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

Why Your Husband Isn’t Making You Frustrated Ep 18

Why Your Husband Isn't Making You Frustrated | Relationship Coach

I frequently talk about how other people can’t make us feel a certain way. They can’t make you feel loved, valuable, angry, annoyed, certain, silly, unloved, or frustrated. It’s 100% ok if you disagree with me because there are times when I will argue with myself about this fact. Well, actually, when I think about it intellectually, I am well aware of the fact that my thinking about a person or a circumstance is what makes me feel a certain way, but when in the middle of an emotional experience, it is often easy to forget all logic, jump in the deep end of the pool and start fighting for our belief that if other people would behave differently, we could feel better. So today, I want to talk about how to own your emotions to see why your husband isn’t making you frustrated.

There are still times when Jeff does something, and off my brain goes, it forgets everything I know and does what I’ve taught it so well to do, which is to defend and protect myself. So what I do not want to do here is discourage you from digging into what I am going to talk about today because there is a significant difference between the result I get now and the result I used to get, so follow along.

This work that I share with you every week is work that evolves, and it’s work that you will never quit doing unless you want to quit growing and improving your relationship with yourself and your relationship with your partner. I say that to help you understand that old engrained thoughts will continue to pop up once in a while, expect them. Still, as you incorporate the practices I share with you each week, you’ll begin to recognize these thoughts as old, allowing you to let them go instead of reacting in ways that don’t serve you and your relationship.

Let’s first dig into the why behind the truth that your husband isn’t making you feel frustrated or any other emotion you might be feeling when you think about your partner and what they say or don’t say, do, or don’t do. To do this, I’d like you to think of someone besides your mate because we have higher expectations of how they should show up in our life when it comes to our mates. We expect them always to support us, always do what would feel good to us at the moment, and never do the childish things they do. So we have a higher set of standards for our partners, and it takes more laser focus to do this work on our closest relationships. So do the practice on less vulnerable relationships before digging in with your partner.

Let’s look at a girlfriend who has told you that she won’t have time to go on your yearly girl’s weekend because she will be spending it with her new boyfriend. You think you are frustrated and angry because of what she has told you, but the truth is that her words are not making you feel anything. How do I know that? I know that because she could say these same words to all of the other girls that go on your weekend trip and your husband, your mom, her mom, her boyfriend, and they would all have an array of different feelings. How can that be? The reason people feel different emotions around the same circumstance because they are all having different thoughts about the very same words.

It is our thoughts about someone’s words, lack of words, actions, or lack of actions that make us feel a certain way. For example, some women might have a girlfriend say the same words around their girl’s weekend and feel relief because they think that they don’t have it in them to organize girl’s weekend again this year. Another woman might feel sadness for the girl who chooses her new boyfriend over the girl’s weekend because she’s been there and done that, thinking that this might be a decision she will regret. Another girl might feel envy over this friend’s words because she is thinking how nice it would be to have a boyfriend that she would want to skip girl’s weekend over.

Get what I mean? Each of our emotions is generated by something we are thinking; sometimes, we don’t recognize a thought between the circumstance and the feeling because it is a practiced and quick response. We have practiced blaming others for how we feel; we don’t know how to own our feelings, recognize that we are creating them, and don’t see how disempowering it is to put our emotional health in the hands of others. The good news I have for you is that as you start practicing owning your emotions, you’ll get better at seeing the difference between the circumstances and the thoughts we think about them; that’s why I call this work a practice. As a gymnast, it’s the work of practicing, testing, practicing, testing, and never deciding to quit the practice, trusting that you will continue to grow and understand the more you practice.

Step one to owning your emotions

Start paying attention to when you feel any type of emotion, good or bad, and then see if you can describe how it feels in your body. Like when describing a headache or an upset stomach, describe how the emotion is showing up in your body. You can ask yourself questions like:

  • Where is this emotion located in my body?
  • Is it hot, or is it cold?
  • Bright or dark?
  • Fast or slow?
  • Smooth or rough?
  • Does it have a color?
  • Is it pulling in or expanding outwards?
  • Is it energetic or lazy?

These questions help you identify with what is happening in your body, and then you can ask yourself what this feeling is making you want to do? You can also ask why you are feeling this emotion and pay attention to how you respond. For example, are you blaming someone else by telling yourself that you feel this emotion because of what someone else said or did? If so, you know this is a lie. Then ask yourself what you think about what they said or did; this will clue you in to why you are feeling the way you are. You can also learn more about how to start feeling your emotions in this article I wrote: How To Start Feeling Your Emotions.

Step two to owning your emotions

The second step is simply noticing what is happening for you and why; it is about creating awareness in your body and in your mind. Your body is trying to tell you something, and instead of using your mind to retaliate and fix this circumstance, I want to recommend you tune into your body first. As you start to create awareness, you will notice that you will often still fall into the emotional trap of letting other people’s actions create how you feel; it’s ok. Remember what I said earlier? We have years of experience acting the way we have always acted; we have created automated responses. For me, I had fifty years of patterning to change, and that isn’t something that changes overnight. I like to think of this work just like all of the other work you have done in your life. As you start practicing and commit to the discipline of learning how to feel better and owning your emotions, you will notice a snowball effect; it will not take you an equal amount of time to change the patterning; our brains are smarter than that!

With time and consistency, though, like any good practice you have established in your life, it will become an automated process to where you don’t even notice that you are responding differently. With that said, there will still be times, after you have automated your practice, where old patterning shows up, a glitch in your brain’s neurotransmitter sequence that all of a sudden has you thinking old thoughts. I want to share that this isn’t something that should cause you to feel despair, though, because once you have started doing this work, you recognize the thought error and use your tools to change the sequence, again further ingraining your new thought sequence.

Step three to becoming the person who can let go of what other people do and decide on purpose how you want to feel

Discipline. You have to be committed to the discipline needed to create a life practice. To be willing to feel awful and know that through the awful is something better. The more you practice, the more you will notice how other people’s actions aren’t bothering you and how you can show up for them from a place of curiosity or compassion instead of judgment.

Every time you notice yourself feeling some emotion that has you withdrawing, holding in, acting out, or any other way that doesn’t serve your best interest in the relationship, you know that you will get through this and have the tools to work through the emotion. You have learned how to be aware of the emotion, feel the emotion and understand why it is there, allowing you to decide what you want to do with it.

The next best step to take in this process is having a coach help you do this work. I know for certain that I could never be where I am without the help of my coach; she helps me see what it is that is going on inside of me, what is blocking me from moving forward so that I can get a clearer vision and make a choice that better serves me.

If you are struggling with your marital relationship and can’t quite grasp how to let go of the emotions you think your partner is creating in you; I want to encourage you to schedule a consult call so you can talk about it with someone who knows how to help you move forward. Staying stuck in a place where you can’t see how to change how you feel about what your husband does or doesn’t do to make you feel better is not a fun place. But, I promise that through this place where you are right now is something much better in your marriage. On the other side of this is a marriage that feels better than you have ever felt in your romantic relationship, not a place where you and he expect each other to fill your needs and desires but a place where you want to.

My story might be different from yours, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I know how to help you navigate to the place you want to get to in your marriage. I, too, was in a place where I thought the only way to have a better relationship was to find someone different; many of you think the same way. When you can experience how powerful you actually are in creating a marriage that you love, that’s when your life begins. Are you ready to start living your best life? Let’s do this!

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.

Five Steps To Ending Negative Body Image Self Talk Ep 17

Five Steps To Ending Negative Body Image Self Talk | Relationship Coach

Negative self-talk is a real thing, we all do it, but there is a practice different from believing the lies. A practice you can utilize to quiet those negative saboteurs while allowing you to hear them, recognize them, dismiss their lies and access the part of your brain that has your best interests in mind. This practice is what I call mental fitness, which resonates with many of my listeners because many of you are quite familiar with the required consistent practice of weight lifting to strengthen and grow muscle. Lasting results don’t come from a temporary practice, though beneficial and it will move you forward but stopping the practice only reinforces old muscle memory. You are all probably quite familiar with the phenomena of consistent training bring you slow, permanent results while watching those gains quickly disappear over a short hiatus from your program. Today I’m going to share several tips to help you end your negative body image self-talk but remember, the key is consistent practice and belief that the practice will win you results that set you free from the control you’re giving your brain over your body image sabotage.

One of the best things about mental fitness is that you can do it anywhere, anytime, with no gym membership required. Oh, you didn’t know that was possible in your physical fitness practice as well? I’m here to tell you that it is; all you need is to decide that your practice is part of your day-to-day life, and then you use that powerful brain of yours to show you how. Yes, your brain is what produces all of your results!

Let me share a huge result that I am quite proud of producing for myself. It’s been almost five years since I’ve looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. Now, that doesn’t mean that my brain never offers up some sort of lie about what it sees in the mirror, but it’s much quieter now than it ever was in the past. I don’t squash it down and try harder to look “better” or different; it’s more of a whisper now that I gently notice and then excuse the thought, reminding my brain of who I am and how magnificent I have been created to be.

Most of my life I have done everything I could to change what I thought was unacceptable about myself.

I exercised.

Educated myself.

I learned how to eat right.

I read self help books.

I learned the latest and greatest makeup tricks.

You know what? None of it mattered. No matter what I did, that negative self-talk and desire to change was consistent; nothing I did was good enough to satiate the negative body image monster inside my head. I was never good enough; no matter what anyone else told me, I believed them to be liars. So what did I do? I tried harder, searched for a new level that might bring that satisfaction; it was a negative body image treadmill that never brought me to my desired destination.

Then one day, I decided enough was enough and that I would change this lifelong energy drain. I decided to step off the negative body image treadmill. I decided to stop denying God’s perfection of creation while being all-in on my journey to self-love, knowing that it would take some time, I committed myself to it. If you haven’t listened to my very first podcast episode, I highly recommend you go listen after you finish here: How To Start Loving Yourself.

The process of loving yourself includes quieting the negative self-talk. Period. Today we are focusing specifically on our bodies and how we talk about them. I want to invite you to follow the podcast and come back every week because every topic will bring you closer to the self-love needed to break this cycle. This month’s expert interview, which will release the last Tuesday of this month, is with master certified life coach Martha Ayim. Martha helps people end their relationship with binge eating and within the realm of what we talk about in this interview is the subject of body image and negative self-talk.

The first step to ending the negative body image self talk is to just decide to stop.

My intention here is not to make you mad because if you are anything like I was, you have tried this route with very little success. The problem is that you did not implement the other tools of change that I will be offering you today; you didn’t recognize that voice as a saboteur. Instead, you believed it. Believing that voice will only send you into the self reprimand that keeps you stuck and in a forever loop of powerlessness over your own mind and body.

The solution is within you, but you have to be committed to the end result; you have to believe in the truth that you are fully lovable and valuable, and worthy. Again, the ticket is committing and implementing ALL five of the steps I am sharing here today.

You have done a beautiful job over the years protecting yourself for some valid reason or other, you have taught your brain well, but now it’s time to re-teach it. There is no longer a reason to protect yourself; these thoughts are no longer serving you. You are an adult who gets to decide what you want to think, you get to decide to manage your mind, or you can decide to let your mind manage you, your choice. One will help you grow and increase the joy you experience in this life, and the other will continue having you search for something outside of yourself for that joy that keeps escaping you.

The next step is to understand the cognitive dissonance you are experiencing when it comes to what you currently believe about your body image.

To better understand cognitive dissonance, you can read a post I wrote specifically about this topic called What Is Cognitive Dissonance? Cognitive dissonance is the gap between where you are right now and the person you are becoming. In this instance, it would be looking at who you are right now, what you believe, how you feel, and how you behave versus the person you long to be, the person who believes down to their core that they are valuable and whole with certainty while no longer believing the voice inside their head that says they aren’t good enough as they are.

Your brain is very comfortable with your current belief, so comfortable that it has stored it away as an automatic response. It takes work, energy to believe something different, to change that old belief and exchange it for a new one. It’s like a child who loves its binky and will kick and scream when you take it away, until one day the child discovers that life is fine without that binky and maybe even a whole lot better. The child can clear the gap of the binky/no binky dissonance because they haven’t been using their binky for as many years as you have been telling your brain the story about your body.

Recognizing cognitive dissonance allows you to enjoy the journey instead of fighting against it. Understanding cognitive dissonance allows you to have compassion for the process and to trust yourself to know that you will keep doing this work until one day you look back and see how far you’ve come. It’s like looking at the long journey to swimming across the big lake in front of your Airbnb rental, thinking that you will never get to the other side. One stroke at a time, you tell yourself, one more, then another, until suddenly you find yourself on the other side of the lake, giving yourself a high five for persevering and not giving up on yourself.

The third step to ending the negative body image self talk is creating awareness.

This is where my mental fitness program comes into play. My mental fitness program is a simple, easy-to-implement process of noticing, hearing, and then dissipating the saboteur voices that we have partnered with over our lifetime.

Awareness is the first step of change; you being here searching for solutions to your negative self-talk and acknowledges that you are tired of the self-sabotage and ready to do something different. When you become aware of the action you are taking that you don’t want to take without squashing it down, again, unsuccessfully attempting to run away from it, that’s when you allow your brain to start coming up with solutions. See, you’ve already started the awareness problem by listening to this podcast.

As you create awareness and start taking the steps, I recommend you notice that you will continue to fall into old thought loops, but now the difference is that you recognize them and self-correct. The more often you put this pattern into effect, the less your old thought patterns show up.

A warning alert I want to share with you, to re-enforce what I shared earlier when talking about cognitive dissonance, is that your brain likes its old way of being; even if it feels like garbage, it’s a default, you do it on autopilot, it requires no extra thinking or energy consumption. The process will be a bit more difficult once you implement these tools because you have to bring your pre-frontal cortex into the process through deliberate interception. This is the process of any good change, though, eventually, your new thought patterning will become more auto-generated and committed to the primitive brain, something to look forward to!

Awareness includes calling out those old thoughts; I want to suggest you write them down, maybe using your notes app on your phone. Every time you look in the mirror or shop window as you walk by and say something negative, write it down, and then correct your thinking and remind yourself that you are beautiful. Yes, even if you don’t quite believe it. A super useful tool to help graduate into more believable thoughts, if thinking “I am beautiful.” isn’t working, is the thought ladder; you can read about that tool in my post titled How To Get From Here To There. Maybe that ladder thought is something like “I am contemplating the idea that I am beautiful.” There you go, bonus, a sixth tool to help you end your negative self-talk battle around body image.

My fourth tip is to work on creating compassion and empathy around the process.

Compassion and empathy are emotions that will always serve you well and open you up to understanding; they are emotions that open up your mind to its creative process, helping you come up with solutions. As you move through this process, you will start noticing the emotions you are feeling; some emotions open you up, expand you while others close you down, keeping you from changing. To help you with the process of learning how to experience your emotions, actually feel them, let me suggest you go read my post “How To Start Feeling Your Emotions.”

In my AwakenYou coaching program, one of the exercises I teach my clients is how to process emotions. Emotions are our body’s signal, our awareness tool. Learning how to tune into your emotions will help you become aware of what you are thinking and why; it is one of the most powerful tools I teach. The process of feeling your emotions opens you up to what your brain is trying to tell you, what it is trying to do for you and when you’re able to tap into this tool, you start to understand why you are feeling the way you are and see whether it is actually serving you or if it is an old, outdated, deeply engrained response that you can now choose to change.

Compassion, curiosity, and empathy towards yourself will always open you up to learning something new and helping you move past what keeps you stuck in old thought loops.

Finally, my last tip I am sharing today, a tip that will help close the gap even faster, it is the tool I call my self mentor.

This tool has evolved as I have utilized it, just like any other tool you have learned how to use. When you discover any new tool, you’re an amateur, a bit clumsy; you’re not really certain of the power the tool provides, but as you continue to use the tool, the power starts to reveal itself.

The future self mentor is the person you are becoming; you create her. Maybe you gather photos of her, you write about how she shows up for herself, how she holds herself, how she speaks to herself, everything about her you begin to envision. You start asking yourself how that future version of yourself would act right now; what would she say when she looks in the mirror and sees what she sees. Would she smile and wink at herself? Would she pat herself on the back? Would she lift her chest and stand tall?

Start creating your future self model, a vision board for who you are becoming, and watch grow into her.

As you do this work and implement these tools I have shared with you today, you will find yourself having your own back without relying on your husband to tell you how beautiful you are and then not believing him anyway. Of course, you still love it when he does so, but now you wink at him, give him a big hug and say, “Right on, honey, I couldn’t agree more with your thought!”

Remember, friend, this is a journey, and if you want help along the journey, then I’ve got your back; it’s what I do, and I love what I do! If you have any questions about this process or want help implementing these tools and all of the other tools I use to help women change their lives, then let’s chat soon! Let me come alongside your process, sharing some extra accountability and guidance to reach your goal with ease. Book your program inquiry call today and I look forward to hearing from you and helping you create your future self vision!

If you’re interested in learning about my Mental Fitness six-week course, valued at $1495, then get on my mailing list where I will be sharing all about this life changing program. Even better, every week I am giving away one of these programs to one lucky listener who reviews the podcast and sends a screenshot of that review to christine@christinebongiovanni.com, I will enter you into a weekly drawing that makes you eligible to join. If you don’t win, no worries, I keep everyone in the lottery, only taking out those who have already won. Reviewing is simple, scroll to the bottom of my podcast page and click on the “Write a Review” blue text, take a screenshot of your review and send it to me! I can’t wait to hear from you.

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.

Three Reasons Why We Lack Marital Confidence Ep 13

Three Steps To Building Self Trust | Relationship Coach

This week we’re going to talk about how building self-confidence in yourself will help you start building the confidence to create a marital relationship that you dreamt of having back when you said “Yes!” to his ask of having your hand in marriage. As we move through the years of our marital relationship, many of us find ourselves in a place so far from what we dreamed our marriage to be that we have no idea where to start in the journey to what we want. When we go back to the beginning of our marital journey, we had confidence that everything would be happily ever after because we saw our joy and happiness as evidence that all was well. Fast forward through the years of your marriage. You have a pile of reasons proving why your relationship isn’t working. You lack confidence in your ability to create a joyful ever after, and today we’re going to look at three reasons why you lack marital confidence so that you can get back on the road of navigating to your ideal marriage relationship.

This will help you to build back some desire so that you can actually believe that your wants are possible.

The number one reason you lack marital confidence is because of your lack of self-confidence.

I do not say this in a demeaning way. When we lack self-confidence we are often letting other people’s actions, or inactions, mean something about us.

I’ve always been a self-help junkie. As far back as I can remember, I was learning how to exercise, meditate, eat right, but knowing what I know now; I’m sure it was mostly to fit into the mold society deemed desirable.

So I could feel acceptance and approval.

Ok, maybe not the meditation, I think that was part of my deep desire to get connected spiritually as well as to discover myself.

Back to the feeling accepted.

This was always a struggle for me, always doing what I thought would make me fit in, feel accepted and good enough to be a part of the group.

I thought I would generate self-confidence by proving myself as acceptable.

I always looked for love from other people by doing everything for others until I discovered that the only true way to feel love was to start with loving myself. If you haven’t listened to my AwakenYou in your marriage podcast, episode 1 is all about How To Start Loving Yourself; I highly recommend you take a listen.

As I started digging into becoming self-confident, I started figuring out all of the things that I needed to work on and was on the road to a new belief and new way of life.

Secondly, we have low self-confidence because we don’t trust ourselves.

To discover if you trust yourself, you can go back to episode 10, One Simple Way To See If You Trust Yourself where I share one question that will help you see how much you trust yourself. If you discover from that episode that you might not have a great trusting relationship with yourself, you can go to last week’s episode, where I share Three Steps To Building Self Trust. (link)

As we start to build a foundation of self-trust, we start to build confidence in ourselves, and we start building our self-confidence. Yes, there is a difference between confidence and self-confidence; join me next week to take a deep dive into the difference, but today let’s distinguish the difference. Confidence comes from repeatedly doing something until we do it well; this repetition, failing until we get better, builds proof that we know how to do something; this is confidence, built through doing, taking steps forward, and learning. Self-confidence is created by doing things and being willing to do them wrong, being willing to experience whatever emotion rises when we fail and having our own back. We trust and know that our failure says nothing about ourselves except that we gave it our best in the moment. The more often we are willing to experience a negative emotion for the sake of growth, the more our self-confidence grows, and then hand in hand with that, we build confidence along the way.

If you look at your marriage, there might be an excellent chance that you haven’t been taking steps forward to create the relationship you dream of. Because you aren’t taking these steps, your confidence in your ability decreases; you aren’t exercising your marital confidence muscles. This process starts with learning how to trust yourself and take the steps you want to take, even when it feels uncomfortable, and building SELF-confidence.

The third reason we lack marital confidence is that we are afraid to feel our emotions.

The first step to creating marital confidence and self-confidence is learning how to feel and experience any emotion. Not being willing to do so weakens that marital confidence muscle. We’re afraid of not feeling loved, we’re afraid of being rejected, of feeling sad or disappointed, so we do other things that will make us feel temporarily satisfied in the moment. We seek pleasure at our own expense instead of delaying gratification. We want our partners to treat us the way we want them to treat us to feel good. Do you see how disempowering that is? What we do in AwakenYou is learn how to generate that positive, good feeling ourselves while letting our partners act and do as they choose. This is the gold of my program result; you get what you want without requiring your partner to join in the work.

Learning how to process our emotions instead of avoiding them allows us to build self-confidence to do the things we want to do in our marriage, building marital confidence by the doing.

Emotions are only vibrations in our body, and when we get up into that concept, we can recognize that much of our lives, we have been afraid of a feeling, a simple vibration, that will not kill us.

Learning how to experience any emotion is necessary to create the marital relationship you stopped dreaming of. Moving towards any goal in your life requires stepping into feeling and allowing the emotions of fear to surge through you while you take your next step. The beautiful thing about taking these steps in my one-on-one coaching program is that you’re not doing it alone; you have support and accountability.

Lastly, I want to share a bonus reason as to why you lack marital confidence.

Let’s get honest; most of us have learned what we know about marriage from our parents, step-parents, or whoever our initial caregivers were. When this fact was laid before my eyes, I smacked myself in the head – no wonder I sucked at this thing called marriage! I was using my parent’s marital playbook to build a relationship AND a relationship that I didn’t want! Now I am creating my own unique version of a marital relationship. This is one more awareness tool to give you the confidence you need to seek the help of someone who can guide you to where you want to go, not to where someone else has modeled you to go.

Becoming confident in yourself to build the marital relationship you want is a journey of empowerment and one without any regrets. Becoming maritally confident requires you to become self-confident, and it is completely possible, no matter what lies you may have told yourself in the past, today is a new day.

There is no better day than today to start creating the confidence you need so you can begin believing again in a new marital dream. You have the power to change the course of your marital journey, and I’d love to travel that beautiful road with you!

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.

Three Steps To Building Self Trust Ep 12

Three Steps To Building Self Trust | Relationship Coach

Today I had a consult with a woman who was having a difficult time making a decision, so I started asking some questions about actions she was taking, or not taking in her life. She didn’t trust her boss and then she admitted to several other people she didn’t trust, ultimately uncovering that she didn’t trust herself either. With her being able to uncover her distrust in herself, she could see the potential impact that could come from doing the work of building a trusting relationship in herself so she could let go of her lack of trust in others. Two weeks ago, we looked at one simple way to see if you trust yourself; please go back and listen to that episode if you haven’t already, it is episode 10, One Simple Way To See If You Trust Yourself, and this week, we will start working on that trust relationship. Today we’ll be looking at three steps you can start taking to build trust in yourself.

In episode 10, I shared some prompts for you to start becoming aware of how often you unknowingly let yourself down, thus building up that lack of trust in yourself. Those prompts included taking some time at the end of the day to take a look back and notice how many of the things you told yourself you would do, were actually followed through on. Then I asked you to look at what you didn’t follow through on and ask yourself why. That exercise was an exercise of self-awareness, not an exercise to look at all of the ways you are failing in life. Awareness is always the first step to creating change. I help my clients look at this newfound awareness with curiosity and empathy while exploring how we might want to start navigating towards something new.

Let’s look at three ways to start building self trust

Learn how to follow through on things you tell yourself you’re going to do.

This is, in my opinion, the most important step you can take and the easiest one to start implementing because it is actionable. When I say it’s actionable, I mean that you can start paying attention and prioritizing the items you want to be doing in your life. You can get them out of your head and schedule them on your calendar. This step is part math because once we get all of our desired actions out of our head and onto a piece of paper, we can create a process for prioritizing and scheduling. We can start to see that there is only so much time in the day, a portion of which you want to be sleeping and another portion is your time at work, so now you have to start determining how long each item will take and where you are going to fit it into your weekly puzzle.

Here is where you begin to notice what your brain starts to do. You begin to see how much time you have left to yourself, and you start squeezing all of the things into those time spaces.

Here is where you get to start running experiments to see how your plan is working. Did you allow enough time for the item you scheduled? Did you take more time with your allotted task and steal time from the next item you had scheduled? Did your item pop up on your schedule, and you decided it wasn’t something you really wanted to do at the moment, so you did something different? This is where experimentation with your scheduling and daily planning comes into play. You learn more about ending your time management battle and start figuring out how to honor what you said you want to do. When we look at what we want to do and work on the implementation of learning how to do what we say we’re going to do, it is never a process that tears you down for doing it wrong. It is a process of trial and error and managing what is going on in your head to learn and move forward.

Let’s look at something you want to follow through on; let’s use my relationship huddle as an example. You can read about the relationship huddle in my previous blog, where I teach you how to create a twenty-minute meeting that will forever change your relationship.

  • To begin, I like to write down my reasons for wanting to do what it is I am telling myself I want to do, as well as all of the reasons I don’t want to. This step alone helps me be all in on my reason for making room in my calendar for this item, and it also allows me to decide if it isn’t important so I can let it go, kick it out from consuming space in my head.
  • Then I like to write down all of the reasons I’m not doing the said item; what is in the way of me following through? It is always something I am thinking which is causing a feeling that drives me not to do what I say I want to do. It’s important to uncover this blurry obstacle that is keeping me from following through and building trust in myself.
  • Then it’s time to start coming up with a plan for moving forward. Please write it down, schedule it, walk through and bring to light emotions that keep you from moving forward.
  • Then start playing around with what emotions you will need to be feeling in order to follow through on your meeting, knowing that sometimes fear and discomfort might be two of the emotions that will have to come alongside courageousness.
  • Another tool I like to use is to look forward to what it will be like when I have followed through on what I told myself to do. I work on embracing and experiencing how proud and powerful I will feel.
  • Then I move forward boldly. When that item comes up on the calendar, I watch what comes up for me; I remember who I will be after I follow through; I embrace whatever discomfort is coming up and do what I said I would do.
  • Lastly, I plan time to look back and evaluate (is there a post I can link?)
  • Rinse and repeat.

The more you do this process, the more you start to trust yourself, EVEN if you don’t follow through because you start building a process for following through, and you start building a belief in yourself that you will figure this out. This is what builds self-trust, not that everything turns out as you expect but that you gave it your best and used it to learn and grow and move forward.

Learn how to experience any emotion.

You can see from the step I just walked you through that learning to become aware of emotions you are experiencing is one of the first things you will have to do to start following through. The main reason you are not following through is because of an emotion you aren’t willing to experience at the moment. Instead, you are choosing something that feels better at the moment, at your own expense.

Learning how to experience any emotion is a large part of what I help my clients with while they are going through the process of creating the romantic relationship they dream of. Taking steps to make this happen in your life is usually a bit uncomfortable, change is uncomfortable, sometimes so much that we choose to be more comfortable with what we are unhappy with. When that discomfort of doing something to help your relationship grow becomes more desirable than the comfort of staying the same, that’s when and where the magic in your relationship can start happening.

Make a decision to change your opinion of yourself.

As you start doing this work, you will also want to start looking at your self-belief, what you believe you are capable of, what you believe you are worthy of achieving. You will have to start peeling back the layers that keep you from loving yourself fully and believing that you are strong, lovable, capable, worthy, and competent. As you start creating this belief, self-trust starts becoming part of who you are and what you do. If you go back to episode one, How To Start Loving Yourself, you will learn this is something you can start believing today; you can decide and be done. Of course, your brain will keep coming back to offer you that old, conditioned thought to think, but today is the day you can begin to change that thought into one that will serve you best. This decision will build self-trust, self-confidence, and your best marital experience ever.

Building trust is one of the most important things you can do for yourself and your marriage. Trusting others starts with you. Join AwakenYou, and let’s start the process together!

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.