Hello everyone and welcome to the Sex, Love and Super Powers podcast show. I’m your host, Tatiana Berindei. And today I have with me a really, really lovely woman, lovely spirit, Stephanie Lee and we’re gonna be talking about a fun way Stephanie’s developed to help improve relationships. So Stephanie Lee is a master’s level therapist and lifestyle mastery relationship expert. She loves helping people with self-discovery and transformation in various areas of life, but her passion is relationships. Having been an editor, writer, and contributor for several books and magazines she loves to share her gift of writing with the world. And she’s going to tell us at some point about an upcoming book that she has. Stephanie has also created the popular conversation starter card game for women and couples called “Sip and Share, A Fun Way to Be Nosy”. She’s set to launch her relationship book this year. Stephanie and her family reside in sunny Palm Beach, Florida. And I’m really excited to have you here with us today Stephanie. Welcome.
Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.
Yeah. So, I’m gonna start off with our mainstay question. I love this question. Stephanie, can you tell us what your superpowers are?
Well, that is an awesome question.
Isn’t it good?
That’s great. You know what’s funny about that? It’s like, it automatically makes you believe that you do have a superpower.
I know. I know.
I feel like everyone can connect with people.
Off the top of my head, I’d have to say my superpower is the way that I’m able to connect with others. I feel like everyone can connect with people. Or has the capability to connect with people, but I just find that the way that I’ve always been able to connect with a man, woman, young, old, no matter what profession, whatever background, and disarm them in a way that creates the environment for a healthy and authentic conversation. I think that is my superpower. And I don’t even know that I’m doing it. So I think that that’s more, why that’s so amazing to me because I feel like it’s a God-given gift.
I think the true superpowers are. Right? That’s really beautiful being able to bring someone into that space with you. It’s the real hallmark of someone who’s a true healer, I think.
I really want to talk more about this game because you’re the first person who I’ve ever met whose created a game like this. And I think it’s totally awesome and I think the timing is ripe for it. You know we live in a culture that’s very gamified. People are always looking for something fun to do with their friends or like you’ve mentioned, you’ve used it for a ladies night out. I’m so bummed that I didn’t get the opportunity to play the game when we met each other recently, but I want to hear more about the evolution of it. How did it come about? And what is it, for our listeners, who are like, “What are you talking about? Game? I have no idea what this is.”
Okay. Well, the game is called “Sip and Share, A Fun Way to Be Nosy”. And where that came from is I have been playing card games with friends and family for a while now, but I think the last few years have shown the trend of card games coming back. And I’m old school. And my soul, some of this, you know, I’m not really that old, but I really value some of the old school things. And think that we’re hitting a point in society where even though in some elements the farther we push technology, the more amazing it is. I think there’s a little bit of pushback nowadays where people are thirsty for the ’90’s. Thirsty for something that’s reminiscent of things less saturated than they are. So as I started playing these games and having fun, I really don’t even remember when it came to me to start creating the game, but I just started jotting down questions because I started thinking about the importance of having conversations that we don’t want to have. And how playing these games, we end up having those conversations unknowingly.
So for me, as the therapist and somebody who’s always working with people, I find that there are a lot of people who really are interested and they are self-directed and seeking help in that way, but as far as we’ve come as a society we still are very limited in our thinking and there’s still a negative connotation with talking to a life coach or talking a therapist or going to a psychologist or whatever the case may be. Everybody’s kind of pointing the finger. So I, in a very sneaky way, kind of sprinkled sugar on medicine. I created this card game that has, it has questions from four categories. There aren’t categories in the game, but I my mind I created these four categories of relationships, sex, career, and life, in general, to give it a great array of questions. Some of them are super, super fun. And then some of them are a little more serious. But what I wanted to create was the opportunity for a breakthrough on the other end of the question that you didn’t know you needed. And that you didn’t know you had.
The name of the game is Sip and Share.
So, most of the time people are closed off even if they come see a therapist or come see a life coach because I’ve had that experience where people come and they’re kind of like, “Fix me.” Or they kind of try to size you up to see what you’re about. And so when we’re playing a game with our friends or with our spouses we’re having fun. The name of the game is Sip and Share. I’ve had people do it with wine and brunch. I’ve had somebody do it with a tea where they created all of these different teas and had a tea party and they did it that way. So people are in a space where they are open, they’re ready to receive, they’re ready to give. And bam! Here’s a little bit of medicine sprinkled in sugar. And people really have a good time playing this game and it opens up the opportunity for conversation and more meaningful relationships. And you can do this with somebody you’ve known forever. That’s the beauty of it. Because we’re seeing each other all the time, but we’re not having conversations. We’re seemingly connected to people online, but we’re ignoring the people right in front of us.
Right. Or it’s like, “Oh, I saw on Facebook that you and your family went on this trip.” But you have no relationship to their internal experience of what it might have been.
Exactly, so to me, it opens up the door to deepen current relationships or create new ones. I had a woman who purchased the game probably a month and a half ago and she reached out to me and said, “I just want to let you know my experience. I had, I was going through issues of trying to get pregnant.” Of course, you know you’re not alone, but nobody’s really walking around talking about that. So she had been going through that for a while. And she said that she played the game with three other friends, two of which she wasn’t as close to but they were kind of friends so they’re playing this game. And she said that there’s a question that kind of is geared towards that in the game. And she said that when that question came up she got very emotional. Unbeknownst to her, one of the ladies in the group chimed in and said she understood what she was going through because she was going through the same thing as well. And so they were able to bond in such an extraordinary way through that and create this understanding of I’m not alone and I’m actually seeing and touching the person who relates to me. And she said that that was a really beautiful and emotional experience for her.
When she told me that, I was, literally had chills because that is the bigger picture of why I created the game, to have that type of breakthrough. That wasn’t what she was looking for, but that’s what she got. So there’s a lot that can come with this.
Would you say that for someone who might be listening, who maybe does some of this deeper emotional work on themselves, but have a hard time relating to their family members, for example? Would you say this could be an interesting game to play with your family or is it kind of a little too far out there to go through your family members?
I think you can definitely play it with your family. It depends, you know. First of all, if you’re playing it with your family, and it’s everybody, I would take the sex questions out just because it’s weird. It’s weird to ask the sex questions with my dad in the room.
Right, right, right.
But if I’m playing it with my sister and my cousin, I’m leaving that questions in, you know what I’m saying? Because it’s like, oh it’s us, girls. Or me and my mom. I think it’s definitely family appropriate when you take the sex questions out just because it’s, with the sex questions it wasn’t created for family, but I think that there have been people who have played with their siblings or played with their cousins and really … One of the buyers that I had said that she’s known her cousin, obviously her whole life, and there were some things that she never, ever knew about her. So I think within reason, you can alter the game. That’s the beautiful thing about it. My mother-in-law actually purchased it and she had some friends over. And she’s an older woman. She’s 75. And she said, “We had a great time because we talked about a lot of stuff that we normally wouldn’t talk about.” But she also took the sex questions out.
Did she?
She was like, “We’re 75. We’re not really talking about these things anymore.” But it didn’t alter her experience. And she gifted several people the card game as well. The beautiful thing about that is though it’s created who it’s created for, there’s an opportunity to alter it to make it fit.
I love that. I love that. It sounds like such a fun game. I want to get myself a copy. Can you tell people, can you tell our listeners where they can go to find it?
Yes, you can go to www.iamsuccessfullyme.com. It’s iamsuccessfullyme.com. I have a company called Successfully Me and it’s a lifestyle motivational transformational brand and through that I do sessions and I’m creating a suite of products to take the fun back in self-development. Or create fun in self-development. The I am is allowing people to take ownership of what their idea of being successful is. So that’s where that whole thing comes from. So it’s iamsuccessfullyme.com.
Beautiful. I love it. So go out there and get a copy of this Sip and Share game. Sounds like a lot of fun. And I’m very curious to see what kind of questions are inside of this. We’re going to go to a quick break, and then we’re gonna come back and we’re gonna dive deeper. I want to hear more, just about the nature of your work and more about this book that you’ve mentioned when we get back. We’ve been talking about a fun way to improve relationships with Stephanie Lee. So stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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