EP: 71 Real love story interview with Lauren Leopold (Vicki’s former client!)

Vicki here! I have the most beautiful and inspiring real love story podcast for you today in celebration of me opening the doors to working with new love coaching clients this Summer. It’s really exciting to announce this to you for the first time in 3 years (where there has been a waiting list for love coaching since 2016!).

Tune in to listen to this weeks’ episode where you’ll hear Lauren’s beautiful love story and journey of self love and transformation.

Lauren wrote to me back in 2015 when her self esteem and confidence were at an all time low, feeling stuck in a toxic and unhealthy relationship. All around her were friends getting married and buying houses together and she couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe it just wasn’t going to happen for her like it had for so many of her friends. She had convinced herself that she would always feel anxious around men, that she was hard to love and that she was unworthy of a loving relationship.

In 2016, I started working with Lauren and took her through the 3 month Get Ready for Love 121 coaching programme and I witnessed her grow and transform and open up to love in the most beautiful way. Over the course of the sessions, Lauren’s confidence started to grow, she started to get to know herself (and actually quite like herself!) and over time, she became available to the loving and secure relationship that she now knew that she deserved.

Cut to today and she has just returned from the most magical wedding in Devon where she married her best friend, surrounded by the people she loves most in the world.

Lauren’s story is such a wonderful example of someone who turned her love life around. It wasn’t easy and she faced a lot of fears along the way but she had the courage and the willingness to learn and grow and do the work and that was key to her transformation.

If Lauren’s story resonates with you and if you too dream of being in a loving and secure relationship then know that you can make that dream come true. Don’t give up on that dream or leave it up to fate or chance. With courage and the willingness to learn and grow, you too can change the course of your love life, just like Lauren did. I am so passionate about working with clients on the journey of getting ready for love and I can’t wait to hear from you if you are ready for that journey too!

If you would like to be one of the four new clients I am taking on this summer on my 3 month love coaching programme then head on over here to check out the programme. If it sounds like just what you need, then fill in the form to book in a discovery call with me - I have put aside time in my diary to talk to you next week (w/c 24th June).

I hope you enjoy the podcast!

Love, Vicki xx

Try our new Project Love Couples Check-in Tool

🎧 You can also listen to this and all of our other podcasts on Apple Podcast (iTunes) and Spotify.

If you’re in a long term relationship do you ever feel like you get stuck in a bit of a rut sometimes of feeling like you’re more housemates than loving and attentive partners? Do you ever find yourself getting irritable and feeling frustrated that your partner isn’t giving you what you need or making you feel the way you want to feel in a relationship? Do you ever wish that there was a little more connection and love between the two of you?

Well congratulations! It means that you are human!

All of us, no matter how much we love our partner, will have times where they just don’t seem to be giving us what we need, where we only ever seem to have conversations about who is doing the dinner tonight and can you remember to pick up toilet paper on the way home.

Which is why taking the time to step back together from your busy lives and really focus and reconnect as a couple is absolutely vital to making love last.

But how do you do that?

Well, inspired by the Rewilding your Relationship couples retreat we did with Canopy and Stars back in 2018, we wanted to have a go at creating a tool for couples to use, to help them reconnect, address any issues bubbling under the surface and get the love flowing.

A tool that you can use whenever you need a bit of a relationship check-in.

So we teamed up with Canopy and Stars to do it, because honestly, there is nothing that supports and nurtures reconnection with yourself and your partner like being in nature and in beautiful relaxing, luxurious surroundings and that is what Canopy and Stars are all about (if you haven’t checked them out yet, come and feast your eyes on all the amazing glamping places you can stay over here, from treehouses, to yurts, to cabins, all nestled in beautiful natural surroundings, from woods to lakes to the sea).

We each went for two nights to a Canopy and Stars magical location (Vicki went to Ditchling Cabin and Selina went to The Treehouse at Harptree Court) and we tried out our couples check-in tool to see how it worked and WOW, the check-in combined with staying in the most amazing C&S places had such a powerful and long-lasting effect on both of us and our relationships.

Ditchliny Cabin

The Treehouse at Harptree Court

So in this episode we share what we learnt from using our Project Love Couples Check-in tool and the power of reconnecting with your partner in nature.

And now you can download the Project Love Couples Check-in Tool here and give it a go yourself!

And when you do, email us at hello@loveprojectlove.com and let us know how you got on.

And thank you to Canopy and Stars - we are officially obsessed and we will be back!

X Selina and Vicki

PODCAST - Using attachment theory to help our relationships to grow | Interview with Psychologist Helen Dent

For those of you that have been wanting more from us on how to thrive in your relationships (current or future) then this one is for you! In this week’s episode Vicki interviews Helen Dent, a clinical and forensic Psychologist, Attachment style expert and author of “Why Don't I Feel Good Enough?: Using Attachment Theory to Find a Solution”.

It was SUCH a fascinating conversation!

Tune in to hear us talk about:

• What attachment theory actually is and how we can use it as a practical tool to help ourselves and our relationships to grow

• What the three main attachment styles are (anxious, avoidant, secure) and how we can develop a ‘secure base’ in our relationships (and not just in our romantic relationships but also in our friendships and even with our pets!)

• How we develop a blueprint for a relationship and how the relationships that we have throughout our lives can influence our attachment style (here is a quiz where you can discover yours)

• The difference between healthy dependency and codependency in relationships

• How we can manage relationship challenges when we have opposing attachment styles to our partner!

• Why we are more likely to come across avoidant attachers when we are dating

• And how we can consciously work towards becoming more secure in our relationships

 🎧 You can also listen to this and all of our other podcasts on Apple Podcast (iTunes) and Spotify.

x Selina & Vicki

We can’t wait for you to listen to the episode!

x Selina & Vicki

PS we have a dating and attachment style podcast on the way on Sunday, register here to be the first to hear about it when it’s released (and you’ll also receive a dating masterclass video which is absolutely free!) 

PODCAST | How to set healthy boundaries and learn the art of saying 'no'

We’ve got a fresh new podcast for you to enjoy, all about the importance of setting healthy boundaries and learning to say 'no' (the loving way).

It’s a topic that has been coming up a lot lately among our Project Love communities and our friends. It seems to be something everyone knows they need to get good at, but they get stuck on how to do it.

And so we’ve dug in deep and taken a look at why it is so important, why people often get stuck when it comes to setting boundaries and saying ’no’ to people, and how to do it the healthy loving way.

Listen to it below or download it over on iTunes or Soundcloud

Lots of love,

Selina & Vicki

BLOG POST: Who do you bring with you on a date? Yourself or your representative?

Ever wondered why the guys that you like never seem to fancy you BUT the ones that you don’t like, always seem to fancy the pants off you? Well you’re not alone, it’s been coming up quite a lot amongst the women I work with. The conversation goes something like this:

Client - “When I like a guy, they don’t fancy me. And when they like me, I just don’t fancy them”.
Me - “OK, so tell me about the last date that you went on where you didn’t fancy the guy.”
Client - “It was like going out with a friend, I wasn't that bothered about what he thought, I ordered a pint and I was just being myself”
Me - “And what about if you DID fancy him?”
Client - “I would have been more girly with him, I would have ordered wine instead of a pint and I would have sipped it and been more delicate and ladylike. I’m usually a bit of a loudmouth who likes to crack jokes but if I fancied him, I would have reigned that in and been more mysterious”

With the guy she fancied, she felt the need to perform and impress him, as there’s more at stake. This could be the one she could marry one day, so she needed to be on best behaviour, right?

We laughed about the Chris Rock sketch where he talks about dating:

Relationships, easy to get into, hard to maintain. Why are they so hard to maintain? Because it’s hard to keep up the lie! ‘Cause you can’t get nobody being you… When you meet somebody for the first time, you’re not meeting them. You’re meeting their representative.”

So my question to you is..

Who do you bring with you on a date? Yourself? Or your representative?

If you’re like some of my clients then it’s usually the latter. Why? Because it’s scary to reveal your whole self, dating feels like a job interview where you’re being judged on how you look and everything you do or say. Bringing the representative feels like the safer option, the mask to hide behind so if it all goes tits up then you never really lost anything. But when you don’t show up as your whole self, what you sacrifice is human connection and when you have two representatives show up on a date then it kind of makes the whole thing a bit pointless. Here’s what to do about it:

1. Relax your expectations on what the date means - use online dating as a way to meet like-minded people and not a way to find a life partner. If you go into the date with huge expectations, it will put unnecessary pressure on yourself and your date and it will feel like a job interview where you need to perform and impress. Instead, see online dating as a tool to meet people for a coffee and a chat and go from there, taking the pressure off those early interactions.  
2. Adopt an attitude of gratitude - dating can trigger all sorts of fears and insecurities, especially the fear of not being good enough. Instead of focusing on all the things you lack, shift your mindset by focusing on all the things that make you great. Step into the shoes of a loved one and think about all the things they love about you and all the ways they appreciate you and respect you. You could even ask a good friend to tell you! Make a list of all your best attributes and keep reminding yourself of these.
3. Let go of the need to be ‘cool’ - it’s tempting to bring your ‘cool representative’ to a date but honestly, all people ever want from us is to show up as ourselves. Brene Brown says “The need to ‘be cool’ is an emotional straightjacket. It keeps us from moving, growing, stretching and feeling free” and if we’re hiding behind our cool then how can we connect fully with someone? Allow yourself to be un-cool and own it.
4. Use your feelings as your compass - how do you want to feel on the date itself? Playful, inspired, at ease? Then work back from there when you plan the date itself so if it doesn’t go anywhere after the first date, then you’ve still had a great experience, which takes the pressure off your date and will help you to relax and have some fun. You could suggest one of your date ideas the next time someone asks you out. Or why not make the first move?
5. Set out your boundaries - think about how much time and energy you’re willing to commit to dating and set out some boundaries that are suited to your needs. So for one of my clients, she knows that her energy levels are best in the mornings so she’s experimenting with brunch dates. And for another client, her working week is pretty full on and she’s been struggling to fit in evening dates so now she’s limited dating to just one night a week to keep the weekends free for catching up with friends and getting some me-time.
6. See rejection as redirection - each time you get rejected, they are setting you free to find someone who would be right for you, so extend gratitude and see rejection as a weeding-out process to find someone better.

I think it's no coincidence that the guys that my clients don’t like seem to fancy them because when the stakes are lower, they have permission to be themselves. That is all anyone really wants from us. Authenticity is a choice, one that you can make right now. So dare to be you, show up as yourself and give your representative the day off!

Vicki x

If you’ve enjoyed this and feeling like you need some guidance to figure this dating stuff out then come and join us on our Get Ready for Love 30 day course