#146: Doubting Hearts, Courageous Love: The Power to Overcome Relationship Uncertainty (Part Two)

Imagine lifting weights, not at the gym, but in your heart. Every emotion, every boundary, every challenge in your relationship is adding weight. Sounds intense, right? But what if I told you that this emotional weightlifting is the key to navigating the unknown terrains of a relationship space? Hello, dear listeners and welcome back to Love Shack. Live your haven for rediscovering love. When you're at that crucial relationship crossroads, if you if the walls of your heart echo with questions, if you're seeking to bridge that emotional gap, then you've tuned in to the right frequency. I'm your guide, Stacy Bartley, relationship expert. Joining me on this journey are my co host and lover Tom and our daughter Brooke. We've walked the path, faced the storms, and we're here to light your way. Today we're diving into the depths of emotional weightlifting and the pivotal role of courage. But here's the question. In the face of relationship challenges, how do you flex those emotional muscles? How do you summon the courage to not just face the world, but to face yourself? So join us as we explore these questions, share some insights and provide you with the tools to strengthen your emotional core. Together, let's transform challenges into stepping stones leading to a deeper, more authentic love experience.

Hey, thank you for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

In the love shack last week we had a conversation about choosing ourselves first and why does it matter and some actual steps that you can take to begin to build and deepen a better relationship with yourself. Here's the thing. If there's no sense of self from within, there is nothing to contribute to a co creation with another. At best, it will be a relationship built on pretense and illusion. After all, the only thing of value we bring into our relationship relationships is what we are, not what we have that will lose its luster fast. So I want you to think about a car without an engine, a fruit tree that bears no fruit, a body without life. Once you can connect with a sense of self, then we can begin to strengthen it so that yes, that car now has an engine, that tree can actually bear fruit, and that body actually can breathe life into something that is known and felt inside. Now we build on that foundation and we begin to develop emotional strength by doing what we call in my body of work, emotional weightlifting. Now that's probably a new term for most of you. And so let's dive into what that is, what that looks like and what we're actually talking about today. What emotional weightlifting is, is the skill and practice that enables each of us to truly utilize and benefit from our emotions in a way that allows us to feel strong, empowered, and complete. We accomplish this by consistently building and strengthening our ability to recognize, understand, manage, and express our emotional selves in a way that leaves us feeling inner peace. Have you felt that before? Do you know what I'm talking about? Sometimes this can be a big challenge for us as we try and wrap our heads around what I just said.

Especially I'm talking to the anxious people. I just want you, the anxious person listening to this podcast, to think about how rare it is for you to feel that inner peace. Because as an anxious girly myself, it doesn't come naturally and it doesn't come very often. So really listen to this episode and think about how much more calm your life could be if you had the ability to create that inner peace yourself.

For you, because it's available for all of us. It's just we've not ever really learned the skills nor know how to engage in the practice that would help us accomplish those things. If you're like most of us, we are just reacting to the people in the world around us and we don't give much thought to what's driving that. What's happening. For me on the inside as I'm spinning up and up and up, I just all of a sudden fall apart and know that I'm a hot mess. But aside from that, I don't really understand why we can then make up some terrible narratives about ourselves, unfortunately, that we're broken, that we're sick, that we'll never have love. We don't know how to do this when the reality is we just don't know how to end. We just don't know how to do emotional weightlifting. We don't understand how our bodies and our minds process emotions, and we have no idea how to do it. It's one thing to know, okay, I know this isn't working, but come on, tell me what to do instead. There's two components to that. Understanding what's not working and then understanding what to do instead. And left to our own devices as a human being, we will continue to do what we know to do simply because we don't know what else to do. And that's so true when it comes to our emotions. The second thing about emotional weightlifting that's important for you to understand is to realize and recognize that emotional pain is normal. It's going to happen. Imagine living in a world where you never experienced physical pain again. We have come to accept that physical pain, having the occasional headache, stomach ache, the propensity to maybe twist and turn an ankle, fall down, skin, your knees are all normal parts of life. And living, we wouldn't anticipate living, you know, 50, 60, 90, 120 years on the planet and not ever experience physical pain again. Like that would be a crazy thought, right? You'd think, what world are you living in? Well, the same is true with emotional pain. It is part of being human. It is a part of our day to day life. And if we hold it in the same light as physical pain, the pain is simply just asking for our attention. Hey, there's something here that's not working. There's something here that's not going well. There's something here that needs to be addressed. It's literally just asking for our attention to understand it, to break it down, and then to recognize what it is we would like to do. Instead, when it comes to ruddering ourselves through the challenges of life and relationships, what we tend to do is try and change our behavior with no regard to what the emotional driver is. And I'm going to tell you right now, it won't work. It's a setup for failure. We can't change our behavior without understanding the emotion that drives it first. So our first goal has to be the ability to understand myself emotionally. I also want to just propose this idea to you. Emotional pain gives us the opportunity to practice emotional weightlifting. Emotional weightlifting helps us to be stronger in our constitution and in our understanding of ourselves instead of just the act of simply acting out. Can you feel and hold your emotions when all you desire to say is you're wrong, you're wrong, you've got it all wrong, you got it all twisted. Can you feel your emotions while you continue to listen and wait for an appropriate time to share? It's possible and it takes learning and practice, but you can absolutely learn to do it too. As Leo Biscalio once said, when we accept our pain, our sorrow and our disappointments as much as we do our joys and delights, we will be well on our way to becoming fabulous lovers. So emotional weightlifting essentially gives you the ability to regulate your emotions, create healthy boundaries that serve not punish, notice and step out of a manipulations and defensiveness. It is a crucial ability in our relationships both with ourselves and others. It's when we can dictate our own behavior regardless of the behavior of others, and feel good about ourselves and how we navigated through challenges. And it's a lifetime commitment and practice. You don't arrive just as you wouldn't with physical fitness. You don't just arrive and then you get to hang there and you're all done. Right. I've got that accomplished. It's just like that. And to begin, we must summon and muster up some courage. So let's take a minute and talk about the role of courage as we step into emotional weightlifting and learn some things about courage and why courage is the first step of emotional weightlifting. When we think about courage, what do we typically think about?

I think about the lion and the wizard of Oz.

That's cute.

Or something like climbing a mountain or, you know, doing something you've never done before. I always think of my dad tell, which is Tom, for anyone who's. Who hasn't listened to us before, telling me about perseverance and just doing things when I was a kid, teaching me lessons like that. But the point I'm trying to make is that we don't really think of courage in everyday activities. We don't really think of it as being something that we need to employ every day. Every other emotion or every other feeling. We think of it as something that is a special occasion.

Well, and I would say on stacking on that, Brooke, I couldn't agree more, is we usually hear about what happens after he or she decides to have courage and do something and what the result of that is. But again, this comes from Dan Sullivan. I love his teachings in many areas, but talks. No one talks about it. When we're in the throes of courage, what that requires, it's not all that. It's intense. I mean, it requires a lot of us to do things. What comes to mind after lion in the wizard of Oz is doing. I've done numerous, several different renditions of the ropes course, which involves going up heights. I'm not a huge fan of heights. Ropes courses are very well known. They're used for team building and such a very, very powerful experience. But definitely, at least for me, required a lot of courage. I'm happy that I got to the other side of that. But going through it was very intense and took most of what I had to do Some of these things at very high heights.

I always think of courage as being like the person who plunges into the dark, smirky waters to rescue somebody. They're kind of, I think of courage as like a hero kind of a thing where they're, you know, pulling somebody out of the water or rescuing them from a fire. Yeah.

Or the Kevin Costner movie where he's in the Coast Guard and they bring the helicopter and they jump out of the Helicopter down into the raging ocean to rescue people and boats and things like. No, that's courageous. Yeah.

Some heroic accomplishment where the feat has been taken and I've come out. Conquer.

Yeah.

And when we boil down the understanding of courage, it's literally the ability to take action in the face of fear. That's it. Like it's me being able to summon myself to take some action when my armpits are sweaty and my knees are kind of shaky.

So I mean, along that lines, we hear often about studies where after the fear of dying is the fear of public speaking. So we're going to bring that even down. And the fear of able to. The fear to bring something up that has bothering you with your special someone is incredibly fearful and takes a tremendous amount of courage. It's less, I think, less scary if when we start practicing it. I never used to really enjoy difficult conversations. I don't geek out of them still as much as my wife does. But they don't just freak me out anymore because why? I've practiced them many, many times.

Well, and the ultimate act of courage. Are you ready?

Yes.

Is as a human being to turn and face oneself.

There you go.

To be willing to take the plunge into the dark abyss of myself and to see what's in there. Our greatest fear is that it won't be pretty without realizing it's absolutely glorious. Right. Our fear is that we're going to find some terrible things in there. And instead what we find is ourselves. And nothing can be scary and murky about that. However, the fear is still real. And so the greatest challenge and the most courageous act we will ever embark on is the ability to face myself. And this kind of dovetails on what we talked about in our last episode. Choosing yourself first. That's one of the reasons why it's such a challenging thing to do. And I even remember myself back in the day as I was starting to uncover the hot mess that I felt like I was that my greatest fear was that there was going to be nothing in there that was going to be of any worth or value. And so I remember how terrified I would become when people just said, oh, you got to just choose yourself or you just got to love yourself. It's going to be great. And I think what else you got for me? Because that one is at the top of the totem pole of things to avoid. Right. Is there no other way? And it's amazing. As human beings, we will try every other way before we'll simply turn in face and do a deep dive. Into ourselves to uncover what's really there and what's going on. And so that is the ultimate act of courage. And it begins with the challenges of self reflection, I. E. Our ability to translate our thoughts, feelings and emotions into a language that first we can understand. This is the epitome and the beginnings of emotional weightlifting. And the first act that we summon is that of courage. Do you understand the emotions of your feelings? Do you simply. Or do you simply just react to them? Do you understand them? Or do we just react right. There is a moment of self reflection and courage right there. So we can see that it's not so scary. It's just more of a contemplative, reflective question. Can you do that or are you just constantly in a state of reacting? And here's the interesting part. The more we're in a state of reaction and then we have the regret on how we've showed up, done some things, said some things that as we reflect back on them, we don't feel all that great about it. That just adds to the belief that when I do do a deep dive into myself, there's not going to be anything there but rubbish. It's interesting how we become the self fulfilling prophecy of ourselves, right? It's like the more I react, the more I resist doing the deep dive, the more I believe that there's just rubbish in there. There's some additional examples of courage that are being demonstrated too. When you're raising your hand for help and support, that's an act of courage. You're demonstrating a ton of courage then. And when you want to attack your partner, run away, or numb your emotions and you choose to do something else instead, like understand why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling. That's a tremendous act of courage. These are the small acts that courage can be built on. The courage to face the fear and the awkward challenge of the emotions instead of acting them out on others, obsessing about them, or burying them all together, all will require the act of courage to face the emotions first.

I think that an additional fear of going inside of yourself and exploring and seeing what's there is not in addition to thinking, there will be nothing but rubbish thinking, oh God, I'm gonna have to wade through all of my past trauma and all of my things that I've locked away from my childhood or from past relationships that I didn't want to deal with. And now they're all in there growing and rotting and all of this stuff. And I would just like to point out that We're a little bit different in the way that we work in relationships. So if you decide to work with us, I think you can be rest assured that we don't do that. We don't make you, we don't make you go into your. All of your past secrets and traumas. If they come up, sure, deal with them.

That is really the truth. Sometimes the overwhelming concept that we have of what this means makes it fearful and challenging in and of itself. And so I want you to know you don't have to do that in order to make progress forward. That we go forward and what we need to address that's hanging us up from getting where it is we want to go in the future can be addressed as we go. It doesn't have to be this total rebuild, so to speak, we can just begin where we are and progress forward without having to do all of that.

Well, and if you come into trying to save your relationship believing that that's what you have to do, who the hell would ever want to do that? We're not going to make you do that. So stop having that fear because that's not what we're talking about here. And it's natural for that to seem overwhelming and for you to not want to do that. So if you're feeling that way, it doesn't mean you're weird or that self help isn't for you or that doing this kind of work isn't for you for you. It just means you have the wrong picture of it.

Well, and I think it's just an important tool for us to kind of wrap our heads around as we're building courage to do a deep dive anyway, that we have to begin where we are and we have to begin with small steps that we don't have to do a burn it to the ground and rebuild. We can just begin where we are and start making progress forward. And Brooke, as you had said in the relationship journey, especially when we're already in a tremendous amount of emotional pain, we don't want to continue to increase the pain, thinking that that's going to take us to the promised land. Because what are we going to do between today and me burning it to the ground and then thinking we're going to pick it up and move on from there. In some ways it doesn't make any logical sense. It's like we need a small win now. We need to refuel and recalibrate now and that's going to help us make the journey happen overall, wherever that might take us. And it really is. That's how healing is done. It's done in very small, small steps and increments over time. And just to demystify what healing is, healing just means I'm reframing what I've been through because I'm having different experiences and different perspectives about what is happening now. And when I can do that, I can heal it backwards and forwards, right Then my behavior can change and I can move on to some of the things I share.

This often in my clarity calls is when people are, you know, we use the metaphor of your emotional part of your body, like the gasoline tank in your automobile. And it's very fair to say that if you don't ever put any additional gasoline in your automobile, it will stop. And I ask people that question. Everyone says, oh, gosh, yes. Well, I say the same thing will happen if we don't put any deposit into our emotional gas tank. Again using that metaphor. And most people, when they're in a tough place, I'll ask them. And it's usually either flickering on empty or empty. And so momentum is crucial because that will give us a deposit back in if we don't feel like we're making momentum. And these are usually these traditional places of approach, how people think this is how they gotta do. It's just a depletion. And you kick, get your fanny kicked, and it never goes well. There's no momentum. We are exactly the opposite. We are all about getting momentum in your life as fast as possible going forward. And that's why people gravitate to us.

And the last thing I want to say, I know we got to move on. I can see why many people would not want to get help for their relationship because they picture it to be exactly that. Like, oh, I'm going to go in and someone is going to tell me all of the things that I suck at. And then I'm gonna have to go through and admit to all of my wrongs and dig through this big pile of trash that I've created because, you know, I haven't dealt with anything until now and wow, that would be extremely overwhelming and I would never want to sign up for that. So I see why so many people wait so long. And we just want to make it very loud and clear that that is not what working with us is like. It's so much more empowering and we want to make you feel better, not worse. And that' why you're paying us, right, to feel better.

Well, and last thing I'll say about this before we continue Our conversation about courage is. Is one of the greatest compliments I get when a couple comes into my office for a session is, you can tell on the way in they're not really excited to be here. Like I say all the time to my clients. I know. I get it. I get that you seeking help for a relationship and talking to a stranger about your most intimate, personal relationships is not on the top of anybody's bucket list as a human being. Like, let's just be honest about. And the greatest compliment I get is when they say, wow, that was really incredible. I have hope now, and I think it's kind of like walking into the gym, right? You kind of drag yourself in there and go, man, this thing might kick my fanny. But when we accomplish it, when we do it, we always walk out feeling so much better than when we were walking in. And that's truly our goal and our design here is getting yourself there. Yes. It's going to take courage for sure. And I hope that your payoff for that. My intention. That your payoff for that is to walk out filled with hope and possibilities. Possibilities and something to actually tangibly practice to know that you're going in the direction that you want to go in. Like, that's what we promise, and that's what we commit to, and that's truly our overall intention. And that leads us to something I just want to point out here. Is courage something that you just inherently have, or is it something that you can actually develop? And a lot of us believe that it's just inherent. You know, we're just courageous.

Either courageous or you're not.

Yeah, yeah. And that's a lie. And so I just want to debunk that right now. It is not the case. It is not the truth. Courage is something that we can absolutely develop. And we develop it just like we develop other skills and distinctions in our lives, one little step at a time. And what's so fun about the development of courage is when you just get right outside of your comfort zone. That's how you build it. I'm just barely outside of my comfort zone. Not like leaving and bounds and canyons out of my comfort zone, just slightly out of my comfort zone. And I accomplish that, and I go, wow, I did it. It's the ultimate, like, hey, mom, you know, hey, dad, look at me. Look. I just. Look what I just did. That's so incredible. That is an example and what it sounds like to develop a little bit of courage. And we go, wow, I just did that. I didn't think I could, but I just did that. And that leads to breeding more courage, because if I can do this, then maybe I can attempt something more. And when I climb that scale, I do something more, and then I can do something even more, and I do something more, and I. And then I look back and go, why was I even afraid of that? Like, that doesn't even make any sense. Now when I feel and know that I can demonstrate, you know, this far out of my comfort zone, that's how we develop courage. And so it needs to be an intentional practice that we start really small with. And again, just outside of your comfort zone, not all the way out of your comfort zone, but to challenge yourself, to continuously develop courage. We do CrossFit four days a week, and there's some things in there that challenge me and continue to force me to develop courage physically. And my work consistently challenges me to grow courage emotionally. That then. Absolutely. My relationships with my clients, my lover, my kids, my grandkids, my neighbors, my friends. I'm consistently able to challenge myself there in ways that I couldn't, you know, a year ago, five years ago, a decade ago. And so this is a continuous place of wanting to challenge ourselves in small ways. And over time, that develops a tremendous amount of courage. And I'm not afraid anymore. Right In. In most aspects of life now, if I don't develop courage and I don't face this off, it actually works in the reverse as well. If I'm afraid of this, then I have to be afraid of that. And if I'm afraid of that, then I have to be afraid of this. And if I'm afraid of this, oh, gosh. And that's how we get ourselves to places where we won't try any. Anything new. We won't. We don't want to meet any new people. We don't want to try any new activity. I get paralyzed. I get filled with social anxiety. It's happened in little increments going the other way as well, just to make us mindful about sometimes the choices that we're making.

That was me in, I would say, 2014, 2016, at the height of my anxiety. It would take me all day to work up the nerve to go get ingredients for dinner from Target, because I just couldn't face it. I couldn't face. It was such a mental chore to even think about leaving the house to go see people or even just not see anyone and just get the stuff I needed from Target. It was insurmountable. It felt like sometimes.

And now you're a regular contributor to the podcast.

Yeah. And I am on camera every week. I'm not scared to leave the house. I go everywhere I need to go.

Just shows you guys.

Let's be honest about the first time that we ever did a video.

Oh, gosh. Well, we had some fun. Thank you all for listening and helping our podcast grow. Because we, the three of us had a fun text thread the other night of when we first started. I can tell you it was pretty interesting.

And I always chose to never be on it. You know, I, I was never involved. I was always behind the camera and I was. Would say, no, no, I don't, I don't really want to be any of these videos.

You guys just do it, it's fine. And I remember the first time you were on camera, you were so like dripping with sweat that you had big rings underneath.

We were down at a conference to learn how to do better on video and things. And this gentleman had a very high, very, very nice studio. I mean like really cameras you see like in newsrooms and stuff. And so he prepared us what we were supposed to say and everything. And I was one of the first ones that got nominated to go. And I started and he said, cut. He said, that's. That sucked. He says, you sound like you're dead. And so.

And do you. And you remember me? I couldn't talk on video about the work or anything. I. My voice would start to shake and then I'd cry.

Cry.

Yeah, we still cry, but not all the time. Yeah.

From the emotional aspect of what we've been talking about, I'm remembering now a situation that happened not too long ago where I had my 22 year old son tell me he wanted to join the military. And in the reaction of that, no emotional push up whatsoever, in the reaction of that, I launched into a very defensive, attacking posture and I was like, oh, that's a crazy idea. Why would you want to do that? We're not military people. I mean I was, I launched into my soapbox and my sweet 22 year old just went really quiet. And I get well into my soapbox and here's the emotional push up. It's the recognition and the courage to stop myself and to say, oh, I'm sorry, I am manipulating the hell out of you right now because of my own fear and panic about sending a son off to the military. So let me just reset, create a do over and then I will give you another opportunity to tell me why it is you want to join the military. And I just think that also is an act of courage. And the only reason why I was able to do that is because I do hundreds if not thousands of emotional push ups every single day. And I'm thankful that my work allows me to practice consistently over time. It makes me a better person. Right. So there's really, if you want to know the heart of it, right. I get so much out of my work for myself personally and, and that's why I love to be of service to others. And so I can't even imagine myself having the ability to do that years ago. And it allows me to do it when Tom and I are having an escalating fight to, to get off of it and to say, okay, I'll listen to you first and then you'll listen to me. True. And this emotional pushup or this ability to be courageous and strong just allows us to have difficult conversations and solve life's dilemmas quicker, faster, more effectively and efficiently, allowing us to get back to the good stuff quicker and sooner. We still have challenges. It's still just as important for me and us to develop our emotional weightlifting and do our push ups every day so that when we need it, it's there for us. We have the strength and the know how to do it. How does courage and the ability to do some emotional weightlifting apply when you're in the crossroads of asking if you should stay or you should go in this relationship? Because without emotional push ups and the courage to turn and face this situation, you're going to start buying into a lot of obsessive thinking, a lot of anxiety, a lot of defensiveness, a lot of manipulation. It's going to be very, very difficult for you to rudder this in a way that when you look back on it, you're going to feel about, which is gonna actually compound moving forward. Because at the end of the day that you've done and said some things that you didn't really mean. Case in point. And talking to a client recently, her boyfriend lived 10 years, said, I need space. And so in her fit of reaction, gathered up all of him stuff and threw it out on the porch over the balcony. Of course, he was very hurt by that. He felt exceptionally betrayed and misunderstood. She was saying, well, if you didn't ask for space, I wouldn't have to do these things things to you. And then as we started talking and helping her uncover some things, she was like, I always felt terrible about that. I knew that that wasn't something that was going to help take me in the direction that I wanted to go. I E repair our relationship and move and grow forward. I just didn't know what else to do. And so these are the things that we do if left to just the reactionary places with inside of ourselves. And that's why inevitably we end up creating exactly what it is we said we didn't want. We didn't want is because we're showing up and behaving in ways that are going to actually take us in the place of the person wanting space, wanting more space from us and we can't figure out what to do instead. And the, the to do instead is the emotional weightlifting part, the courageous part of looking within and deciding what is I can do in order to make this a better situation for myself.

When I put I think if you really heard that, you mean. And hopefully it really landed because many times think, okay, okay, I get it, I'll get it. But what should I do? What should you do? Number one, you have to understand it's going to take courage because you've never done it before, most likely. Let's just be honest, these types of things, even though they're not the heroic ones we were talking about earlier in the episode, they take a lot of courage because they scare the bejesus out of us because we don't literally know how to get the words out of our mouth to maybe have a conversation that's been brewing inside of us could be for years. We hear this all the time. I've never been able to say this before, so we get it. And that's what takes courage.

And there's another. A couple of the comments I've received recently on social media have been like, well, this is not how relationships work. Now. This might have worked 20 years ago. And I just find that so interesting because no, the these are very simple human principles. They're not. It's not like a trendy relationship trend that was popular because my parents are older. So that's probably what the person was meaning. You have a been in the dating pool recently, so you don't know what this is about? No, it's showing up differently in the way that you want to be seen in your relationship. That doesn't go out of style, that doesn't become uncool. Okay, well then be uncool, but be a person with integrity in your relationship and see what happens.

Well, and to answer that, and a lot of it I think is because Brooke is a big part of our show and our platform and body of work. We have have younger clients, younger than Brooke, aged more so ever that have been working with us. Our audience demographic and people we work with is way younger now than it used to be.

Yes.

Than it used to be. So I appreciate that comment, but, yeah, these are human behavior principles that are timeless. They really are.

Yes.

Yeah.

If you're a human, they apply. What's trendy? I'll tell you what's trendy. Oh, boy, get me on this soapbox. What's trendy? Trendy is attachment styles. What's trendy is my love language. What's trendy is labeling people, diagnosing people, only to find at the end of those roads. Okay, I still don't know what to do instead.

Right.

There's not. They're not going to take me to any real place with any real skill because they're not based on foundational principles of being a human being. They're based on something that's trendy and popular in the moment. And I know sometimes that's a tough pill to swallow because as that trendiness happens. Happens, and when these lights are going off, oh, my gosh, that's it. It's our love language. That's been it the whole time. We feel like we've really uncovered and accomplished something, only to find ourselves in our first real major conflict yet again. What am I going to do with the fact that you're a time person and you're a gift person? That one's not going to get us out of that situation. It's going to be put on the shelf as we do what we typically have done done, which has probably escalated into a fight that we've now had for the 3,000th time. And then we part and not talk. And then we've got to figure out how to work our way out of that one. And I just want to point out that all the while, you still know what your. Your love language is. You still know what your attachment dysfunction is, and it really didn't help you much in getting through those or changing the course of your behavior, going in a different direction. And that's what we're after. And that's why our work is based on. On foundational principles that are not trendy. They're not going to probably be some kind of a catchy hook to get popular social media engagement because we're not having those conversations over here. Okay, enough of the soapbox. I don't get that fired up at all. Let's talk about what it takes to develop some courage. Recognizing and acknowledging your fears and insecurities is a great place to start. Like, it's like, we have to shine light on those. Think of fear as something like bacteria that grows in the darkness. And when I can shed some light on it and I can understand it, it's really not so scary anymore. And this is going to require you to do the next step, which is embrace your vulnerability. We think that that's a place of weakness, when indeed it is your greatest source of strength. You want to feel empowered and powerful. You want to stop giving your power away. Then. Then learn how to get vulnerable with yourself about what you're thinking and how you're feeling and what you need. That is your greatest source of power and your ability to do what I call planting your flag. And the next one would be seeking support and mentorship. Admitting that I need help, admitting that I don't know how to do this, that I'm at the bottom of the bag of tricks I have, or that I was given or that I knew to be true or thought were true. And now tell me, help me, me, teach me so that I can practice some things that are going to take me in the direction I want to go. And this is going to greatly be enhanced. If you have a community of people that will be on this journey with you. Why? Because you've got people to practice with and learn from. It's more impactful to do typically a journey like this with a group of people so that you can compare notes, you can practice, you can see. See what's working and what's not working as we're all working on it together. It's just a place where we learn faster and understand better. And the last one is you get to celebrate your small acts of building courage that lead to feeling more brave so that we can embark on more courageous moves. And these things stack and build on themselves. And it's important that we realize that. So that is how we build courage step by step by step by step. The part of doing the emotional weightlifting is you've got to understand it's going to be a daily practice to regulate emotions, to understand your emotions. And then you can change our behavior not a second before. We can't will ourself into behavior for a long period of time. Have you thought to yourself, hey, I bring these things up, I talk to my partner about them. I really lay it all out. I describe what it is I need, and they go, okay, okay, okay, okay, I'm gonna do it. I swear, I swear I'm gonna do it. And they're good at it for like, I don't know, let's give them a month. Well, heck, let's even be generous. Let's give it 90 days. Let's say they knock it out of the park for 90 days. And then day 121, you start noticing a slacking off. And then day 122, a slacking off, and so on and so on until 30 to 60 days later, you're right back where you started from. From. And the frustration that that is bringing on and into your relationship is almost overwhelming at times. I want you to understand this is what happens when we change our behavior cognitively, but we don't understand the emotional driver. We can all will it and eek it out for some kind of a sustainable time, but then the true sense or the true emotional driver is going to start playing back into, into the equation as soon as I feel like the coast is clear. And so we need to understand why I'm doing that, why I feel that way. Once I understand that I can do all kinds of things in a different.

I think there's a classic case when we hear in the world of addiction, you know, if we just choose to stop whatever it is that's challenging us, whatever that source is, drug is, whatever, and he or she says, okay, I'm not going to partake in that though. Then just, we just strict, we excuse me, we just switch to a different drug of choice, so to speak. But there's been no behavior change. We're just simply managing it from a different place.

And that's about effective as telling an anxious person to just calm down. Which, let me tell you, that doesn't work.

Exactly because we're not understanding what's driving the anxiety in the first place. And more importantly, there's not a place where I can just accept that it's okay to have anxiety, that it's okay to feel the way I feel and think the way I think. In most mental health issues, that's always the start. One is making it okay to be where I am. There has to be some acceptance there or I really can't be effective in going any other direction. Like in, in a crazy sort of way. I. I've got to give some grace to what's happening so that I can understand it long enough to go in a different direction. And that's hard. And that's going to require us an emotional push up on all sides. Because if it's something that's frustrating me, I want to attack it to get it to go away. And if I'm well intended and well meaning, I'm going To want to teach and preach and give some wonderful advice about how that you can totally turn that around. Both are not going to take us in the direction of truly amassing new behavior because we haven't taken the time to understand the emotion that drives it. Emotional push ups are very important for that reason. Little by little we grow and we add weight. Not necessarily make big decisions and changes about what we're going to do because we need to understand and work with the emotion first. It's also going to give you the ability to set clear, sound boundaries. Not in punishment, but truly where it's necessary. I amass control where I can control and I let go and accept the things that I don't have control over. Those are really important things for us to learn how to rudder and then recognizing and avoiding the manipulative behaviors, those are hard. I shared a story just a minute ago about things with my son. Being able to do that in real time because emotions move very, very fast requires practice of emotional weightlifting and then the ability to step away from it.

Let's give an example to people who are struggling with their partner asking them for space. A scenario that would apply to them about how they could use emotional weightlifting. So maybe they really want information from their partner about when this space is going to end or when they're going to be able to talk to them again. How does emotional weightlifting or occur courage apply in those situations?

It takes a tremendous amount of courage to just allow the space to be like, think about that one for a minute. Like the act of allowing space is very courageous because we want answers, we want deadlines, we want dates, we want assurity. That's really what we want, isn't it? We want to be reassured that we're going to be okay when the reality is is nobody knows if we're going to be okay. So being able to rudder through a time of space when there is no concrete create answers or timelines or definitive decisions about what we are to become in the future in and of itself is the greatest act of courage that you are going to embark on. And in order to do that effectively without acting out and without stepping into manipulation is going to require you to do some emotional push ups. Because the tendency to want to get those definitive timelines and dates and parameters that are going to reassure you are the very thing that you, that you think you need in order to be okay.

And so what would be an example, like a verbal example of an emotional push up in this scenario that Brooke just described, Rather than saying you gotta buy Next week you better be able to tell me when this is gonna be over or when you're gonna be moving back home. What would be an emotional push up? Our definition of a different behavior? Maybe in a way that you would approach that in a conversation with someone that has asked the space. What would that sound?

Let's just start with remember your vulnerability is your superpower. So admitting that I don't have to mistreat you or cut you off or pretend like I don't you is one. An emotional push up would be I really love you, I care about you, I want this to work and I'm going to do my best to honor your request for space. And how I'm going to go about doing that, I don't know. But I'm going to learn how. Obviously there's some things that I need to get better at. If I am needing to rely on you to reassure me and I can't give that reassurance to myself, that is several emotional push ups in that one state.

Gotcha.

Being vulnerable, being able to take responsibility for myself, stop chasing others for the validation that I need to learn how to give myself. Those are all examples, great examples of doing an emotional push up in acts of courage for myself.

Another one would be feeling like you have all of these things that you want to over explain to them. Like I feel like I did this and this wrong and I can understand that this is why you need space face and saying all that word salad that we that would mean something but it probably would be better to just not text those things and wait until a better time would occur. That's a huge emotional push up and.

I'll add one more to the stack. Feeling like you've got to control and position the situation. Like it's going to go my way. I'm going to demand it. Like if you're going to leave me right now, you're going to get your stuff out of this place now. Don't call me, don't text me, you know, I don't want to ever hear from you again. 30 seconds later you're on the couch sobbing your guts out because none of that was true for you. Absolutely none of it was true for you. You thought that in order to protect yourself and create a measure of safety that you're going to cut this person out of your life. And so not doing that would be a tremendous act or demonstration of an emotional push up that we do consistently over time and so so often. That's why it's so difficult in the Beginning as we have no concept of what emotional weightlifting is and we're left with very little strength and resiliency when it comes to the conversation of what the heck am I supposed to do with all of these emotions that are flooding in. And we're usually going to do one of two options. I'm going to get controlling like I just talked about or we're going to get in a place of collapse. And that's in that place of collapse. I'm going to beg, I'm going to plead, I'm going to say I'll do anything, just please come back. And that's me seeking in a collapsed state the validation that I have no idea how to give to myself. So this is the moment where we get to see emotional weightlifting and the acts of courage as it's stuff first step are so important. If I want to change this relationship to be healthier, better, more foundationally sound, it is crucial that we learn how to do these things in a better way.

And it's going to take some consistent practice, just like any other place of mastery in your life. I often ask people when I'm on the phone with them, is it fair to say that you're better at what you do now in your job and your profession, in your business than when you start to. Oh my gosh, yes, I said that's great news. You know why? Why? Because the exact same approach is what's needed, the currency of commitment to get better at love. It's not just this, only for the chosen few. It is a skill based journey and most of us just don't have never been presented that way. Like we're all supposed to be born lover based on outside of the fairy tale to be fair. Like on what. So I would say that's wonderful news available for all of us if we choose to. As Stacy has said, we've all said repetitively doing things we've not done in the emotional realm of life. And people think, oh my gosh, you're right, I've never thought about. And we are going to share with you here in a moment where we have created our emotional weightlifting gym for you to join us.

We need an emotional weightlifting gym and, and of course we had to create it because there isn't one out there. And this emotional weightlifting gym for people who are at the crossroads of relationships, that space where we say gosh, I don't know if I can do this anymore, I don't know if I want to do this anymore and, or the person who's receiving that information and have no idea how to go forward. This has been created for you. It is our love and limbo 30 day roadmap. And so I want to invite you right now, now, right now to join us for 30 days. Why 30 days? Because it's going to take that long for consistent practice and learning to be able to amass what it is you need to do in order to go in the direction that you want to go. And it also comes complete with a community to practice with. I want you to think of it like a gym, but instead of doing physical push ups, you're going to do emotional ones. This is the place where you get the safety, the support, the mentorship where you can turn and face yourself, develop some courage, learn the skills of doing emotional push ups and please know you are going to get shaky and sweaty here just like you would in a typical gym. However, just like when you have somebody standing by your side saying, okay, here's what you need to do, spread your legs apart, get a little lower, breathe a little, modify this. Yeah, let's modify this. Maybe this is too much weight for you right now. Let's scale it back for you right now so that you can have some successes. That's why we are committed to walking with you step by step along the way for these 30 days. In the end, you're going to feel stronger and more confident with inside of yourself and you're going to show up more congruent with the person that in your heart that you are. The reality is here guys, we can't make much progress with getting better at this thing called love unless we muster up the courage and practice some emotional weightlifting, will instead be prone to acting out in defensiveness, engage in manipulations of all types and dismantle the loving connection that we once had. It's the case for all of us and as Tom said, not just for the chosen few, but we are all susceptible of finding ourselves in this space and most of us do so during this time of space. This is an opportunity for you to create a great place for you to spend some time learning and practicing and focusing on developing a better you, a person that is better. To step into the relationships, the conversations, the co creation aspects of a relationship and come out on the other side going, oh, I just did that, I just did that. That's incredible. So if you know this is for you, I'm going to invite you to jump in now. The journey begins October 1st, which right now is coming up very soon and I'm going to put the year on that because I know the podcasts live on Forever 2023 and will not be repeated until January 2024. And the spots are limited to 50. Why? Because we're realistic here. We know that we can't support numerous people, especially as we're just opening the doors on this. We need to also scale up with you. The doors are opened and is limited to the first 50 people that come in and the slots are filling up fast. I don't even know how many we have left, but they are absolutely filling up fast. So if you know you want them this take advantage of it now. You'll find all the information you need to enroll in our show notes or by visiting love in Limboroad. Map.com we invite you to step into a space of understanding and healing today. So I guess we're going to have a little bit of follow the fun today and I'm going to throw a curveball on y'. All. I'm not going to give it. Tom's going to give it.

And you know what? We know by our metrics. And again, we so appreciate you that are listening. We have a lot of new listeners. Again, that means the world to us. I can't tell you how grateful we are as a family that you're spreading the show. Thank you again so much. But we know from our analytics that some, a lot of you, like log off. Okay, I'm good now, guys. See you, Tom, Stacy and Brooke, I'm good. And you know, the follow the fun. I can just be very transparent. We do it for Stacy and I and Brooke, you know, because we love to have fun. I didn't nearly like to have near as much fun as I do now. So my points, I said, honey, I'm going to take over this fall of the fun because here's the thing, if you're listening live, like Stacy just said, we're at the end of September 2023 and we're going whale watching this weekend. Now, I've lived in California since 1980. If you do the math, that's 43 years. So why now? Great question. I've had the same opportunity. I've been in the same proximity to the ocean I have for all 43 years. So my point here is what have you wanted to do wherever you live? Maybe some geographical location or some. Just for me, it's the ocean. And so obviously you have to go to the ocean to watch whales. So we have some wonderful friends that say, look, we found the place. We're going, we're going. Do you want to come? If you do, then get your ticket. He said, yeah, we want to come. We're going. And then not this daughter, not Brooke, our daughter, but we have other daughters and we're bringing another daughter who happens to be her birthday. Would you like come? I'd love to go. So my point here is it's no different now than it ever has been other than I'm with some people that like to have fun. And so we're going to go. So I would just challenge you. The follow the fun challenges is pick something that you've known you've wanted to do for a long time, maybe specific to where you live geographically. Just choose to say day, let's just go. There's no different. To be totally fair and transparent. There's nothing different now. I'm probably busier now than I have been. I'm grateful that we are. But we're going to just take all day and go. We're leaving like at six o' clock in the morning and we're going to be gone the entire day. So just gift yourself just like a beautiful gift that someone hands to you and just commit to making it happen. It really was pretty darn easy really to have it other than the decision. They said you want to go. There's only. There's not that many spots on the boat. You better get them now. How we're going. So anyway that. That's. Hopefully we're going to see a massive spike and people aren't logging off to listen to this. Follow the fun right now.

I think you've made a great point that it's just all about a decision.

It is.

And once you make the decision then it's amazing how the things everything falls into place to support it. Yeah. So we can make some decisions that it's okay.

So we'll promise to Next episode we'll do a brief breakdown on the I hope to hear the sounds I love you hear. They use a lot of the whale sounds in like meditative software and such because to me it's. If they're talking to each other, it's very. I hope we hear that. That's my hope.

Did you know that there's a well song that travels around the world every year?

Maybe you might have told me.

It's pretty awesome.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hey. In addition to a little piece of.

Follow the Fun, I didn't pick the song. What's the song?

Honey, for those of us who are listening new who don't know, we have a song at the end of every Episode. Right. We do choose a song and it's usually a theme for the episode. We love music and this is something that we do for a little bit of fun for ourselves each week. I hope that it resonates with you as well. And today's song is Sabrina Claudio. Nurture. And I chose this song because the act of doing courage, courageous moves, and emotional weightlifting is a nurturing aspect of ourselves. It's a place where we can think about nurturing ourselves and nurturing the relationships and the people that we love. So it's a wonderful song. I encourage you to check it out. You can do that by going to our website. You can also also check it out on Spotify. We have a playlist there that has all of the songs for each and every episode we've ever done. And it's Love Shack Live playlist. And on that note, thank you so much for being here. And as Tom said, the show is growing. We've just crossed 50,000 downloads, which is awesome. Thank you so much for sharing the show and subscribing to the show. It is such an honor and a privilege to be of service and contribution to you, your life, your relationship. And if you know of somebody who could really use this episode today, please continue to share the message and let people know that there is a way you can get better at this thing we call love. It's been a pleasure to be here with you today. I look forward to doing it all again next week. And gosh, one more, one more shout out. If you know the roadmap is something that would really benefit you in doing some things to get better at these things we've talked about today. I just want to encourage you to.

Check it out and I just really. Another quick shout is we have international audience. We've got. We have some wonderful international people that have signed up for the road map and they found us through our podcast. We've got people from Germany and Europe and Australia. So thank you so much for listening and. And joining us.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, till next time. Bye bye.

All right, it's time to leave the Love Shack. But before we part ways, we want you to know our door is always open and we'll leave the porch light on. Ready to welcome you back back whenever you need a dose of relationship wisdom. For more resources and tools, visit us atlove shacklive.com to dive deeper into the topics we've explored and find additional support for your relationship journey. Stay connected by subscribing to our podcast. Thank you for being part of our Love shack. Live community.

Sam.