I thought. I was looking for a man that I really held in high regard, it took a lot of vulnerability on my part to be able to feel safe with him. He really is my spiritual teacher now, Benjamin. I don’t take things personally with him. I feel that there’s so much safety and trust in the relationship that I really defer to him and I know that if the person who is my model of love in the world is upset about something, or hurt by something I’ve done, it’s not because I did anything wrong, because I would never do anything to hurt him ever. I just know that something needs to be corrected. So immediately, if there’s an issue, or Benjamin comes to me and says, “Hey, there’s something I want to talk to about.” My first reaction or my first response is, “Please tell me what it is. I’m so sorry you were hurt and what can I do to fix it. How can I correct this?” that’s how we’ve resolved all of our issues, just like that.

‏‏That’s beautiful. Oh my god, there’s so much knowledge, so much to learn from you, you’re amazing.

‏‏Oh honey, thank you.

‏‏We are about to end.

‏‏I’m sad, this is one of my favorite interviews. You know something Orion? There is coaches and there’s coaches, and I got to tell you, some people are the real deal, and I can tell that you are.

‏‏Oh, I love you.

‏‏I could just tell, you’re so natural, you’re just real, and you’re easy going, and authentic, and in the moment. I love how you pause and think before asking a question. It’s just been really refreshing and easy.

‏‏Thank you. But before we finish, I do want people to find you, but I also have another question that I ask all my guests because it’s a good question, what are your three top tips to live in a stellar life?

‏‏Number one, do not quit until you find your man. Having a partner to share this with—the celebration of life is every freaking moment of every day when you’ve got your guardian of your soul next to you. I would not stop. I would keep dating, I would go on a date every moment of every day, I would hire the best coach you can find, and go on a date every single second you can, but I would get out there and work through this stuff because he’s out there. He is out there, you are not cursed, there is nothing wrong with you, you are not so broken, or damaged, or whatever the heck you’re telling yourself right now, just do it, just get over your big bad self, and get out there, and find him. If you want to celebrate life, you need a partner to celebrate it with. The second thing is grow. If you find yourself stagnating in an area of your life, then again, get a coach, find somebody to help you. I just hired the most amazing coach I wanted to transform my coaching practice. I’ve been doing it for at the time I think 14 years, and I was thinking it was time just to scrap it and come at it with a whole new approach. I am in a circle of 50 of the finest top coaches on the planet. It is the best thing I’ve ever done. It just lift me up all over again. I took the same career and I just completely reinvented myself. Keep growing, growing your career, make new friends but keep it fresh, just keep living on the edge of life. The third thing is gratitude. My husband says it’s the most beautiful word in the English language and I agree with him. Be grateful, there are people who are starving, there are people who don’t have roofs over their heads. I listen to NPR all the time and I was in tears over what’s happening and Burma right now in Myanmar. It was horrifying to hear what’s going on in parts of the world. We are among the elite of the elite, if you have a job, and a car, and a cellphone, and a computer, and have a regular paycheck, and food on the table every day, you’re one of the luckiest people on the planet. Get over yourself, stop suffering and be grateful, look around at all the blessings you have and just enjoy it because it’s not going to last forever.

‏‏Beautiful words. I’m sure many people would love to contact you, and find you, and follow you, and I know the book coming up and I can’t wait to read it.

‏‏You are an angel, thank you so much honey. They can contact me—you want to go to lisashield.com so it’s very easy, and you will find a link to sign up for an amazing webinar that I have. It’s about a 45-minute webinar that will change your life, it’s called, Conquer the Dating World in 5 Simple Steps and attract a man who will cherish you, desire you, and love you forever, even if you’ve never been in a healthy relationship. Please, listen to this, it’s packed with amazing information, and if you really like it, if you like what you hear, and you think you may be looking for a coach, and you don’t work with Orion because she’s terrific, or if you feel like you can connect better, you just like what I said, then please jump on a call with me and we’ll talk about that.

‏‏Wonderful. Thank you so much Lisa, you are wonderful, you are fantastic.

‏‏Thank you. So are you. I love doing these things because I get to meet so many amazing women and coaches. Thank you so much for having me honey. You’re amazing too, I learned a lot from you today.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

✓ Become the woman you need to be in order to find a partner you really want.

✓ Stop relying on fate and the belief that finding the right person happens on its own. Get yourself out there and start dating.

✓ Determine the difference between fantasy and reality.  Love isn’t only about romantic trips, expensive gifts and amazing sex. It also involves hard work and challenges.

✓ Find a person who can guard and nurture your soul rather than someone who can provide you with material possessions.

✓ Have a high standard of who you want to spend the rest of your life with but keep an open mind. We all have flaws and imperfections so don’t let one negative trait ruin your relationship.

✓ Keep growing and inspiring yourself and your partner. If you can’t fully love yourself, it’s difficult to give love to others.

✓ Take care of your physical, mental and emotional health as well as your appearance. First impressions are vital in finding a partner.

✓ Live a life full of gratitude. Develop positivity within so that it keeps exiting out of you.

✓ Don’t give up on love. We’ve all had our hearts broken in the past but that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve love and happiness.

✓ Find a love coach. Seek help if you feel stuck in your dating life and close to giving up on love.

Links and Resources:

About Lisa Shield

After fulfilling my lifelong dream of finding my soul mate, I became a certified life coach so that I could help others find theirs. While I understand that not everyone wants to go searching for love, I am committed to helping those who do.  I know that nothing else we do in life can feel as frustrating, confusing, and disheartening as dating or being in a disappointing relationship.  But I also know that love is worth everything we must go through in order to find it.

 

 

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