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.

Marital Jealousy And How To Let It Go Ep 16

Marital Jealousy And How To Let It Go | Relationship Coach

Jealousy is an emotion that most of us have felt on some level in our romantic relationships and is quite different from envy, a word often used interchangeably. Today I’ll chat a bit about the difference between the two while focusing on jealousy within romantic relationships and how it can bring up emotions that can push our relationship apart if we don’t recognize the root of why we are feeling this emotion. I will also share how to address jealousy to best support our own mental health and wellness. Let’s dig into what marital jealousy is and how you can start the process of letting go and building a more connected relationship with your partner.

Let’s first look at the definition of envy:

Envy, from Wikipedia, is an emotion that occurs when a person lacks another’s superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it.

First, let’s look at our reasons for wishing someone lacked the quality, achievement, or possession. Wishing someone else lacked that quality that we are feeling envy over is us thinking that we can’t have what they have and because we think we can’t have it, we could feel better about ourselves if that other person didn’t have it.

I actually love being curious when I notice feeling envious of someone’s achievement, quality, or possession. Typically, I will initially notice a feeling of discontent around what someone else is doing or something they have. I notice myself judging them as possibly being irresponsible or maybe better than I am, making me feel inferior. When I become aware that I am judging them, myself, or the circumstance, I enjoy asking myself what it is about what the other person is doing, or what they have, that I wish I could do or wish I had. At this point, I can decide whether I want to pursue what they are going after and doing or if I want to admire them and let go of envy. At this point, I can actually reach out to them from a place of admiration and gratitude. Gratitude because their accomplishment has pushed me to become better and to become aware of a weakness in myself and admiration for their ability to step into fulfilling a desire in their life.

All of our emotions are signals that we want to be aware of, just like the traffic signals; if we ignore them, we will eventually get to a place where we are hurting and become victim to the emotion or a place of dissatisfaction in ourselves because we aren’t stretching and growing into our capability. When we can slow down, pause, use the signal to help us decide where we want to go next, we can let the emotion guide us to a place of spacious, conscious thinking that allows us to let go or open up to a new adventure in our life. When we’re able to process the emotion of envy, it can open us to inspiration around something we’ve been wanting to do but haven’t allowed ourselves permission to do so.

The definition of jealousy:

Jealousy, according to Wikipedia, generally refers to the thoughts or feelings of insecurity, fear, and concern over a relative lack of possessions or safety.

Jealousy is a human relational experience that becomes evident in the early ages of human development and envelopes other emotional aspects like anger, resentment, fear, inadequacy, worthlessness, disgust. When we look at jealousy within the confines of marriage, it can tear a relationship apart and cause a couple to create distance between themselves. Still, when we look at it from a different perspective, we can see jealousy as a place where you can work on your own personal growth.

Oftentimes, jealousy is rooted in low self-esteem, lack of self-compassion, self-trust, fear of unmet needs. It is often insecurity within ourselves around our desirability, ability, and worthiness to be a good partner, and we project that insecurity onto our partner. Seeing this fear within ourselves opens up a beautiful opportunity to dig in, explore, look inward and grow.

Going back to listen to episode 1 (How To Start Loving Yourself), episode 10 (One Simple Way To See If You Trust Yourself), and then episode 12 (Three Steps To Building Self Trust) will help you start taking steps to build your self-confidence and allow you to start the process of letting go of the grip jealousy might have in your marriage relationship.

When we start looking at our jealous feelings, we start looking at what is going on within ourselves and see what is triggering the emotional response. Learning how to process your emotions helps you to see where the weak link inside of you might be and then opens up your mind to the possibility of creating a conversation around what you are experiencing without putting the blame on your partner.

When we start looking inward, becoming aware of the fear that is arising within ourselves, and then do the work of processing through what thoughts are coming up for us, we can start separating out what is simply insecurity within ourselves and possibly something we might want to discuss with our partner. If we choose to have a conversation with our partner, it will come after taking time to access and manage, coming up with what you might say and how you will say it in a way that centers around you and your thoughts and feelings, without placing any blame on them for creating how you feel. We can state the circumstance, and what thoughts it generated for us, and how those thoughts made us feel; we do this process through a thought download (read more about this tool in my post “A Daily Tool To Manage Your Mind”) and then running some of those thoughts through a thought model (learn about what the thought model is and how you can use this tool in my post “Self Coaching Model”) so that we can see how we are producing our current result. When we discover the result that WE are producing and see that it is all being created within ourselves, this is often the point where we can start exploring a different option, an option that feels better for us.

When we’re open to having a conversation about what we are experiencing it opens up a vulnerability in our relationship which helps us create a more deep intimate connection with each other and helps create awareness for both parties. These conversations will often open us up to a different option for ourselves and for our partner. We went through an intimacy series recently and this type of conversation where you are opening up to how you are feeling helps build emotional intimacy, you can go back to episode 6 to learn more about emotional intimacy and how to increase it in your marriage.

Let’s briefly talk about three different types of relationship jealousy:

Projection jealousy

Projection jealousy is when we are projecting our own thoughts onto our partner. For example, we are being overly aware of our partner’s actions, jealous of things they are doing or saying, and then turning around and seeing how we might be doing the same thing, creating insecurity around ourselves and our relationship. We are projecting ourselves onto our partner to find evidence of how they may be doing the same thing. Possibly we are looking for validation outside of our marriage because we don’t feel like we are getting it within our marriage, so then we are looking for the same thing in our partner’s actions instead of focusing on ourselves, validating ourselves, and treating our partner the way we want to be treated.

Protection jealousy

Protection jealousy comes when we want to protect ourselves from something that we think might hurt us. It could show up as us attempting to control our partner’s actions to feel better and feel safe. An example could be checking your partner’s email or text messages to protect yourself from something that might be happening that could tear your relationship apart. When we build trust in ourselves, we start letting go of the control we have been placing on our relationship; we’re not ignorant to what is going on in our relationship, we’re actually more in tune with what is happening because we are engaging with our partner instead of sneaking around, focusing on something that isn’t building up the relationship and not trusting them.

Building our self-trust and self-confidence brings us awareness when we feel negative emotions and helps us dig into the why’s of that emotion versus placing the why in the hands of our partner. It empowers us to create the change we want without waiting and needing our partner to do it for us. We actually have a clearer focus of what we are creating in our relationship and trust that we are building a loving, connected, intimate bond with our partner.

Competition jealousy

Competition jealousy is when we are jealous of what we see other people getting and feeling jealousy that we aren’t getting that attention. When we look at this in our marriage, we could look at it from the perspective of scarcity, that we feel like there isn’t enough love and attention to go around, that it all has to be directed to us and if it’s being directed towards our spouse it means we are lacking. I really believe that there is plenty of love to go around when we manage our minds, and we see how emotions like jealousy are limiting our ability and capacity to love. When we take a look at the thought creating this type of jealousy, we will often find that we do not share the love that we wish we were getting, thus depriving us of the love in return.

Feeling the green eyes of jealousy isn’t such a bad thing; it means that we want something from our partner that we feel we aren’t getting for ourselves. We can let this green monster make us angry and resentful, have us pulling away from our partners, taking us further away from the relationship we want or, we can use it as a sign of love and compassion we have for our partner. A signal of an area for us to grow and a way to share with our partner how we would like to be treated and shown love and affection, an opportunity to be the one to take the action that you wish he would take.

Today could be the day where you take your jealousy and use it to pull yourself closer to your partner instead of pushing them away. If you are feeling jealous of your partner and are struggling with how to move out of it, I would love to have a conversation with you about the ways you can turn that jealousy into learning more about who you are and what you want in your marriage. You can book either a free coaching session or a program inquiry call today and notice how that action alone will create some ease in your life!

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.

One Simple Way To See If You Trust Yourself Ep 10

One Simple Way To See If You Trust Yourself | Relationship Coach

All of us have struggled with times in our lives when we didn’t believe in ourselves, times when we didn’t fully trust we could reach a goal we set for ourselves; I’m willing to say that it plagues most of us every single day. I know there are days when I have a positive mindset and everything I have said I would do gets accomplished, but then there are other days where my mind is convinced I’ll never “make it.” Learning how to trust yourself is a practice well worth doing because every time you take a step forward and prove self-trust to yourself, your brain will more often trust you. Today I’m going to share one simple way to see if you trust yourself; this example was the first time I sat down with myself and told myself the truth about whether I trust myself or not. 

I used to believe that I trusted myself, but honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it; I just denied that I didn’t trust myself. I thought I trusted myself because I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone else, so of course, I thought I trusted myself. What I have found to be the truth, though, is that as I have learned how to trust myself, I have let go of my lack of trust in other people. I have found confidence in myself to take care of myself, to recognize when others might be attempting to take advantage of me but not always assuming upfront that they are. I trust everyone until they give me a reason not to trust them.

Today I want you to ask yourself if you trust yourself.

Answer that question and then ask yourself a few others. Why do you think you trust yourself? What does it mean to trust yourself? Do you trust other people, or are you suspicious of them? Do you check your partner’s phone messages, do you listen to their phone conversations, do you look with distrust to your co-workers who are chatting together without you?

I’m not telling you that you should be unaware of what is happening around you, but when you trust yourself, you can let other people be who they are. You can join co-workers in their conversations without wondering what they think of you. You can love your spouse without having to check on them behind their back; as a matter of fact, if you have a question for them, you would ask from a place of curiosity or conversation rather than distrust.

Here is one simple way to see if you trust yourself:

Ask yourself how many times per week you do what you told yourself you would do. How many times do you tell yourself you’re going to do something, and then you don’t follow through?

Every time you do this, you solidify your brain’s belief that you are not going to do what you say you will do. Every time you tell yourself you’re going to do something and you don’t do it, you reinforce that distrust superhighway in your brain. If this is you, you know it, and it’s not something to be ashamed of; it’s something we do. When we become aware of a behavior that isn’t serving our best life, it is an opportunity to change it, to grow, and this is what life coaching is all about. This is why I love life coaching because there is always something to uncover within ourselves, something that is holding us back from being our next best selves. When we uncover this behavior, we can get to doing the work of solving and changing.

Ask yourself about today. How many times today did you follow through and do what you told yourself you were going to do? How many things did you tell yourself that you would do today that you didn’t do?

“I’m going to eat ‘healthy’ today.”

“I’m going to have a 10 minute conversation with my husband tonight.”

“I’ll call so and so after work.”

“I’m going to plan a get-away for our anniversary.”

How many times have you carried over that one task you have been telling yourself to do for ummm, a month, maybe even longer? If I look back at my life a couple of years back, I remember having lists of things that I wanted to get done. I would carry many of those to-dos over and over and over every week, but now I no longer do that. Sure, there are times when I carry a task over for a few weeks, but if I continue to do so for more than a few weeks, I ask myself why I’m not completing this task. If it’s important, I have a little discussion with myself, look at why I might be avoiding and solve the problem and get the task done. Sometimes I simply decide that this isn’t important enough; I’m not making it a priority, so I let it go trusting myself, knowing that if it’s important enough, it will come up again, and I can re-visit it at that time.

Think about that friend of yours who is consistently late to commitments you plan; maybe she doesn’t show up or bows out at the last moment; do you trust her to show up on time anymore? Do you expect her to have an excuse as to why she can’t make it this time and find yourself surprised when she does commit?

There are a few important tips that I will be sharing with you next week to help you start the process of building trust within yourself, but for now, I want you to start paying attention to the times throughout the day and the week that you don’t follow through on what you tell yourself you will do. I suggest you take five minutes at the end of the day and write the things down and then take another five minutes to answer the question: “Why didn’t I do this thing I keep telling myself to do?” Creating awareness this week to the ways you are re-inforcing the belief that you don’t trust yourself, and then next week, I’ll share ways to start taking steps towards building self-trust.

Look at yourself honestly and then decide if you like not trusting yourself.

I didn’t like it so I decided to change it, tune in next week to learn how to change it!

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.