The Secret You Can’t Keep

The Relationship Secret You Can't Keep | Relationship Coach

🎧 Prefer to listen to the audio version? Click here!

If you have ever been asked to keep a secret, you might understand the tension that arises when you’re in conversation with someone who makes it easy for you to share the secret. We get to a pause in the conversation where we’re searching for something to contribute, and all of a sudden, that secret is the topic of discussion. It was a secret you couldn’t keep.

Our brains default to figuring out why this secret has to be kept; it is so important that we can’t stop thinking about it. In all honesty, though, the secret sharer knows it’s quite likely the person will leak the secret, and the question I pose to you is this: who is to blame when the secret gets out?

I shared that to make you think a bit about secrets, now for the secret I know you can’t keep.

If you are anything like me, you have had an inborn desire to grow, improve, be better than the day before. While on the outside, it appears as though this is actually occurring, on the inside, it feels like an ugly, hot mess, broken and unsuccessful. This is often the secret people aren’t interested in sharing with anyone, their shame around how they feel on the inside not matching up with what they are presenting on the outside.

The secret I can’t keep.

The magic of having a life coach. It is not any life coach but a life coach who uses thought work to help you see why you aren’t getting the results you want. The life coach that helps you decide what results you do want and then walks along with you as you start making those results your reality.

I recently had a life experience that was a beautiful analogy to how a life coach helps us create the love relationship that we want. I’m going to share the story with you today.

I love decorating the house for Christmas, but there is one task that I wrestle with every year, and it is putting the wreath upon the fireplace. You see, I have this piece I made several years ago that I absolutely adore; it is a simple pallet board base with a deer skull hanging in the center of it. During the holidays, I hang a wreath around the deer antlers with some whimsical decorations, but every year, I struggle to get it right. This year as I started the battle of setting up the wreath, my daughter watched from across the room. I contemplated, complained, then climbed up the ladder and attached the ribbon hanger. This handmade creation is a bit delicate; over the years, I’ve dropped the skull, the whole piece has fallen, it is uncentered, etc.; it really was a struggle.

From across the room my daughter said, “Why don’t you take the whole thing down and assemble it on the ground?”

🤯

Initially my brain wanted to defend my position, explain how I’ve been doing this for years, it’s plain difficult. Then I thought I’d take her advice. Simple. Enjoyable. Brand new. My yearly struggle with this project resolved.

It seemed brand new because it was brand new to my brain. Funny thing is, I had done it this way in the past after much struggling but all my brain could remember was the struggle. This outside observation changed my perspective around this holiday task forever.

This is the exact work I do as a coach with my clients.

I help them see what they are doing, why they are doing it, and then help them develop a brand new, easier, more productive, and much more enjoyable way giving them a result they can appreciate.

The secret my clients can’t keep.

My AwakenYou program is the secret they can’t keep. Once they complete the program, there is a confidence in themselves that they can’t help but share. The transformation they have achieved to create the marriage relationship they dream of makes them so happy that they can’t keep it to themselves. They share it with their girlfriends, guy friends, family, and anyone who will listen because she wants everyone to know that if she can change her life, so can you!

Once introduced to the concepts I share in my program, we can’t help but notice how they will help our friends. We’ve found the only tools/techniques that actually have had a lasting effect on our love relationship. We feel so good, even while we continue creating our best romantic relationship, because we know that things will keep getting better and better if we continue to do the work.

We end up becoming the friend that helps others discover the key to unlocking love again in their marriage.

Maybe you will be the one who passes on the key of personal relationship freedom to the world around you. As women, we love helping others feel good; we love helping others solve their problems; I want to show you how to do this in your life so you too can share your secret to a lasting love relationship.

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

💓💓💓💓💓💓💓

I am a life coach working with individuals looking to change their current or future romantic relationship – my Awaken(YourTrue)You 1:1 coaching program helps you discover that you are enough. This self-love empowers and equips you to take continual, forward steps in achieving the healthy, romantic relationship you desire. I’d love to talk with you about my process and welcome you to our community, book a program inquiry call today and let’s discuss your future romantic goals.

bell
Stay up to date.
Get notified as soon as I post new stuff!
Get Updates
>

The Relationship Fix

You could actually heal your relationship today, on your own, if your brain were like a computer operating system. Imagine if someone erased all of your current thoughts about your partner and your relationship with them and was able to replace those old thoughts with shiny new ones. You would think differently about your relationship. You would feel differently. You would act differently, giving you the result of that shiny new relationship you have been dreaming about, and that is what I call The Relationship Fix.

Today I’m going to share my Relationship Fix webinar where I teach you four practices, plus one special bonus practice, that you can start implementing in your life today that will start the process of turning your relationship around.

If you are in a relationship that has lost its luster then I want to encourage you to set aside some time to watch my class so that you can start taking the steps of re-creating, re-designing, and reigniting your love relationship.

Click here to watch my Relationship Fix Webinar, enjoy!

💓💓💓💓💓💓💓

I am a life coach who works with individuals looking to change their current or future romantic relationship – my program helps them discover that they are enough. This self-love empowers and equips them to take continual, forward steps in achieving the healthy, romantic relationship they desire. Are you ready to explore this journey in your life? 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.

bell
Stay up to date.
Get notified as soon as I post new stuff!
Get Updates
>

What is Cognitive Dissonance?

Cognitive Dissonance

🎧 Prefer to listen to the audio version? Click here!

Cognitive what? I know it sounds a bit difficult, but I’m going to break it down for you because it’s something that we all experience, and once you understand it, you’ll be able to see it at work in your life. Once we recognize cognitive dissonance for what it is, we can close the gap between what you currently believe and what you want to believe.

Let’s start with a definition. Cognitive dissonance is the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

Yikes!

Let’s break it down a bit more because if you’re not confused, I am. Basically, cognitive dissonance is when we know how we want to act, we know the “right” beliefs that could get us to take the actions we want to take, but yet we don’t believe those thoughts enough to take the action we desire consistently.

Phew. I know, it’s a mouth-full!

Cognitive dissonance can also work in reverse where you have taken steps towards your future self and are doing the things that you want to be doing but your old self and thoughts are trying to tell you that you can’t do it. I call this identity crisis which I will speak about in a future post.

Cognitive dissonance examples:

  • Knowing sugar isn’t good for you but eating it anyway.
  • Knowing that we want to get up early tomorrow morning having a rested and clear mind but staying up late and watching Netflix anyway.
  • Wanting to snuggle on a Friday night with our honey but staying at work late instead.

The work I do as a coach helps you see your current beliefs and how they are serving you. What that means is we uncover the things you are thinking that are keeping you from achieving what you want in your love relationship. Once we understand how we feel is coming from how we are thinking, we can then start looking at what other beliefs we might want to begin working towards.

The trick is that once we decide where it is we want to go with our new belief, cognitive dissonance steps in between that new belief and our old one. How long it will take us to eliminate the dissonance truly depends on our willingness to do the work of banning the old thought and how long that old thought has been lurking in our brain. It also requires that you take believable steps in your new belief creation; downloading the thought laddering worksheet found in my post “Getting From Here To There” will help tremendously in this process.

The process of closing the cognitive dissonance gap is one of the biggest reasons we hire coaches. First, a coach helps you discover the pesky belief holding you back; then your coach helps you close the gap of disbelief and keep you moving towards a belief that will serve the life you want to create for yourself. On our own we will always gravitate towards the belief we’ve identified with, our coach helps us uncover how we are doing this so we can keep making progress.

The gap between what we currently believe and what we want to believe can seem difficult to overcome. As much as we dream of the desired results and as much as we despise where we currently are, there is comfort in the mess that we sit in. Take a look at the industry I served for over thirty years, the “fitness division” of the health and wellness industry—so many people miserable where they are yet stuck in that misery. “About 82.1 million adults spend an estimated $28.6 billion on gym memberships each year. And yet 6.3% of these aspirational gymgoers never end up using them.” That, my loves, is some cognitive dissonance!

Where we want to be and what it means to us.

Most of us have dreams of being somewhere other than where we are in life and I believe that’s a beautiful thing, I’m all in on growing, learning, expanding our horizons. The problem is how we think we will feel when we get there, our reason for getting there is that we think life will be better “there.” Most of us think our lives will be better when we have the love, have the car, have the job, have the goal weight and so we keep chasing that better life. Here’s the problem though, we’re not enjoying where we are, what we have achieved so when we get there we will be looking ahead to the next, never satisfied.

Pay attention. Look at some goals you have achieved; maybe you’ve married the man (or woman), bought the car, and landed the job, but you’re still not happy. That’s because you are always in search of the happiness outside of yourself, in that next best thing, never truly enjoying the current victory for more than a moment before you move on, not truly in love with where you are.

I love asking myself, “What is perfect about right now?”

It’s when we can fully love ourselves and our current life that we can actually start drawing more to us, but not because we need them to feel happy, but simply because we want to. When we know where we want to be, we can recognize that the achievement will be the reward and that life will still be 50/50 when we get there; that’s when we start making true progress towards our dreams while fully enjoying the space between here and there.

Where we are and our belief in attaining our goal.

Most of the time, our belief in ourselves and our ability to achieve our goal is in the dump. When this is the case, it’s difficult for us to believe enough to invest in ourselves.

Working in the fitness industry for thirty years showed me how much money people will throw at promises to look good. Yet, we are reluctant to invest in what will allow us to achieve our fitness goals, sustain those goals, and achieve our life goals. Why? Because we don’t believe in ourselves, we want someone else to tell us what to do so we can look to them when things don’t go the way we expect. Learning how to manage our mind allows us to create our own path, the path that will produce lasting change.

The price of the coaching program doesn’t matter when a person’s dissonance is large. If the program is cheap, they may buy-in, but only because their rationale is that they might lose that money and they are ok with that. When the program is worth its gold weight, they doubt themselves so much that the price becomes the obstacle to starting.

Once we learn how to be all in ourselves and believe that we can create our desired results, that’s when we wouldn’t even consider the “cheap” program because we believe in the value we will produce for ourselves. We know the value is priceless and that we will be making an investment that will easily pay itself off.

Stepping into belief and closing the dissonance gap.

One, you could decide today to be all in on believing in yourself and your ability to produce the promised results with your new coach’s help. This is a stretch for most people, and that’s why I offer so much free value here on my blog, in my free courses, and on my social media platforms. It allows people to start the work independently, start closing the dissonance gap and start taking steps towards self-belief, self-trust, and trust in me as their future coach. As you create the results on your own you will know that continuing this work with a professional will put you in the fast lane.

My job is to show you how to believe in yourself, help you to believe that you are worthy and capable of the results of this work.

Personally, I have watched the cognitive dissonance be reduced in so many areas of my life, the biggest one is seeing, believing and investing in the work of cleaning my own mind.

I used to yearn for the dream; I believed my dream was worth millions, yet I didn’t believe hard enough to justify investment in a coach to guide me. The truth is, I didn’t believe in my ability to create the results, but I did the work of narrowing my cognitive dissonance, and then I believed enough to dive into the deep end.

I will NEVER regret that decision.

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

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

Stop Avoiding Your Lover

🎧 Prefer to listen to the audio version? Click here!

“You are cold-hearted and non-emotional, I’m tired of being ignored! I am always the one who has to plan our time together, obviously, you don’t care enough to put any energy into our relationship.”

Deb has had it, she just wishes Jack would change. She is full of resentment and tired of fighting against him. Instead of coming up with solutions, Deb starts finding ways to get away from her husband as a form of punishment. Punishment because she isn’t actually enjoying the activities she chooses to participate in, instead she is using them against Jack hoping that he’ll change.

One of the most common actions my clients take when they are experiencing some sort of negative emotion like resentment, fear, confusion, anger, resignation is avoidance. They decide to start “doing things for themselves” but not actually enjoying their time, they aren’t using the time to grow, explore and connect with themselves. Imagine this; you want to get in shape, like build some shoulders, glutes, and have a 6 pack but working out just doesn’t work for you. So instead you watch workout videos, athletic events, collect workout plans, apps, equipment but none of this gets you any closer to your vision, it actually moves you further from your vision. You are avoiding the actual work of it.

Let’s dig into the why of your avoidant actions.

Resentment has us wanting and expecting our partners to take care of our needs. We want them to do all of the things that will make us feel loved and connected because somewhere along the line, we learned that other people’s actions determine how we feel. “Make mommy happy by cleaning up your room,” “I’d feel so much better if you told me you loved me.”, “Give grandpa a kiss goodbye, so you don’t hurt his feelings.” Pay attention to other people’s conversations, pay attention to the conversation in your own head and notice how true it is; as you start to see the prevalence of this behavior, you can start deciding if you like it or not.

Let’s take a look at what it is you do when you are feeling resentment, fear, confusion, anger, resignation in your romantic relationship. Let me guess about some actions you might be taking:

  • Avoid
  • Blame
  • Complain
  • Expect them to change
  • Don’t proactively plan activities together
  • You spend more time at work
  • Go out with your friends more than usual
  • Search for things to do that you haven’t done for yourself in years, but not for enjoyment sake – out of resentment
  • Spend money on things that don’t matter for a temporary “feel good”
  • Maybe you eat more than you’d like
  • Have a drink or two more because that might get you in the mood of having a good time with your partner

Can you see how every single one of these actions are a form of avoidance? All of these actions have you changing into someone your spouse might not want to be with AND further away from someone YOU want to be with! It gets you further from your goal of creating an intimate relationship, both with yourself and your partner.

So what’s in the way of getting what you want in your relationship?

You. Yep, I typed that correctly. You are in your own way of getting what you want in your relationship. You are waiting for them to do the things you want them to do which gives them all of the control in your relationship and in how you feel. Boo! That won’t work for you my friend, trust me I’ve tried it, all it does is get you further from exactly what you want, which is lots of love.

How to stop avoiding your partner.

Now it’s time to start digging into all of the reasons you want them to do these things. We actually uncovered that in the story of Deb and Jack’s relationship, she wants him to make her feel good. Deb gives Jack all of her emotional power in their relationship, Jack feels manipulated if he abides by her demands without feeling honoring and Deb ends up losing herself in the process.

The first step Deb needed to take is becoming aware of this simple fact. We do this exact thing in so many of our relationships, we are expecting them to act a certain way, over and over and over again. We wonder why we’re getting so frustrated, the whole time forgetting how to fill ourselves up all on our own. When we keep expecting our love to come from an outside source we are always craving our next fix, looking for that next hit of pleasure outside of ourselves. These outside pleasures leave us empty, maybe overweight, hungover and sad.

To turn the cycle around, you will want to start taking care of your mental health; you’ll want to take your power back and start working on how you will find joy for yourself. You may ask why you should do that; you thought that’s what marriage was, your partner providing you with the love and support you need, that my friend is a lofty ask for anyone and quite dangerous. That will have your partner all weak and not themselves, continually trying to make you happy. That is a lose-lose situation for both of you. It’s time to let go of your manuals, start practicing emotional adulthood, and start nurturing that dried up love seed that you’ve unknowingly been neglecting.

The good news is this; when Deb started taking her focus off of Jack she started feeling so much better, she felt empowered, satisfied, responsible, and joyous which led her to start opening up in conversation with Jack. She doesn’t need him to fill up her joy tank because she is learning how to do that all by herself. Now Jack gets to be himself while she gets to enjoy her best life to date. Deb has learned how to Awaken her true self!

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

💓💓💓💓💓💓💓

Are you struggling in your love relationship? I would love to help you fall back in love with the one you love. My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong women like you, and a few pretty cool guys, who want to stop hurting in their most intimate relationship. Together we work from the inside out, meaning I teach you how to have a healthy, loving relationship with yourself so you can show up and simply love your partner. Let’s reignite your love relationship today, book your consultation call today!

Relationship Buffering

🎧 Prefer to listen to the audio version? Click here!

This week I want you to look at all of your past love relationships to see if you can find a common thread. Is your common thread that they start out high energy, highly pleasurable, high doses and quantities of dopamine shots? Many relationships start out this way, similar to the effects we get from food, alcohol, drugs, spending money; you get a relationship love hit and it feels so good you keep going back for more. Eventually, your relationship can’t sustain that type of energy and when those dopamine hits start to fade away it’s like an addict who can’t get their fix, they start looking for something new to create that same feeling.

Maybe you’ve been in and out of so many relationships you’ve decided to settle, but your brain still wants that rush of pleasure so you start looking for the fix elsewhere. You start avoiding the relationship that you want more from, the one you’re unwilling to give in. Working on love feels uncomfortable and awkward while your partner seems unwilling to do any work to make it better so, why bother?

Upon reflection, many of my clients also see this pattern in other areas of their life besides in their love life. They find themselves seeking the high of feeling better through other external actions like eating, binging, over-drinking, spending money on temporary feel-goods, pornography, other relationships, exercise, body improvements, anything that makes them feel better temporarily while avoiding the root of their problem. Chasing but never finding lasting fulfillment.

Today we’re going to take a look inside the life of one of my clients, for the sake of anonymity I’ll name her Michelle.

Michelle grew up with what she called a tattered relationship with both of her parents. Michelle was full of resentment stemming primarily from the thought that she didn’t receive the love and nurturing she needed, especially as a child.

Michelle constantly sought love outside of herself, including getting involved in relationships where she did things that were not her typical modes of operation, actions against her integrity, in an effort to fit in and please. In an effort to feel the love in reciprocation of her acts.

When Michelle looked back over her life, in particular at her love relationships, she discovered that she was always seeking some sort of high out of her relationships, she was addicted to the feeling she got at the onset. Michelle thought this was what love was. Eventually, the relationship would fall into a pattern of her not feeling the love; she’d get bored and blame it on her partner.

Michelle’s typical response would be to end the relationship so that her partner couldn’t hurt her by leaving her and move on, looking for someone else, someone more exciting. Michelle also noticed several other similar behaviors that created responses she could control – drug use, overeating, binging with over-exercising mixed in, over-drinking, spending money on things that provided a temporary good feeling.

Michelle decided she was tired of where her life was going. She felt stuck in a cycle, knowing that there had to be something better than what she was experiencing. Stuck in her current relationship, she decided to do something different. She decided to start figuring out the root of her problem and see if she could resurrect her love relationship with the person she was with.

To begin Michelle started working on herself, this included work around healing her past and reconciling what was happening in her addictive behavior characteristics. She wanted to figure out how to feel good on her own, end her self destructive behavior, stop escaping and start feeling it all instead of resisting.

She told her current partner that she was beginning a journey of self-discovery, of sorting out issues that she had been long repressing and pretending weren’t a big deal. She told him that she loved him and was committed to their relationship but wanted some time to create a relationship she had been neglecting her whole life – the one with herself.

As Michelle did this work she began seeing her life through new lenses. She started creating relationships out of existing relationships that she now fully enjoys just as they are. Re-writing her past into a beautiful story of strength and power has helped her more clearly see her life purpose. She sees that the joy she had been seeking outside of herself was always there for her to access, planted inside of her and now she is on the journey of nurturing it into life. Through all of this work Michelle has been doing, her relationship with her partner is blooming again, daily doing the work of creating a love relationship where love sticks around.

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

💓💓💓💓💓💓💓

Are you struggling in your love relationship? I would love to help you fall back in love with the one you love. My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong women like you, and a few pretty cool guys, who want to stop hurting in their most intimate relationship. Together we work from the inside out, meaning I teach you how to have a healthy, loving relationship with yourself so you can show up and simply love your partner. Let’s reignite your love relationship today, book your consultation call today!

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, your future life is waiting for you.

Know someone hurting in their relationships? If you think they might benefit from hearing this message please share this article with them. You might be the one who leads them to their best life.

Don’t forget to join my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself and never miss another post, get yourself signed up for my newsletter!

AwakenYou, Before And After

AwakenYou Before and After

🎧 Prefer to listen to the audio version? Click here!

One of my favorite morning routines in the summer is taking my dog for a walk. I love watching the scene of our consistent morning path transform as we emerge from winter into spring, summer, fall, and back again. There is a spot on our walk where dozens of baby thorn sprouts have grown into a massive thorn thicket, heights of which surpass mine. Every day as we pass this mature thorn thicket I think about the pain that would be inflicted upon oneself if traveling by on a bicycle that jumps off course into this mass of prickers, I know, tragic. One day as I approached the thicket I saw something that captured my attention and drew me in. A beautiful dragonfly amidst the thorns. Her contentment sent my mind a-wandering. A wandering about life before, during, and after its awakening.

A fun side note about what I found as I wandered and wondered about the dragonfly amidst the thorns: a band called The Thorns who have recorded a song called Dragonfly, what?! Go take a listen, after reading this of course.

Life before AwakenYou

Most of us feel at the effect of our world. We have an inner desire to do more, to be more, to move out of the thorn bush that keeps pricking and piercing us. We get mad at the thorns, we blame them for where we are and why we keep getting stuck in the same crummy situations.

Relationship after relationship in the bliss of what is, yet held back from what could be. We push, or get pushed, into the prickers and then bounced into bliss, thinking this will be the time things change. It will be better this time around, I’ll remember the beauty amidst the thorns.

Eventually, the game gets old, we realize we are powerless to change on our own. We’re over the struggle and have seen evidence that others have found something better, something different. We used to think it was just perfect matches, matches that weren’t meant for our life, two dragonflies who have figured out how to maneuver the thorns.

Wait, we remember someone talking about changing their life and how that changed their relationship with their partner. They heard this odd story about creating the love life of their dreams without the other partner’s willing participation. Who was that? Where did she see that?

The thought slips away and life returns back to the same old same old, but then she sees a post, reads an email, searches for help, and her mind delivers a message.

During

She had tried couples counseling, individual counseling, and made some strides toward freedom but she kept getting drawn into the same old same old. She asked herself if there was really any hope, was she destined to live a sad life? She wanted and thirsted for something different, she wanted to break this cycle. She didn’t want to move somewhere else because she had done that enough with the same results. Then she remembered that life coach who had talked about something different, she was ready.

After

Transformed. Everything transformed. No longer was the mass of thorns a threat but a beautiful retreat that had her back. She saw every thorn in her life and what she had made it mean.

Unworthy, unlovable, unsatisfied, shameful, guilty, unsuccessful, dirty, ordinary, cold, weak.

She realized she had been living a life of lies, that the true story of the thorns was beautifully different.

Worthy, lovable, satisfied, willing, honest, successful, brand new, unique, beautiful, warm, loving, tough, smart.

Now seeing the beauty and purpose in the thorns of her life, she was able to sit proudly amidst the thorns knowing they couldn’t hurt her, only she had the power to do that. She knew her power wasn’t in escaping the thorns but loving them for what they were, always knowing the way out but no longer seeing the need.

When you look at the dragonfly amidst the thorns, what do you see? I see the beautiful mystery of nature and ask myself what it is teaching me. Is the dragonfly crazy or is it smart? It all depends on your perspective, that perspective will determine the outcome in your life. We can always change our surroundings but until we see our surroundings for what they really are; until we can love and appreciate them, new surroundings will eventually be like the dragonfly at the effect of the thorns instead of in the presence and protection of the thorns.

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

💓💓💓💓💓💓💓

Are you struggling in your love relationship? I would love to help you fall back in love with the one you love. My Awaken(TheTrue)You program is for strong women like you, and a few pretty cool guys, who want to stop hurting in their most intimate relationship. Together we work from the inside out, meaning I teach you how to have a healthy, loving relationship with yourself so you can show up and simply love your partner. Let’s reignite your love relationship today, book your consultation call today!

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, your future life is waiting for you.

Know someone hurting in their relationships? If you think they might benefit from hearing this message please share this article with them. You might be the one who leads them to their best life.

Don’t forget to join my mailing list where I send out weekly tips on how to start building love and confidence within yourself and never miss another post, get yourself signed up for my newsletter!