In this episode we talk about what makes up a relationship. How to solve the problems within our relationships and how we can show up to our relationships with others. I take you down some personal relationships in my life and show you how the tools I teach work to help strengthen relationships.
In this episode we talk about what makes up a relationship. How to solve the problems within our relationships and how we can show up to our relationships with others. I take you down some personal relationships in my life and show you how the tools I teach work to help strengthen relationships.
You're listening to the modern Mormon, Episode 15. Hey there, I'm kami Satterlee. And I'm the modern Mormon. I'm an Advanced Certified Life coach who's dropped the all or nothing approach to life, and religion. I can't wait to show you how. I've got you, girl. Let's go. Hello, all you beautiful souls. And welcome to the podcast today, I'm super excited to talk to you about relationships, and specifically relationships that last how to make them last. So when I coach people on relationships, they're not coming to me, because the relationship is amazing, they're coming to me, because it's not going well. We don't talk about relationships when they're going so well, we just kind of accept that it's going well and not try to change anything. But when things are difficult, we suddenly start to have questions in our brain about that relationship, and whether we should keep it it's toxic. Whether it's our fault, or we have thoughts like somebody else needs to change in order for that relationship to continue, or to improve, right? So what makes something challenging? What makes your relationship challenging? If you've been a follower of mine, or you listen to the podcast, you know, the answer is, our thoughts about it, or our judgments about that relationship, or that other person. So I want you to do this, I want you to think about a challenging relationship in your life. And I want you to just notice your thoughts about it. A lot of times our brain describes this as that's just how this person is we see it kind of like as factual that our brain does not see it as an option to think about them in a different way. And this is one of the most challenging parts about coaching. And one of the hardest parts for me personally was realizing that when it came to my relationship with my husband, which is what I initially got coached on for the first time and continue to get coached on probably the most, not only had I labeled him, but my brain wanted to be right about that labels. So it constantly found evidence for that. And because of that it created such a disconnect between us. Factual would mean every single person in the entire world would have to agree on it. So for me in my coaching sessions, what I brought to my coach so many times was that my husband doesn't make me a priority. He puts everyone else before me, he puts his job before me, he puts our marriage last. And I constantly had resentment and anger. And just a bunch of issues with it. So my coach responded with something that I now use as a coach myself. And she said, Why are you choosing to think about your marriage and your relationship with your husband this way. And it was like, it just hit me right in the face with a truth bomb, my brain instantly wanted to think she just doesn't understand. She would agree if she saw what he does. But the more I got into the coaching, the more I realized I was victimizing myself and causing a disconnect in my marriage, and that it truly was optional, regardless of Steve's behavior. Even if Steve agreed on that, even if he said, Yeah, I don't put you I don't make you a priority, I still get the option to choose how I want to think about that, because I am choosing to stay married to him. So I can either be miserable for the rest of our marriage, or I can choose to look at that in a different way that serves me and allows me to show up as a, you know, as the wife I want to be and then also to view our relationship and stay connected in the way I want. So even if I didn't agree with him, even if I truly thought that he should be different, that thought alone was what was causing me so much heartache and pain, the bottle with it. And I think like the hardest thing we have with relationships is it's not that we want to end the relationship, it's that we just want that other person to be different. We think that if they were different than we would feel different. The hardest thing is not cept accepting that accountability for your own emotions. And when we want somebody to be different, but they're not all it does is just cause us nonstop heartache, we have zero control over whether somebody wants to change or not. But when we try and control that other person or we try to make things different, it naturally is just such a turn off and it makes the other person probably not want to change. The more I got into coaching, the more I was coached on this topic again and again and again, because I would just bring different scenarios, different circumstances, but they always had the same thought that I'm not a priority. So it took a lot of coaching to come to the conclusion that I don't want Steve to be different. I love him because he's not me. And if he was like my brain, it would come up with even more reasons to be upset trying to keep me safe. Like if we're too alike. Then there's also a problem there. The deeper we get into questioning or noticing our thoughts on purpose, the more we realize what it is creating for us in our lives personally. When I thought I wasn't a priority to Steve, my brain also went to if I was a better wife. If I was more attractive if I had a better personality, I would be more important and based off my last pie cast on shame and blame, you can kind of see what my brain was doing here. It wanted to shame me into fixing this. And then also wanted to go to blame on Steve, because I didn't like the emotion of shame, I was stuck in that cycle. And I love coaching for this reason, because it actually is my toughest work, my relationship with my husband is still something that I continually have to get coaching on. I know the tools needed, I know what my brain is doing, but I'm still in it. Like in my relationship, when I'm feeling insecure, it will come out in my marriage, it will come out in the things I think about my husband, just the other day, I realized I was resenting him and getting mad at him for everything, like I saw my brain finding evidence to not like him, it was just non stop, I sat down on the couch next to him and said, my brain hates you so much right now. But I just want to love you, he responded with then just love me. Just such a simple statement that is so powerful, and so true, yet so hard in those moments, and this is why we need coaching. So when we talk about relationships, relationships are simply thoughts we have about another person. relationships exist in our own brains. So when we have a great relationship, it's because we have great thoughts about that other person, when we have a disconnect in our relationship, it is because we are choosing to think not so great thoughts about the person, which causes a negative emotion within us, that other person does not feel that negative emotion. Now, they may see the effects of it. Because when we take action from that negative emotion, they can see those type of actions and what is driving that action, if it's not love, but even then they get to decide what they want to make it mean for them and their relationship with us. So when we have a negative emotion, only we feel that pain, and only we have that experience. Our brain likes to fight against this and say, No, we are feeling terrible because of this other person's behavior. It wants to put blame on them for our emotions. But that simply is not true. And I see this a lot too, within parenting. I recently did a real I'm new to the real world and on Instagram, and I did one on labeling your child as difficult and how that makes us feel terrible. And then how do we show up as a parent towards that child when we've labeled them? This really got so much attention, I believe, because I think for a lot of people, for the first time they realize that their child is not simply difficult, that it's optional for us to think of them that way. I had so many people comment on this because on one hand, it made them feel terrible that they had been doing this and putting blame on their kid. On the other hand, it also provided them so much freedom in moving forward. There were lots of people also who fought against it in the comments and said, if we just walked around labeling everything as positive, then that wouldn't serve us either. And they missed the point, your child can be difficult, your child can be defiance, they can be a challenge for you. We're not trying to change that reality of what they're doing in their behavior. We're not trying to mask it either. And say it's totally fine. That is not the purpose of that. What we are doing is how can we view this behavior in a way that still allows us to show up and parent the child discipline if we need to set boundaries if we need to, but show up as a parent we want to be and through love versus anger, impatience, frustration, resentment, any negative emotion that we feel. So in that real what I show is my son Easton. And Easton is one of a kind. The kid has a quick wit and he's super sarcastic. He has a response to everything. So when other parents hear him, they like they get super offended. Their brain says he is disrespectful, I've had family say I would never let him speak to me like that. And in the past, this caused me to kind of panic as a mom, that I wasn't doing a good enough job, and that I had no control over this kid, that I was the one responsible for his behavior in sort of a way. The more that I did this, the more that I showed up and parented him from the emotion of fear. I was trying to change him to perform in a way so that I could feel a different emotion about his behavior. Well, trying to control him did not work. But it did cause a disconnect between him and I, there were a lot of fights. He got super mad, and then he would act out on the anger. When I learned the tools for coaching, and I started to question my brain and question what was going on here? I realized that thinking my son is disrespectful, hurt, it hurt me. It hurt me inside and made me feel shame about my parenting. And then it made me put blame on him for my emotions. And then he could sense that and almost felt responsible for my emotions. He like he there had a choice to be himself or to make mom happy. And as a child, I can see how he felt out of control and how that angered him. I showed up as a terrible mom to him, always disciplining him always yelling at him and always putting him down and punishing him. What I decided was that I don't like his behavior, but it doesn't make it disrespectful. I started to think about why he would Talk back and have a quick wit and say like inappropriate sarcastic things. I decided he likes to get a rise out of people. He likes to be liked, there's a part of him that's probably insecure. And something I would like to help build in him not tear down. I decided he's a little boy. And he likes to flirt. And he likes to be funny. When I started looking at his behavior from this perspective of compassion and love, I started showing up as a better mom to him, I started to appreciate and love Him for who He is, instead of wishing he was different, once I could cut out the noise of other people, and their judgments and their comments, and even my own eyes began to just smile because I knew my boy. And he's going to do big things with that big old mouth of his, if he was quiet and reserved, he did everything I wanted him to do out of fear of having me have an emotion about it, I can't imagine the problems that that would create for him later on in his life. Now, as a mom, I set boundaries with him or allow him to just simply be himself. But also there are consequences to behavior that I as a parent decided is inappropriate, he can still choose to participate in those behaviors. But I don't have to judge him for it, I simply just hold him accountable to that boundary. He knows he is not responsible for my emotions. In fact, he uses this against me all the time by saying, that's just a thought Mom. But more importantly, he knows he gets to choose who he wants to be in life. He knows other people's opinions do not matter, that his pet opinion matters more than anyone's. He knows that he doesn't need to change or act or be anything for anyone else. He's learning through trial and error, how he feels inside when he behaves certain waves, and he's becoming the man that he wants to be. I feel so much joy in watching this because I finally took accountability for my own emotions. And because of that, I can now parent out of love and feel good about that. It's because he knows he's 100% responsible for everything in his life. And I to know the same about mine. So by asking ourselves, why we're choosing to think about a certain person in a negative way, it can open our eyes and increase our awareness, allowing us to understand that it that it's optional, and that we are creating that relationship with them. If we want the relationship to be better, and feel better, we need to change the way that we think about it. Which brings me to the most important relationship of all, the relationship we have with ourself. The reason we are so hard on those we love the most comes down to us being hard and unforgiving of ourselves, who we are the things we think about the choices we make in life, the past our capabilities for our future, we think that if we were better than we could love ourselves, and if we loved ourselves, then others would believe us as well and love us. The sad thing about this is, it's the complete opposite of that, when we can fully love ourselves for who we are in this very moment. Without anything needing to change, then we can have compassion on those around us. We can view them from a place of they're just doing their best. We can have love and empathy for who that person is, in that very moment. When we love us and the people around us, it helps others to want to love us too. So when we are constantly putting ourselves down constantly trying to be something we're not in hopes of attention, approval, validation, whatever it comes across as fake, and authentic and negative. Those are not typical qualities of someone that we want to be around. So why do we do this? And why do we beat ourselves up? Because our brain thinks that if we put ourselves down, it will motivate us to want to do more and be more and be better. This is not true. And it actually does the complete opposite. The effect of negative thinking does not create positive action. It creates a negative feeling in our body that has us doing acting, and being completely against what our true desires, and what our spirit actually wants to be aligned with. The relationships you have with yourself is the most important one because it affects all the other relationships in your life. It determines how you're going to show up in those relationships as a mother, as a wife, as a sister, a friend and employee and a daughter of God. In my last podcast regarding shame, I talked about how the adversaries greatest tool is keeping us in shame, keeping us thinking we don't measure up and we aren't good enough. If we can do this, he can destroy our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with others, how we show up in the world and what we're capable of doing and becoming. In order to change the relationship with ourselves. We have to first understand what our relationship currently is with ourself. We do this by noticing the thoughts that we think about ourselves throughout the day. From an unbiased and and judgmental view. I noticed that I hate my body. Notice I'm thinking I'm too old to start a career. Notice that I can't do it all. I'm a bad mother. My kids would be better off with a different mom. I cannot parent this kid. If I was more attractive. My husband would want to have sex with me. If I was more worthy. God wouldn't be punishing me in my life. I can never measure up. I suck at cooking I don't enjoy being a stay at home mom. And I should, I'm boring I have no friends. I mean, the list is endless that we say to ourselves, how many of you have had one or more of these thoughts that even I just listed. These are ingrained in our heads as women, and especially as mothers and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, just being a woman, from the time we're born, a lot of these things have been, you know, conditioned, and are now default to thinking. Because we think we need to think this in order to be better. These are all lies. These thoughts are what are holding you back from incredible relationships in your life, we can understand and know that these are lies, because I personally would not ever say any one of these to my daughter, I would say the complete opposite of every single one of them, I would tell her, she's freaking capable of becoming anything she dreams, she's worthy of love. It's okay, if she doesn't enjoy things that other women enjoy. It doesn't make her bad, incapable or less than her body is beautiful, and it's a gift and the more she loves it, it becomes stronger and healthier. And whatever she wants and diet desires it for it to be. These are the things that we tell ourselves throughout the day, whenever we notice our brain going to these default thoughts, the more we can get good at this and believe this and become this, the more it will reflect in our relationships outside of us to create relationships that last it takes awareness, acceptance and allowance on our part, becoming aware of what we are thinking about that other person, accepting that they are not creating our feelings, allowing space for the reality of our brain and the emotions that are being created. And then taking responsibility for that and choosing to intentionally think about the person the way that we want to, in an effort to create the relationship that we desire. This is what life coaching is, this is why I fell in love with it. For the first time I had options and choices in my life. I did not rely on somebody else. It was all me, it was the most freeing thing to have that I felt so in control. Every day, when I think about myself, I choose love. Every day I choose to stay married to my husband consciously. Because let me tell you, it comes up unconsciously that it would probably be better off without him. I mean, it's kind of a sixth fantasy. I say all the time. Like if we divorced, he would have to take the kids 50% of the time, I would get alone time, I'd be able to date like it sounds like such a beautiful thing that my brain creates in my head. But what it comes down to is No, I love my husband, I want to be with my husband. This is what happens is our lower brain takes over and this is what causes the fights the arguments, the resentment, all the negative thinking about the other person in that relationship. Every day I decided I want to show up as a mom of love and compassion. Sometimes I fail. But in order to show up bigger and better next time, I do work during these failures, I don't let them bring me down. I do this by saying no brain. We are not going there today. We may have gone there yesterday, but not today. Do these things and you will create relationships that last a lifetime and beyond. If you're ready to drop the all or nothing in your life, then I would be honored to be your life coach. Head over to the modern mormon.com To start your journey in becoming the confident authentic and best version of you