#42: Are personal power struggles sabotaging your romantic relationships?

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We're going to be talking about power struggles today and how they sabotage our romantic relationships. And in order to see a power struggle playing out right before our eyes, you may or may not be aware that all we've got to do is turn on the news or maybe take a scroll through Facebook. The power struggles and challenges that we are facing, both in our homes, which are the most important with the people that we love. But that plays out in our communities and in our world at large. And. And so we thought it would be a really great time for us to open the conversation on what a power struggle is, how to know if you're in one. Right. And by the way, I'm going to just give it away right here. We all find ourselves in power struggles. We all do them. We all have our favorite place that we go when we're feeling emotionally pressed and our backs are against the wall. Power struggles are those places that we go to in order to cope, to feel a little bit better and to somehow feel like I'm going to be okay. So this week we invited an expert who's actually written a book on the matter, and it's called Awakening the Soul of Power. A lot of us are also afraid of power, stepping into our power, owning our power, and so you can start to see that this starts a little havoc in our lives and in our relationships both with ourselves and others. So we're going to bring him on as a guest. Christian has traveled the world, he does retreats, he's a breathwork, transformational spiritual coach. And I'll go on and on when we formally introduce him right after our break. But get ready to discover our power struggles running your life and your relationship to find the answer to that question. Join us. We'll be right back.

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To have you with us. Welcome back everybody. Good to have you with us. We're Tom and Stacy Bartley host of Love Shack Live. We have our awesome engineer Eric Ryder at spaceship KKNW and an incredible guest today.

Yes, we're going to be jumping into the conversation with our guest around what is a power trap and how to spot and avoid them, how to step into your own personal power without misusing it on others and how to navigate through the power struggles in a powerful way, yet a loving way. So, so to have this conversation, we are so excited and honored and grateful to Christian Delaworta. He's traveled the world offering inspiring and transformational retreats where he combines psychological and spiritual teachings that have lasting, life changing results for the people that he works with, I might add. Also, he's an award winning, critically acclaimed author. He has spoken on the TEDx stage and and even has a wonderful testimonial from Gloria Estefan and everybody knows who she is. I used to love her song.

Me too.

How incredible to have somebody of that caliber backing you. He's been called by Gloria as a balm for the soul of anyone searching for truth and answers to life. Very difficult questions and what could be more difficult than dealing with our own power struggles with inside of ourselves and watching them play out in ourselves and the people that we love and affect them, whether our lovers, our children, our extended family, even our friends and co workers, business partners. So this is a very important conversation today and we want to shed some light on doing a self examination of understanding power, what the reality of that is and then seeing where you might be stuck in a power trap. I know for me I probably need a sign on my door that says danger. You know, power traps ahead. Ta ta. Keep, keep yourself alert because it's something that we all do. So Christian, without further ado, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you with us.

Hey. Hey Stacy. Hey Tom. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here and honored and looking forward to our conversation.

Yeah. I was really struck in your book by the passage you shared from James Hillman. When I first read the book where you write, James warns us of setting up love as the antithesis to power. Power is not the enemy of love, he states, but is too often cast as the opposite of love, goodness and beauty and man did that strike me at the core. And he goes on to say the corruption begins not in power, but in the ignorance about that. So I wanted to start our conversation today with you about what is power and why is it we're so afraid of it.

Yeah, that's a Great question, because I've, I've, I believe that most of us have an ambivalent relationship to power. Like part of us wants it, part of us longs to have it, and then another part of, is just, it's afraid of it. And the more that I work with people around this theme, what I, what I think we're afraid of is that if we really stepped into our power, like if we really stepped into our full potential, like let it rip, bead all of who we are, that other people wouldn't be able to handle it and that we might end up alone as a result. So we stifle it and, and we play small and we limit ourselves into smaller little boxes that, you know, that won't rock the, the boat too much. We also fear that we might abuse it. And, and no wonder, like you were talking about, on any given day, we just got to turn on the news to witness at least one abuse of power. And what good hearted person wants to, wants to do that, we don't want to do that. Then further complicating the matter is that we've been conditioned to believe that power is a bad thing. Like, like your quote, your Hillman quote was talking about or pointing to. And, and so yeah, that power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But what they forgot to tell us about that quote is that Lord Acton was speaking specifically about political power, not personal power. And so add to the mix the fact that we've also been conditioned to be afraid of our emotions. We've labeled the emotions weakness, which doesn't make any sense because emotions are neutral, they're energies. They're neither good or bad or strength or weakness. They're just energies. It's how we express them. Depending on how we express them, they have a good or not so good effect. So when you put all that into a mix, what happens is that we end up giving our power away. Or innate inherent power that no one can give to us, no one can take away. We are the only ones who can give it away. And the tragic part is that we give it away for lame reasons. Like we settle for less, we place more, we say yes when inside we really feel no for an illusion of security, for a false sense of acceptance, for morsels, crumbs of pseudo love. And it's not a good strategy because we don't end up getting what we really want.

You know, in this quote, it was the opposite of love is power. And I thought, no, love is power, right? And what's interesting is I bet you've witnessed this as well. Even with inside of myself, when I really touch on the core of who I feel I am, like when that idea of who I am and what I'm doing come into sync, then I, I cry. There's a level of humility.

Yes.

And so what's interesting is it's not. That's power. In my book, in my experience and in my life and with the clients that I see, there's always a very humble, accepting, like, graciousness about accepting who you truly are as a personal piece of your power. And I think it's important for us to point that out, that it's not this exterior demonstration. And I want to get into that. I want to talk about all your power plays. I love them. I love how you've described them. I also loved how you gave some practices for each because it's important for us to be able to self identify what our particular favorite are. Right. We. We all do them and we might be prone or enticed to do them and, and then we all have our particular favorites, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Beautiful. Beautifully said. And I love how you bring in the humility, the, the humble part of power because that's part of the reason that we get stuck, that we, that we reject it because we've, we get confused. Right. So the way the world looks at power is it's, you know, people who have either really big, powerful guns and weapons or money, a lot of money, a lot of fame, or they're high up some kind of hierarchy, whether it's a corporate ladder or, or some institution. And. But the thing about all those kinds of power, that they're external, they're outside of us, right? So they can be taken away, they're here today, gone tomorrow. Whereas the other kind of power that you, that you're pointing us to, which I call soulful power or spiritual power, it's inside of us. Right? Again, no one can give it to us. No one can take it away. And whereas worldly power, it always has an agenda and is always trying to puff itself into, seem bigger than it is. And the soulful power, power that we, we all have is humble. And it doesn't have. It doesn't need to prove anything to anybody. It just is. So I think of a Gandhi or Gandalf in Lord of the Rings and their simple monastic robes or sandal feet. You would never know how much power they hold until it's needed. And then, watch out. Gandhi brought the British Empire to its knees when, when it was at its, you know, Highest terms of. In terms of global reach had its. Was at its. At its thin as at its highest point. And he did that without ever landing a punch or shooting a gun. That's power.

Well, and in my own journey to stepping into my power, which in the spirit of full disclosure, I still wrestle with to this day, I think that's a lifetime journey of uncovering and accepting who it is you are and what it is you have the capacity to be. And I would get confused in. There was a point in time where, you know, in my love relationships, I came out of completely giving my power away. And then I stepped into being almost the abusive one, like the abuser, where I was going to do relationships on my own terms and I was going to call the shots and I was going to tell you how it was going to go down. And. And then you. You kind of go, well, that's not power either. Right. So in my own search of power, I realized that power is that place inside of myself where I am humbled by who I am, where I accept who I am. And sometimes it brings me to my knees. It always makes me emotional. Right. It always brings me to a very wonderful, emotional place. And I see that in my clients as well. When they finally own who they are, they cry. They don't go. I'm the.

You know, that's me.

Right? It's. No, it's. It's this very sweet, sweet, sweet place.

I was just gonna say it makes me. It makes me think of the quote by Robin Sharma, who's a well regarded, wonderful leadership, you know, person in the space and is the most loving person in the room. Comes from a place of strength and not a weakness.

Yes. Yeah. Beautifully said. And I love your. Your personal story with that, Stacy. Thank you for, for sharing that because, yeah, we, you know, we've all struggled with it. And I do agree that it's. It's a journey, it's a process, and sometimes we go, you know, the pendulum swings a little bit too far in the other direction as we're trying to figure out who we are. And so, yes, thank you for humanizing that.

Yeah. No, and I think it's important, as we say, come on, step into your power, own who you are. It could be a misnomer to think that, okay, well, that's it. I'm going to take advantage, and it's time and it's permission for me to go out and take the world by the tail and conquer it. And it's none of that. That's why I thought it's important for us to realize that when we touch on those parts of ourselves. I've even had people ask me, why am I crying right now? And I says, because you're touching on who you really are. Right. Why am I emotional right now? And I can't hold it back because you're recognizing you, right? You're taking that all in and you're experiencing that in your body. And that's not a I'm going to take over the world kind of feeling. It's a, oh, my gosh, I'm amazing.

It's humbling.

It is like, oh, my gosh, that's me. I never knew. So let's talk about some of the power plays that play out in our lives, some of the wonderful things that we can talk about. This is not who we are, but it's what we can do, right? When, again, where backs are against the wall and we don't know what else to do. And we pick these up from our parents. We pick them up from demonstrations in the world in our effort to try and connect with and find a place of power because we're tired of being pushed down or we're resisting what we know we are truly capable of. And I want to take them one by one. Yes, we have time. I want to take them one by one and briefly, just kind of summarize and give some tips and points in regards to helping us identify which. Which one is which. And I'll give you the. What am I trying to say? I'm going to give you the Denier, for example. And then you tell us how that plays out in our lives when maybe we're. We're caught in a power struggle of that particular.

These are the unhealthy ways that we express power. So, for example, I was working with a woman recently.

She.

I think she'd been buried 30 years or close to that, and they got into this unhealthy behavior that he would. Which we've all done, right? So the husband would come and he would put the keys in the wrong place, whatever that wrong place was. And then either she would react and nag and. And, you know, like. Like try to win the argument, like, and. And. Or she would just withdraw. And, you know, the. The that you, you know, sorry, honey, you're not going to get any tonight kind of thing. And so I have a headache kind of thing. And so it never ended well.

Yeah.

And so by figuring out, you know, like, what the patterns are, we can stop them. And in her case, like, it was as simple as not reacting. Like, right. Not getting sucked into that. He did this, I did that. I said that. Boring. Because it becomes a fight, like a, A struggle between egos, and it never, ever, ever ends well. And so she just stopped and she stopped reacting and she stopped reacting. And I think we had maybe two or three sessions or weeks before we met again. In her just being unwilling to engage in, in the unhealthy power struggle, he stopped. Like he. That. That ego didn't have anything to buck up against. And so, so what, you're taking us in that direction of what. What are these power, unhealthy ways that we express power? So the denier is acting as if we didn't have it. And in some ways, my older sister was an inspiration for my thinking about this. What, what ended up being this book. Because when we were kids, she's two years older and we're nine kids, a very Catholic family, and all of Those conceived within 12 years. No twins. So when we were kids, she would boss around not only the nine of us, but the entire neighborhood of, of like 15, 20 kids. And in a natural way, like, not a bossy, obnoxious way, she would just say, hey, let's go do that. And we would all say, okay, let's go do that. And when she hit puberty, like, something happened. Like, I don't know if somebody said something to her that little girls didn't behave that way, or she just picked it up through osmosis from society and culture, but she turned it off and be, you know, kind of took this Persona of Mother Teresa and, And that never ends well. It's because, I mean, that's the typical. This is not the way that it showed up in her, in her case. But when we suppress power, it has to come out a different way. In. In her way, it started showing up more in, in. In physical stuff, physical symptoms. But, but this is what happens. We're like, you know, we're sitting in front of the boss and. And he or she is like, just letting us have it unfairly. And we're just saying, yes, ma'. Am. Yes, ma'. Am. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Inside we're seething with the injustice of it all. And we don't. We don't say it right. And so what happens is that that energy has to come out in some other ways, and it comes out on health unhealthily. So that's like the kick the dog syndrome. When you get home, it's so. It's. It doesn't end well.

Well, and I. And I love some of the. The examples that you gave to examine for ourselves. Are we doing some kind of a Denier pattern, which would be, I'm staying busy. I'm. I'm triggered. I maybe experience some road rage, or I'm ticked off that I have to wait in the checkout line or. Right. I can never get to doing the things that I want to do. And I'm constantly having a story or an excuse around that. And really what it is at the end of the day is I'm really terrified of stepping into my power to who I am. You know, it's that book I never write. It's that. Right. That. That webinar I never get together, that business I never launch. It's that person that I love dearly, that I never say, oh, I love you. You want to go out, right? Or, honey, I really want this to work. Can we. Can we work on this? I love you. You mean the world to me, and so does this relationship. What can we do about it? And so instead of that, we get into this power play where we. We withhold it, we stay busy, and we take out this frustration on others. Right. So let's move to the next one. The pseudo macho. Right? Is that you, babe?

No, no.

No. You know, I think that's when we overcompensate. So here's an example. It's not about the politics. It's not about. It's more about looking at the energetics of it, because I think let's. Let's look at Hillary. Whether you like her or love her, that's not the point. Whether you agree with her or don't, it's not the point. I'm just looking at the energetics. In the first elections, when she was running up against Obama, she was acting ultra tough, like. And I don't know her. I don't know what's going on in her mind, but my perceptions would be that, understandably, she would, as it would. Would have been the first woman president that she thought or somebody told her that she had to be extra tough. And so, like this. That's what I call the pseudomacho. So she was actually more hawkish. We got to go kick. But over, you know, overseas. Whereas Obama actually represented more of the inherent feminine principle with. With, you know, with principles like, let's get everybody at the table. Let's. We can. We can get through this. Let's talk it out. And. Which is very effective. And so when he was actually elected, and I think people all over the World celebrated with demonstrations in the hundreds of thousands. I think what that was pointing to is that as a species we've had enough of this power over approach. You know, this kind of power that is patriarchal, that is hierarchical, that needs to kick butt and that needs to press somebody down, push them down. You know, the, the cowboy, my, my way or the highway kind of thing. That we've had enough of it and what he embodied. And this, of course, this is all subconscious. We weren't thinking about it in this, in this way that, that we're longing for that more feminine, if you would, expression of power. And we can get into a whole discussion about how we have mistakenly labeled the feminine as weakness. That's a whole other conversation because it' erroneous and a misunderstanding.

Well, I love how you use the example of pseudo macho with a woman. I think that's brilliant on your part because we wouldn't think that a pseudo macho would be a female type of aversion. Right. Oh, I'm female, I wouldn't do that. And yet there's a lot of empowerment for women movements that I say, okay, no, I agree, we all need to own our voices, but become very aware and wary of not becoming like the thing you're saying you don't like or that has kept you down.

Exactly.

And we need to have that conversation in feminist groups and those kinds of things. It's not about overcoming or overtaking. Right.

Which is about expressing it in a masculine way. That's what we're trying to get away from. And so flash forward eight years later when she went up against Trump. Now she had a lot more experience, she probably had a lot more self confidence. She confident she'd been senator, she'd been Secretary of State. Her approach was very different. And you know, it was, there was that self assurance that you could say, see it in the way she dressed and the way that she wore her hair. There was more of a softness, like the power didn't need to be proven, like she knew her power and so she spoke about love from, you know, in her speeches. That was very different and I think it comes from that you were also addressing that that the more are, the stronger our self esteem, the less that we need to prove in our power in the settle in the pseudo macho kinds of ways.

I love that. So let's move into the critic, the judge. Right. Tell us, tell us about that one.

Yeah, you know, it's like criticizing which, which and express an expression of which whether we're doing it in person, which is like cutting somebody down at the knees, which is very disempowering. Or whether we're gossiping about them behind their back. It's a power struggle because we're initially, we feel like we're putting ourselves above them by taking them down, whether, whichever way we're doing that. But it doesn't get us what we want because it's a false expression. Just because we're putting somebody down doesn't mean that we're empowering ourselves. So it might feel good. I mean, it might have an effect in the immediate. But how do we walk? How do we feel afterwards? Because we've all done it, we've all gossiped, right. Actually, we walk away from that. It's like, it's yucky, like, right? We don't feel good. That's not how we want to be. And so it ultimately doesn't get us what we want, which is to feel good about ourselves and to have an authentic sense of empowerment. And this is not a good strategy.

Mm. Well, in a lot of our work we teach that, you know, criticism and judgment comes from within. I'm criticizing myself. I'm needing to feel good or better about myself. And so I compare myself to others. If I'm, for example, wanting to lose weight, you know, I'm going to notice all the skinny little women in the room and I'm going to notice all the fat ones. The skinny ones make me criticize myself and the fat ones go, whoo. At least I'm not that big, you know, and that's where these kinds of criticisms come from. And so it's important for us to all maybe examine where we stand there, which is another thing I love about your book, by the way. You have those practices and those reflection exercises at the end of each segment, which I think is brilliant. So let's move on to the. Yeah, let's move on to the.

Let me, let me add to that because I think it's really important what you just pointed to, which is that judgment has. It's always two sided, right? So that's why when I talk about the ego in the beginning of the book and the ego, weapons of happiness, destruction, one of them is the double edged knife of judgment, which is what you're pointing to that as harshly as we're judging others, we're judging ourselves because that's that harsh inner judge. And we know, like the things we tell ourselves are so mean and so cruel that we would never ever say to anybody else. So when we soften that judge, that Judgment and toward others. We're also softening towards, towards ourself.

I love that. And, and I also love how you pointed out in the book that we can cut people down in humor, but it doesn't make it any less mean. And I, I loved how you pointed to some great examples in our society. Ellen DeGeneres, for example, who can be funny, but she doesn't do it at the expense of others. And I, and I thought that was a really great point to make, that even if it comes off funny and people in the room are laughing and we can all relate to it on some subconscious level, if somebody in the room is feeling less than, it's still not okay.

It's not okay.

Yeah. So let's move on to the bully, the abuser.

Yeah, that's, that's a more blatant abuse of power, usually by force. Although, you know, now we're finding out and hearing about cyber bullying all the time, so it doesn't have to be physical bullying, but to me, you know, and again, trying to avoid the, the politics. But, but that's what, but my example, my best example of that, the one that makes me, like, really get it, it's the US after 9 11. You know, after that incredible tragedy, we had the goodwill of the entire world. And at this point, we were like the world's only superpower. And so what do we do? Right? We had that moment of choice, like, how are we going to handle the situation? And what we did, it's like we abused power. Like we went and used our might or physical might to invade another country that under false pretenses, as we were to find out afterwards and look at what's happening now. It's 30 years later and we're still mired. We just maybe pulling ourselves out of that and, and you know, how many times do we need to hear it that you can't put out fire by throwing gasoline on it. Or like Gandhi said it, you know, an eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind. And, and so that's, that's an abuse of power. And what happened, it's like we, we bullied and nobody likes a bully. So pretty pretty much we went from having the goodwill of the entire world to becoming global pariahs. And so not a good strategy either.

Well, and I love. And I, I'm just going to encourage people to pick up your book. There's a story of you being a bu. Period of time in your life in the book. Right. Just to show that, hey, we're all in this journey together. And we all, even though we're talking about this, have our own struggles with, with power. Not to say we shouldn't step into our power, but learning the differences. Right. Not being ignorant about what power is and is not is the goal here. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And it was, you know, very relative to examples of bullying including my haven't been bullied and it was more like the psychological, not it wasn't like physical. But absolutely. And I included that intentionally to, to help understand what, what drives bullying which is usually not a good sense of self, not. Not good self esteem. So we're overcompensating and trying to prove that we're good enough. We're trying to prove that we're powerful enough or don't mess with me but, but again it's not a good effective long term strategy. It doesn't really get us what we want.

Yeah, so true.

And I would say oftentimes it's, it could be done to, to, to be in favor of others because we don't have the, that ability to have that strength within our inside of ourself. Right. So even though we're doing something we know inherently is not good for us or good for others, we still are so desiring. Again we, we like to say Christian and everyone needs to know that they're appreciated, acknowledged and you know, who they are is important. That's fundamental to our human experience. And however we need to get that is how we're going to satisfy those needs.

Exactly. Yeah. It's, that's the bottom line. Right. So self love, self acceptance, which, which begins with self awareness. Right. We can't, we can't heal all these unhealthy patterns if we don't know what we're doing or what's driving them. Like that's why the journey within, the willingness, the courage to look within and to ask the hard questions. Why do I do the things which I do? Why do I get stuck in these patterns of self defeating behaviors, of self sabotaging behaviors. Why do I get stuck in these be in this relationship Patterns that sometimes feel like it's the same boring movie. Like I've seen this movie, it's just with a different actor, a different co lead but it's the same boring patterns, the same boring issues that keep come up. So why do we do the things we do? Hard questions and, but and nothing less than heroic. To be willing to look inside and to face our inner demons. And it is so worthwhile because it makes freedom possible.

I love the way you said that it does make freedom possible. And what we have to resist is the temptation to think. I've got to figure out the other person first. That's my problem. If I could just get them to stop or start doing what drives me crazy, this whole thing would work out. So what's the problem? Right? It's got to be over there. Man. I wish sometimes I could be a psychic and answer those questions with honesty. But the reality is those questions can only be asked with inside of ourselves.

That's right.

Not even a psychic can give you those answers. Nobody can give you those answers. I love. And you, in the book you say, cultivate your own garden. And it's a garden that only you can cultivate.

And only we can let ourselves out of that self made prison. It's like no matter how much we can get help, we can get support, we can get mirrors to help us see, but nobody can open that door. Let us let ourselves out. Except for us.

Except for ourselves. Yeah. So let's. We. You've got four here that we need to get through in about four or so minutes. I know, we could, we could have a whole show on every one of these. So it's obvious to me we've got to have you come back and continue this conversation. But I want to make sure we cover the victim because the victim is the most, I would say, challenging place to get somebody out of. Would you agree totally?

Totally. The 30 years of doing retreats, that is the hardest one to pop out of. And it's a level of consciousness, it's the biggest trap for sure. And so, yeah, you went for the jugular. So here's the thing, like connecting it to power. As long as we're holding anyone or anything for that matter outside of us responsible for our state of being, for our happiness, for our success, we just gave our power away. Right? Because so, because we're, we're usually either. If if only mom had done this, if only dad had done that. If only the teacher, the minister, society, sexism, racism, homophobia. If it only wasn't for that. If I had been born in a different family, in a different country. If only, if only, if only. It's like we're just giving our power away and oftentimes to the perpetrator. And so it's a. It's a tough one. It's a tough one. And this is not denying or making right or rationalizing what anybody did or didn't do. It's not about that, right? It's not minimizing anybody's pain or trauma. It's not about that. It's saying that if we want to be free, we've got to let ourselves out of that, that victim trap. Because, and, and here's, here's, here's the thing about it. It's like one thing we can count on for sure is that life is going to continue throwing curveballs our way. Stuff is going to happen. People are going to do things that we didn't see coming, and that's the way it is. And sometimes it's going to suck. And here, here's how we begin to let ourselves out of that prison, no matter what happened in our past. And I'm so sorry about the stuff that many, if not most of us had to deal with. Human beings should not have had to do deal with that kind of stuff, especially kids. But no matter what happened, no matter what happens going forward, we can always choose how we're going to be in response to that. And that alone, that reframe changes everything and allows us to reclaim our power in regards to that situation. And nobody embodies that, exemplifies that. Better for me than Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist.

Yes.

Years in concentration camps, I lost everybody, his entire family, his pregnant wife, soulmate kind of relationship. And that guy was able to say, I mean, not to mention all the property and degrees and education, all of that.

Right.

Everything was taken away from him. And that guy was able to take that. They could, was able to say that they could take everything away from him except for one thing, that choice to decide how he would be in response to that. And again, not to minimize anybody's pain or tragedy, but if he can do it there, certainly we can do it in our lives.

Absolutely.

So what would you say, Christian, in doing all your years of retreat work when you're, you know, working with a participant and they've gone through something horrific. So I so appreciate. Look, we're not denying the horrific situation you've gone through. How is it they're finally able to have them hear something perhaps that they've not heard before?

You know, it's, it's a, it's a conversation and it's a process and it's understanding what, what the ego mind is and how it works. And because the ego is that part of us that it's, that is stuck in victimization and we don't have time to dive into that right now. But simple, simple visual is if you put a baseball in the center of the stadium, that's what the ego is who we are is actually the stadium. And we've allowed this tiny, tiny part of who we are to think that it is all who we are and to make really important consequential choices from its very limited and always fear based perspective. So at every retreat that I do, that's the starting point in the book. That's a starting point, understanding what the ego is. So we do that and then we also use breath work, which is another conversation that we could spend the whole session on. But I've yet to come across anything that heals past trauma as effectively and as quickly as, as this does. And I'm talking about people that I've worked with with really severe traumas that they've overcome all sorts of abuse, including sexual abuse, people who've, who've experienced traumatic physical violence stuff. And it can be healed.

I love that. Well, gosh darn it, we've got to wrap up our conversation here and let's each of us take a takeaway from our conversation today. Let's give our listeners three takeaways from the points that we really feel like are the most important from our conversation today. You know, Christian, we'll put you on the spot since our guest. What, what would be one for you?

I, I think that, that there is a way that we can step into our power that is a match for who we are. So as we understand ourselves and understand more about the nature of power, there's a way that we can figure this out, that we can own our power that doesn't require that we push anybody down, that we step on them, that we manipulate them, that, that, that, that there's a way that we can do this that is a match with the inherent goodness in our hearts.

I love that. What about you, babe?

Yeah, I would say a similar track in that, you know, certainly from the male energy perspective there, there's in my, in my experience living life on the planet, you know, there's not a lot of celebration of what we're touting. Meaning I like to say I love that quiet demonstration, you know, and, and so when you have that power within you, it's just like the greatest athletes, they, they don't necessari they how well they perform, they simply demonstrate it. So you know, you know, to know and not to do is to really not yet know. So then just be that quiet demonstration of the power, you know. And the male power has been such an interesting evolution for as long as we've not been on this planet. And I think we need to embrace that this feminine energy we Have a mentor we work with, Trevor G. Bike. He talks about it's breathless, it's fast. The feminine energy definitely is coming into our evolution now. Fast and furious. Most of our most prominent CEOs at the the fastest growing companies are all women. That's no. By. Not by accident. So we have to embrace, you know, the convergence of both the feminine and. And yes. And the male masculine.

Well, that. And this wasn't something that so much that we've talked about, but something that I just want to point to and encourage our listeners to do. Don't be afraid to look at these and own them for yourself. Right. It's a freeing experience to say, gosh, I do that. Oh, I've done that too. Oh, holy cow right there. Look at them and own them because they have no more power over you. And to some of the abuses and the egregious things that have been done to us. I also want to point to those in and of themselves are power. They fuel the goodness that we see in the world. For example, if I've gone through a horrific. I have a client that went through a horrific battle with addiction only to create after killing someone driving drunk. An organization that supported families and children of people who are struggling with alcohol is so we can take these things that have happened to us and we can reframe that power. And those are the reasons why we have wonderful nonprofit organizations and people doing great things in the world because they have stepped into their power and they're taking those things that are egregious and they're wanting to make some change happen because of it so those things can be transformed into the power, the energy, the juice that we can take and embody in our lives to go forward and change the way that we look and view things. So I want to leave our listeners with that as well. Christian, it's so wonderful to connect with you. We. I will reach out to you after this is over. And man, you're somebody we could have on, you know, every few weeks to continue this conversation.

And how about share with us, please, where people can find you and your awesome body of work and your book, please.

Thank you both so much for having me and for asking that question. Tom, it's been an amazing conversation and thank you for doing what you do. I know that your willingness to do this work and this podcast makes a difference in many, many lives. So thank you. In terms of where to find a book, you can get it at your local bookstore, you can get it on Amazon. So wherever you buy your books, in terms of reaching me, probably the best way is my website, which is soulful power.com and then they can access social media from there. And for your audience, if they will go to soulfulpower.com and get on my email list, we all know how easy it is to click unsubscribe down the road if it doesn't work for you. But they will get a sample chapter from the book on what it means to live a heroic life in the 21st century. They'll get some of the power practices that you were talking about, Stacy, that are designed to integrate, to apply those teachings to our lives so that it doesn't stay at the level of information because we don't need more information. We've got information overload. What we need is transformation and that's what those teaching, those practices will do. And then they'll get a recorded lesson and guided meditation about trust, which I created specifically for to support us during these crazy chaotic times of uncertainty. So thank you again.

Oh, absolutely. It's been a pleasure, Christian. Thank you again and we look forward to having you back on the show here soon. Okay, big squeeze to you.

Thank you, Christian. We'll see you soon.

So we're going to take a really quick break right now and let you ponder all that we've talked about and all that we've shared. Come on back and we're going to have a little fun. We gotta, we've got to kind of balance things, right? We've had a wonderful conversation, but don't forget to, to have a little fun along the way. We're going to have a super tip for you in just a minute. We'll be right back.

Here's what one of Stacy Bartley's clients says about working with her.

Working with Stacy has been life changing in a very magical way. I wanted to work with Stacy when I left a long term marriage because I didn't want to repeat any of my relational, how would you say, unhealthiness. I'm so amazed how she has taken her experience and wrapped it into her own program. A program that is designed specially for you, for anyone that moves forward with her. She's unique, she's profound, she's magical. She has a love for others that is unmatched and it would be a gift to yourself to work with Stacy.

To book your 30, 45 minute or 60 minute session with Stacy, go to stacybartley.com checkup.

Back. We just finished an incredible conversation about personal power with our wonderful guest today, Christian Delaware. And it's Time to have a little bit of fun. Okay? So it's always a good time to have some fun. We need to make sure that we incorporate that in our lives. And we do this segment every week to inspire you to do just that. So today, what I want you to do is I want you to think back when you were 5 years old, or maybe 10 if you can't go back that far in your imagination. And I want to encourage you to sit down and make a list of all the things that you used to love to do at that age. For example, I used to love to ride my bike. Be free. In fact, in the spirit of full disclosure, I love to run naked because I love to feel the wind on my skin fill the grass underneath my feet. And my parents were always after me because they'd find me at my friend's house or out in the front yard butt naked. Okay? So I love nature. I love the feel of it. I love everything about it.

We still have that problem now. No, just kidding. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm having a little fun.

And listen, what I want to encourage you to do is after you've made that list and really contemplated, what was it that I used to love to do? Coloring, sculpting, Riding a bicycle, riding a motorcycle, walking in nature. All of those things that were intrinsic to who you are because you didn't know better, I then want to encourage you to just do one of them this week. Just do one. Pull out the coloring book and the crayons. Feel the grass on your feet. Feel the wind in your hair. Go for a bike ride.

How about swing? You always talked about being on a swing.

Swing, too.

That's anytime now, just so you know. We see a swing somewhere in a park or something. We stop and swing, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, yes, we do.

And the longer the chains, the better. So gift yourself a few moments to think about that and then incorporate that back into your life. It's going to reconnect you with the essence of who you are. And you may pick up another hobby. Right? I'm convinced that Tom was a drum player in his previous life. And I'm always encouraging him to beat a drum. But you give him a drum, he'll stand there and beat it for hours.

So, honey, you know, I'm told I have good rhythm.

You do. You have really good rhythm. So we have a spread some love moment, which is where we feature people in platforms and bodies of work that are doing really great things in the world. And today it happens to be a really dear Friend of ours, actually a colleague and a coworker, as well as a dear friend. And we're going to be taking care of her dogs this weekend. Yes, we are. Kim Murphy is a colon hydrotherapist. She's also a nutrition specialist, and she had this to say about her love and journey into relationships. Hi, I'm Kim from Auburn Total Health. And being a business owner and relationships go hand in hand. Whether it's dealing with an employee, dealing with a client, dealing with another vendor, whatever. You have to have good relationship skills to be able to run a business effectively. And it's so important to communicate not only clearly but also authentically to be real. And that, in turn, is going to turn around and influence your relationship, personal life. So being a good communicator, a good expert at relationships is important for a business owner as well as in every other part of your life. I love the work that Stacy and Tom are doing. It's just incredible. And I think that the tools that they provide will help any business owner, any person in a relationship, be able to have a good and lasting relationship. We do do good things for good people, and it comes from a place of genuine caring about our clients and the work that we do.

Well, I find it interesting, too, that, you know, Stacy, you know, you had a very thriving, wonderful health center in Salt Lake City before you met me and chose to drop everything and come to Sacramento. But you always used to share that. Interestingly enough, when you were doing your colon therapy work, many times the com. Or usually most times, the conversations would turn to relationships. Interestingly enough, through that protocol, through that therapy, if you will.

Yeah, right. When we let go physically, we also let go emotionally. There's. There's no if, ands, or buts about it.

And by the way, we weren't. Kim wasn't on there to, you know, talk about us. That was a bonus. Thank you, Kim. We appreciate you. But just the importance of communication. And I always would marvel when Stacy would share literally every single time she found herself talking about relationships. So go figure. That that's what we do now. So sometimes we don't know where this life path is going to.

To lead us. Well, in a. And a health journey will always take you to an emotional journey, and an emotional journey will always take you to a health journey. It's just kind of the way it rolls. And that starts to point us to the physical and the emotional body that we talk about. And if you haven't heard us talk about that, you can catch it in our previous episodes so, gosh, it's time for us to wrap up this episode and I'm so sorry to go. This is such a wonderful experience to connect. I'm going to come and share and be with you and our guests and our listeners. We so appreciate and love you and appreciate everything that you do to help and support us by listening in and sharing with us yourselves and your stories and your journeys. And like Tom said, thanks again, Kim. We appreciate you sharing your insights about that with us. We by chance, if you want a free book, we didn't have a chance to do this because of time. I didn't want to mess the conversation up. But if you want a book, you can email us. I'll give it to the first two or three people. Christian has agreed to autograph and personally sign three physical copies of his book to the first three people who email us and let us know that, yes, this book is me. All I need you to do is in the subject title, put power and I'll know what you're, what you're referring to.

What's your email address?

Email address is. You just go to the website stacybartley.com there's a place where you can contact us there. That would be the best way to go about it. As we close each episode, we close it with a song because we've talked and talked and we've got your head thinking and spinning and we also want you to feel. And so every week we leave you with a song. You can get our playlist on our website as well. But today's song for this episode is Sade's Stronger Than Pride. And the reason I chose this song is because love is stronger than pride and right. We need to learn how to govern ourselves and our pride. Some of that pride is what gives us some of those power struggles. So check it out. Feel the episode. And babe, you always have a great.

I love.

Yeah, I mean, in fact, you know what? Listen to the song first and then listen to the rest of the podcast. I think that would be a. I, I'm a. I love podcasts. There's a few that I listen to all the time, but they don't have that particular way. But again, Stacy and I, we talk a lot about. We have our emotional, our physical body, but we also have our emotional body. And music is a big part of our lives and we have a lot of fun each week picking the song. So perhaps, yeah, try the song. Listen to the song. What is it? What are you feeling? Feeling. And then listen to the rest of the podcast.

And you can catch the whole playlist for every single episode that we have ever shared with you on our website. Again on that playlist, stacybartley.com forward slash podcast. Don't miss it. So I want to shout out as we wrap up and say goodbye to you, a special thank you to Christian Delaware for sharing his wisdom on power struggles.

We'll have Christian back for sure.

Oh, for sure. And Kim Murphy for some spreading some love with us today. Come on back next week and join us for additional ways to improve your sex, love and relationships. That's our jam. That's what we love to do. It's been a pleasure to be here with you today. We're Tom and Stacy Bartley, hosts of the Love Shack Live together with our engineer Eric Reiter. Thanks for being here and spending some of your day with us right here inside the Love Shack.

We'll see you soon.

Foreign.

Thanks for joining us today in the Love Shack. We hope you came away with something that made your toes tingle.

To learn more about everything you heard on today's show, go to stacybartley.com podcast Love the Show. Help help us spread the love by.

Sharing the show with others. Okay everybody, time to go. We gotta close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week though and join.

Us for another edition of Love Shack.

Live with Tom and Stacey Bartley. Here's what one of St. Stacey Bartley's client says about working with her.

Working with Stacy has been life changing in a very magical way. I wanted to work with Stacy when I left a long term marriage because I didn't want to repeat any of my relational, how would you say, unhealthiness. I'm so amazed how she has taken her experience experience and wrapped it into her own program. A program that is designed specially for you. For anyone that moves forward with her. She's unique, she's profound, she's, she's magical. She has a love for others that is unmatched and it would be a gift to yourself to work with Stacy.

To book your 30, 45 minute or 60 minute session with Stacy, go to staceybartley.com checkup.