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

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

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.

The Importance of Healing Past Relationships

The Importance of Healing Past Relationships | Relationship Coach

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Last week, during my quiet time, I was reading from Mark’s book in the New Testament, and there were two verses in the second chapter that made me pause and take deeper during my prayer time. The verse helped deepen the belief I hold around the importance of healing past relationships being included as we do the work to improve our current and future relationships.

First, let me share Mark 2:21-22 “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

Creating your new self relationship starts today.

Much of the work we do in AwakenYou my 1:1 coaching program is about coming up with a vision of who you want to be in your relationship. I work together with my clients, helping them dream and explore what that might look like for them, and we do the work of making that dream a reality in their life. As we start doing this work of evolving into the person we want to be, there is a lot of cognitive dissonance around who we have identified as in our past and who we are becoming.

The work is multi-faceted in a way that as we peel off our old identity, just like when we exfoliate our skin, past “impurities” begin to rise to the surface.

As we do the work of living into our future self we have to do the work of sorting through and healing our past.

Many of us have stories from our past that we’d rather forget. Sometimes we think that we don’t want to forget them; they are part of who we are. Our past is definitely part of who we are, but as we start creating our future selves, it is important that we also do the work of sorting out our past and seeing where we are holding on to stories that aren’t serving us anymore.

As we work on creating a fierce new romantic relationship, we carry with us all of the old relationship stories that get in the way of us fully experiencing the love that could be available in our current relationship.

Here is where the verse comes in. Jesus talks about creating a patch on an old garment with new fabric and how the new will pull away from the old, making the tear worse than before. This is exactly what happens in our lives when we start repairing and living into our potential if we don’t do the work of healing our past relationships.

What healing our past relationships looks like.

This process is about re-writing our current past life story in a way that serves us. I love to ask my clients to think of three ways that their past relationships could be turned into a gift and opportunity. I also ask them what unresolved matters from past relationships might be keeping them from having the relationship they dream of with their current or future mate.

Jesus’ words proved several things to me, the first being proof of how He speaks and teaches us truth through The Father’s words. The second being how powerful the work being done in my coaching program is and how much it aligns with my goal of bringing people closer to a life they were created to live; a life full of love that feels fierce and free.

I want to invite you to come experience what this freedom feels like for you in your life and in your closest relationship.

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

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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.

Creating Vibrant Love Relationship

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Rachelle felt stuck in her current relationship, so stuck she has a hard time calling it a love relationship, she views it more as a partnership because the love she used to feel seems to have disappeared. Like all of her past relationships this one started out with fireworks yet this one was very different, she had a better perspective from the beginning. She stepped back a bit when things seemed to heat up too quickly, she didn’t let herself get committed too fast because she had seen where that got her. Yet, here she was again, in the same place she always landed, loveless and looking for the thrill elsewhere.

No relationship can maintain the whirlwind and energy requirement of the relationship that is born in a wildfire; eventually, there is a crash and burn with energy scattered out into other areas of your life, places that were neglected during the wildfire. The relationship deflates and gets neglected. You feel alone and can’t see how you have gotten to this place. You crave a healthy love relationship but have no idea of how to get there, much less where to start. Instead, you look for something new, a shiny new something to bring excitement back into your life, all the while pushing away that which you want most – a vibrant, lasting love relationship.

So, what is the solution to having a vibrant love relationship?

Rachelle was committed to her current relationship; she didn’t want to do what she had always done in the past – run away to something “better.” That commitment didn’t change how she felt though: tired, disappointed, lonely, hopelessly thinking this is what a lasting relationship looks like. She attempted to divert the pain by distracting herself with experiences, thinking they might bring joy back into her life: painting, time with girlfriends, retreats, sports; though these activities brought her life needed joy, they didn’t bring joy into her love relationship.

The solution to the problem of figuring out how to get from hopeless to vibrant in your love relationship:

Decide on what you want. Ask yourself this question and write down ten of your best answers: “Wouldn’t it be nice if <fill in the blank>.”

Deciding and defining what you want in your love relationship is where you start. Sure, you may not know “the how” to get those results but until you define what you want you will forever be stuck in avoidance, blame, and inaction.

That is what Rachelle did and here is how she did it:

  • She decided to be all in on her marriage and came up with a plan to fight for what she wanted
  • She defined her desires by writing them down and prioritizing them
  • She made an intentional daily plan of the steps she would take toward those goals, focusing on the one that was most important to her
  • She made this work a life goal that she would develop – not a “today” all or nothing goal
  • As she took steps forward into her unknown, she started to gain clarity and perspective, wisdom, knowledge
  • She re-commits to her goal daily and uses “mistakes” as data to learn instead of evidence of failure
  • She takes the process seriously because she cares; it is a priority for her
  • She stops assuming that she is destined to have a dull, unsatisfactory love relationship and starts fighting for her desires, for what she has defined as her wants
  • She prioritizes what is important to her in her life and makes them a daily habit
  • She assesses all of the other shiny objects in her life to determine whether they are helping her get closer to her goals or distracting her

It wasn’t until Rachelle clearly decided on what she wanted that she could start making that desire a reality in her life. Rachelle isn’t where she wants to be in her love relationship but she can clearly see how far she has come and is fully enjoying the process of making this dream come true in her life. As they say, she is starting to see the fruit of her labor.

What is it that you want out of your love relationship and how will you start making it a reality instead of a wish? Until you are committed there will be hesitancy, the chance to always pull back and stop feeling uncomfortable. Once you commit yourself then God steps in as well. A whole stream of events arise from that one decision that are in your favor; incidents, meetings, understanding, power, financial support that you would have never dreamed would come your way.

Cinderella says that a dream is a wish your heart makes, let’s make that wish into a dream that you create actionable steps to making your reality.

🎧 Audio version of blog here!

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

I’d love to offer a free call for you to work out whether or not my program and life-changing promise is a fit for you. Either book your call now or send me an email with your availability, your future life is waiting for you.

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