To be brave...is to take action even when you're scared.
To be brave...is to believe even in love even when you've moved the age needle past 50 and even when you've been hurt.
To be brave...is to hold a picture of the life you want just ahead while putting the steps in place to make it happen. Focusing there...living here.
To be brave...is to love. Period. To let it be who you are with no strings attached.
To be brave...is to create a Plan for love. A "Perfect For Me" Man Plan. (Click this link to find out how.)
To be brave...is to carry that Plan out.
All of this is what we're talkin' about in this podcast.
Come on in and discover if YOU are brave enough for love.
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(3s):
What do you do when you're a woman pushing beyond 50 and you wish you could just fast forward, past the dating parts, how do you find the love? And the guy you know is out there. You step up to be brave enough for love. You refuse to give up on the magic. You create a man plan and you go for it - one day at a time. One date at a time. I'm Bernice, McDonald your love coach. And that's what I had to do. And that's what we're talking about in this podcast.
(44s):
Brave Enough For Love. So come on in. Woohoo! Welcome to the first episode of brave enough for love. This is a morphing of open to love. Again, the content is basically the same. It's the whole spirit of it. I just felt I needed to infuse into my, into what I'm saying and to my words. And it's an idea that I want to transfer to you. It's a vision that I want to transfer to you, the beyond 50 woman who is struggling a bit to believe that love is really out there for her.
(1m 33s):
What stands in our way? The bottom line is that it's always FEAR. Everything comes back to FEAR. No matter the story you tell yourself, you're afraid that that story is true. And it always comes back to FEAR. I looked up the definition of "brave". Here's what it said. Ready to face and endure danger or pain showing courage without showing FEAR. Now, sometimes I think it's okay. In fact, many times it's okay to show FEAR.
(2m 14s):
It's okay to feel FEAR, but as Ambrose, Redmoon saId. Courage is not the absence of FEAR, but rather the judgment that something is more important than the FEAR. That's the quote that got me through these years in between my divorce and finding the love of my life, facing all of the things that I was uncomfortable with. All of the things that scared me, because there were so many "what if's". What if... this happened again? What if... I get hurt again?
(2m 54s):
What if... a guy didn't like me? What if... I got rejected? Like 150 times? What if... I got rejected once? That kind of FEAR led me to the chasing, led me to the pursuing and the bagging and the "Yeah, see, I'm a wonderful person. I'm going to help you as much as I can. Let me be there for you." That kind of attitude actually pushed men away. And it caused me to choose the wrong kind of guys. Now, when I was in the middle of it, I didn't see it.
(3m 36s):
I wish I had had somebody like me to guide me along through it. It was only because I did a lot of learning. I was already a coach and I needed to use - I was on hold for coaching because I was way too numb - but I took the time. I faced my FEAR and started to deal with it by taking courses that would encourage me. And so I turned to relationship courses. I thought, well, I can relate to this whole divorce thing. I can relate to this whole being single thing again.
(4m 17s):
So I may as well learn how to cope with it. Maybe someday. That's what I'll use my coaching for. And that became my heart. To be brave enough for love is to face your FEAR, embrace it, and to do what you need to to go for your dreams anyway. And that's what I stand on. You need to make that decision that no matter what you feel, no matter how many rejections you get, you are going to continue on because you believe that real love exists.
(5m 4s):
Real love that is a home for your heart. Real love that makes you feel safe and warm and gives you somebody to watch your back. Somebody to walk with you on this path of life where you walk alone. You are alone because we each are a heart that is making decisions on our path. We're born. We die. In between the decisions we make are ours. It's our life. Who we let influence us, who we let hurt us, who we let tell us who we are.
(5m 47s):
That's our decision. To be brave enough for love is to step up and say, "No more crumbs. I want the whole cake". To be brave enough for love is to say, yes, I feel the FEAR, but I'm making the judgment that some thing else is more important than that you will find. And a man out there who also wants to have this same approach to life, the same approach to love as you do.
(6m 29s):
I did. When Rod and I met and we started to talk and relax with each other. That's what we found out. Each step was scary but each of us wanted a love that was genuine. A love that was deep. A love that was a place that was our shelter, our strength, our place to go to find the answers we needed to life. Or at least to bounce them off of somebody.
(7m 10s):
To have somebody who cared about us. To be brave enough for love was to face that desire to make that decision... That, yes, that's what I want. And I'm not going to give up until I find it, until I find that person who is the picture in my mind of who I need to build the kind of love I want. In fact, what I did - one of the things that came out of the singles coaching course I took - was what I call the "Perfect For Me Man Plan". That Man Plan became my guiding light.
(7m 52s):
That I would go back to it over and over again. What were the failures that I was looking for? What kind of character do I need to look for in a guy in order to determine if, if he's going to have the same values as I do for our relationship? What kind of attitude will he have towards family? How high up on the list will honesty be for him? What kind of home will we have? What sort of atmosphere are we going to create in that home of our dreams? That was my Man Plan.
(8m 32s):
And that's what I offer to you now for you to create that same kind of Man Plan. That's where I'm taking my coaching. To start in that place for you. Because... Listen to this, I have been reading this book and I know I've referenced it on my Instagram posts and talked about it somewhat. I believe the title is "Autumn Romance: Stories and Portraits of Love After 50" written by a newspaper editor, Carol Decker. Now Carol or Denker I'm sorry, Carol.
(9m 13s):
Carol Denker is her name. I love a story she tells in her introduction about a couple who were, I believe, let me just see here. They were 79 and 80. And they both had had difficult marriages and they found each other. What they said was this. And I want to read this to you. "As she told about her difficult first marriage, he reached a smooth her cheek and kept his hand there."
(9m 58s):
As he described their wedding six months before Sue leaned against him and stroked his arm. Remember these, this couple 79 and 80. "Then Bob stepped away and Sue leaned forward. 'Did you ever see the movie, the enchanted cottage?' she whispered. I knew the film made in the 1940s, a disfigured soldier and a homely girl marry. They honeymoon in a cottage they come to believe has a magical powers because slowly and miraculously, inside that cottage, they shed all their physical imperfections and become beautiful.
(10m 44s):
'Yes', I said. 'That's us.' Sue said, eyes wide with wonder. 'We're old. I don't even like to have my picture taken anymore, but inside our house, it's like, time was never born. We're like teenagers. We play, we hug. We laugh all day.'" Doesn't that sound like a beautiful place to live? Age doesn't matter. What matters is that connection of hearts is being heart to heart.
(11m 24s):
There is someone out there for you who is looking for someone like you. And he's wondering if that person exists, he's wondering how many princess toads do I have to find before I kiss the one who turns into the Princess? Being Brave Enough For Love is to have the courage to keep walking on your path. Keep tapping into the amazing wonder of who you are, to pull out the strength, the courage that got you through all of the other hard things that have happened to you on the path before.
(12m 17s):
That's what Brave Enough For Love is about. You can find your dream. If you have the courage. Just as you need the courage to face life itself, If you have the courage to step up to be you, to find your beauty, to transform your FEAR story into a power story. And that's what I help you do. I help you to create that perfect for me, man plan. And then I help you to transform your FEAR story into the Power Story, the Courage Story that you need to find and connect with the man that you're looking for.
(13m 9s):
The man who can build the love of your life. Okay. That's what we're doing going forward. I'm really looking forward to connecting with you. And I want you to know that I believe in you. I believe in love. And that was the one thing that got me through those desolation years. I believe in love. And I believe that nobody should have to be alone If they don't want to. All right, I will talk to you in the next podcast.