Functional Relationships

I'll start by sharing how I met the Freemans, and I'll refer to them as the Freemans. And sometimes I'll go back and forth, but, you know, we met through Genius Network and they recently joined Genius Network and we were on the virtual meetings together and they did a 10 minute presentation really recently, and I thought it was really powerful. And during Genius Network, we get split up into groups and it's all random, or so they say. It's random. Or so the universe says, or so we think. Things are random, but synchronistically we kept coming back into the same group together and everyone else was rotating and switching out, but our orbits and our ecosystems kept coming together. And as many of you know, I work with my wife, some of you work with your spouse. They work together. And so there's a certain dynamic that goes with that. Right. Sometimes I actually have to hire experts to help my wife with copywriting and, you know, all those other things that you might think I help her with, but I don't because it can create some tension and sometimes it's hard to give your spouse guidance and advice and provide leadership and things like that. So I was very fascinated by how they work together. They shared some amazing frameworks to enhance and optimize relationships. And now that all of us are working in close quarters with our loved ones, if we're in quarantine or if we're working from home, and especially as we all work towards building our perfect practices, we're going to have to. And virtual practices, that is. We're going to have to get used to this idea of being in close quarters with people that we deeply love and admire and may not always know how to express that or may not be able to, you know, create borders and boundaries around that. So I, I thought it would be fantastic for them to come on and share their years of experience helping literally thousands of people. They just released a new book called the Argument Hangover, which I'm excited to get my hands on. And without further ado, welcome. Erin and Jocelyn, I liked you.

Combined our names. That's a good name.

I know. Erilyn. How about that?

Just combine us.

That's great. So tell us a little bit more about yourselves. Let's start there.

Hmm.

First of all, you're right in that Genius network, I mean, imagine it's not even mathematical or logical. 200 people randomly put into a breakout room and then we were in the same with you three times. Not alone once, but three times. So definitely is not a mathematical logical possibility. So definitely Something else there. We're really just happy to be here in this group. You know, functional medicine practitioners is one thing already to bring that kind of health, mentally, physically, emotionally to clients and those that you serve. But then we know that can even get taxing. It takes a lot of energy. And so to be able to have a group that you can take on the own practices for yourself and be accountable, be alive and by others, I think that's really powerful. So, number one, thank you for having us here.

Type in the chat too. Before we jump into the kind of formal talk we want to show you, slides and everything. Would you type in the chat if you are in a committed, romantic relationship? We'd love to see who is. And if you're not, say I'm attracting in my romantic committed partnership. That would be great to know because I think if we want to affirm that. Okay, so a lot of yeses, 30 years working together, I'm attracting. I love that.

Good.

Several people I'm attracting it in. Amazing. Okay.

Also interested. So drop in the chat too. If you're doing the functional medicine practitioner sort of as your practice or are you doing it also with your partner, meaning that they're business partners with you. So maybe just say they're business partners or solo.

Solo. Solo. And even if you are doing it solo, you have that partnership, right? And you want your business to thrive. You want your relationship to thrive just as much.

Wow. Well, Sachin, we're really ready to jump in. We don't like talking about ourselves that much, but feel free if you want us to do more of an intro or if you had something else as well.

Well, why don't we get into it? Because I know there's people that have lots of questions and I want to save as much time as possible for that too.

Cool.

Sounds great. Are you able to see our screen share here then?

We sure can.

We wanted to acknowledge all of you for once again being in the space of functional medicine. It's so powerful, especially around bringing meditation in bringing more natural remedies besides prescriptions and drugs and even things around movement. So it's powerful to be in the functional medicine space. And yet in your relationship, functional is not necessarily the place you want to be the main pursuit, but you may have found yourself there. So today is really about going beyond a functionality relationship while running a functional medicine practice. Now, as a functional medicine practitioner, you have a grand vision. It is to bring this kind of health to people. Now we are just going to make this up out of nowhere, right? The Doctor of the future is the patient. Maybe with that being your vision, you now seek to change the health care paradigm through education, self care and remapping the mindset. Does this resonate with anybody on here?

I think that's probably what they're up to. Yeah.

That's actually Sachin's vision that was in the Genius network. So either way, for you, yours might not be exactly the vision that Sachin has, but similar. So you have a grand vision and that vision takes time, it takes energy and support from others and what a better place to get that support and ideally from a spouse. But now in this pursuit, often you may find yourself in some different places.

Yeah. So if you're in a relationship and you're allowed in 2021, there are some challenges that come up. Right. Even the most intentional people. Obviously you don't join a group that starts with meditation, with your eyes closed, listening to music if you're not an intentional person. And yet you can still encounter challenges like having a functional relationship, you know, going through seasons where it gets focused more on managing tasks, activities, things around the house, your to do list, your business, or the fact that you each express yourselves differently. Anyone have a partner that you express yourselves, your emotion, thoughts differently? We do. And so you can have moments of not understanding each other emotionally. Another one is that one or both of you wants it your way. Again, even if you're a super intentional person, you can become attached to your perspective, want it your way, and sometimes argue until you get that or another one. That's quite common right now because we get behind the scenes information into couples is feeling a loss of passion, aliveness and just feeling a little bit more like roommates than you would prefer. This is not just coming from us guessing, this is from us having thousands of conversations online, in person, all the time. So type in the chat if you can relate to one or more of those. And I'll be looking in the chat. We like to be interactive here, having a conversation, several people saying, relate to many. Yes. So the thing is, in relationships, as time passes, effort in a relationship often declines. And you can give the scraps to your partner. Not intentionally. You're not going to sleep at night thinking, I'm going to give the scraps of attention and time to my partner. It can happen unconsciously and especially when we can get into the routine. It's almost like you wake up, you know what you're going to do for business, then you know what you're going to do for dinner, then you know what you're going to do before bedtime. And every day kind of repeats itself.

And the goal of functional medicine is to first shift the paradigm. So we want to shift the paradigm on a functional relationship. First of all, being that love can't compensate for poor or if we just got right down to it, crappy communication. So often we think, well, there was love in the beginning, love's going to carry the day. We have love. Love is all we need. Well, to be honest, love is a base foundation, it's a requirement. But really it's not enough to keep that love really alive. If your communication, number one is poor, if you're not understanding each other, if you feel like you don't have that support. So we want to shift that paradigm. First of all, moving to a second paradigm shift, you assume that your partner is satisfied in certain areas of your relationship. And honestly, this is just one you don't have to think about because we don't. When someone asks you how is your relationship going, what do you really base it on? First of all, it's going great or it's not so great. It's just your most recent mood. It's probably, did you have a disagreement argument today? Yesterday. That's probably going to be the most alive in your experience. So we just base this measurement on seemingly an idea or just the most recent experience. High emotion, low emotion, either one. And in functional medicine, do you want people just to guess how their health is? No. You really need a way to accurately measure the health of a relationship. And assuming your partner is satisfied is not a recipe for success in your relationship.

So in our talk today, we want you to invite you to take notes. They did put the team put in our PDF for a note taking guide. If you'd like to download that, write down additional questions. We're going to leave plenty of time for Q and A. That's our favorite part. And comment in the chat box. We like to feel, I mean we don't see a lot of human beings right now. So being able to chat is a great way to feel connected to people. So what we want to do, and this is something you would do with your patients, is do a self assessment. So what we want you to do is actually self assess and be honest with yourself. And yes, you have your moments of being amazing and maybe your moments of not being a perfect human. But give an average score of lately, how have you been showing up in your communication within your relationship? So from one to a 10, one being like, I'm not even communicating with my partner to 10. Being like, I couldn't get better. There's no way I could be a better communicator. And the way we want you to define communication is looking at if your partner feels emotionally understood and validated and you listen for their needs and wants so you can make a note either on your paper or if you feel open enough to type it in the chat, how would you score your communication? Seven. Seven. Quite a few sevens. Five. Great. Thank you for typing them in here. Three, four. The only way we can get better at something is by acknowledging where we are. Now, as you keep typing those, let's go to the next one. Communication. I mean, sorry, conflict. The way we want you to define your score for conflict is do you stay in communication when triggered, do you do little damage during disagreements? And you emotionally repair quickly? So type in your score if you're open to that, or just write it down. Seven, six.

Eight.

Thanks for being honest with these. All right, good. Now we'll go to the third and final self assessment. Connection. Do you give and receive love frequently? Do you have meaningful conversations? And do you feel alignment between the two of you, Your purpose, your vision, your values. So now if go into that. So 9, 10, 6, 8. So people are in a wide range. 3 and 6. Oh, I thought 3 and 6 to catch up. 4. Great. I love the engagement. Thank you so much. So it's why we want to start there is because especially as entrepreneurs, we're entrepreneurs as well. We can get so focused on our mission, our purpose. We want to impact people. You want to help people, and we can take our eyes off of the relationship. And a lot of times when we invite people to do this self assessment, they haven't stopped, stopped to think about their relationship and check in on how they're showing up for years, if ever. Right. It's just like we're going along and hopefully my partner tells me how we're doing. Right. So we like to give you that moment to really check in on how you're showing up.

So thanks for participating in that. And in full transparency, a self assessment is great, but pretty limited. If you wanted to know a real accurate assessment, where you would discover these answers would actually be over there with your partner. You know, you can say how you think you're doing in your communication, your conflict in your connection, but to get a real understanding would be to have a really open conversation partner, how do you feel I have been doing in my communication? Meaning how much do you feel understood? How much connection do you feel? That's the real place to check out. It's not what we think of ourselves. A better place is to check in with our partner.

So whether you work with your partner or you don't, or you're attracting in your partner, what we're going to cover is really how you can continuously raise the score of those three Cs. We like to call them the three Cs. And to not assume that your score will always stay there. Because for some of you who wrote a higher score, an eight or a nine, it takes intention and effort to stay there. So today is really about how you can continue to keep that score. Score rising up or continuing to improve. So you want to go into the first one.

First of all, what your relationship needs to stay romantically connected.

Anyone interested in that, like, not just being like roommate. I mean, we get a lot of messages and people don't maybe post it on social media, but behind closed doors, they're feeling a bit more like roommates. So is anyone open to even more of a romantic connection? I know we're always open to more of that.

An actual answer might be different than what you would have thought. It's not candles, it's not date nights. It's really starting with clarity on the larger perspective and ultimate outcome within the relationship. Said another way, the bigger reason why you're in a relationship said one other way. Expand both of your identifications from self to the relationship. Now, this is an interesting shift here, right? Because when you think about probably why you got started in functional medicine is you had a bigger vision. You know, you go beyond yourself. Just like the vision that Sachin has about having the patient become the future doctor or for themselves, that has him create a larger identification of himself and what he's up to. And often you might be having a conversation with your partner that says, if you don't feel aligned, don't you, or at least in your mind, don't you know the work I'm set out here to do? Don't you know what I'm striving for? I'm striving to change the future of medicine for patients. And so now you might use that to say to your partner, don't bring these small things to me. I don't care about the dishwasher. Why are you arguing with me? Don't you know what I'm up to over here? And so you can start to put your identification as a practitioner above the identification of the relationship. Now, I know we're moving into a new principle here, but in the realm of consciousness raising, consciousness this is a base foundation, right? We are out to raise our identification of the self. That's what consciousness is. So maybe as a reminder for some of you, right, the base level of identification is going to be physical. You identify as a physical body, which is primarily where your clients are based if they're experiencing pain. It's hard to identify with a larger identity if you do experience a lot of pain in the body. But you can raise that level of identification to that of personal. You know, an Erin Freeman, a Jocelyn Freeman, being a son, being a husband, a wife, a brother, a sister. But then there is a higher level of identification of relational. And we're not going to spend all of our time here. But then there's also identification with group, which is a perfect example of perfect practice. Here you identify as. I am a member of that group. Jocelyn and I are genius network members. And that raise of the identification actually has us see our concerns and our challenges differently, as well as has us see different actions to take. So higher than that, you could be at the level of principal as well as universal, where there's not a self over here and someone else over there. All of it is you. But today we want to invite you into. Can you just go from the physical or the personal to changing your identification into the realm of relationship?

Really? Like, what is our relationship up to now? That sounds like a nice concept. Cool. I'm up for seeing myself as the relationship. What gets in the way of this happening? The first mistake that we invite you to just acknowledge once in a while our humanity, right? We're just humans here. Once in a while is your partner or relationship gets deprioritized. We mentioned this, right? You start to function more like roommates managing life. And this happens. We work with couples even that are up to amazing things. They have the best of intentions, but when they take their eye off of the relationship, they realize that most of their conversations can start to become about how was your day? How was the meeting? What do you want for dinner? Should we watch a show tonight? What do the kids need? And there it's been a minute since they have actually talked about the relationship itself. Like, when was the last time you talked about how is our relationship going? How are you feeling within our relationship? And that's often neglected. So said another way is that the emphasis of your focus becomes the business and your purpose, and then the partnership becomes less of a focus. We've had that happen. We even do relationship work and we have had seasons where most of our attention is on the business. And purpose, and we've started to neglect the partnership.

And then the partnership is something that you just then function inside of. Like the partnership or your relationship is the place that you relate to each other at a lower level of identification. We I'm in business. That's a bigger vision. And then we're just functioning here to what if you shifted this now to where the partnership is, where you identify. And then some of the other roles like your business, like raising the kids or your social contribution or your purpose is all inside of the partnership. And how about this? All of those activities serve the purpose and the identification of the partnership. We actually identify our partnership and relationship as its own entity. And Jocelyn and I, as individuals, ask ourselves often, how are we best serving or are in service of the entity called our relationship?

So the skill for this is to actually have a vision statement for your relationship. Most entrepreneurs that we talk to are fired up about their vision for what they're up to, and they don't have a vision for their relationship. And for some of you, I saw some of you married for 15 years, 30 years, and that's amazing. No matter how long you've been together, there can come a time where you don't feel like you're maybe aspiring for something as a couple. Or perhaps some people even feel like they've grown apart from their partner. It's like I'm growing. I feel like I'm growing so much as myself and my business. And I haven't felt the same growth within our relationship. And so we would invite you, and if we had another hour with you, we would take you through what we call the couple's vision statement process. It's something that we can tell you about ways we do that afterwards. But we want to give you an example because we invite you to sit down at some point in the near future and create a vision for your relationship. So ours is. Our vision is to experience financial freedom, massive contribution and joy through speaking, coaching, and collaborating, to empower millions of couples with the relationship skills to be connected in any season of life and lower the divorce rate. Now, some of you in reading that, go, well, that sounds kind of like your business, because you're up to a business together. And yes, but even for couples who are not in business together, because many of you said you are building your business solo, you can still see that your purpose and what your partner is up to still is serving some vision that you have together. So it doesn't have to be that you're in business together. It doesn't Even have to be related to your business, even if you have kids. Like, how do you want to involve your kids into the vision that you want to create as a family? What do you aspire for? What are you co creating together as a couple and as a family?

A couple of things to note here. You see, we highlighted some words. We do this process in our couples workshop to create these vision statements for couples. But just note that there are areas. What is the experience? Hence why experience is highlighted. What's the experience you want to have in your relationship? There's also how you're going to express that the activities you have, who you're going to serve, and really ultimately the message. Now, the two things I want to say about this is by having a vision statement that represents the purpose of the relationship, two things happen. You now both see the current activities. Whether you're in your functional medicine practice and your spouse is maybe in another business, maybe they have a job, maybe they focus on, maybe they're raising the kids without changing the activities. See, this is context. You change the context for the purpose of the relationship. So you don't even necessarily have to change the activities. And your partner can now start to see how what they do contributes to the fulfillment of the vision. So where before this? Oh, I'm just here managing the house or you're always spending time in your practice. We don't spend as much time together. The change in context will have them and you see what you do in a different light. So you have more fulfillment in your current activities. But ultimately the vision statement will have you start to see different activities. And that would just be a whole other conversation. But two places you would find yourself after creating this vision statement.

Now, before we move on to the next element of continuing to feel the sense of romance in the relationship. Type A. Yes in the chat, if you like the idea of creating a vision as a couple, like that's something you've never actually done. Like what's our vision for relationship or family? Okay, several people typing. Yes. Okay. I love it. Because I'm sure in this group you created a vision that fires you up in your business. And you'll feel that same sense of excitement as you create that vision for your relationship and your family. Okay, so someone said we talk about it, never wrote it. That's a perfect example. Right? Like we thought of the idea and didn't follow through.

And for sure there are long vision statements out there for businesses. It is beneficial to have your vision statement be succinct and clear to where you actually can remember it and you can share it not only with your partner as a reminder, but with other people. So we don't like anything that's vague and not useful.

So continuing on, we're still within the section of how can you continue to feel a sense of romance in your relationship? And the thing is, people do think about we need to go on a date, which I know right now is an interesting type of thing to do. Or maybe it's about getting them flowers, maybe it's about a gift. Right? All of those things are what we call a bonus. But according to research that has existed over decades, it actually does not have to do with those more infrequent activities, even vacations. People are like, oh, if we just went on vacation, we definitely would feel more romance. Again, those are bonus. But according to research, it's not those more bigger intermittent things that actually builds a sense of romance and connection.

So one mistake you might be making then is that your love account is low. And what we mean by love account is we actually want you to think of your emotional connection to your partner, which right now you might not be feeling as much connection. You might be feeling like slightly on different pages, maybe not as aligned. Well, that emotional feeling in your body and in your heart is what we like to call your love account. And there's been other people out there that, like the Gottmans and different relationship leaders that have called this a love tank, some sort of love bank account.

You can call it anything you want, really. Love account.

Yeah. So just think of that level of love, of connection being your heart, I guess. Type in the chat. Right now, if you were to give from a 1 to a 100, how full do you feel like your love account is within your relationship or even for yourself?

You know, your experience of love for yourself within the relationship. Look here. 60, an 8, 60, 40 low. And thanks for the honesty. Really appreciate just having an honest conversation. Like, where are we now? Again, we can't improve anything without just acknowledging where we are now, now, now.

The feeling of being emotionally connected. And love is not a magical, unknown thing. And like Jocelyn said, it's actually been shown that there are ways that you make withdraws from that account knowingly and sometimes unknowingly, and then also deposits. So the first mistake here is you're probably making more withdrawals than you are.

Deposits, even unconsciously, like unintentionally doing this.

And the way that shows up withdrawals would be like criticism, even as small little feedbacks. If that happens more frequently, can Feel like you really criticize one another, withholding physical affection, ignoring things that they say.

Or just being distracted.

Affection, being distracted, being on your phone, being having passive aggressive language, shrugging off the comments that they make. So all of these things as well as many others are withdraws from that account.

So then skill number two then, right, is to make frequent bids. That's what the Gottmans call it. We like to call it just deposits because we find the bank account analogy being helpful for connection and love. So some deposits would be compliments, a kiss on the cheek, appreciation, a tap on the butt, attempting sexual intimacy and active service paying attention to them. Now here's the thing again. According to research, it is the frequency of deposits every single day. Not once a week or twice a week. Just when you happen to have a date night or you're intimate in the bedroom. It actually is even this smaller things that as you walk by them in the hallway, you graze their back or when you are in the kitchen, you give them a kiss on the cheek while they are cooking. It is all those smaller things that add up than even one big action you could do even one big I planned a vacation for us or I am taking you out on a date or I bought you this amazing gift. Again those are bonus. But it is ultimately the small things you are doing throughout the day. Now here's one more thing that we'd add on is it is even more important how you respond to each other's attempts. So this would be a little bit longer of a conversation but there's turning towards, turning away and turning against. And so we can as entrepreneurs be distracted because we're so committed to our mission. Right. Like we're so and many of you are parents, I'm sure. And then there's the news and there's so much going on in the world that we can even sometimes miss our partners attempts for connection.

So Jocelyn, how are you doing today?

I'm good, how are you? Oh, sorry, what'd you say? I was responding to an email. I'm so sorry. A client reached out.

So that would be an example of just turning away. Now the thing about this is a lot of times those gestures, those bids for connection are subtle. So you might not even notice that your partner is making necessarily a bid. And when it goes unacknowledged, it does feel like a rejection to us because we put it out there. I said, jocelyn, hey, how's the day going? That's me asking for connection. And Jocelyn goes to her phone. That's an Example of turning away, which would be a slight withdrawal from your account. Now, I could also say, hey, Jocelyn, how's your day going?

Fine. Oh, you wanted me to do the other example. Okay, well, you didn't. I didn't know we didn't have a code.

I thought we were here.

Okay, okay, I'm sorry I wasn't on the same wavelength. I thought you were going to talk about your response, but okay, so I could be like, hey, I see you're making a bid. I see you're making an attempt to connect. I just have a couple more emails to respond to. Would it be okay if I came to be with you in five minutes? Because I really do want to connect.

That would be a way to acknowledge the bid. Or you could have said something like, it's going really great. Thank you so much for asking me. I really appreciate you. So that would be a way to deposit into the love account is actually turning towards and accepting that bid. The last one is actually turning again. So if I said to Jocelyn, hey, how's your day going?

I'm really busy. Like, give me some time, okay? Like, I don't have time. I just need some time. Give me some space.

That's turning against acting as if I'm some interruption into Jocelyn's life is the larger withdrawal from the deposit. So this happens 10, 20, 60, even up to a hundred times a day that we make these small gestures to each other. Are you doing them consciously and are you aware of how you're responding to them to make these deposits into that love account?

So then let's go into mistake number three, within keeping the romance and the connection alive. And that is allowing dissatisfaction or just lower satisfaction to linger in the relationship. And I know for some of you that stung a little bit because it's true. Right? We can almost not want to go look at the area that we have. Dissatisfaction for many reasons. Being committed to your business, being committed to your children, not wanting to do it because it can be hard work. And so it really doesn't work to just avoid the areas where there is lower satisfaction within the relationship. Because when satisfaction is low, even though it can be tolerable and we can just kind of survive it, there's little to no willingness to change. And so if you and your partner, because some of you maybe are going through a rougher patch right now, I know all of you are on a spectrum. Some of you are thriving within your relationship, some of you are going through a rough patch. And if you are ignoring the lower areas of satisfaction it also will bleed into their ability and wanting to change their behaviors. Right. So it's almost a chicken and the egg thing, right? What comes first, the satisfaction or the willingness to change when, when you know.

When a client is feeling pain, is feeling like something might be off and then they just ignore it. Would that be something that you would suggest to them? No, absolutely not. Even though it might seem uncomfortable for them because maybe they don't want to know, maybe they don't really want to know if something is wrong because, because they're fearful. Isn't it better for them to come to you to find out and get the steps to heal that, to grow that? Absolutely. And it's the same in your relationship. Just because you may be afraid of an answer from your partner, like how satisfied they are in your intimacy, does not mean you can avoid that conversation. You have to bring it up because now, knowing now, you're at least on the same page, you're not making assumptions and then you can put the skills in place to raise that. Which brings us to skill number three.

So the skill then is instead of making assumptions or avoiding the areas where there's lower satisfaction, is to have frequent meeting, check ins, family meeting about your relationship. So we actually have a worksheet. We could get that to you so we can send that afterwards to be distributed if you would like it. This is our worksheet that goes into the core areas. And I can tell you because we have worked with couples married 20 years, 30 years, and when we ask when was the last time you checked in on each other's satisfaction in intimacy in your social life? Never. Like I just kind of hoped they bring it up. There wasn't a moment to pause and actually check in on the relationship itself. So this is a great tool that you can use and we recommend doing this monthly, ideally would be great. So just to show you what it would look like, you have the area of life and then you have each of your satisfaction levels. You can go from a 1 to a 10 and then you would set a goal or intention for that area of the relationship. So we've said a bit here, we're only through section one. So before we move on to the next section of our talk, we'd like to hear some aha's in the chat because we like to see what people are taking away.

Or Sachin, if you'd like to jump in with something from the identification, from bids, or from the satisfaction.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, this is so fascinating because it's. I'm Seeing things and opportunities in my own personal relationship to work towards optimizing. You know, Deepa and I were actually having a discussion because I was talking about wanting her to be on this call and giving, kind of pre. Framing her in terms of what was going to be covered and what I enjoyed most about our previous conversations. And this morning, it actually prompted us to sit down with one another. Although we didn't talk about our relationship, it was just really good to sit next to her. And we have. We have this, like, funny thing going, this funny dynamic because her room is upstairs and her room is really hot and it's the hottest room in the house. So it gets really warm and cozy. And my room, my office is in the basement, so it's always cold down here. So that's her cop out. Your office is too cold. And so we're going to set aside some time every week to really connect on the business, but more importantly, connect on. Like, I love how you said to create this vision for your relationship and then identify how does it all tie in? Because sometimes, you know, let's face it, you're busy, you're doing work, and here you are thinking you're doing this for your partner, you're doing this for your child, or you're doing this for the, you know, the advancement of your family. But then you could be sacrificing your relationships unless they actually see how that's actually contributing to the partnership and contributing to, you know, the, the common bond and growth that you've, you know, kind of discussed. So I really love that framework. That's really helpful.

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And I just want to acknowledge a few people saying, a reminder of how we've tolerated a standard compared to what we created 10 years ago. Just thanks for being honest. Right. Like, there are times where we can just get used to something, tolerate it, and it even becomes the new norm. And we know it's not our best. Right. Like, we're all committed to be our best and sometimes we aren't being our best in the relationship. So that was. And then, let's see, I saw someone also mentioned that they realized they've been putting so much attention on their children and several people said, I can relate to this, which makes sense. Right. You're committed to being incredible parents, and it's not a one or the other thing. Right. It's an. And being a great parent and a great partner. Okay, good. So thank you for sharing just what you're taking away here. Create a family vision. Several people have said they're going to create that.

One quick thing I wanted to say about those that have kids to actually, you know, it's powerful to have that vision for you and your spouse. But if you also have this conversation with your kids to where they see either the role that they play in that vision being realized, or at least they know what your vision is together, that will reframe the context maybe for them of why you're gone X amount of time, which could be a lot for them. Now, we're not saying you don't adjust. If quality time with kids is something that's more important, you can certainly move more towards that. But if your kids know the bigger why all of a sudden they can see your own actions differently as to maybe why you missed a sporting event or why you haven't been around as much. So including them is super powerful.

Absolutely. That's great. So thanks for sharing what you're taking away so far. So continuing on to the second portion, we're going to go into this secrets to influencing your partner when you disagree. Anyone ever have times where you disagree with your partner? Could be a financial decision, it could be something about parenting, it could be something about within the business. Anyone ever disagree? Like, let's just see if we're the only ones. I'm sure that there are some other people daily. No, absolutely never. Well then that's amazing. A miracle really. Okay, so there are those times, right, that we can disagree with our partner. Especially something else that we talk about if we had more time was how there are actually four communication personality types. Actually we're going to mention that towards the end. But sometimes people get discouraged because they're trying to influence their partner positively. Right? They're trying to invite them into self development, they're trying to invite them into consciousness work. And it can feel like we're not influencing our partner because they don't agree, perhaps that it's important or why are you investing into that group? Like do you really need to invest into something else? So first we have to acknowledge how you cannot influence real change. And yes, many of these are reminders. But again, we have to be honest with ourselves. Sometimes we use these. It can be blame, blaming them for where you are in the relationship or blaming them for things that haven't been going as well. It can be judgment, judging their lifestyle choices, judging the choices that they make in their life, their business, or how they're parenting, being reactive. So what we see often is people who say, oh, I communicate. But when we dig deeper, they communicate Once they're already upset, they're not communicating in advance the needs and desires that they have. Resentment. This is very common even in the high performing world. I'd consider you all high performers because you're in this group. And we can sometimes just tolerate something for a while or silently resent our partner for something and it just becomes the thing we tolerate. Criticisms, labeling them, avoidance complaints, passive aggressive statements. So these are things that just do not work to create change.

So it really is to look at the state in which you are approaching your partner, having these conversations, that emotional state. And we guarantee that no one, let alone your partner and no one in life has ever been truly influenced when another has come from this type of state. Now, what might have happened is you might have forced somebody, you may have created power struggles, resistance, and at best created compliance in another person. Of course, here we're talking about your partner. So that means your partner might have said yes. But there's a big difference between a compliance yes and a commitment yes. This actually principle comes from Chris Voss, lead FBI negotiator and author of Never Split the Difference. There's a huge difference when your partner, when you come to them and say, I would like more support, I would like to do personal development, I'd like to get this coach, I'd like to be more connected, I'd like to go through and have a family meeting every week for us to check on our satisfaction. They might say, okay, yes, but if you came from one of these states of trying to force them or change them or labeling them or shaming them, then that yes, for them, really, they're thinking, did you just get off my back already? And they're not really committed to this. They're not really engaged in it. So you're probably going to end up in a place where they don't do it. And for a lot of people that's a complaint. My partner said they were going to do something, but we never did it. And probably that's because there was some sort of compliance rather than on the opposite side. If you come to your partner, true influence is getting a commitment. Yes, I will do that. I'm committed to that. I love that idea. Let's do that together. And so it's a huge difference of starting to notice from a state of all of those other places of criticism, of blame, you're probably more so going to get a compliance versus true influence.

So to have this skill of influence. We want to remember that this is also from Chris Voss. Life is a negotiation, which is really A game of empathy. And we can read that word, empathy and be like, yes, okay, I'm going to be a more empathetic person. I'm going to be a more empathetic partner and parent and we can forget about it, right? But we want to remind ourselves that real influence comes from empathizing with our partner's perspective, empathizing with the season of life that they're in, with the choices that they're making. Another element that is huge is having agreements. So we, a quick example when we talk to high performing couples is they're like, well, I'm really frustrated that we don't get enough quality time. And every single week we just say, okay, fine, I'll get you quality time. And then another week passes and another week passes and they don't have a clear agreement on exactly when, where, how long the quality time will be. So as it might seem like, oh, agreements kind of feels sterile or that feels like not a romantic relationship, but it actually supports it really thriving by making sure that you have, especially if you have different preferences for it, what's a win win agreement that works for both of us, clear boundaries. And so that even includes, it was mentioned earlier, like the separation between business and romance. So it could be, hey, at 5pm we put my phone away. And actually something I implemented that helped us a ton in business is I put my phone literally in the other room, face down and I cannot hear it or see it at 7pm and so that allows us to do whatever we want in the evenings because. And yes, I have dings and I mean it's on silent, but I wake up and yes there's messages and yes there's emails and all the things, but those messages are not more important than us being able to be present with each other.

And even in our room, we create that as a sacred space. So there's no technology in there whatsoever. There's no tv, phones are on airplane mode. We don't even, we're not even on our phone while in the bedroom or even social media and television. We don't need someone else's vision trying to be impressed upon us. We really want to create an environment and a space within our own house. Not just our office, but another place where it's just us. It's about connection. We're not bringing anything in from the outside world. So that's a great agreement that has worked well for us.

And so continuing on accountability, consistency, if you want to improve something within your relationship, you can't do it one week and Be like, I tried and it didn't help us that much. It is consistent doing it over a year and beyond. Communicating proactively instead of reactively ahead of time. Even if you think, well, we've been together 10 years, they should know, I need this. No, communicate it proactively. Don't assume they will know. Healing resentments. If there are things that happened years ago or months ago that you just got busy and didn't distract, you know, quarantine. One of the things that happened and we were observing early on as couples were reaching out to us, was all this extra time being together where they weren't distracted. It was revealing things that they had been ignoring. Right. Revealing where they weren't as great of communicators. Revealing where they actually hadn't healed something. But they got so distracted with the meetings and the games and the birthday parties and all the places they were going that they were able to ignore the resentments that were lingering there. So you want to heal those. And also asserting your needs from an I perspective, really check in. When you communicate with your partner, do you start a lot of sentences with hey, what I realize they need, or do you start a lot of sentences with, hey, you did or didn't? It's just something to check in on. And then having commitments like, what are you really committed to in your relationship? So to give a step for this, three steps to empathize with your partner. And I'm sure these are things that you practice with. Patience, right? Because I know that you all really are conscious of how you communicate with them and we can forget them in our relationship is to do things as simple as saying, hey, what I'm hearing you say is blank. Is that right? What do we do instead of this? Yeah, but that's not what I said. That's not what I did. That's not what I meant. Actually, that's not what happened. We can have some kind of a defense or an invalidation. Okay, you start.

Thought I told you to send that invoice to the client and you didn't do it.

So what I'm hearing you say is you thought I was going to send the invoice to the client. Is that right?

Yeah, that's right. Okay, so notice how that's at least different. What Jocelyn could have said was, you never told me that. Well, what do you mean? I sent that over. So if you immediately react back with some sort of defensiveness, that's not going to be a place of being able to empathize. So what Jocelyn clearly did Was to kind of even restate what I said and then acknowledge, am I hearing that correctly? Because often we can hear one thing, especially if we feel like our partner is blaming us or really. For me, what I found as a male is a lot of my own defensiveness comes from not wanting to feel like I disappointed Jocelyn. So a lot of times, that's kind of the energetic, don't talk to me about that. Stop. Stop. Saying that is really because I didn't want to be a disappointment. So when Jocelyn says, what I'm hearing you say is and then asks me, we get out of the realm of making assumptions. This is really the first step to be able to empathize.

So then the second way you can empathize is to say, actually acknowledge how they might be feeling. It sounds like what you're feeling is blank. Even check in when your partner, especially for those of you who maybe have been going through a rough patch or going through a lower level of satisfaction, let's say, in intimacy, it sounds like what you're feeling is that you haven't been prioritized, you know, really acknowledging our partner's feelings. We can so much communicate on a logical level, responding to the literal words that they're saying, whether they're talking about the dishes or they're talking about the kids. And we can miss the feeling that they're trying to communicate, which really, in a romantic relationship, that's what we want to be known and to be acknowledged is how we're feeling.

Notice how much different this conversation would go is if you just made it to the second step. So let's do the example again. I told you to send that invoice to that client, and you didn't.

Okay. So I hear that you thought I was going to send it, and it sounds like you're feeling frustrated. Is that right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Notice what that did. It turned the direction from me sort of blaming Jocelyn to at first have me reflect on what is it that I am feeling. So immediately, it turns the conversation around to have them check in with what they're feeling. And once again, for all the males, sometimes we don't necessarily know how to express our emotions. We might not have the words for it. So this question is great because it helps me reflect. Am I feeling frustrated? I might even pause and say, well, no, I'm not really feeling that frustrated. It's just more I feel, you know, like I let the client down.

Okay.

Right. So it really allows me to access the real root or base emotion from which I'm actually Coming from. And rather than just react or take action from my upset, notice how we have created a break. Tony Robbins calls it a pattern interrupt. Right now you're creating a pattern interrupt by having me really self reflect. What am I feeling? Is that right? And I might adjust that a little bit. And at minimum, I'm now feeling like Jocelyn is really interested in the real feeling for me.

So then the third step to empathize would be actually to share with your partner. I would love to hear more about that and hear what you need. Even think about the times you don't agree with your partner. Imagine if, even if you didn't see it their way, even if you had a different perspective, you still said to them, I'd actually love to hear more about that. I'd love to hear more about your perspective, why you prefer that it would blow their minds. And we so often forget that the point of communication is not to always agree. The point of communication is to understand each other, which I know is like a thing that people want to write down and be like, yes, I'm going to do that. But then we forget to do it. We forget to actually focus on understanding our partner because we don't agree with them. So there's a lot more that we could say. We actually sometimes are like, how do we choose the principles that we're going to talk about? So before we open it up into Q and A, we really want to leave you with the fact that communication is not one size fits all. And we see online, on social media all the things, communication is the key to a relationship. Right. How many times do we see that? And we all know that, but something that we've developed because in our work with couples, what we realized was that there actually is not just a one size fits all communication. There's actually four communication personality types. And so in a way, this is a way we want to make you aware of if you enjoyed our content and you'd like to hear more. Our new book, as we shared earlier, is coming out and we go into the four communication personality types. It's very insightful to know a better way to initiate things with your partner depending on their type and also understanding how long they need to process things. This helps prevent disagreements, it helps them keep from getting escalated and ultimately to shorten the argument hangover period, which is the name of our book. So we wanted to just make you aware for those of you who are going, okay, I could bring some more attention to my relationship. We're actually giving $200 worth of pre order bonuses, including two trainings on communication, conflict, emotional triggers, being a better listener. And all of those bonuses can get claimed even before your book arrives. And that's@theargumenthangover.com that's currently what we're very, very excited about. And one of our biggest business goals right now is to get this in the hands of as many couples as we can right now. So we hope that many of you do enjoy that book and take advantage of those bonuses.

Yeah, it's just really powerful to notice what type you are because often, you know, we get into a relationship and it's like, well, you should be communicating at the same speed I am. You should be as proactive or upfront. I want to talk this out right now. Let's come to a resolution. So we often unconsciously try to get our partner to really operate in the same type. Without realizing there are types, you feel like there's this mismatch rather than when you understand there is a certain type, then you can approach, you can have different ways to have conversations and just acknowledge that your partner has a different type of. And if you do the Math, obviously with four different types, you could fall into 10 different dynamics. So it's not that your communication style is wrong at all, it's just knowing your type and which dynamic you fall into. Because imagine you don't have to change each other, but just imagine with some additional awareness, how much easier, how much flow, how much ease you could feel in your communication while you now move towards creating this vision that represents your life, your relationship, your bigger purpose, all which includes your functional medicine practice and the impact you're making in the lives of clients.

So with that, we would love to answer any questions or just kind of dive deeper into the principles. Something coming up in your relationship, your business partnership, really anything that we can be of service with.

Well, first off, I want to say thank you. I feel like there was a lot of light bulbs that went out for me personally. I can speak for myself. And judging by people's facial responses and nodding, I felt like almost all of us got some sort of value out of this. And significant value for me, I can say for sure, because I can already think of a few, you know, levers that I could, you know, kind of really implement to swing a big door open and really have that home run. And, and it's really easy for us sometimes to take things personally, but if our partners don't know this, then we're playing with a different set of rules. Right. And you might be Trying to make an effort to, like, I can go upstairs right now and do a few things, but it might feel out of alignment and might feel a little creepy for Deepa because she wouldn't be used to that. So I would love to know how to navigate that. She's very, she's very open and receptive. And, you know, I feel like we really try to get to know each other on a genetic level, on a personality level. And I'm always looking to further continue to optimize that. And I would love to, you know, any tips that you can offer because I know that many of us might not be on here with our spouse or significant other. How do we introduce some of these concepts into the home so that we, you know, the effort and the energy can be reciprocated.

So interestingly, I introduced Aaron into self development and even the idea of working on the relationship before crisis came in, because that's what our culture mostly does, right? We put attention on the relationship when getting engaged in the wedding and then, oh, we're in crisis. So let's go to counseling. And that's the paradigm we're out to shift, to actually make it the norm to proactively work on your relationship even before it gets to that point. So there's two approaches. And a lot of times people are like, well, I've brought up the idea of reading a relationship book with my partner or going to a couple's workshop and they go, oh, I don't know. And then they don't bring it up again. And so it is something that you want to not, of course, badger your partner with, but bring it up and in a way, take a loving stand. Like, this is something I'm committed to for our home. And I'm making a bold request that you be a yes to this, even if you're not sure if you're going to like it. I can tell you that, you know, before quarantine, we hosted in person couples workshops every month and we were about to take it on tour. Isn't it the story of like, Corona? I was like, I had this plan and then, you know, it got taken away. But we had so many times where a couple would come and one of the partners, it doesn't matter which gender, was kind of more apprehensive. And then at the end they're like, I'm so glad. It actually wasn't something I felt like I was trying to be friends fixed or that I was flawed. And here's the thing, the partner, though, that invited them didn't just say, well, you know, they weren't that interested. So I gave up on it. No, they said, this is really important to me. I really would love if you'd be open to trying it. If afterwards you don't like it, great. We don't have to do that same exact thing again. We can try something else. But I invite people to really take a bold stand for the relationship from not a place of force, but from the possibility that you're trying to create. What is the possibility you want to create for your relationship? It's not like, hey, we're broken and we need to be fixed. No one is inspired by that. It's, hey, I have this possibility of wanting to know more about you, your needs. Like, I want to be an even better partner for you. I want us to be a shining example for our kids and I want us to have a relationship that's extraordinary. And for me, I'd love to do like self development for our relationship. Would you be open to that with me? So share from the possibility rather than the problem.

Yeah. Another way to say it, share the positive intent. And I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with Simon Sinek. It's the same in the relationship. Start with the why, not the what. I want you to read this book. I want you to go to this seminar. I want you to be a part of Sachin's group or just listen in. Well, you're starting with the what. You want to start with the why and share what your positive intent is for the relationship. If I said to Jocelyn, you know, I really just want to be even more connected and have deeper intimacy, I mean, I'm in. Why would she say no? So your partner will say, okay, great. How do you think we should go about that? Now you're in a conversation of exploring options of what's. But you started with the why. That's a way to really get them into a commitment. Yes. Rather than one of those compliant yeses.

I see a couple more questions. Is it okay if we jump into those?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, so one I saw here was I'd love to know how to deep have deep conversations with a partner who goes silent and freezes when deep talk with detox when I'm a talker and more forceful. So this is perfect because that's exactly why we developed the four communication personality types. So to give you a brief answer, because, you know, that's why we wrote out a book on it. It's a little bit more involved to go into it thoroughly, but it sounds like your partner falls into more of the reserved column. And reserved partners don't do well with being blindsided or having conversations spontaneously brought up to them. And their brain just does not process things that way. I'm not talking about necessarily from like a biochemical level but just from their patterns, how they grew up, the personality that they formed. And so they do much better reserve types, which he does fall into that with giving a heads up. So even to this day, as much as we have developed communication, as much as he's done self development, if I give him a heads up that there's something I want to talk about, whatever it's about starting a family, a deep conversation I want to have. If I say hey, I think it'd be really amazing if we talked about kids or if it was something deeper like the meaning of life. Like if you want to have a really deep conversation, I know that you do better when kind of having time to think about it, reflect. Would you be up for having breakfast together tomorrow and talking about that? It really helps for them to be able to gather their thoughts in advance and contemplate it. They don't do well kind of being put on the spot. So that's the short of it. And okay, let's continue to go on here. Oh, I saw someone ask for the URL for the book. We're so glad that you want that. Do you want to go on to one of the next questions here?

Well, Sachin, do you have anything else or see any other question?

Well, I wanted to, you know, kind of if you could share with us in addition to how to introducing this to your home, I would love for you to kind of share the workshop that you guys have coming up because what I would love to see happen is. So we didn't even talk about this but we'll figure out the logistics later. But I'd like to buy everyone a copy of the book. So we'll arrange for that on the back end so you'll all get a copy. So don't go and buy it and we'll figure out what we can do. And then what I would love to also see happen is the training that you have Coming up on the 21st, I'm going to be attending that. It's my birthday weekend. For me this is really important and, and Deepa and I are really looking to expand our business, expand our impact and expand our influence and that really starts in that immediate home center. So we want to work on that and I'd love for you to share a little bit more about that so that those who might be interested, let's give them all a script to get their significant other there so that we can, all of us can grow. Because if we have our significant other on board, understanding, I mean, so much friction in our life gets removed and that same energy, that same, you know, time that we spend with them can be way better leveraged. We can resolve things that are probably lowering our hrv. Maybe certain things we've been holding onto that need to be released. And I feel like for many people that I've spoken to, at least recently, for whatever reason, I know it's getting close to Valentine's Day, so maybe there's something in the air. But you know, I feel like I've. That's been coming up quite a bit is I'm growing, but my partner may not be. Or now that I'm focusing more on my business, how do I address this with my spouse? Or I'm spending more time at home now than ever before. We're seeing our spouses more than ever before in many cases. And there's children in the mix in some states and provinces. So there's all this dynamic that's shifting and changing. And I know the frameworks that you provide can be so valuable and just that one thing can create such a huge shift. So let's go into that and then let's do some more Q and A as well.

Thank you for asking. So just to briefly share about it. So we created the couples Workshop. That's what we call it. It's a half day event that like we said, we used to do every month in person and we now can have that done from home. The website for those of you who want to go look is thecouplesworkshop.com dates you want to add that slash dates to get the live dates that we have coming up. And it's a very highly produced in studio event. But the whole intention is that no matter how busy you are, you can invest a half a day into your relationship. And if many of you were intrigued by the idea of creating a couple's vision statement, that's the first exercise that we take couples through is creating a vision statement for the relationship. And then we also go into communication exercises. So we take you through ways of. Especially if what I would bet is when it comes to conflict, it's not 100 things that you disagree about. It's usually one or two things that keep coming up over and over again. So we even have a process for how to overcome that frustration that keeps you from love. We do communication exercises. So in a half day, that's what the studio looks like. It's really a cool experience. And you really get to invest into your relationship in the half day and walk out, walk out of your room, that you do it in your home, really feeling like the most empowered couple you've ever been. So the promise, as you can see, is that you will communicate better and resolve conflicts faster in just five hours instead of five months. And for some of you who are like, okay, communication is one thing, and also the vision, you can really be benefited by the vision statement. Anything you want to add about the couples workshop?

There's just a great section in there, my favorite, about disappointment. And not to go too much into it, but when we think about stalling momentum, whether in your business or in your relationship, what stalls momentum? Well, it's disappointments. Well, what if there was a way to disappear disappointments? Well, it's one of the things that we actually go into. We have a process of having you explore what creates disappointments, giving you a little insight. It's actually unmet, unexpressed expectations. And we have a whole process that you really get to dive into a conversation in a safe container with your partner to explore expectations that you may have had but not expressed or didn't even realize that you had that were running in the background of creating disappointments, which just moves towards creating disconnection and some frustration. It's just a powerful exercise. So I love that piece. And then we close it all out with the four elements of true love, which are not what you think they are, which, of course, is the whole point of relationship, is to experience more love not as a condition or as a reflection of circumstances, but as a decision. And there are ways that you can put that in place.

Yeah. Thank you for asking. We'd love to have you. We are doing one on February 21st. It is a Sunday, and it works for most schedules. We try to fit it in no matter which time zone. Hopefully you can attend, and we would love to have you be a part of that.

Okay. Amazing. There was a question that came in, which I think is more of what I want to hear, is, do you have an affiliate program? Because I think there's a lot of us here that could really think of our patients, our friends, our clients or relatives even, that could potentially benefit from this. I think, really everyone can benefit from this. So there was a question that came up from Lisa is if there was an affiliate link.

Absolutely. So what we would do is we would develop that for you, but either like. Like a coupon code or a special link, we do that depending on kind of how you prefer. Because sometimes we can give your client a discount or give you the bonus. So if you would want to email us on that, we could develop that. And our best email. I'll type it into the chat. So people could send that.

Yeah, you want to talk a little bit more about how people can get signed up. So we've got the. We'll post the website in there and then. And it's only 197. I mean this is. I can see this being of tremendous value, kind of going deeper down some of these areas to improve and optimize. And I love doing things with my community. So like, we've done like breathwork trainings together. I would love to go through this training together because it kind of raises the vibe for all of us. And so, you know, this is my encouragement to all of you to make this investment in your relationship. And like I said, we'll arrange for each of you to get a copy of the book, so look out for that so you can at least start the learning process and become more familiar with this. And I also feel like this could be. It's kind of. We didn't talk about it. Maybe we can touch upon. It is a lot of our patients challenges and issues are stemming from broken relationships. Like it's causing a lot of their health issues and challenges and could be one of the underlying root causes or mechanisms, aside from their diet and all that other stuff is their relationships. And because we are social creatures, you know, there's more to us than just our biology. There's that emotional body that we need to also consider. So I feel like this could be really helpful for us to learn, you know, for, you know, maybe even guiding or assisting our clients or at least being able to point them to your work so they. They could get some solutions too.

Absolutely. Yes. I completely echo that. Right. Any withheld communications or places that we're not feeling satisfaction within the relationship can show up in our health 100%. And I love. People are saying, you know, send it to some clients. Thank you. Like, that's amazing. We would absolutely love to have anyone be a part of it.

All right, awesome. We'll share more details in the group and I want to make sure that we get to use the time that you've given us most effectively. So if somebody wants to unmute themselves and ask a question, then by all means, go right ahead. You know, there's probably something that's in your. On your mind that other people have on their minds as well. So if you've got a question, then feel free to share that. And if you want to post it anonymously and send it to me directly or to Aaron and Jocelyn directly, then you can certainly do that as well. We won't say your name.

Yeah, we'll take a look. And while one more comes in, I did see one above, so I'll give everybody a second if anyone wants to unmute. But I did see someone type 1.

So I also saw an acknowledgement for you, Sashin. Someone said you continue to amaze and inspire, which I really echo you. Just you're such a great leader here in this space and, and honestly, from our heart to your. From our hearts. I mean, thank you so much for again, not only having us on, but even sharing the workshop and the book. This really is our life's work being put out into the world. So similar to all of you putting your work into functional medicine. That's what this is to us. So we just really appreciate you sharing.

I saw a great question here. How do you suggest implementing these tools when things are heated, right? So communication is when you can communicate, like our having a dialogue when you're hopefully emotionally calm, conflict gets escalated when now emotion is triggered, right? So the communication has triggered something. Or perhaps you disagree. And so that's really where having conflict skills is really important. And I mean, there's, I mean, we could go for a long time on this. That's why we wrote a book called the Argument Hangover, because we find conflict really interesting. And one of the things is a lot of people see conflict as something that's bad and shouldn't happen, so they resist it. I don't want my partner to be frustrated. I don't want to rock the boat. And there's a whole thing we could talk about in terms of where did that come from? Why do we see conflict as a bad thing? But conflict can actually be something that creates more bonding. It creates innovation between you two, creative ideas, and actually even healing between you two can happen. Or even healing for yourself. Right? Because sometimes what's triggered in the conflict isn't even from the relationship right now. It's from your upbringing, it's from your childhood, it's from the past relationship. And so if we look at even the emotions that are getting triggered in conflict as an opportunity to heal, then we can start to respond to our partner as, oh, what they're saying might not even be about Me, it might be about something else that's coming up for them. The emotion that's coming up for them, whether it's anger or it's sadness, oh, my gosh. This is emotion that wants to get released. I'm sure you all follow that, right? Motion being energy in motion. And so if things start to get heated within your relationship, then what you want to do is actually see it as an opportunity for that emotion to move and to actually keep yourself from getting triggered back with your partner. Which, if we had another hour, we love talking about emotional triggers, but I think if you can also work on the perception or how you see heated conversations, anything you'd add to that question.

Well, Chris, I wanted to echo back Krista. So true. These are principles that work for all relationships, not just romantic. So with staff and parents and siblings, she said, we got another question here directly to us. So I wanted to address. If a partner says they're interested in growing and personal development and then they don't have the follow through, what would we do? Well, a couple of things is just to notice if there's a true commitment or if it's a compliance. Right. So though your partner might say, yeah, I'm really interested in that. But does that sound like a compliance? Meaning they're just trying to avoid the conversation. They're just trying to kind of get you off your back rather than. I am truly committed to that. And then there's something that's just in the way of that.

I'd also say, so we just had a session with a couple who actually attended our workshop, and then they wanted to talk to us more. And. And so she had signed up for the workshop, and he was afterwards, like, okay, I acknowledge I could have taken that initiative and I didn't. And here's the thing. What he said was, I'm so glad you signed us up and you asked me to just do it, just show up. Even though I was kind of like, what are we doing? You know, like, he was not like, yay, like, we're going to this workshop. Right? Like, your partner might not always show up as like, oh my gosh, I'm excited. They might be like, what's this thing we're doing? But to still embrace that. And he said, I'm so grateful you just took the initiative. You signed us up and you said, honey, this is what we're doing. Because he said it really, he was able to be influenced by someone else. And sometimes you aren't the best person to influence your partner. Right. I know that's our goal and that's our dream, is that we can give our partner feedback and they take it. But sometimes another person saying it can be so much more of a contribution. So.

So if your partner was more of a compliance, then it probably. And again, this is just, you know, one sentence out of multiple ways this could be going. But if it seems like you're inviting them into change because you don't like the way that they're operating, you know, I had resistance to that. When Jocelyn framed it that way to me, she said, hey, I want you to check out this personal development thing. Well, how does that come off to me? I'm like, okay, yeah, sure, I'll do that. But I feel like she's wanting me to be different or I'm sort of disappointing her. So in that stage when Jocelyn got more interested, number one, in where I would like to grow or progress for myself, as human beings, this is a base thing. We all want to progress. That's what has us feel happiness. And so just getting interested in any area that your partner might want to grow at least gets them into the conversation. So as they make progress in one area, they're going to start to feel that momentum, start to feel that happiness. And so that might be a way to get a partner that's been more of a compliant. Yes. That it just wasn't clear to them the benefit it would be for them rather than you wanting them to be different or change in some way.

I saw another great question. I hope it's okay if we kind of do just the Q and A is like our favorite part. So someone said, what's the most common issue you see with couples? And how do you help guide them to improve this? So two of the main ones come to mind. Like, you know, people talk about how money is the. One of the top reasons for divorce. It really all comes down to communication. And none of us had a Communications 101 or a Relationships 101 class growing up, right? And so people, like, are like, well, I found the person I love, right? And we have chemistry and all those things. And they bank on love and chemistry, not realizing that there are critical communication skills that, you know, none of us learned really growing up unless we had, like, these amazing, magical parents that taught us. And so really it comes down to communication. And they in two parts. One, people not knowing in relationships how to clearly speak their needs and their desires. Like, they might know it up here, but they either have fear of speaking the need and the desire to their partner, or they're actually not as clear as they think they are. So, like, a quick example would be like, I want us to work on intimacy. Well, intimacy. The moment I said intimacy, all of you imagined different things. Some of you imagined kissing or being intimate in bed. Some of you imagine just quality time and having coffee together. And so people think that they're clear communicators when they're really using vague words that they're partner has a different interpretation for. And then so they're speaking and then there's listening. And a lot of us, including us, can always get better at listening. So I'd say the biggest breakdown, whether it's involving resentment, money, whatever the circumstances showing up as is because they're mostly missing communication skills. So I hope that answers that question, Sasha.

And we know you had a hard stop in three minutes also.

So how many of you would like more time asking questions? Yeah, is this helpful? Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to. I'll pass the co host on to Carol and we'll keep the conversation going. I'm excited to watch this replay as well. And for those of you that may have missed it, we're going to make sure that each of you gets a copy of the book. So we'll figure out the logistics of that and we'll send more details around that. And then I would definitely encourage all of you or those of you that really feel called to it on the 21st, join me and Deepa and perhaps other people from this group who are going to be up leveling their relationships. I think, you know, really, if we're going to. What I realized over the last little bit is that, you know, building a virtual practice from home means that you have to have that your home has to be a sanctuary, has to be an emotional sanctuary, a physical sanctuary, a spiritual sanctuary, has to do all those things for you. That's why last week we had my feng shui master designer come and talk about how to improve the energetics in our home. And now we have both of you on here today talking about how to improve the kind of relationship energy in our homes. And of course, relationships, communication, it applies into every area of our life. But it really is important that it starts at home because if we're not communicating well at home, then we're going to bring that energy into our patient encounters as well. And what you think might be your patients are draining you is actually you draining yourself because you're not dealing with some of the other stuff that's going on. So I think that, you know, this. This is really all part of it. You might be wondering, why aren't we talking about building your funnel or Facebook ads or, you know, split testing your homepage like we're talking about this? Because this is, at the end of the day, what matters to me at least. And I know for many of you, this is what matters the most. So we want to anchor this as part of our core value system and then build a business around that, because if we don't have good communication and relationships within our home, then that can lead to a lot of negative behaviors and compensatory behaviors that a lot of people get themselves into trouble with. So, you know, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Carol. Thank you. I'm going to pass the floor on to you. But, you know, I appreciate you for joining us. And, you know, you've got lots of great comments and feedback, and, you know this. I can see us having many more conversations moving forward around this. So thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you for inviting us into your sacred space and enjoy your day.

Thank you. Thank you.