Navigating Love Part 2: Cultivating a Happy Relationship

Please watch this video to help you cultivate Happy Relationships! Thanks for watching and sharing!

5 Essential Tips to Cultivate Happy Relationships

Cultivating a happy relationship involves commitment, open communication, and mutual respect. Here are some easy steps to help you build and maintain a strong and healthy relationship:

1. C - Clarity - Find out what you seek (friend, partner).

2. L—Love yourself. Be authentic. Don't worry about impressing them; be yourself.

3. A -Ask what you want. (Approve, acknowledge, and appreciate them).

4. S - Successful ingredients for relationship (chemistry, love with respect, and compatibility).

5. S - Step up and step out. Be limitless and expand your perception of who is out there. Meet all kinds of people, even the people who intimidate you. Find out if they are interested in a relationship or are out there to play. Ask them on your first date if they are open to marriage.

Have faith in the process. Write in your journal about the identifier (the person you converse with), list your attractions with this person (turn on/turn off), values, passion, treatment of the opposite sex, generalizations about men, lessons learned about yourself, and comments about the person you met.

Most importantly, Have Fun! You can make decisions and shape your life. The power to choose is in your hands!

Video Transcription

Welcome to another episode of Unlock Your Superpower podcast. We are here at the part two of the relationship series, and I have here with my dear friend and my personal relationship coach, Miss Susan shepherd, and if you don't know anything about her, she has spent four decades, that's right, four decades in the emergency room, and now she has taken another four decades and become the number one relationship coach, expert for single women in the United States of America. She's not only a coach and an expert, but she's also a serial entrepreneur and a multi international best selling author. So, please welcome Susan Shepherd to our wonderful Unlock Your Superpower podcast. I'm your host, Michelle, meet, and I have with me my co host Veronica, Joseph, and we are so excited to have you be part of the part two of the series of what's it like to find your dream partner? So Susan, take it away.

So happy to be back with you again, ladies.

So you know, last time we talked about my five step process, which very briefly is class, C for clarity. L for love yourself. A for ask for what you want. S for success with the essential ingredients in a relationship. And the last test is for step up and step out, because you are now ready to choose the person you want in your life. So what would you like to know more about, other than what the basic steps are?

So Susan, we covered the basic stuff, and my question to you is, tell us more about the process that you use for single women finding the right person for them, and let's go in depth.

So you know step one is clarity, and really what I want you to do is get in touch with who you are. So a lot of the work in step one is pretty simple. You just identify your values and prioritize them and really figure out what it is that you want. Because most women like I think I may have said this before, most women have a sense of what they want, but they don't actually dig into it and decide what it is they're specifically looking for. So I've had many clients come to me and say, oh, I want a man. And then when we get working, they change their mind and they say, oh, maybe that's not really what I want. Maybe I just want some friends, or maybe I want to have a better relationship with my kids. Or maybe I, maybe I do want a man, but I don't want to get married, you know. So they change their mind, because they actually go in depth and figure out what it is they really want. So that's step one. Step two is the transformation process, and this is where the majority of all the work that you're going to do with me happens. It's it's unorthodox, it's different,

it's challenging at first, and fun after you start doing it.

And so the basis of step two, the love yourself, step is, I want you to go and meet if it's a man you're looking for, 40 men that you're not particularly attracted to,

and I want you to have intimate conversation with them.

And you'll ask me, of course, what does intimate conversation mean?

And it's intimate conversation is not about sex. Intimate conversation is, who are you? What gets you up in the morning?

What are you passionate about? What are your highest values? How do you really treat women?

What is it you want in your life? And having that type of a conversation that's not a typical first conversation with someone you meet on the street, but I tell my clients, I want you to have this kind of conversation with every man you meet.

So how do you make them feel comfortable discussing those you know questions because and will say, Oh, I wanted to actually cover that in a private conversation, or I don't feel comfortable asking answering your question.

That's a really good question, but the trick of it is this, if you ask somebody an intimate question and they don't want to answer you, then they're the wrong person to talk to.

You just go next. Because what happens is you can start a conversation with anyone I tell, I tell my clients, you're in an elevator with a whole bunch of people, and there's somebody in there you'd like to talk to. Just open your mouth and say something, and they say, like, what I said? Well, you can say something like, isn't the sky blue in this elevator, knowing full well, there's no sky, and it doesn't matter what you say, you opening your mouth and words coming out of your mouth gives anyone permission to talk to you.

And men are looking for permission.

They're looking for a signal from you to be able to say something to you. Now, if nobody talks to you, it means their mind is elsewhere. They're focused on where they're going, what they're doing. Maybe they have a sales call, maybe they have an appointment in the doctor's office. Maybe they're meeting a woman who knows it doesn't matter, but if they talk to you, then it's not about you, it's about them and where they're going and what they're doing. You can be in a grocery store and say, Gee, these apples look really fresh.

It doesn't matter. But if there's somebody there that's willing to talk to you. You can have a conversation with them. And then when you start asking them the things that you want to ask them, and you're not going to come right out and say, What's your highest value, you basically just have a conversation with them and say, What are you up to today? What? How's your day going? Are you having a good day? And if they say yes or no or however they answer, it leads you in the direction of a conversation. And all you have to do is be open and be authentic and be real. And when you get to the part where you want to know, what's that? What? What are they passionate about? Ask them. What do you do when you're not working?

You ask somebody what they're doing when they're not working, and they will go off on their passion. And believe me, if you're having a 15 or 20 minute conversation, they'll come back to it several times. So you'll be able to identify what they're passionate about

when they talk about their family or their job or how much money they make, or what kind of car they drive, you can identify their values. I mean, there's a certain amount of interpretation, but you can identify the values, the things that are important to them. And then, if you want to know how they treat women, just watch them.

Watch them. Watch how they if you happen to be in a restaurant, watch how they talk to the waitress. Watch how they talk to the the hostess that's sitting there. Watch how they talk to you,

and if they're not giving you any clues, ask them, Is your mother still alive?

How is your relationship with your mother.

You ask a man to talk about his mother, and 90% of the time you're going to get one of two answers, oh, I don't talk to her at all, or oh, she's the most wonderful woman on the planet.

And you can ask about their sister, ask about their wife, ask about their ex wife. You know you can ask them about anything but getting the answers to those questions.

You don't ask directly. You don't say to some man that you just meet. Well, how do you really treat women that might get you knocked out, and so that you know what this makes us do, right as women, it makes us better listeners and more observant exactly because sometimes, as women, we like, oh, it's no big deal. We're giving the benefit of the doubt. But like that phrase that we use in coaching all the time is how you do one thing is how you do everything.

So the fact is that if you are not paying attention to the conversation in front of you, what else are you ignoring in your personal life, or what else are you ignoring in your professional life, right? So what do you use your visual acuity and pay attention. Pay attention to what you're seeing. And you know you can, you can comment on anything, anything they're wearing, what you know you look like you just came from the pickleball court. I'm gonna reiterate right at this moment that the main thing you have to remember when you're doing this is your point of view, that you are not concerned. You're really not concerned with what this person thinks of you, because really, you're doing research. Most time when you meet somebody, you're trying to impress them.

And what I'm saying to my clients is don't try to impress anybody. Just be yourself. Be Real, Be authentic. Say what you mean. Mean what you say. And say whatever pops into your head, because if, as long as you don't care what this person thinks about you, you can go deep. Because you're not really trying to impress this person. You're not trying to get them to be attracted to you. You're not trying to get them to ask you out or respond to you in any way. You're just doing research, and you can even tell them that you can be that transparent, and you can say, you know, I just got out of a kind of testy relationship and and I I'm just doing some research. I want to learn more about who men really are. So do you mind having a conversation about that, about who you are and what you do and why you do what you do, because that would really help me, and you can tell them that's what you're doing. That was the truth it is. Is that when you put your attention on another person for 20 minutes, and you are focusing all of your attention on this person and asking them personal questions. What their interpretation of it is, is that you want to be associated with them, you want to meet them, you want to spend time with them. And that isn't necessarily the truth.

The truth is that you really do want to know who, who are you, and what is it that gets you up in the morning, and what is it that? What does it get you up in the morning? What? What is it that turns you on? What is it that excites you about living and just tell me, I'm really curious. And being curious is, is very attractive.

People don't know that. They don't understand that, but when they are actually, really, sincerely just being curious and and asking about this person, well, you're having an intimate conversation. You are you're finding out probably more than most people find out, because everyone has a everyone has a what

do you want to call it a shell? They have a protective shell. And that protective shell is what they use to bounce people off, you know, to reflect the people you don't want to talk to. And what I'm saying is, don't make anybody who you don't want to talk to, make everyone who you want to talk to.

And even if you see somebody and say, oh my goodness, this is the one I want, that's the one you shouldn't talk to, because that's your other than conscious mind, attracting someone to you, attracting the person that you feel would be in your comfort zone. And what I'm wanting you to do in In this step, is expand your comfort zone, expand your perception of who's out there in the world. Because what is, what has probably happened, which happens to most people is you start out open like this, you're open, okay, and then you get disappointed by somebody and disappointed by somebody else, and disappointed by somebody else and disappointed by somebody else, then you're looking for someone who fits in this little microscopic space, who doesn't exist.

And what I'm suggesting to people is that you want to expand, expand this open again, or go outside of the limits that you've created for yourself, and stretch. And I tell my clients, I tell them, Go meet

someone older, someone younger, a lot younger, a lot older.

Meet married men, meet single men, meet one of every color, one of every race, as many nationalities as you can find, and have these conversations. Because when you do that, what you're doing is you're opening yourself up and realizing that these people that are out there, people

don't talk to them, people who are handicapped, people who have physical disabilities, and things like that. When you have the conversation with them. I also tell them, Go meet a homeless person, go meet a billionaire, go meet the people that intimidate you, and have a conversation like this with someone who intimidates you.

Perfect example, okay, of what it does when a woman walks up to a man and starts a conversation is you disarm them. When I was thinking about it this, like men are not used to women being that direct, because women have been taught to be demure and shy and wait for the men to to to make an advance. But the reality is, men are scared of women now, because of the metoo movement and because of all the different things that have happened,

men are much less eager to approach a strange woman and start a conversation.

So I just tell all the women that I work with, give them the opportunity open your mouth say something, even if, even if, all you're doing is saying, gee, do you know what time it is? I mean, it doesn't matter what you say, any words that come out of your mouth. Give that person permission to talk to you

and give them, give them the permission to say something, whatever they say, and then you are in charge of directing the conversation. Because, you know, women do the choosing, and women do the ending of all relationship.

Relationship is the groundwork of everything that goes on, because relationship is the foundation of everything that goes on in the world. It's the foundation of business, it's the foundation of politics, it's the foundation of family, it's the foundation of of love.

You know, relationship is the foundation of everything, and if women have the power and foundation, then they actually have a lot of power in relationships. You know that men don't like talking about relationship.

They don't want to talk about it. They just want it to be there. They want to make women happy, particularly the women they choose to have in their life. They want to support them. They want to do things for them, but they don't have a clue what it is that the women want them to do. And if you as a woman, don't tell a man what you want, you're going to get what he wants to give you, rather than what you want. But if you really want a romantic weekend, and what does romantic weekend mean to you, if you want, you know, weekend at a bed and breakfast at the beach where you can, you know, watch the sunset and eat dinner and have a glass of wine while you're watching the sunset, then that's what you have to ask for.

But asking for a romantic weekend isn't going to get you what you want. I can almost guarantee it.

Well, is there a way you can tell the single out there what questions they can ask to find out whether if the person likes them or they just want to have sex.

Um, you pretty much know, by the way they're reacting. Would you say that's true? Michelle,

yeah. Like, there are times where I would message somebody and they would send me a picture of, you know, without a shirt on. They'll have pants or shorts on, but they won't have any shirt. And I know, okay, where their heads at right? Because men usually think from down there. They don't usually think from up here. And women think from their heads, more, more so than others. And just knowing that, and then also, many times they, you know, they'll reach out to in the middle of the night, I was thinking about you and you know, and they'll say something like, Oh, I wish you were in bed with me. Well, you obviously know where their intentions are at. So navigating that thought process of, do I really want that initial, long term relationship, or do I just want that quick release? And I'm out of here, right? So having that awareness for yourself and some women love that they just go from one partner to another, just like men love that they just go from one partner to another and asking yourself, what is it that you really want? What are your intentions here?

Yeah, very true, very true. And that's why you know one of the rules that I give all my clients is no sex for 90 days. You need to have enough relationship with this person to know that you would want to keep them in your life if you're going to have sex with them, doesn't mean you want to marry them. Doesn't mean you want them to be exclusive with you forever, but don't be sharing your body with everybody you know unless you know that this is somebody that deserves to have you in their life.

You want to be choosy about it and and the other thing I tell all my clients is, if it's if this is the right person, if this is this the right person for you? That person will wait for you forever.

They'll wait they'll wait the 90 days. They'll wait 900 days.

They'll do whatever you want. I tell my clients all the time, if you've got the right person in front of you, you can't do anything wrong,

because that person will make an excuse for you. They will justify your behavior. They will justify what you're saying, they will justify what you're doing. They will make it okay. And obviously, you know there are, there's limits, but the bottom line is, you know, you can't make a mistake, and women are always so afraid they're going to do something that's going to slip their head away.

That's why I tell women, when they're actually down to step five, which is the step up and step out. You want to know. You want to know, are they really interested in having a relationship, or are they just out to play?

You can ask them, Do you want to get married?

Are you somebody that's interested in having kids? And you can ask that the first time you meet them, because if it's going to scare them away the first time you meet them, it's going to scare them away the 100th time.

Because the ones who are looking for that, they'll tell you they're going to be honest and transparent as well. They might think, Oh, she's pretty forward, but hey, I like that.

Men are very attracted to women who are direct.

What they dislike immensely is women who hint about what they want, who don't say it directly, who don't know what they want. That's a big complaint I get from men all the time. Women don't even know what they want. They say they want something, and then when I give it to them, they don't even want it.

So being really understanding what it is you're looking for at any given moment, and being that transparent with a man is very attractive to them. They find it very attractive when you're direct and when you tell them what you like and what you don't like, because otherwise they're operating in the dark. You know, they're guessing. So when you meet these men in the meet 40 men, there's an important piece that I've left out so far, and that piece is that you must dismiss them, because if you don't dismiss them, they're occupying the space in your arena.

They're occupying the space you're trying to fill if you don't dismiss them, because if they ask you out, they probably will, because you're putting your attention on them, you're giving them attention they're not used to getting. So they're going to want to continue that. They want. They want more. They want more of the attention you're giving. So but you have to say to them, I tell them, you can't date these people. You're not ready because you haven't healed your broken heart. You haven't defined your values, you haven't defined your deal breakers. You are not ready to be in a relationship. You are not ready to choose the person you want yet because you haven't identified what you're looking for. You're still operating from that other than conscious mode, where you're in your comfort zone with this person. No, this person makes me feel good I'm in, you know, and that may not necessarily be where you want to be, because frequently what happens is, before you are age seven, you develop, unconsciously, a prototype of what your comfort zone is, what what type of a man is makes you comfortable. And it might not be what you're looking for. It might be that you had somebody abusive in your life in the first seven years, and you're still comfortable with it, but that isn't what you want, so you have to really define what specifically it is you're looking for. So that's part of the work. But then when you get them, when you meet them, and you have this conversation with them, and then they say, can I see you again? Can I have your phone number?

What I tell them to say is this,

I'm not ready to do that yet. I'm just coming out of a uncomfortable relationship, and I'm not quite ready to date. I'm really just doing research, and I hope I haven't misled you, but you know, if you'd like to give me your number, I can call you when I'm ready. You know, I

can call you when I'm ready. Right now. I'm not looking for a relationship. I really am looking for information. And when you say it that way, they get it, and you doing that action of dismissing them and walking away raises your self esteem. So the other piece is that I asked my clients to journal. I want them to list the men that they've had these intimate conversations with. There's the columns and the first one is your identifier, and you don't even have to have a name. You can be met this man at the bond supermarket in the parking lot on such and such a date. You don't have to know his name. And then what you want, what I want you to list on your in your journal is, what are you attracted to about this person, and you have to find something attractive about everyone, no matter how unattractive they are. Find something you're attracted to find out what are the turn offs, what are the things that they do that really you don't like?

Identify their values from the conversation.

Find out what they're passionate about. Then you run to identify their treatment of the opposite sex and and you may have to ask directly, you know, something like, how do you get along with your mother? Then, what is a generalization you would make about that sex? What's a generalization from the what did you learn about men from the conversation you just had? Just a generalization, and then what did you learn about yourself from the conversation you just had? And if you do this analysis with yourself, every time you have one of these conversations, you learn a whole lot about yourself.

And then it's, did you dismiss them? Did you actually do the dismissal? Because if you don't do dismissal, you don't get the self esteem boost. And then the last column in the journal is, is there any comment, anything you want to say about this person? And it may be, oh, I really found this person interesting. I'd like to meet him again. And then you write his phone number there, because you got it, you know, but don't act on it. You wait because you are in the process of learning. You're learning who you are, what you want, what your deal breakers are that list of the negatives, the turn offs. It's going to show up your deal breakers. It will show it up. And then you will find out what the deal breakers are. Deal breakers can be anything. They can be the way you spend money, the way you keep house, you know, your personal hygiene, you know, do you want to have kids? Do you not want to have kids? Where do you want to live? What's the lifestyle you want to live?

I met people when I was in nursing school. There was a girl in my class and a guy at Northwestern who was in one of the fraternities, and they were so turned on by each other. They were so they were like glued to each other. They were so involved, they eventually got married and they got divorced. Shortly after they got married, because they had this powerful chemistry, but they never bothered to look past it. They couldn't even talk to each other. They had nothing to talk about. They had incredible chemistry, but there was nothing there to hold the relationship together, and they had deal breakers all over the place.

The thing about compatibility, love with respect and chemistry is that you really need all three of those ingredients, and if one of them is missing, or one of them is off, it can totally destroy the relationship. It may take a while.

You know, how do you know, if you are in a chemistry, your compatibility or love with respect, or respect the love, I think the answer to that is they should contact you, and they should work with you. So how do we find you?

Oh, I have a new website, Susan shepherd.com

and you can go to Susan shepherd.com and click on Time with Susan and make an appointment and talk to me, because I will talk to anybody.

They get an hour of my time free of charge.

Thank you so much for being here and being a special guest on our part, two of our episode, because it's so enlightening to know that we're not alone. Thank you, Susan. And communication can either make a relationship or break a relationship, and I truly honor and believe that. And so thank you so much for being here. And like I said, she's giving a gift of her time.

So make sure you go to our website, Susan shepherd.com, and book that time and figure out what the black bodies are in your life and see how she can support you. Because I know she's been helping me with every single step of the way, and now she's helping my co host as well, Veronica Joseph in finding herself as she navigates the next phase of her life. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you everyone for listening. We'll see you soon on the next episode, and God bless. Bye.

Here are key strategies for identifying deal breakers and finding a compatible partner:

1. Self-Reflection and Clarity

   Identify and prioritize your core values

   Understand what you truly want in a relationship

   Journal about your past relationships and patterns

   
   

2. Expand Your Comfort Zone

   Meet 40 men from diverse backgrounds

   Have deep, intimate conversations

   Focus on understanding their values, passions, and how they treat others

   
   

3. Observe Carefully

   Watch how they interact with opposite sex

   Ask about relationships with family members

   Pay attention to their communication style and treatment of others

   
   

4. Set Clear Boundaries

   No sex for 90 days to ensure genuine connection

   Be direct about your relationship goals

   Ask early about long-term intentions like marriage and children

   
   

5. Use Journaling as a Tool

   Document conversations with potential partners

   List attractions, turn-offs, and values

   Identify your personal deal breakers through systematic reflection

   
   

6. Prioritize Compatibility

   Look for love, respect, and chemistry together

   Don't settle based on chemistry alone

   Ensure you can have meaningful conversations

   
   

The key is being authentic, curious, and intentional in your approach to finding a compatible partner.