Self-Work and Overcoming Resistance: Embracing the Change Process (Episode #49)

On behalf of me and Marianne Michaelis, I'd like to thank you for being a listener of our Human Intimacy podcast this year. It's always a privilege to spend time with you and I want to express my deep gratitude. If you are ready to take your healing and recovery to the next level, you're ready to deepen your healing and strengthen your connection and gain real tools for meaningful change. I invite you to join us and other Experts at the 2nd Annual Human Intimacy Conference where myself, Marianne and many other leading experts will come together for powerful teaching, live question and answer sessions and provide insightful pre conference conversations to help you get the most out of your conference experience. And right now you can save 50% when you register before December 31st. Please don't miss this opportunity. Visit human intimacy.com and reserve your spot today. There's something about you that I can't.

Help but smile when you smile and.

Laugh when you laugh, something's around. Welcome to the human intimacy podcast Dr. Kevin Skinner with my friend and colleague, Marianne Michaelis. Maryanne, how are you this new year?

You know, Dr. Skinner, getting over the holidays, getting back into the swing of everything. It's, it's always nice to have a break and just in normal regular routine and schedule and it's always so nice to get back into the routine of things. So I'm grateful to be back in the routine, ready for this new year and moving forward.

And it is a new year. And usually with new year we have, we've Talked in on January 1st, we talked about New Year's resolutions, but really I want to say now we're two weeks into this new year and we know that many people who set goals or aspirations for this next year, we know that many are struggling. And the reason why we're struggling is because the research shows that we get into this thing that we want to do, we say we're going to do and it's harder than we thought it's going to be. So today we're not just going to be talking about that part of the change process. I want to talk about self work, working on ourselves. And I find that even in myself, this is me and this podcast is actually for me. And it's a reminder of things that I have committed to do. So I'm along with you on this journey. Self work is critical for all of us. And the reason why, Marianne, is because we can all be better.

You know, Dr. Skinner, when you say the word self work, the, the first word, like the first thing that comes to my mind is I remember much younger me, I love to read and I remember thinking self help, self help books, like, who would ever read those? And who, like, I just want to read fiction. I don't like people who read self help books who do that stuff. Like, I, I don't know, that's just not for me. There's something wrong with them. Like, that was my judgmental place that I came from at that time. And then I hit a phase where I realized I really need to do a lot of healing. And that's shifted. That, that's really shifted. And you know, as, as you say self work, that's the first thing that comes to my mind. But I'm not sure if you're talking about self help. What are you talking about when you bring up self work?

You know, I was thinking about that because that often is a question that people have. What do you mean by self work? I'll give you an example. If you said, I'm going to give you five minutes and I was going to give you an assignment, and here's the assignment for five minutes, I want you to identify the things that you want to change or need to change, or let me say it another way, you want to improve on something. Self work is the thing that you are working on to make your life better. Whether that's health, whether that's mental health, whether it's being a person who eats differently, a person who exercises more, a person who's less angry, a person who's more kind, more compassionate, has more empathy. If I asked you for five minutes to take a break and push pause on this podcast, and I gave you the assignment, this is to our listeners. Pause the podcast, take five minutes and write down the things that you feel like you need to work on. You would come up with an incredible list of things that you personally know you want to change. And so that is an invitation. It's five minutes. Do a self reflection, Sit down with yourself. Have a self work, self improvement conversation with you. That's what I mean by it.

Okay, so if I'm the listener, I want to jump into the listener's chair for just a minute and, and I want to invite our listeners to take a deep breath and just take a pause. Because if what Dr. Skinner just shared, if you might be, I can imagine that at some phases of my life I might have been like, okay, I'm skipping to the next, next podcast. Move along. What I'm trying to say is sometimes we're not ready or it doesn't feel like we're Ready or it feels like it's too hard. So if I were to take five minutes, when you say take five minutes and sit down, I could write down things I could maybe want to improve. But if I were to write down things that I wanted to change that, like, like there's a level of honesty with myself that I have to get to. I have to be able to say, these are the things I have to be willing to admit to myself that need to be changed. And sometimes it can feel like it's so overwhelming to say, oh, I'm just gonna move along. I'm not even ready for this.

Yeah. So Marianne, great point. And our listeners, and I'm going to just be blunt with you for a second. This is something we all get to do. So you might have that resistance inside of you. That's what we're going to call it. We're going to call it the resistance, which makes a boatload of sense, right? There's a bunch of resistance to change our bodies, our minds, the way that we do things. We are very habitual people. So while you find the resistance, if you're finding resistance, just doing that five minute exercise, okay. I'm not concerned about that. There may be a time down the road where you come back and you want to do that. And so what I tell people is I'm never going to force you to do that kind of self reflective work. I'm going to do it as an invitation because instinctively we all know the things that we can be better at. I know for a fact that I can eat less sugar and that's part of my New Year's resolution for, for 2025, I don't have a lot of sugar. I don't eat a lot of gluten because I'm gluten free. Dark chocolate. I, I, I mean I can really do popcorn with a little bit of a caramel on it. It's so it's gluten free. But the sugar is something that I'm trying to change this year.

So you, you've got something specifically in mind? I think it's that acknowledgement piece that sometimes we feel like if I even bring this into the light and acknowledge that it's there, that it needs to, I can't stay in denial about it. That means I'm going to have to step into it. But I also think taking a step back from that, we've talked about this previously, but I know that I can go to any, almost any human being and say, what are three things that you need to change in your life right now and immediately. We know there's at least three things on the surface that we can say. I need to eat less sugar, I need to get more sleep, I need to get more exercise. Those are pretty basic. And so I just want to invite our listeners. There's. You can do this at different levels. You can do a deep dive and really go deep in. And you can also start with something that, that I like. I like how you talked earlier about even something to improve on. Improving on feels easier than something I have to change right now.

And here's the thing. The whole journey begins with a five minute writing exercise. Because everybody knows instinctively, I think we know we need to do better. And if you wanted to try it at a different angle, do it just for your relationship. What are five things, five minutes of writing things that I can do to improve my marriage. So, so you could do it self worked. You could also do relationship work because instinctively, I have found this over and over again. When I give people that assignment, they know. Let me give you another example. You could do it at your work work. How can I be better at my work this year? And I'm. It's amazing. I do that assignment with my clients all the time.

Well, you talked in a previous podcast about your daughter, how she has the ability to bring out and see the good. And so even as you're talking about in your, in your relationships, no matter what relationship, I can say I'm going to do something, an act of kindness every day. I can be more forgiving, I can find someone to compliment. So those are, those are some things that are feasible.

Yeah. And so that first assignment, that first concept is just spend some time with yourself when you're ready. And again, I don't. Sometime in the next day, week, month, sometime this year, whatever it is. And the invitation is change requires us to have insight because we live our lives on autopilot. One of the most interesting things, Dr. Joe Dispenza said that about 90 to 95% of the things you and I do, we, we do on autopilot, we do it without even thinking about it. So the reason why I'm asking this first step of self work is to have a conversation with you, a real one, an authentic one, get in tune with you. That's what I'm asking for here. Because every time I've done this in my life, I'm amazed at the things like, oh, of course I need to do that, I need to do that. And now it's a matter of Putting it into application. Because once you have that, that five minutes down, I'm not asking you to do everything in it. I'm asking you to identify two or three prioritize and then of the two or three that you've ident things that you want to change now eliminate all the way down to 1. Identify one of those. The most important thing that you need to change. The most important thing for self work that needs to be accomplished. I'm telling you when you do that you will say pinpoint and like this is the thing I need to change or alter. It's incredible.

So you're so we're not talking about, you're saying let's make a list and then we're going to go through this process of reducing it down and really pin pinpointing the one main priority that feels like it needs the most attention and it's the most critical and urgent for right now.

That's right. And, and if we do that then we break it down even a step further. Why did I choose this one? Right now I've got it the what I'm trying to change but why did I choose this one? And if you have a conversation with yourself that's another two or three minute writing exercise. And so you've written for five minutes now. You've defined it, honed it down and then you take it to the next step. And that is why is this so important to me? So for two minutes you would write down why is this so important to me? And again I, the time is very important. I don't want you to write for 10 minutes. I don't want you to write for five minutes. I say two minutes because your brain on that speed will write fast. Fast because you have a time limit.

So the time limit helps me write faster. So I'm going to brainstorm faster.

You're teaching your brain to focus. That's exactly right. And it's very, very helpful. So you've got your what now? You've done defined it down to one thing, why it's important to you. Now you get the next exer part of the exercise. And this is something that I do in the change 2.0 course. How, how am I going to make these changes? And now we go back up to five minutes. Five to two. Up to five, five minutes. And now it's how am I going to do this? Now what's interesting there is once you've done that five minute writing exercise, we're about 12 minutes into this exercise, maybe a little bit more then we'd conclude it with, okay, what's of the things I've written, the how. Which one is going to fit into my schedule and how am I going to do it? So you literally put in insert it into your schedule.

So we're looking at about a 15 minute exercise, really distilling down. And what I'm hearing you talk about at first sounds a little bit intimidating. Sounds a little bit. Maybe I've got some resistance to it, but if I can recognize that and acknowledge and say, oh, I've got some resistance here. I'm not sure how to do this. Or this might feel a little bit uncomfortable for me. Diving into it. It also sounds really exciting. This is a space where I can brainstorm and I can just really get personal with myself. But it's exciting too.

It is. And I love the way you're describing that because the excitement comes from us having a strategy. See, the brain needs this when you feel stuck. And stuck comes for a variety of different reasons. We don't know what to do different. We don't know how to do it different. Sometimes we try to do something different and it backfires on us. This is a very different thing because your brain, I honestly believe this is true. Or we know how to solve our own problems.

I agree with that. I love that. Because as a trauma therapist, one of the things that I've learned about trauma is you cannot think your way through trauma. It does not ever make sense. But when I use accelerated resolution therapy, we use the back part of our brain, which is a very creative process. And we say, brain, what do I need to do with this? Here's the problem, what's the solution? And the brain comes up with just sometimes some really off the wall crazy solutions that take my breath away. But our brain wants to solve problems. And so if we give it the right, it's kind of like data input, it will give us a lot of really great output if we're going through the right process for that.

That's right. Because our brains are brilliant. We just need to turn them on and allow them to do what they're trained to do, what it's designed to do. It's a problem solver. It can help us. But interestingly enough, again, I said this on this podcast before, my friend Ken Patey. The seeds to the solutions to your problems lie within you. And that's what I'm taking this off of. And so you could do this in multiple areas of your life. You could do it with parenting. How can I be a better parent? This year, how could I be better employee or a better business owner? How could I be better in whatever I'm trying to do, Health and well being, how could I do it in my marriage? And so you could take and do this exercise and you could do it every day on one of those topics. And by the time you're actually done with it, the self work that you're working on, you have a plan, you have a strategy, and if you want to do one at a time and then move on to the next one for a few weeks, that's great. It's self directed self work. It's so much fun to watch.

Let me, let me clarify what you're saying because I think I heard a couple of different, like I got a little confused going a couple different ways, what I connected with or where my brain went. Hearing you say that was, I could sit down and take 15 minutes each morning and do this, but I could even look at it and say, what do I need to do today? What do I need to change today? And so I, I think I got a little bit stuck thinking, well if I have this plan yesterday, then that means I need to do it today. And then I need to add more onto that and then I feel a little bit overwhelmed.

So let me clarify. So the first assignment is to identify the what you want to change. And then, and I suggest you could do it in a category. So let's say my self work. I want to improve myself. Five minutes on self. Let's say included in that is I want to be better in relationships. Okay, I'm, that's a different construct. I want to be better in relationships. That might be the priority during that fifth, that five minutes exercise. And I realized I want to be better in relationships. So that's going to be the focus of. Okay, I've identified, I want to be better in relationships. How do I do that? I've identified the one thing and I, I, I, I, I'm telling you, just start with one thing.

So, so let's pull that out. So because that's a very broad general topic. Be very better in marriage. And so then you're distilling it down and saying, hey brain, help me figure out. Here's my whole list of all the different ways. And so maybe I can take 30 seconds and really look into my partner's eyes each day like that. That's something that I can doable do. So more be more present, might be more of a broad and then figure out what's one specific thing. So looking into My partner's eyes.

So that's exactly right. So that would fit within a smart goal concept. Specific, measurable, actionable. Right. These are things that I'm actually doing. Right. And as we go through every time we create change, it needs to be measurable. It needs to be something that we can monitor and see the progress. So something specific, actionable, looking you in the eyes. Right. Those are the type healthy touch. Right. So being specific in how I'm going to do that is a. Another part of the conversation. Now what happens here is we, our brain consolidates and that's what we've done. Relationship. But when you do it with one relationship, you start to see in other relationships, it's not gonna, it's gonna bleed into other areas. You're gonna be better in other areas because if you're doing it in one, you can do it in others.

So I'm gonna be focusing on that saying, oh, where's an opportunity for me to really have eye contact with my partner and realize, oh, I can do this with my kids too. Oh, I can do this at work as well. I can do this better with my friends. And so it's just something that just starts to naturally kind of bleed out. As you're saying, it just spreads.

That's right. Because as we know that a keystone habit leads into other habits or patterns. So in context, now that I've defined I want to be better in relationships, I've defined the how I'm going to do it. Let's say that I'm working on that and I want to do this project. And this is what I was trying to allude to earlier. Now I'm working on this relationship. But let's say that I also want to be better at work. I could go through the same exercise in how to improve my work skills or my interactions at work with other people, or my maybe more productivity at work. And so I can take the concept and just do it again just for that specific area. And now whether that's in a few days or maybe I brainstorm, okay, I want to be better in relationships. This is how I want to be better in work. This is how you can choose to do that. But don't overwhelm yourself. And that would be my bigger concern there.

Yeah, and let's talk a little bit more about that because I know that we need accountability and we need some self accountability as well, because I can. This is the challenge I think that we're also talking about. I can make lots of lofty goals and I can get Started and I can do great for a couple days or a couple weeks and then it gets overwhelming or I forget or a couple days go by and then I'm just back to where I was before. So, so what's the secret magical part there in the middle about the continuity, about not getting bogged down or overwhelmed?

So what we need to do is we need to simplify. And now we're going into micro experiences. So I plan a day in advance what tomorrow looks like. And, and if my, if I'm exercising and my goal is three to five times a week. Three to five times minimum. Three. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday, Thursday, Saturday, whatever you, you choose there you micro do a day. And so the night before you say this is tomorrow and these are the things I'm going to do tomorrow. And usually if you do them at the same time, you enhance your ability to succeed.

Can I, if I can add on to that, One of the tools that I've learned that's really impactful is just before I go to sleep, I will visualize and see myself the next day, See myself getting up at this time, see myself exercising, see myself going through my day. I visualize my day not just saying here's my plan for tomorrow, but let me visualize what. And does my day look turn out the way that I plan? No, not always. But if I can visualize, my brain already has a map and I wake up prepared, ready to do the things that I have anticipated and planned for.

Yeah, because you're seeing it happen. I mean as we visualize it, something occurring, our brain is already working on it.

And that's exactly seeing the neural networks already. My brain knows what to do.

Yeah, that's right, that's right. So as we look at self work and really the self work we're talking about, I might need to do some deep dive on some stuff. So let's go right now we're talking on, on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis. But there are some issues. The self work is lifelong work. The things that I need to unlearn. And, and there's a whole concept in the course that I created, change 2.0. And it really is the unlearning process. And I call it learn to unlearn. And as we unlearn something, there may be something that I learned in my childhood that I've never addressed. In fact I may have ignored because I didn't know what to do with it. And so the unlearning process is also self work. A lot of people come to our offices and they may want to focus on a present day issue. You know what I'm talking about, Marianne?

Right.

This present day issue, it's like, I just want to focus on this. I'm depressed or I'm anxious. Okay. How long you been anxious? My whole life. Oh, now we're talking. Maybe even generations of unlearning. And so if I'm doing self work, I'm trying to learn how, and I'll do this with anxiety for a second. I often have clients who have generations of anxiety in their family. That's very, very common. So I say, who else in your family is anxious? Well, mom was anxious or dad was anxious and grandpa was anxious and grandma was anxious. And you go through gener of anxiety. Well, you have cellular memories. And cellular memories carry with us from generation to generation to generation. So learning how to calm the body, relax the body, learning how to deal with those things, you're unlearning something that could literally influence generations of time.

Yeah, I have a, I have a really great example of that. I've got a friend who's in her 80s. And one of the things that she, she'll tell me almost every time I see her, she talks about her, her four sisters and she says, we were all really close in age and we've never fought. We've never fought ever in our lives. And I hear that, and I hear a red flag pops up for me because I'm like, that means that nobody addressed conflict. And this friend tells me how she's always had anxiety. She's got such deep anxiety, and it's so prevalent for her, and it always has been. And in my mind as a therapist, I put two and two together. Well, if you didn't learn how to have conflict, that means you probably didn't have a way to say, I'm not okay with this, I'm not comfortable with this. Which means you probably had a lot of anxiety because you weren't able to get your needs met or express yourself. Sometimes we don't know what the problems are that we have. We have, we can have the generational, just as you're saying, this is our culture, this is our family culture. This is. We think it's great that we've never had a crossword or that we've never had a disagreement or a conflict. That might be a bigger problem than a blessing.

And again, that's an interesting concept because we think of conflict as a bad thing culturally. Right. We've said over and over, it's a Bad thing, bad thing, bad thing. And yet sometimes if we ignore issues, if we avoid issues, it manifests even more at some point in our lives because we're not having hard conversations. I might have a disagreement with you, but I don't bring it up because, well, we don't, we don't do that. So, so now that unlearning is, how do I stand up when say something when I normally don't?

And, and how many clients have you had, Dr. Skinner? When I say, you can say, I'm not comfortable with that. My clients say, I can say that for sure. Say that. Of course you can say that. But that's not the culture. That's not something that's been learned. And so part of this learning to unlearn is also I, I'll never forget, I was taking a, a course. Well, I've apparently forgotten the name of the course, but I was taking a course and they were talking about different parenting techniques and they, we've got pervasive and we've got authoritarian. And I remember reading that and going, oh, this is how my parents parented me. Oh, that's not the right way. I mean, like this is, here's the unhealthy ones and here's a healthier way. My parents didn't use a healthier way, probably because that's how they'd been raised. But that light bulb of realizing, oh, there's another way, there are other ways. And this is kind of that circle back around to, I only want to read fiction books versus I'm ready to do some self work, some learning how to see and how to think and how to interact and do things differently because there's some room for improvement in my life.

And what I like about this is this, Marianne, I don't know what I don't know until I learn more about myself. Self work is a self introspection. What are your most common emotions? Why do I get angry in this situation? Why do I ignore issues? How do I communicate more effectively? These are all self reflective questions that at any time, you and I, we could pause and we could address. Every one of us, every one of us could simply ask ourselves these important self work questions. And as we go through them now, our insight begins to increase and we have an opportunity to create change and unlearn habits, behaviors, patterns that may have existed for generations of time because we're willing to learn more, to ask ourselves these questions. That's what I'm referring to as self work. Yeah.

Can I add a quote that comes from Patrick Carnes book, the Betrayal Bond. Yeah, it's one of my favorite self work books. It's a hard book to go through. And we can talk a little bit more about that in just a second. But there's a quote that, as you were saying that, that I remembered he talks about, he said, and he's a reader. I think it's just good to acknowledge that he's always a reader. But he says, I believe that books can be transformative. And he says, at times, I think we professionals only believe the insight comes through therapy, support groups, and intervention. All three are important tools, perhaps even indispensable. And then here's the part that I really, really like. He says, however, people reading a book in seclusion will admit realities they are not ready to acknowledge to a group or a therapist. And that for me is really significant because there is a part of our work, of this self work, where we have to be in a place where we can admit, I need to change something. This isn't working for me. And it takes a lot of courage. I have clients who show up in my office. We don't show up for therapy when we're in our best state. Usually we show up when our pain is big enough and strong enough to say something has to change when we are in enough pain. And so getting to that space where we recognize may come through reading. It may come through something that happens in life that just comes up. But there is that admitting it part that I think is really important.

And when we take that next step and we say, this is beyond my current understanding, I don't know how to do this, that whether you want to call it humility or whether you want to call it somebody who's just in so much pain that they're like, I, I've got to go to the doctor. This is not working. When we get to that point and we acknowledge I need this, I mean, I think as men, we tend to avoid doctors just in general, but when we acknowledge that what I'm feeling, say physically is that doesn't work for me. Recently I had an experience where I had to go to the doctor. My health was. It made no sense to me. I literally could not sleep on my right side. My right arm was going numb. And I've had to go to a physical therapist. I've had to get a X ray. I've had to do things to figure out some of my health. It's not my favorite thing to do, but I've learned that things don't get better by themselves. And if I can get some help. I went to a physical therapist, he gave me some exercises and he gave me maybe an understanding of why I was experiencing what I was experiencing. I'm like, oh, that's fantastic to know. It's those types of things that we can do with our mental health as well and our physical health and our well being. If you don't like something, if you're struggling with something, if something doesn't feel right to you, ask the questions. Don't be afraid to step in and make the changes. It will give you a better quality of life.

And when we're talking about our mental health, we often need an outside perspective. We have our blinders on. We don't know what we don't know. Our normal is, what we've grown up with or what we're surrounded with. And this book, the Betrayal Bond by Patrick Hearns that I've just referred to, it's an excellent book for doing some personal work. However, it's a book that's about walking through your trauma. And boy, it's a book that we need somebody to say, oh my goodness, I just went through this checklist or I just did this assessment and I need to make sense of the results of this because this is too hard to interpret by myself. Not that I'm not smart enough to interpret it, but it's shifting my whole mentality of how I see and it's showing me things that might be broken in me or things that don't work. And I need just somebody to reflect that back, to have compassion with me and to help steer me through and see, really see clearly. Because I've still got my blinders on, right?

Because I can't, I, I, if I ignore it, right, then there's so many opportunities that I'm missing, right? And I mean that in so many ways. If I don't take care of my health, I can't hike, I can't go for walks. It might be harder to go fishing if, if I don't take care of adequate sleep, I wake up more, less effective and more grumpy. These things have residual effects that bleed out into other areas of our lives. It's interesting to me in the change process, I was reading about how our body replenishes and changes in a certain period of time. We get new organs and in terms of how they replenish now, they don't completely go away, but we replenish so many elements of our skin, I think.

It'S in six years, our whole entire body replaces Itself from a cellular level in general, yes.

Well, what happens when I have healthy habits versus unhealthy habits? How long does it take for those cells to realize this is the new way? This is the new way of thinking. This is the new way of being a healthier us is a healthier us. And that self work when we do it, I mean honestly, our lives are relationships. Everything can be better if we really want to change our culture and our society. Everything from the way we eat, the way we sleep influences our mental health. Our relationships influence our mental health. And if I want to be learn how to be more relational, learning how to have meaningful conversations and be with friends and hang out with friends and do things, those are ways, these are ways I should say that we can do the self work that I'm referring to.

As you were sharing that Dr. Skinner and I know we're getting ready to close up, I was reminded of a music student that I had years ago. I was living in Colorado and as I've shared here before, I'm a cellist and I had a student, she was the dean of a college. She contacted me, she was in her 60s and she said I want to take cello lessons. And I said oh, okay, great, great. Let's get you set up. And she came to my house and she said she'd been sitting at a concert with a friend and she said, oh, I love the cello. I always wanted to play the cello. And her friend looked at her and said, well, why don't you? And she said, I don't know. So she went and she rented a cello and she found me and she, she was the best student I'd probably ever had. She struggled a lot, but she practiced a lot. She worked so hard because it was a simple question, well, why aren't you. As we get ready to close out, I want to invite our listeners just to really look and look at yourself. What are you waiting for? You are worth taking the time to do some introspection and to make some changing. And I invite you to really look at what is holding me back. Or as my students friend said, well, why don't you? What's the challenge here?

Love it. So as we get ready to close today, I just want to close on a couple review a couple of things. You need insight and then you need courage. I didn't talk about courage. But change self work requires courage because you have to lean into the things that you find resistant or uncomfortable. When you do that and you start getting into the flow. I'm going to call it, the flow, it's fun, it's exciting. Your brain and your body engage in the change process because no longer are you thinking the way you thought, you're not feeling the way you felt, you're not acting the way you acted, and you're not believing the way you believe. If you really look at the change process, and this is what I talk about in the Change 2.0 course, you can really change those four things. Thoughts, feelings, actions or behaviors, and your beliefs. If you think about all change, it usually is going to come within one of those four categories. And so the self introspection that I'm looking for, the self work that I do, is how can I think differently about this? Am I missing something? How do I feel different about this? The way I'm feeling? Is that working? No, it's not. What about actions? What could I do that would change my actions and my thoughts and feelings would come from that? And then ultimately, what are my core beliefs I've come to believe? What about myself and others? So that's just some ways for you to think about this, the change process, thoughts, feelings, actions and your beliefs.

And I think it's really important. What you just described are some really big major areas of change in thoughts, beliefs, actions. I think it's important to make sure we've got support along the way. If I'm changing all these things and my family's like, what's going on over here? Suddenly, like there can be that resistance from other people as well. And so having people that we trust, having good support is good is going to be really important. Also saying, hey people, if it feels safe, if it's a safe place to do it, I'm working on some changes. And so you might be noticing some things that are different that can be also helpful as well.

Yeah, you talked about the accountability there. That's something we always talk about in the change process, is that accountability? So, all right, I know we've talked about some key things today that is hopeful. My hope is for our listeners that it's giving you some insight. Self work, engage your mind, have some fun, get excited. And that's what makes change, actually. That's what makes life livable. And, and if you can embrace that prior to the process, your brain will like, okay, what do I get to learn? What do I get to do? What do I get to do that self work? One of my favorite experiences was with a friend who's like, when change started to occur, she would rub her hands together really fast and you say, woohoo. I get to work on something today. It was so enjoyable to watch her because that's how she lived life. She's like, okay, something new is coming, and I get to go figure it out.

I'm laughing because I asked my clients, hey, do you want to do some trauma work on that? And I rub my hands and I've had clients just look at me and say, does anyone ever say, like, yes to that? Marianne, nobody wants to do trauma work. I know what it's going to look like on the other side, which is that excitement. There is pain in the process of change because we're, we're doing something different. It's unknown, it's uncharted, and invariably it is a challenge.

What we're referring to is strength training, right? I mean, there's strength training for the body, right? People do planks and they do sit ups and they do push ups and they lift weights and they do strength training. We're talking about mental strength training, mental.

Health strength training, resistance training.

Yeah. And that's, and that's what we're doing is lean into your resistance. Discover what you're resistant about and lean into it. I'm telling you, if you'll do it, you'll find tremendous benefits. All right, Marianne, thank you for the conversation today to our listeners. We appreciate you. We really do. And I just want to remind those who are listening, the first annual Human Intimacy Conference is coming up, March 14th and 15th. Put it on your calendar. We'll put a link to it in today's show notes. My invitation to you is to join us. We're going to be talking about, have some leading experts, literally leading experts in the country, talking about betrayal, trauma and infidelity, overcoming unwanted sexual behaviors. We have a whole day for couples and couple healing. And if you've been struggling, going through a difficult divorce, we have an entire day to help individuals who are looking for support in how to deal with divorce, how to parent after a divorce. We have incredible support. It's gonna be two incredible days. Hope you'll join us. And there's a link in the show notes. Hope you'll join us. Marianne, final thoughts before we close.

I'm so looking forward to this conference. I think it's going to be wonderful. And my last final thoughts are, if there's resistance, recognize it, step into it, lean into it, and once again, give yourself some self compassion. Change is hard and it does require some effort. Thanks for being here.

All right. Self work. Our friends, thank you for being with us, and may you be blessed in your journeys. I'm going to start something that I. I used to do, and it's about relationships. This is the Human Intimacy podcast. Love is a choice. Make it every day. That's my invitation for everybody. For myself included. Love is a choice. Make it every day. All right. Thank you, Marianne. Wonderful.

Yep.