EP#18- Dating as Self Care with Lily Womble, Founder of Date Brazen

(gentle music) Hi everyone, welcome back to Everyday in Dorfins. In the spirit of Valentine's Day, which is sometimes lonely day for some and an eventful day for others. I mean, I don't know how eventful it'll be during COVID times now. Can't really do a fun date night out on the town, but regardless of Valentine's Day, or how it may be spent this year, I'll be releasing episodes throughout the month of February that focuses on conversations around dating, healthy relationships, and sexual wellness. There is a huge connection between mental health and relationships, and I have an amazing list of guests that are coming on this month to talk about boundary setting, and how dating has transformed during COVID times and in college, and how you can better take care of your own sexual well-being. There's just an abundance of really cool things that I'll be discussing with these really awesome guests that I'll have come on. I don't wanna give too much away, but I'm so excited for you guys to hear this episode. And before we get into this week's interview, I have a quick message for my sponsor, Anchor. (gentle music) So when I say dating is active self-care, I mean giving yourself the permission to look beneath the surface of what you want, giving yourself permission to want what you want. I mean learning how to do self-compassion in your dating life so that you can really love on your own historical context. - That was Lily Womble. In this episode, you'll hear Lily talk more about what it means to date as an active self-care, and how you can become your own expert matchmaker. Before transitioning into date coaching, Lily was a top matchmaker at the largest firm in the US. After matchmaking hundreds of people, Lily realized that with the right training, women can learn how to become their best own matchmakers, which inspired her to launch her own company called Date Brazen. At the time of this release, Date Brazen and Lily is hosting a challenge called Celebrate Your Single Self, which helps women feel empowered to make dating feel more like self-care and being self-compassionate. We chat more about this in the episode, along with how you can date in a way that embodies a self-care mindset and having a growth mindset rather than a fixed perspective. And all other ways to really transform your own dating life and how dating relates to mental health. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy this episode. Hi, Lily. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. Stella, I'm excited to be here. Can you start off by telling my listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do? Yeah, so I am originally from Birmingham, Alabama, which is why you'll hear like a Southern twang in my voice sometimes. I live in Brooklyn with my partner, Chris. And for the past three and a half years, I have been helping badass women build extraordinary dating lives that lead to extraordinary relationships with my company, Date Brasen. I get to coach, I get to do the date brazen podcast, and I get to help women step into their power and purpose in something that could maybe be viewed as a soul suck in some cases, dating. We get to transform it into an act of self-care. I love how your philosophy is really centered around dating as an act of self-care. I'd love to talk a little bit more about that. So I started my dating career in the dating industry as a matchmaker. And before that, I was in feminist advocacy and nonprofit life really helping to forward the well-being of women and girls. When I started matchmaking, at first, I thought like this is kind of crazy. It's like kind of a weird job. Feels like a funny story that I'll have one day. But I realized that dating is a microcosm of everything. Dating is a microcosm of every hope, dream, fear, insecurity, desire that we have as human beings. And so when I got to work with women on their dating lives, it was actually a sort of portal to work on other parts of their lives as well. So when I was matchmaking, people thought that the solution was to be set up on a date. Maybe they'd say the problem with my dating life is I have a bad picker or I can't find a good date to save my life. So I'm going to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to somebody else to fix it for me. And although dating, I was really good at matchmaking. I was the third most successful matchmaker out of 160. Hello. Congratulations. That's amazing. Thank you. It was the crazy time in life. Though I was really good at it, I was seeing that A, it was only working for about 3% to 5% of clients. And B, the idea of I'm not good at it, so I want somebody to fix it for me, is a fundamentally disempowering idea from my perspective. This idea that I'm bad at it, so I need to outsource it completely. And so I started to realize that I wanted to get beneath the surface with these clients because I knew that there was something deeper beneath their desire for a date. And for myself, I was in a toxic romantic relationship at the time and would be crying on his bathroom floor, and then 15 minutes later, would like, take a matchmaking call and be like, you deserve so much better. So I knew there was a disconnect for me, and that I wasn't getting beneath the surface of what I actually wanted. I was accepting so much less than I deserved. So I knew that I needed to start working on a deeper solution and that the key to more abundant well-being was somewhere in there, in dating beneath the surface, and really examining your own essence-based preferences and your own limiting stories. So I started to experiment with date coaching, and I started to date coach my matchmaking clients. And what happened was they started to find better dates for themselves at that point. They started to feel empowered and confident in who they are and what they wanted, and how to ask for it, how to set boundaries like a boss in their dating lives. So I was like, oh, this is working. And then for me, when I applied these principles to my own dating life, I found the courage to be out of that relationship. I found the courage to be single for a while and love it. I found the courage to ask for what I wanted in my personal life. And as a result, I found the love of my life, Chris, who was not somebody who previously necessarily would have been on my checklist, right? I was open to being surprised, and the universe surprised me, and because of this work, I was open to receiving it. So when I say dating as an act of self-care, I mean everything that I just said with date coaching, like giving yourself the permission to look beneath the surface of what you want, giving yourself permission to want what you want. I mean, learning how to do self-compassion in your dating life, so that you can really love on your own historical context. I think sometimes people deny their own complicated history with love and relationships when they're dating. They're just like, oh, it should be easier than this. But actually, if we were to be self-compassionate, when I was self-compassionate, I realized, oh, Lily, of course, this is hard for you. Your parents divorced, right? Of course, this is hard for you. You have a belief, a limiting belief that you're too much. Of course, this is hard. I'm so sorry, this is hard, and I'm here with you through it. You don't have to be perfect at this right now, you know? And self-compassion is really key to this process being self-care too. Yeah, there's so much there that everything that you just mentioned, I really love this idea, you know, instead of outsourcing the work, thinking, oh, I just want someone to find me my person. I want someone to find me my partner. It's too much work. I don't like I'm going to find them. It really, it starts with looking more within. And I think, you know, a lot of people think about health and well-being as something very physical, and then just like mental health. Mental health may be in relation to like mental health disorders, not necessarily thinking about like your emotional well-being, kind of going a little bit beneath the surface. And you know, life is made up of relationships, your relationships to other people, and most importantly, the relationship with yourself. Yes, ma'am. So I love how your philosophy looks at dating as a practice of self-care, as a practice of being self-compassionate and practicing gratitude, and giving yourself, I love that phrase that you use, giving yourself permission to look a little bit beneath the surface. What does that look like? How do you decide, okay, I think it's time to get a little bit deeper and really figure out, I don't know, would you say maybe it's like barriers to successful dating or things that are like roadblocks that are in the way that are making it harder to feel empowered to be your own expert matchmaker. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I think if I were to identify one barrier, it is that most people dating that I've encountered are playing by someone else's rules. In their dating life. So specifically women, there's been a revolution in how women are allowed to, and allowed to work, allowed to take up space in the world, specifically in the workplace in the last 50 years, right? There's been a huge shift. And the same feminist revolution, I do not believe has entered the dating world yet. So I see so many people, so many women playing by, old-fashioned sexist dating rules because they think that's going to work for them. And because that's the advice that most people give is like maybe you should be less picky or shouldn't you just download another app like maybe you should just go on more dates message more people, right? Basically that dating advice equates to run yourself ragged. It will be worth it when you find your partner and then right that advice also bleeds into your life is more valuable when you are with a partner. Yeah, I you know I've never thought about it that way but I agree with you because you know at the end of the day the only person left that you're constantly with 24/7 is yourself. Yeah. So why tie yourself worth to someone else? You know you have to start within and you have to start really valuing who you are and I also love your comment about oh maybe you're too picky or you need to swipe more and go on more dates because I've gotten the same exact advice and I've been single my entire life never really been in a serious relationship and sometimes I'm like oh it would be very nice to be in a relationship. Yeah. But other times I don't feel that strong need like it's it's a nice to have but it's not a must have and I think maybe you would agree with this point but once you actually find someone where it just kind of fits and it works and there's it doesn't seem hard it doesn't feel like you have to outsource that energy to go look for someone or find someone then you know that it's your entering maybe like a healthier relationship or you're going to be more satisfied in that relationship. Right. Well and I think that it is about I mean sort of it's a cliche but we're dating smart or not harder right so there is you know I would say that in my early 20s I might not have had well okay so your preferences are ever evolving right my preferences will continue to probably change as the years go on and I learn more about myself even though I'm in a healthy wonderful relationship that I hope will be my lifelong relationship right. I want to put the focus on growth and learning about yourself as opposed to fixed mindset perspective so fixed mindset perspective in your dating life might sound like well I know exactly what I want and so I'm not going to I'm not going to like go on a date with somebody who is a little bit outside of my preference range or I know it like it's sort of gating your opportunity to be surprised it's gating your opportunity to grow growth mindset in your dating life says I'm still learning about my preferences and I know what my pillars are in my preferences my core values I know what they are so I'm going to date like that but after a date like I want you to be evaluating how did you feel in the presence of that person what did you learn about yourself after that date as opposed to cutting yourself off from that learning opportunity so I think it is a balance of you know have your standards want what you want and how are you allowing yourself to say I'm in my early 20s I know that's where you are I might have been a little more open-minded when it came to my preferences to learn but not at the point of sacrificing my mental health and my like well-being I think this is also a really great transition into talking about the single self challenge that you're doing I know that it already has launched and it's over these next few days but you also do have a webinar that's coming up right after this episode is going to be released which I can direct my followers to as well but I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about what the single self challenge is and what those three pillars are that you talk about on your website of the challenge the celebrate your single self challenge was I created it because I saw that so many single women were not given the opportunity to celebrate exactly where they were in their dating lives when they are single so the and and I also know that to make dating feel like self-care you have to start with celebrating exactly where you are right now so the celebrate your single self challenge it starts on February 3rd and goes for three days day one we are talking about bragging so I firmly believe that learning how to brag is one of the keys to attracting the most extraordinary relationship of your life and when I say brag I don't mean boasting for the sake of boasting I mean owning why you are awesome what you are bringing to the table why you are uniquely qualified for the love of your life owning it and then inviting others to own their brags and own their awesome at the same time so on a date what that can look on a dating app what that can look like is a beautifully bold profile that owns who you are and what you are about and how you are specifically weird and why you are specifically awesome and inviting someone else to share why they are awesome why they are weird at this in the same breath in the challenge these women in this challenge there's a private group and the women are like oh my god people are sharing their brags every single day and they're lifting each other up and it is the most magical space when women are stepping into their power and lifting each other up in the process it can be really magical I think that that also reminds me just when you bragging in the sense of you know not not being boastful but really being confident in who you are not being afraid to fully show up who you are and inviting that same energy into your life I think it's this idea of where you really start to when you start to change your beliefs that leads to this pattern of change in emotion and change in action and change in behavior and then you know at the end your results change so I think if you kind of go back to the very beginning where you're able to reprogram exactly how you think of yourself and what you believe about yourself it will then enable a smoother road following where these opportunities will just come and I think it also has to deal with a lot of patience as well yeah well and and I think when you can learn how to have your own back in your dating life and when you can really celebrate who you are and stand in your worthiness life becomes I'm not gonna say easier because I don't think life is easy I think life but can become more fulfilling like when you are sitting in your power you you have the chance to allow what you desire to flow to you whereas I think when you are constantly beating yourself up or saying like why don't deserve that because I haven't you know reached that milestone yet or I haven't you know I don't deserve to feel like one of my teachers said something really important to me how happy can you stand to let yourself be because joy is actually pretty intolerable according to the research of Brunei Brown right that joy is the most difficult human emotion that we feel because she's so great and that's also you know it feels kind of contradictory like why would joy be the hardest emotion because it because it's it's our fear of losing it exactly right my philosophy is that everything boils down to fear like there's some fear that I mean that's also that's an opraism too it's like what are you gonna there are two emotions love and fear she would tell her staff at all the time exactly I mean and that's also like a whole other conversation that you could probably talk for about for hours about yeah you know it's a deep claim to have but I think that also ties really well into the next pillar that you talk about which is self-compassion yes yes yes so then you got to have self-compassion you got to learn what that is Dr. Kristen F is an incredible self-compassion teacher and researcher and I follow a lot of her tenets of self-compassion you know like part of being human is suffering and part of what can help you through suffering is acknowledging that you are suffering and acknowledging that you are worthy of support and that you know not pushing the suffering away and saying I'm just gonna think about something else or I'm gonna numb out but really allowing yourself to feel the feelings and then I teach everybody in the challenge how to write a self-compassionate letter specifically about their dating life and it's a practice that I do pretty much every day is write myself a self-compassionate letter about whatever I'm worried about and it really eases my suffering and eases the sort of hot to the touchness of my feelings so that I can move through my day in a more empowered way and self-compassion in your dating life looks like it's it's a really really super power because when you can have your own back in your dating life you can move through you can be more resilient you can move through projections in a in a in a way that acknowledges your pain and also helps you move forward faster so then we move into tenet three or pillar three of the challenge which is this huge mindset shift that I want everyone to adopt in every facet of their lives but specifically in their dating lives and that is this it is not a numbers game I believe that you can date like you are for the few not for the many so with that mindset shift I am for the few not for the many everyone who goes to who doesn't write back who who is a bad date for you like their gifts getting you closer to the few people who are actually right for you because you you actually aren't for everybody. You're only for the few people who are awesome for you. And if you date like that, you're gonna save yourself so much time, so much energy, so much suffering, because I don't want you to try to fit into somebody else's box for you. One of my clients said in a group coaching last night, she was like, "If you want someone to fit for you, they will." And that's kind of a scary prospect. You can make yourself fit with anybody. And so how are you going to date like you're for the few, not for the many, and own exactly what you desire and what you already have? Absolutely. And I think these three pillars are so intertwined. Like you can't really have one without the other. You can't engage in the bragging pillar or just being confident about who you are and proud of who you are without also being self-compassionate. And those two pillars directly influence mindset shift. You're directly tying and keeping that mindset. And I think a lot of young adults have trouble with this as well, because I mean, I'm only 21. Like in college, you're still very young. And you-- Sure. --as long as you haven't dated that many people or haven't been in that many serious relationships. And so I believe that every experience is just an opportunity. And if things didn't go as well as you'd hope for them, too, then you learn from that experience. Instead of feeling incredibly discouraged, I think that also ties into the self-compassionate piece. Like, oh, I wasn't enough. I was to this. I was to that. Like getting rid of that negative self-talk and really understanding what you learn from that experience to enable you to move forward and to then attract that energy you wish to receive as well. Absolutely. And all of these three pillars are really laying the groundwork for a deeper conversation about what do you need to be well in your dating life? What do you-- what support do you need to really hold yourself accountable to these learnings and propel yourself forward? And so that's why I'm opening the doors to the brazen breakthrough my coaching experience during the challenge. Because I know that the brazen breakthrough is a form of experience that will totally transform your relationship to yourself and to your dating life so that you can find the most extraordinary relationship of your life. Because the single-self-- the celebrate your single-self challenge is not about you becoming a good data. It is about you having the tools to find the best, find what you are actually desirous of. Is that a word desirous? I just-- I don't know. We're going to go with it. Well, let's just go with it. So that's the why behind the challenge. And I'm so glad you asked about it. It's going to be fabulous. Yeah, I'm so excited. And I also want to talk a little bit about the webinar that you're having after the challenge. Because by the time this episode is published, I think it'll be about halfway through the single-self challenge. So what webinar are you holding? And how will people get access to it? I'm so glad you asked. The webinar is called Three Steps to Get In Control of Your Dating Life and Find Extraordinary Love. So it's all about how 2021 can be your year if you allow it to be. If you allow this year to be a powerful one for your dating life, it will be. So I really take people through in that webinar step-by-step what is the framework that I have seen work for hundreds of my clients so that they can find confidence and find boundaries for themselves and find extraordinary love? What is the framework to get you there? So it's a nine-step framework. I take you through step-by-step how to get in control of your dating life. And it's going to be fabulous and wonderful. And anybody that's interested in the break through can also go to that to learn more about this experience, this coaching experience. And I also want to say, as a dating coach, I don't define ultimate success as you finding a romantic relationship. That is a cherry on top, of course. And we want the cherry on top, right? We want the whole Motherfucking Sunday at our disposal. You absolutely do. We do. The real-- what I want my clients to achieve and what 100% of them achieve is that confidence in themselves, the understanding of their deeper desires, being able to claim why they are awesome boldly and authentically, and having a tactical strategy to match all of those emotional tools. So that's really the success is being able to own who you are and what you are worthy of and date like it. Yeah, I mean, something that I'm gaining from this conversation already and something I hadn't previously thought about is really the success is when you learn how to date yourself in a way. I love yourself first. And I never really thought about that before. So I hope that message also resonates with my listeners. And I think that's a really hopeful and inspiring message because I know there's been many conversations amongst my friends, back at school, my home friends, about the perils of being single, especially when a lot of your friends are in relationships. And it can just feel kind of annoying or like, oh, I really wish someone was there, especially during COVID, when everything is shut down and you're at home and quarantine, not really doing anything, like how nice would it be to have someone by your side? But I love this reframe of how we see the success of dating and relationships. It really starts with finding out more about who you are and owning it and being confident in that. And I really am so happy that you came on to the podcast today. I really do hope that my listeners take advantage of all the amazing resources that you have. I think we could all benefit from it. I will definitely be tuning into your webinar. And before I let you go, there's one question that I ask every guest that comes on. What is something that brings you endorphins? Yeah. So my everyday endorphins currently are coming from figuring out small decisions that I can make in my day that are fully about what I desire. So for example, just something super small, I usually have coffee with Chris in the living room. But our living room doesn't get good natural light. And I want to be around Chris. So I'm in the bad natural light place and I'm drinking my coffee and I love being around Chris. But I'm like, oh my god, there's natural light. There's none of it. And I want the sunshine. So the other day, I literally just decided. I was like, why don't I drink my coffee in the bedroom and ask him to come in here? And there's so much natural light. I feel so good here. I can look at the water in Brooklyn and think about things. And that little choice opened up a little world of pleasure for me that I wasn't allowing myself to receive before. Because I thought, oh, we have to be in the living room. There are so many decisions that I make in a day because of a should and arbitrary should. And I'm really getting endorphins from shedding the shoulds. From my life. Yes. That's very important. And I'm so happy that even that small, like the tiniest change has brought you so much more happiness. And I think also we just get so stuck in these habits. So we think, well, it would just make no sense to ask my boyfriend, my partner, to go into the bedroom to have coffee because we just have coffee in the living room every day. Then you realize you can actually do whatever you want. You can ask. Right. You want to ask. Right. And I think it also has to do with giving yourself the permission to take yourself off the hook for doing everything at once all the time. I struggle with perfectionism. And it's a lot about allowing my personal needs to come first. And that is really giving me endorphins. I love that. Thank you again so much, Lily. Thank you, Stella. This podcast talks about health, well-being, and happiness. Although many of my episodes focus on the health of the individual, such as how we can adopt better habits and a healthier mindset, we cannot forget one of the most important aspects of health, which is the health of our planet, where we all live. That's why I love Thousand Fell. Thousand Fell is a sustainable fashion company and they've created something called full circle footwear, which is 100% recyclable circular sneakers. They're designed from innovative leatherless materials and backed by their brand-owned recycling program, which guarantees that the sneakers will never end up in a landfill. One of my goals in the New Year is to understand the impact of my decisions on the planet and make positive impact on issues such as climate change and global warming. This is exactly why I love Thousand Fell and their sneakers that pay it back to the circular economy. Their vegan, zero-waste, stain and water resistant, 100% recyclable, and they also come in a versatile design and are super comfortable to wear. So I hope you guys snag a pair because they're super awesome and they help out the planet. And when you do buy a pair, make sure to mention the podcast every day in Dorfins during the post-purchase survey. [MUSIC PLAYING]