Having a strong sense of self is so valuable in our parenting journey. It allows for us to have healthy, strong, and beautiful relationships with our children, where a struggling sense of self breaks down our relationships and actually creates more struggle with our sense of self. The work we do to develop our sense of self will allow us to have be…

This week we are continuing with our discussions about sense of self, and focusing on how it impacts our marriages. It is really difficult, if not impossible, to have a strong, healthy, intimately connected marriage relationship if we don't have a strong sense of self. When we have an underdeveloped sense of self, we lessen our capacity to really l…

Continuing on with our sense of self series, today we are applying it to dating. When we have a strong sense of self, we approach dating with courage, confidence, and conviction. We aren't afraid of saying 'no' or being rejected. That's not to say we love it when it happens, but it doesn't rock our world because we understand that people's preferen…

This week we arae digging deeper into what our sense of self is and seeing how either a reflective sense of self or a solid sense of self show up in our lives. All of the work we do here on the podcast stems from a solid sense of self, so as we clean up our thoughts and get more clear on who we are, how we are, and why we are, we can be more empowe…

Our sense of self, how we see ourselves, how we understand ourselves, and how we accept ourselves is core to our capacity to show up in healthy ways in our lives. When we have a strong sense of self, all aspects of our lives run more smoothly, from our personal growth and happiness to our ability to have happier and more successful relationships. W…

Many of us, when we get divorced, create a story about our ex that keeps us stuck. And even if you're not divorced, you may have a story about your current marriage or family that keeps you stuck. Stuck in victim mentality, where you feel disempowered and at the mercy of someone else to change before you can feel better. Very often, we can't change…

In his book, The New Rules of Marriage, Terrence Real talks about five losing strategies that we often use in our marriages. I think all of us are guilty of using these, but when we are aware of what they are, and are willing to see how we have and do use them in our relationships, we can start to clean up our thinking and our behaviors and really …

Some decisions are harder than others. Everyone I have worked with or talked to who has gotten divorced says that their decision to do it was the hardest one of their life. Whether it's divorce, or another decision that is super difficult for you to make, understanding why it's difficult and how you can process all the pieces is a valuable part for…

Why is it that we can be so hard on ourselves for being human? We were created, by God, to be a human, and yet we can have such a difficult time embracing our imperfect humanity. When we can instead embrace our humanity, love the learning journey, and praise the imperfect path, we will not only grow faster and with more comfort, but we will enjoy t…

We all seem to have this innate drive and desire to be right. And yet, there's a pattern I often see that the more we are right in a relationship, the weaker the relationship is. This is because we often push our being right on others at the expense of them feeling safe. They feel judged, criticized, and maybe angry, but not safe. And creating safe…

Remember the analogy about filling our buckets? I don't love that one. And the reason I don't is because I feel it leaves us always in a scramble for keeping out buckets full since we're always emptying them out with acts of service. So, here's an idea for you. How about if we move into a space of overflow, where our service for others comes from o…

It can be super easy to slide into a life that we're not passionate about. I've heard so many people say that their life isn't what they want, but it's okay. They have leearned to tolerate a life that feels far below what their spirit is aching for. And that's not okay. You have great things to do and amazing contributions to make in this world, an…

Often in middle age we get really comfortable, and in that comfort, we neglect that inner voice inside of us that says we still have great things to do, that there is still growth and understanding for us to move into. And yet, it can feel scary to listen to that voice and courage up and do something different. But until we do, we will never find t…

One of the most important things we can do when we want to grow personally is to learn to be honest with ourselves. And when we rely upon the phrase, 'I don't know' when things come up for us, we are being dodgy. We are not being honest with ourselves because, we really do know. Sometimes it's just painful and a lot of work to look deep within ours…

Last week we revisited a concept called 'clean love', a space where we learn to love without expectations of others. A question I frequently get when discussing clean love is, 'But aren't there inherent expectations in relationships, such as a marriage?' The answer to that is absolutely. So, in this episode, we are going to be discussing how to hav…

Today we are revisiting episode #92 Clean Love. This is one of my favorite concepts that I teach about, and for those of you who haven't gotten that far back in listening, here's your chance to catch up on this concept. Clean love is a space where we learn to love without expectation, without an agenda, something that many of us don't know how to d…

Many of us were raised to believe that not rocking the boat was the best bet for happy relationships, and yet, from my experience, not rocking the boat created an unequal relationship that caused feelings of either resentment or contempt in my relationship, both of which were very destructive. Rocking the boat is not only necessary, but also an imp…

We hear a lot of talk about how hard it is to raise toddlers and teenagers, but not many of us were prepared for the challenges of having adult children. In this episode we are discussing five reasons it can be so challenging and how to work through them so you can be the kind of person you really want to be with your adult children. Want to check …

In recent years, fawning has been added to the survival responses of flight, flight, and freeze. While fight is a conflict strategy and flight and freeze are avoidant strategies, fawning is referred to as an appeasement strategy. When we fawn we seek to bring ourselves into alignment with the other person, who our brains perceive as a threat, by pe…

Sometimes the decisions we need to make feel overwhelming and super scary. And because of that we hesitate and procrastinate, and we drag it out and cause ourselves extra hours, days, weeks, months, or even years of angst as we struggle to make the decision. How can we find the confidence to make decisions easier and faster? And how will we know if…

People having a mid-life crisis is common enough that it is often the focus of movies and tv shows, memes and jokes. It is often portrayed as middle-aged people buying expensive cars or running off and having an affair. But a mid-life crisis does not need to be something that brings down the financial well-being or the family. If we understand it a…

Setting healthy boundaries is an important part in every relationship, and sometimes, it is just so hard. When the other person is not happy about the boundary, when they get angry or make accusations or threats, it can be so challenging to stick with what we feel is important for our relationship. So, when we get pushback from those few special pe…

This week I get to interview my husband, Sione, on his experience with moving forward after divorce. Though it can often feel as though divorce is the end, and it absolutely is in some ways, it can also be the beginning of greater self-awareness, cleaning up your dysfunctional behaviors, and creating a life, and even a relationship, you could only …

Divorce is tough, and when it happens to you, it can be devastating, and it can feel like the end. And to be honest, in many ways it is. But divorce can also be the beginning of finding yourself in a way you never have before. It can be the beginning of understanding who you really are and how you can grow into a healtheir and happier version of yo…

There are parts of our relationships that we would consider 'business', and parts that we would consider 'personal'. When we get the two all jumbled together, we end up with a lot of drama and miscommunication. On this podcast I'm talking with my great friend and fellow coach Wendy Lee Johnson about how we can recognize these two aspects of our rel…

In Terrence Real's new book 'Us', (one of my newest favorites) he talks about our adaptive child. This is the part of us that learned to adapt to the dysfunctional parts of our childhoods, which we all had. And although these adaptive behaviors served and protected us as children, very often they are destructive to our adult relationships. In this …

When I work with many of my clients regarding their one-up and one-down beliefs and behaviors, they often find themselves at a loss to describe what an equal response would look like or sound like in their circumstance. We don't live in a world where equal partnerships have been modeled for us, in fact, mostly we live in a world where the opposite …

Some of the areas where we can feel the most stuck in our lives are places where we are just dabbling with change in our lives rather than digging in and doing what needs to happen to create the change we want. And yet, dabbling is comfortable and easy and even justifiable, whereas committing to doing is scary and risky and requires some determinat…

When we're not paying close attention, we can very easily slip into critical words and behaviors in our relationships. Often, we won't even see it, because in our minds we are being helpful or just expressing concern or our opinion, but it can still very easily be perceived as criticism. And criticism breaks down relationship by treading on trust a…

We live in a society that can be a little happiness obsessed at times. And though the thought of being happy all the time can sound lovely, it's just not going to happen. Life is meant to be messy, to be challenging, and to provide us with a lot of opportunities to figure out the tough stuff. It can be difficult to remember this when we live in a w…

Most of us, at one time or another, have had a story that we are not good enough. And it can really wreak havoc in our lives. It can cause us to feel insecure, and from that place we struggle to be the person we really want to be. Understanding how to address our 'not good enough' thoughts is a life-changing skill that will bring a confident and be…

It is really easy for us to create dysfunctional and destructive relationships when we haven't learned how to respect and honor others' personalities, preferences, and perspectives. These three things are at the heart of who people are, and when we reject these things, we reject them. And when we reject them, we shut down the opportunity to create …

Although I talk about the thought model and use it here on the podcast, it's been a while since I talked about the basic parts of it and how they work together. On this podcast we will be looking at how the circumstances in our lives are neutral, how we have thoughts about those circumstances, how those thoughts create feelings, how our feelings fu…

John Gottman is a brilliant relationship expert who has done an amazing amount of research on what makes marriages successful. He has identified four elements of dysfunctional behavior in marriages that are especially destructive, and he calls these The Four Horsemen. These four elements are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. In …

Our primitive brain does some amazing things for us. However, if we aren't paying attention, it can keep us stuck and struggling to create the kind of life we really want to have. When we learn to manage our primitive brain and engage our pre-frontal cortex, we have the capacity to really show up for our life in the ways we want. On today's podcast…

Today Sione and I are celebrating our second year of marriage, and we have a lot to celebrate! In this podcast we are talking about how we have grown this past year, tools we have learned and implemented, and ideas we have come to understand better. This is a chance for you to see how the tools I teach here on the podcast are implemented in real li…

I think a lot of us grew up believing, at some level, that love was a reward for good behavior. And yet, when looked at through the eyes of God, love is never a reward. Love is actually the first and greatest commandment, it is a law. The law of love teaches us that regardless of how others act, regardless of how we're treated, regardless of what i…

Many of the people I work with who are struggling in their marriages find friendship with their partner to be elusive. It was there when they got married, and over time, they have become more and more distant, negative, and dismissive, until they find they just don't have a good friendship with their spouse anymore. And this is a huge problem. Dr. …

I hear so many people who just want us all to get along. What many of them are meaning is, why can't everyone have the same opinions and wants and needs? Why doesn't everyone just do things the way I want and then it would be easy? Of course that would be easy, it would also defeat a huge part of the reason we are here on earth, to learn to be more…

When we feel safe in our relationships, we feel we can show up with more vulnerability. When we show up with more vulnerability, we create more emotional and physical intimacy. But oftentimes, the behaviors we are engaging in in our relationships put the other person into protective mode rather than feeling safe, and so we struggle to create the co…

So many of us did not learn growing up what it means to be in a relationship. If you're like me, you thought that growing up and getting married would mean that you would have someone to love you, to shore up your insecurities, to validate you, or to agree with your opinions. If you're like me, what you wouldn't have thought was that a relationship…

When I really got serious about dating in my 50's, I used something called the 90-day Relationship. An idea baby of Brooke Castillo from The Life Coach School, I took it and ran with it. Basically, you're all in, fully committed, and figuring things out for 90 days. It was a brilliant process for me to figure out relationships more and to find my p…

Dating in the middle part of our lives is a different ballgame than when we were in our 20s. Thank goodness! We have a much better understanding of who we are and what is really important to us in a relationship. And using the tools you learn here on the podcast you will be able to create something very different. I'm going to be sharing with you s…

Divorce is a major life event, and one that can leave us feeling as though our whole world has been upended, because, often it has been. It can be really tough to get our feet on solid ground with all of the emotional and even physical turmoil that divorce creates. How do we start to heal from all of the pain? And how do we move forward into the li…

If ever there is a time in our lives when our self-worth seems like it's up for grabs, going through a divorce is it. It's a time when we question our judgment, our wisdom, our value, our loveability, basically, we question so much of who we are and the choices we have made. And yet, having a strong sense of self is so vital to our abililty to move…

One-upping and one-downing in our relationships is so normal and expected for most of us, that we can often have a tough time recognizing when we are doing it. Here are two things to look for to help you be more aware: resentment and contempt. When we are putting ourselves in a one-down position, we will often feel resentment. When we are putting o…

Validation is something that we often seek from others to shore up our sense of self. And this never really works, because SELF-worth is something that can only be created within ourselves. Validation in our marriages and relationships, however, is a very important tool. It lets the other person know we see them, we acknowledge them, we accept them…

It's hard to know what to do when you're in a tough marriage. You have tried so many things to make it better, and often it seems that despite your best efforts it's getting worse. You're stuck in limbo trying to decide what to do and whether you should call it quits or keep trying. What can we do to make it better? How do we know what the right de…

Our natural tendency as humans is to go into a one-up or a one-down approach in our relationships, especially when there is conflict. And yet, this tactic is incredibly ineffective in helping us to communicate clearly and get on the same page. In addition, when we engage with one-upping or one-downing the other person, we are attacking our own sens…

Miscommunication is a silent killer in our relationships. The tricky part is, we often don't even realize we are miscommunicating, and yet it causes so many fights and so much frustration for us. When we can understand why miscommunication happens, we can behave in ways that will clear up what both of our expectations are about and we can preemptiv…