Three Ways To Create Connection In Your Marriage Ep 19

Three Ways To Create Connection In Your Marriage | Relationship Coach

Missing connection in your marriage is something many of us struggle with; I certainly did. Maybe it’s something you’ve always thought you didn’t have enough of in your relationship, or it’s something that you feel has slowly dissipated; either way, it is 100% possible to bring connection into your marriage relationship, the type of connection you want. The journey to feeling connected in my own marriage has been an interesting one and one I have struggled with since the early years of our relationship, I think even before we got married. I had a belief that really did not serve me one bit; I believed that we didn’t have any connection and that he needed to change for me to feel connected. I had a vision of what connection meant for me and that vision was all about him.

This belief kept me from creating the connection I wanted because I was looking at why he wasn’t creating it. When I was able to step back and see that this could be something for me to figure out, I started the journey to taking my power back.

My own thoughts about lack of connection produced many arguments and were the basis of many of our sessions when we worked with different therapists over the years. When I found coaching and started working with my coach, she shared a different perspective that completely changed my life. There was a point in our work together when my coach questioned my thought about connection with Jeff and asked me what connection meant for me. I, of course, had lots to say about what it should look like. She asked what I thought about the possibility of us actually having great connection exactly the way it was, I told her she was ridiculous. After the session her question kept chasing me, I asked myself “what if?”, what if we did have great connection? How would I show up if I thought we had great connection?

Needless to say, from that point on, I have been on a journey to create the connection I want in my marriage. One, please notice how that coaching session worked for me. My coach didn’t tell me how to create good connection, she helped me think about it differently, and when I was able to think about it differently, it allowed me to come up with ideas of how I wanted to create connection in my marriage. That is what we do together, you and I; you share what you are struggling with, and I help you see what it is you are struggling with from different perspectives giving you new ways to problem solve and create solutions that work for you. Secondly, connection is something we create for ourselves; it is an emotion. It’s possible to feel connected when you’re not having a conversation with your partner or when you are. It is possible to feel connected talking about the weather or talking about the law of relativity because connection is a feeling we produce in our minds; it isn’t what your partner is or isn’t saying.

Something is compelling about doing the work of creating connection in your marriage. When you do the work of creating the connection you want with your partner, what happens is you will notice your partner starting to participate in conversations. When you don’t judge how they should show up, what they have to say and how they say it, you can simply enjoy your time together, creating connection!

Decide what different ways you want connection in your life and through conversation with your partner discover which ones they are willing to fulfill.

As humans, we want connection; we want to be included with others. It’s something we do from an early age on through our life, including when we get married, we seek to feel connection with our partner. Along with creating connection with your partner, I think it’s essential to learn how to build a relationship “family” that meets all of our relationship desires. Over and over again, including in my relationships, I see people disconnect from connections they have established once they meet their partner. We start spending most of our time with this new person while forgetting to keep our other connections alive; we look to our new partner to fulfill all of our connection needs which sets us up for expecting our partners to fulfill connection needs that they might not be interested in filling.

Remember how you did things with your partner not because you enjoyed the activity but because you wanted to be with them? Not a problem but also notice how many of those activities you might not care to be included in anymore and how might this be true for your partner as well? I call this took the “turning the table” concept where we take what we are struggling with and change roles which helps us better understand what might be happening instead of our partner not loving us anymore.

This step is about creating a list of all of the ways you might want to connect with others, think broad and think about connection that you might be wanting from your partner but aren’t getting. A few examples might be:

  • Adventure travels exploring new activities and locations
  • An art and creative partner
  • Art festival companion
  • Food adventurer
  • Romantic connection, physical touch
  • Someone to tell life secrets to
  • Dream conversations about what is possible in life
  • World traveler companion
  • Political banter companion
  • An accountability partner to follow through on dreams you want to fulfill in this lifetime

Our partners will not want to fill all of your connection desires, and I don’t think we would want them to, just like you might not be interested in fulfilling that connection desire your partner has around spending the weekend in a boat on the lake throwing out lines with bait on them. You will also have some connection desires filled by multiple people and some that are filled by one; you might do outdoor walks with your partner and still have another friend who joins you in outdoor activities and can look completely different. A relationship “family” is your group of people who help you explore life and your interests together. Some of these connections may come and go over time, or your connection doesn’t happen very frequently. As you expand your relationship family, you might start adding new ways you might want to connect with others, and then you start that search for a new partner to fulfill your new connection. Through this process, you may also discover that some of your current connections are no longer working for you and decide to limit or deprioritize those connections for those that are more fulfilling for you and the life you want to live.

Let go of your expectations of what connection should look like

When I started questioning what connection might look like with Jeff, I stopped arguing with what was currently happening as well as what had happened in the past. Instead, I started being curious about what could happen today and moving forward. I started opening up to conversations that felt awkward in my head but led us to some interesting conversations and laughs. When I started questioning that car rides should always include fun conversations, I started to get comfortable with the silence. When I got comfortable with the silence, I started coming up with conversations.

When you can see that you have a handbook for how your partner should show up and participate in a conversation, that’s when you can start closing the handbook and start coming up with your own style of connection and conversation. Check out my earlier post about Why Our Marital Handbooks Don’t Work.

What if it is ok that your partner doesn’t start conversations and when they do, how do you participate? Are you curious, or do you shut them down? Remember that “Turn The Table” tool I talked about earlier? Do you have expectations of how they show up, but when the table is turned, are you showing up the way you’d like them to for you?

Without your handbook of how conversations should go, you can start getting curious about when conversations might be best received, and you can start planning intentional time to chat. Share your intention with your partner, learn how to ask great questions, check out my blog post How To Ask Great Questions to get you started. What do you want to know about your partner, what do you want to talk about, and start creating that which you want?

Find a structured “meeting” time or schedule that works for you, just like a work meeting, where you discuss relationship basics as I share in my relationship huddle meeting.

Suppose you and your partner haven’t scheduled meetings before, this concept might seem a bit awkward at first. I used to have a Friday night catch-up with my daughter when she was growing up, and I looked forward to those nights because we shared discussions about things that came up for us during the week, but we didn’t have the time to hash them out and then we would turn it into a family night where we did something fun after the conversation. The same concept with your hubby, we have busy lives, and things come up for us during the week but then when the weekend comes if we don’t plan with intention, everything slips aways only to fester under the surface and eventually erupt.

Remember that this is your idea, you are taking steps to increase connection in your marriage, and that it’s quite possible that your partner might not bring anything to the meeting. If this happens you might find yourself wanting to blame them for not participating and being a partner, but I would challenge you to think about him not bringing anything to the meeting is a problem. Instead you could make it mean that you have the power to change this relationship that you want connection in.

To get started, I want to suggest you read my article about The Relationship Huddle; it will give you a structure to get your meetings started, and over time you can shape them into your own signature version. There is a reason we come together in meetings at work; it brings us together to talk about important things going on, things that have happened, and things we want to create; how important is it to do this same sort of meeting in our marriage?

Lastly, I want to suggest that you be willing to do the work to get what you want in your marriage, no matter how difficult it feels.

A bonus tip for you today is around the idea of commitment to do tough things. We are all familiar with the statement that nothing worthwhile is easy (or something like that); as my listener, you’re here because you believe your marriage is worthwhile, your happiness is worthwhile, and I fully agree. Worthwhile is work and is intentional. It is completely ok to set it down here and there and decide you need a break from the work; no problem, the problem comes when we set it down and don’t pick it back up again. When we don’t pick it back up, we will continue getting our old result which brought us here. Creating exceptional relationships is work because it requires us to step out of the comfort of staying the same, do something that might be new and that someone else might have an opinion about.

Your man might think what you are doing is ridiculous until he starts to see how it isn’t. When he sees that you are actually creating connection in your marriage, better enjoying time together, feeling more involved in your relationship, and creating more physical intimacy, well, I guess that it’s not as ridiculous as he thought.

You, my friend, have the power to create the connection you want in your marriage, and all it takes is a little nudge from inside to make it happen. Trust me, all of those little nudges you take action on will add to you creating a marriage worth coming home to!

I am a life coach who works with individuals to break down relationship barriers by awakening their true self. My process isn’t about changing your partner, it’s about discovering who you are so that you can AwakenYou in your marriage. If you’re ready to take your life and your love relationship to the next level then schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s decide together if this is your next step to creating the life you’ve been dreaming of

Are You Self Confident or Confident? Ep 14

Are You Self Confident or Confident? | Relationship Coaching

Hello, hello my lovelies, how are you this beautiful day? We have been chatting the past few weeks about self-trust. Do we have it and how to increase it to live a more fulfilling and rich life. In last week’s episode, we talked about: Three Reasons Why We Lack Marital Confidence (link) and how we begin to lose confidence in our ability to have a successful marriage because we have stopped taking action in ways that build our confidence. Then the week before that, in episode 12: Three Steps To Building Self Trust, when we talked about ways to start building trust in ourselves, I talked about how this work leads us to have more self-confidence – confidence in ourselves. Today I’d like to dig a bit deeper into the difference between self-confidence and confidence to see how having confidence in certain areas of our lives doesn’t necessarily mean we have self-confidence. What do you think? Are you self-confident or confident or both?

Are you confident?

Let’s start with a definition of confidence. Confidence is a belief that you can do something well or succeed at something, and it is built through the process of doing, of taking action. For example, if you know how to ride a bicycle, you have taken steps to build confidence over time to get on a bike, no matter how long it has been since you were last on a bicycle, and know that you can ride it. This is not something you had before you took the training wheels off and proceeded to crash a few times along the way.

Confidence is specific to the person because it is a skill that someone has practiced or something that a person might have a natural talent for. Strong, driven, successful people like yourself have developed a false sense of self-confidence by practicing and seeking further education in what you do. You have taken actions that have developed your confidence in that thing that you do so well.

I like to liken this to your shield of confidence; you have proven to the powers that be, whoever those people are, that you are fully competent. To prove it, you also might make sure that people are fully aware of your capability, this might make you feel better about yourself because you think they are impressed by you. Many of us, I say us because I’m quite familiar with this form of confidence, use this shield out in the world yet struggle with what we commonly know as imposter syndrome because we still don’t believe in ourselves. Our self-confidence is in the tank; we generate validation, recognition, and affirmation from others, from outside of ourselves.

I experienced this during my 30 year business of coaching athletes. I had gone to college to become a Chemical Engineer; three years later I changed that path to Journalism and Graphic Design. After getting laid off from a dream design job, I decided to start helping all of the people at the gym who had been begging me to help them start their journey to a healthier life. As a single parent needing an income resource, I started one of the most successful personal training businesses in the country and became a professional athlete in the process. All the evidence of success still made me feel like an imposter, simply caused by plenty of confidence but minimal self-confidence.

Something else to consider is that confident people who lack self-confidence often will not try things they aren’t good at because of fear. They are afraid of failing or doing something that might make them feel foolish, embarrassed, or humiliated. They are afraid to experience these emotions for fear their failure or “foolish” appearance means something about who they are as a human, which would have their confidence come tumbling down in a huge heap.

Are you self-confident?

Self-confidence is a feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgment. It is truly an overall mindset you create for yourself about your own ability in ALL areas of your life that matter to you.

Self-confidence is the ability to do something that you might be afraid of doing, but fear doesn’t stop you from doing it because you won’t make failure mean anything about you as a human. When you are self-confident, you recognize failure, embarrassment, humiliation as emotions that could hold you back from doing what you want to do or emotions that you might have to process and feel; that’s all.

Self-confidence can look forward and see the person on the other side of whatever emotion it is that they are afraid of and being able to choose the delayed gratification of knowing that you were willing to take a chance. Taking chances is where growth comes; it’s where wisdom enters; it’s where we learn and evaluate.

Once you can learn how to overcome the obstacle of yourself getting in the way of yourself, you can take steps forward in all areas of your life, including your marriage. This is the work we do in AwakenYou; we learn how to overcome our fears which keep us from living our dream come true life, and we learn how to have our own backs in every life situation. For most of us, the biggest obstacle in our lives is ourselves, yet building self-confidence starts to erode that obstacle and helps us stop blaming the world and start creating our ideal world, life, and marital relationship.

If you want to begin coming up with strategies to overcome the obstacle in the way of your best life and your best marriage, then reach out, and let’s find time to talk. My one-on-one coaching program is designed to overcome this obstacle and clear the way to the ideal life you have stopped dreaming of.

I am a life coach who works with individuals to break down relationship barriers by awakening their true self. My process isn’t about changing your partner, it’s about discovering who you are so that you can AwakenYou in your marriage. If you’re ready to take your life and your love relationship to the next level then schedule your program inquiry call today and let’s decide together if this is your next step to creating the life you’ve been dreaming of.

Social Taboo: Talking Out Loud About Our Struggles

As I was reflecting on a social gathering we had here at the house a few weeks back, it struck me as interesting when I thought about how uncomfortable people get when we openly discuss things that we are struggling with in our lives.

It’s not that I don’t understand why, I mean, I was the queen of covering up my poop 🤣🤣🤣 ! OK, let’s pause a moment because I am completely laughing out loud at myself. The previous sentence was not in my original writing of this post and that sentence was real truth my friends! I just was envisioning my dog Zeta after she does her business, she is adamant about covering up her 💩, sort of like I was 🤣.

It’s just that through all of the self work I have done, through all of the coaching I have gotten, I am very comfortable talking about my 💩 and I’m going to tell you why. If we just keep covering it all up it becomes a big pile of messiness but the messiness isn’t outside of us, like it is for Zeta, it’s all piling up inside of us creating one big toxic mess. Getting it out, talking with a coach, seeing it on paper, hearing it out loud allows us to process and start re-wiring our inner, self taught program, allowing us to upgrade into a daily next best version.

I wonder if you can figure out why we’re so uncomfortable talking about our problems.

What I came up with is that we’re uncomfortable with ourselves. We are ashamed, embarrassed, disappointed, afraid of other people’s judgement, what they might say.

We attempt to control what other people think about us by doing things like:

  • pretend everything is amazing
  • complain and blame others
  • gossip about others, directing attention to someone else’s “dysfunction”

I now realize how healthy it is to share our struggles and here is why I believe this:

  • talking out loud about our struggles allows us to heal but also brings about healing in others, as they hear our story they can start to feel some relief, some hope and possibly be able to initiate positive steps towards feeling better themselves
  • it helps you be a true human, not pretending to be perfect or someone you’re not
  • it allows people to see the true you and connect on a much deeper level

People are going to either like you or not, you might as well find your truest connections by being your truest self.

We are human.

We all struggle.

Stop denying the struggle and start addressing it. Stop trying to control other people’s opinion of you by being someone you’re not.

Be you.

It feels so amazing!

It’s what I do on a daily basis, not just for me but for all of my beautiful clients. There is nothing more rewarding than watching people work on their problems and start living the life they were meant to live.

With a big proud smile on their face 😃

I am learning how to be me and helping you let go of your created you so you, and others, can embrace Your True You!

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My Awaken(YourTrue)You program teaches incredibly powerful women like yourself how to identify and live out your truth. How to believe in your success and boldly share it with the world. How to leave a legacy.

I offer a free call to anyone brave enough to take the steps of creating the life they were meant to live. It’s a call for you to decide if this work is for you or not. I believe it is.

Share this message with a friend who needs to hear it, for every woman willing to do the work of becoming her best self there will be thousands of others impacted by her journey.

This is my life, join me in my mission to save the world, one powerful woman at a time.

What Do Feelings Have To Do With Results?

This is such a great question!

So many people ask me why I focus so much on feelings when I talk about maximizing our life or living out our potential.

They really think that all I’m doing is talking to them about the power of positive thinking.

Yes, positive thinking is amazing yet, if we don’t believe the positive thought then we won’t generate the feeling that is needed to drive the actions we want to take. If you have been following me then you know all about the thought model and know that the actions we take will create our end results.

Let’s say you keep telling yourself that you are happy, like a mantra, yet you’re not one bit happy, you will not be able to generate the feeling of happiness. In this exact situation that thought might even make you feel frustrated which will make you show up way differently than happy, obviously creating a way different result than what you are aiming for.

This is what our feelings have to do with our results.

Think about it.

When you’re angry with someone how do you show up?

When you’re overjoyed with that same person how do you show up?

You show up very differently in both scenarios which creates different results. One possibly getting you the result of you being a jerk and the other with you overjoyed with your life at that moment.

Now let’s say when you’re thinking someone is a jerk and you attempt to apply the power of positive thinking and try on “They are totally awesome.” Well I imagine the feeling isn’t overjoyed. Possibly more disbelief and then you end up with a result along the lines of you not being totally awesome.

This is why I talk about feelings so much and teach my clients how to feel feelings and how to learn how to recognize them in your body.

When you start to recognize how different feelings feel in your body you are better able to figure out what feeling you may be experiencing in the moment. You also will be able to start generating feelings that you’re not feeling in the moment just by knowing what it feels like.

Then allowing you to better come up with a thought that could create that feeling.

Feelings are generated by the thoughts we think. You can even generate a feeling by thinking certain thoughts – try it. Think about a vacation you have been on in the past, then think of one of the most relaxing moments on that vacation. I would guess just thinking about it brings about that same vibration in your body as when you actually experienced it in the first place.

Actually, that is all that a memory is – a feeling that our body generates based on thoughts we think about that past memory.

If you would like to dig deeper into all of this and start to understand how all of this works and how it can help you start moving you into your future you at an accelerated pace, then I can help you with that.

Let’s chat soon!

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My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong, success driven women who want to discover their true self, discover the missing key, find their purpose and then start building a legacy from pure power. I have made it may mission to show you how.

I’d love to offer a free call for you to work out whether or not my program and life changing promise is a fit for you. Either book your call now or send me an email with your availability before your subconscious primitive mind tells you to run and hide.

Please share this message with anyone who you think might benefit from hearing this message and I highly encourage you to get on my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself.

I’m Curious, What Does Defeat Mean To You?

I wrote myself a note to write about the topic of defeat a couple weeks back when I was in the middle of writing my 30 blogs in 30 days.  I never wrote about it during that challenge, yesterday was day 30 ?, I just kept thinking about defeat.

I was a bit curious about why I waited, but just kept moving on.

When will I learn that there is a reason for the wait.

When something feels forced it means that it’s not time yet.

Really.

Here is my experience with waiting and my thoughts around defeat.

Usually I talk about something different every day on my live broadcasts and in my posts.

This week I decided to dig into defeat and stick with it all week.

I spoke about defeat on both my Facebook biz page and the next day on my personal page.

Side note, you should really go follow me on that biz page and turn on your notifications so you get all the good stuff!

I spoke about when we are feeling defeated by life. Maybe it’s our relationship with our spouse, or our kids, or maybe it’s that weight that you’ve been desperately trying to lose or that job that drags you down every day.

I talked about how those thoughts that are creating that feeling of defeat make you show up in your day, giving you the result of creating more defeat in your life.

When we continue to think about how defeated we are in one area of our life our brain gets used to that signal and begins to tell you how you are losing in all areas of your life.

I talked about how taking the steps of creating awareness around this is the first step out of feeling defeated.

I talked about the impact of doing the work to change your brain and how you can re-create your results.

Then this afternoon as I started to think about what I was going to write about defeat, I had an epiphany, well maybe not an epiphany, but it was good.

Ready?

Defeat can also mean to win a victory over something.

Hello.

Welcome to my brain.

All this time since I had made a note to write about defeat, my brain was focusing on being defeated by something.

Something beating me.

My brain completely ignored when defeat means something amazing.

The light that shined into my brain when I saw where it automatically goes was truly enlightening.

Defeat can also mean your victory over your nemesis.

How do you look at defeat?

How can you turn that around to defeat?

Love you all!!

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My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong, success driven women who want to discover their true self, discover the missing key, find their purpose and then start building a legacy from pure power. I have made it may mission to show you how.

I’d love to offer a free call for you to work out whether or not my program and life changing promise is a fit for you. Either book your call now or send me an email with your availability before your subconscious primitive mind tells you to run and hide.

Please share this message with anyone who you think might benefit from hearing this message and I highly encourage you to get on my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself.

Your Top Three Emotions And How They Reveal The Results In Your Life

Feelings, or emotions, it seems like a bunch of wasted time to look at them, right?

Wrong.

Read on to find out why they are so important.

Feelings start in our brain. They are caused by something that we are thinking, when we feel the emotion, the brain sends out chemicals to the body, these chemicals create vibrations in the body.

Feelings are the third line in the Thought Model, they are a one word emotion that drives the actions you take with the things you do on a daily basis.

I have found that we as humans are pretty numb to our emotions. Discovering what emotions we are feeling is one of the first, and fundamental, things I teach.

Think about it for a moment, everything we want in life is because of how we think it will make us feel.

So now, think about what you want.

Then ask yourself what you really, really want (insert Spice Girl Wannabe lyrics).

Lastly, ask yourself how you think you’ll feel when you get what you really want.

BINGO!

You want the feeling that thing will give you.

The next question I’ll ask is how you can create that feeling now?

This is the magical work I do with my Awaken(TheTrue)You program clients.

I help them start to fill that void the have in their life. I teach them how to stop attempting to fill it with external things.

Once they are able to start closing that void their brain is free to start focusing on what they really, truly want in their life.

Then we start creating it.

They step off of their hamster wheel and into the life of their dreams.

They start creating the results that they didn’t even realize they wanted to create.

It’s beautiful.

Let’s keep moving forward with some more awareness activities.

Ask yourself what your top three most common emotions are on a daily basis and why you feel them.

Here’s a list to get you started.

If you’re feeling brave go ahead and describe each feeling, then how you deal with each one.

Then ask yourself what are the top three emotions you want to have on a daily basis and why.

If you felt this way on a daily basis how might you show up differently in your life?

Showing up the way you want to show up will change your life forever.

The best part?

You don’t even need to change any of the external things in your life for this to happen, like your job, your boss, spouse, child, friend, state, car, house.

If you struggle with feeling joy, excitement, enthusiasm, responsible, determined, proud and want help changing the results you are currently getting in your life then let’s find some time to chat. Let’s talk about whether working with me might be a fit for the next step in your life, you can book your free session here or send me an email with days and times that will work for you.

Make today the first day of the best days of your life!

_______________________________________

My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong, success driven women who want to discover their true self, discover the missing key, find their purpose and then start building a legacy from pure power. I have made it may mission to show you how.

I’d love to offer a free call for you to work out whether or not my program and life changing promise is a fit for you. Either book your call now or send me an email with your availability before your subconscious primitive mind tells you to run and hide.

Please share this message with anyone who you think might benefit from hearing this message and I highly encourage you to get on my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself.