S.O.F.T. and Strong: Midlife Women On A Mission

Episode 33. To "Elevate" His Heart is to R.E.L.A.X. Into Love

April 25, 2021 Bernice McDonald Season 1 Episode 33
S.O.F.T. and Strong: Midlife Women On A Mission
Episode 33. To "Elevate" His Heart is to R.E.L.A.X. Into Love
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Dating after divorce can be nerve-wracking. More so, if you're beyond 50.

Nervous, Self-conscious. Rusty... How do we do this??

R.E.L.A.X. Breathe. Let your Sparkle out.

That's the key. This is the 2nd in a 5 Part Masterclass on learning to R.E.L.A.X. Into Love Again.

You've got this! Join me as I offer some wonderful insights I discovered from the one and only Matthew McConaughey - yes, Mr. Handsome, himself. Amazing who you find out has experienced a bit of anxiety when looking for love.

And I have a feeling that, if you use the "Elevate"  technique (the E in R.E.L.AX.), you are going to be invited on a 2nd date.... so be prepared.

Smile. Lean back. Be yourself in all your amazing perfect imperfection.

It doesn't take anything except being a woman who is simply a human being with a loving heart doing the best she can in this life. That's all. Even on a date.

The link to the Matthew McConaughey interviews I talk about are:

https://www.relevantmagazine.com/magazine/the-spiritual-renaissance-of-matthew-mcconaughey/

https://www.goalcast.com/2020/01/17/matthew-mcconaughey-camila-alves-relationship/

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @braveenoughforlove_





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0 (0s):
It changes how you listen. You're watching him. You're watching his body language. You're listening for the words that give you clues as to what his Story is. You're seeking to understand the Story and why he would even come to the conclusions that he's expressing. You're asking questions about what his Story is about and asking him to tell you more about certain things that he's interested in, or decisions he's made or careers he's chosen to find out who that person is.

1 (41s):
So you're a woman Beyond 50. What is standing between you and the dreams that you have in your heart? I'll tell you, it's the Story that your telling yourself. This podcast is about keeping our hearts awake and open to love because those stories are what close your heart and keeps it locked up tightly. It takes courage every day to face those stories about 15 minutes a day, only in fact. I'm Bernice McDonald, Courageous Happiness Coach. And that's the journey that I'm on in this life. I want you to find your heart again, to find the real you, the amazing courageous, loving, crazy, sexy woman that you were meant to be.

1 (1m 33s):
Yup. Even after 50. You read?. Okay. Come on in. Let's take those 15 minutes right now.

0 (1m 42s):
Welcome back, my beautiful lady, to Part Two of the R.E.L.A.X. Into Love Masterclass. The last time we met, we talked about the 'R' in R.E.L.A.X. - Receive. And today we are going to cover the 'E' which is to 'Elevate his heart'. I'm kind of in this Matthew McConaughey phase right now. I became very interested in watching his motivational videos on YouTube, mostly through Tony Robbins in his Unleash The Power Within conference that I attended a couple of months back.

0 (2m 27s):
And he played a clip from one of his motivational videos and I was really taken with that. So I've kind of been researching him and listening to his talks and his speeches. One thing that I was really fascinated by is his Story about after he made the first movie that really brought him to fame, you probably remember it was "A Time To Kill", a very good movie, but during that time, he says that once he was lifted up to a place of being famous, he kind of went into a confused time where he had to really think about who he was and where he stood and how he fit into all of this stuff going on with his face on billboards and on magazine covers and all of the overwhelming things that were happening.

0 (3m 28s):
So, as has become his habits since he takes, he likes to take time every now and again, to go away for several weeks and just be by himself on a trek in another country where nobody knows him where he can just kind of refocus on who he is. So I read a Story that was an interview with him in a published a publication online called 'Relevant'. And also, I heard him tell this Story a couple of other places, too, but I want to read you the quote about what he says about this.

0 (4m 10s):
He says that after he went on his time away after "A Time To Kill" and he was really processing who he was, he had a lot of guilt about a lot of things that he had done in the past and he did not feel good about a lot of things that had happened. He was struggling with understanding how he could have done this, the things that he did, he knew that there were people he needed to go to for forgiveness and on and on. So he asked if there was someone he could talk to in a monastery that he came across and they directed him to someone named Brother Christian, which was really a kind of apt name, right?

0 (4m 56s):
So he went and saw brother Christian, and he spent like four hours in a confession to him. And this is what he says, "I confessed to him for four hours. McConaughey says, I'm feeling like I'm at the bottom of the earth. I'm bawling and snot's coming out of my nose. What does he say? The only word he says to me after four hours of my confessions, he looks me in the eyes and he goes, 'Me, too". McConaughey's eyes pop behind darkrimmed glasses.

0 (5m 36s):
He let me know that I was not the center of the universe. He let me know it was a human condition. What I was going through. God's not looking for us to come there perfectly. He's not looking for us to come there all cleaned up and a halo on it. He wants to open the door when we're groveling. He's not going to judge us on that, McConaughey says, folding his enormous arms in an imitation of a stern, disapproving deity. No, he continues. God's going to go, 'Hey man, thanks. I'll come with you through this. I'll go with you through this. I've seen it all'."

0 (6m 18s):
I thought that was just such a beautiful Story. And so pertinent to what we're talking about here because, really, to R.E.L.A.X. into love again - and I struggle sometimes to actually find the word- to put this into a heart-deep kind of connotation for you who are dealing with your hearts - but to R.E.L.A.X. into love, again is to let yourself just be human. To just be you, flaws and all, no judgment. You, who have walked a Path, who have gone through many hurts, through many trials and tribulations for want of a better word.

0 (7m 9s):
You have faced a lot of stuff. What you need to do is just R.E.L.A.X. into being human. The 'R' in R.E.L.A.X. we've talked about in the last podcast - Podcast #32 - we talked about 'Receive'. That's what the ''R stands for. To receive help, to receive the kindness of others. Because if you're going to R.E.L.A.X. into love again, you need to learn to open your heart. To just let others in and you can do that by simply observing and recognizing when someone wants to offer you an act of love.

0 (7m 50s):
No matter how small, whether in words or opening a door, giving you a gift, they are all acts of love given to you from somebody else to help make you happy. To do something for you. To learn to open and receive is such a blessing and will start to ease you into a freedom of being yourself. But, also, as well as all that, we need to receive the truth of who we are and where we are on our journey. We need to accept the fact that this is life.

0 (8m 31s):
This is my life. This is how I acted. This was what I did. This is how I coped with what I went through. And you need to receive the truth about who you are. And be okay with that. To open up your arms and just put them around yourself and understand that it's okay to be you. It's okay to have gone through what you've been through. And, in many ways, it's as if you're sitting there with that monk, just like Matthew McConaughe was, and you are telling him all of these things, and he just looks at you and says, me too.

0 (9m 16s):
It's such a perfect bridge into what the 'E' stands for in R.E.L.A.X. To 'Elevate'. To 'Elevate' his heart. When you are going into love within a relationship, that's what you need to see more than anything, is the heart of the person that you are trying to get to know. To Elevate is to raise or lift up something to a higher position. So when you look at him, what you want to do is you want to be looking into his eyes and seeing his heart.

0 (9m 59s):
You want to be saying in your mind, "Me, too". No judgment here. I get it. Life is tough. And we respond in all kinds of ways. That man, that person, has been on his own journey. He has had his own bombs go off on his path. He has had boulders fall on him. He has had rocks thrown at him just like you. And he has responded in a certain way. None of us really have the right to stand in judgment of somebody else.

0 (10m 41s):
We should all be sitting there listening and just thinking or saying, "Yeah, I get ya. Me, too." So when you come to talk to somebody with that kind of attitude, it changes how you listen. You're watching him. You're watching his body language. You're listening for the words that give you clues as to what his Story is. You're seeking to understand the Story and why he would even come to the conclusions that he's expressing. You're asking questions about what his Story is about and asking him to tell you more about certain things that he's interested in or decisions he's made or careers he's chosen.

0 (11m 34s):
To find out who that person is. Truth be told, when you come into getting to know somebody like this, you start to forget yourself. Instead of bringing all your anxiety over into what he's thinking of you, you go and just present yourself as, "Hey, I'm a human. And I want to know you as a human." You're going to be able to tell, no matter how your conversation goes, whether or not you have a connection. And I guarantee you, I can say almost 95%, that if you come into a conversation like this, where you just lean back and you let him talk and you ask him questions and you seriously want to get to know who the man is inside the person that's in front of you, he's going to ask you on a second date.

1 (12m 36s):
And that's okay. I would say, I always recommend, because this is the advice that was given to me and it was really true, give him a second date and a third date, If you can. Unless you absolutely have alarm bells going off in your head, give him a second date because the first date is always just a trial and error testing kind of thing where you're both nervous. But if he asks you out again, say yes, and continue with you Elevating his heart with trying to understand who this person is.

0 (13m 21s):
So R.E.L.A.X. Let yourself just be human. Let yourself be who you are. Receive what he gives you, whatever that is and say, "thank you". Just say thank you in as many different ways as you can imagine. And then 'E'- that's the 'R' - this is the 'E' for Elevate. Focus on his heart. Think in your mind, "Yeah - me, too". So our Power Pillars, first of all, your Power Pillar #1 , to put this into a framework here - your purpose is to say, "Yes, I want to enjoy a great love.

0 (14m 10s):
And, in order to enjoy a great love, I need to get to know different people so that I can be open to finding him, to finding the partner that can build a great love with me." So as I do that, I want to be able to R.E.L.A.X. as much as possible so that I can be myself and not make a hasty decision. Here's an interesting thing. Another quote I found by Matthew McConaughey done by a movie company that was interviewing him, or just doing an article on him and how he met his wife and married her. What he said was, as he told the story to them was, "I didn't want to play the game of starting to feel anxious because, with too much anxiety, you can't find a mate.

0 (15m 1s):
And then you make a hasty decision." And I thought, yes, that's so true. That's why you need to learn to R.E.L.A.X., to just be yourself, because you want to be able to make a clear and honest decision about whether or not you can build a love with the person that you're getting to know. So you want to learn to R.E.L.A.X.. And that is your purpose in learning the whole R.E.L.A.X. system that I'm trying to show you here. The Truth Is... for Power Pillar #2, when we think about R.E.L.A.X.ing, when we think about the 'Elevating his heart' part, what you, what The Truth Is, you really do want to know this man.

0 (15m 53s):
Fear or anxiety will close you up and keep you all tied up tight in knots so that you can't, you won't let your real self out and you won't be able to listen to him without judgment, to listen to him without thinking about your list and ticking off the items on your list. In the beginning, you want to give him as much room as possible to be himself. You won't be able to let your Sparkle out unless you just lean back and R.E.L.A.X.. So how do we do that? Here is your Power Pillar #3, Hope-filled Action.

0 (16m 38s):
To R.E.L.A.X., you take the attention off of yourself. You think, "Yeah, me, too. No judgment here". You focus on what he's saying. You listen, you ask questions. You be interested in what he's saying, and you add your experiences to his and just talk to him like a friend. Now to do this on a date, you need to practice doing this everywhere. So that's what I want you to do. I want you to go out there and I want you to practice when you are talking to somebody else, elevate their heart.

0 (17m 22s):
Think about the person that's inside their eyes. Listen to what they're saying. Pick up clues through the words that they're using or how they're seeing things. Ask them more questions to find out what's behind that or how they really feel about something or what made them come to that conclusion. All right, we are in the process of learning to R.E.L.A.X.. "R' stands for 'Receive'. 'E' stands for 'Elevate his heart'. 'L' is 'Learn' all the time about everything.

0 (18m 6s):
'A' is 'Ask for what you need'. And 'X' is for living in your 'Excellence'. That's what's to come. Next time we're going to talk about, learn all the time about everything. Thank you so much for staying here with me, right to the end of this podcast. That means more to me than I can ever say. I so appreciate each one of you.

1 (18m 34s):
And I'm looking forward to hearing how this is going. Please come to my Instagram profile and follow me. And if you have any questions, if you have any struggles, please just send me a private message on Instagram, and I will be happy to help you out with anything that is coming up for you. All right. I will talk to you, my sparkly, lovely ladies in the next podcast.

A life lesson from the handsome Matthew McConaughey
R.E.L.A.X. into just being 'human'. 'Perfect' is not an option.
What "Elevating" His Heart Looks Like on a Date
Power Pillar #1: Your "Why" you are doing this. (Do you want a 'great love'?)
Power Pillar #2: The Truth Is...FEAR and Anxiety will shut you off your ability to Elevate his heart.
Power Pillar #3: Hope-Filled Action Steps. How to listen for his heart.