Finding HARMONY in DIFFICULT Relationships | Dr. Caroline Leaf EP 468

0:00I am so grateful for you. I'm so grateful that you're here today, that you show up every single week to listen to one of our episodes on the School of Greatness. And did you know that this is our 10-year anniversary? That's right, 10 years of greatness. And this holiday season, I don't want to sell you anything. Instead, I just want to show appreciation and I want to do a big giveaway. That's right. Greatness is giving away$500 a day for 10 straight days to multiple members of our community. All you have to do is go to lewishouse.com slash giveaway. And that's where you'll get all the details about how you can be a winner.

0:39And again, we're choosing winners every single day for 10 straight days. 10 days of greatness is my way of saying thank you for a decade of greatness. So what are you waiting for? Head to lewishouse.com slash giveaway and enter the giveaway right now. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes, and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

1:07If someone's in a broken relationship right now, maybe they've been arguing for years or fighting, maybe they have good weeks and then there's a bad week and it's the cycle of good and bad, up and down, and it just feels like it's draining or exhausting. What can they do to start healing the relationship to start healing individually and the relationship to create harmony in the future. So the first thing to do is to get into some good practices that will help calm your neurophysiology down. So I call that brain preparation. You've got a calm, wise mind that's always active and always on your side.

1:41Then we have our messy mind that's in the relationship. It's in the moment. It's the in the moment messy mind. The reactive. Reactive learning. It's very normal. It needs a lot of guidance. So the first thing is that when we're in that messy mind state that's sending all this messy energy through the brain and it's triggering all kinds of i mean toxic thoughts just think of an argument when you start some stupid thing gets you going and then you end up arguing what am i even talking about what's the point in the first place exactly well why did i even bring that stupid thing up we resolved that years ago you know why am i bringing that up now that's what will happen if you don't calm down on neurophysiology so it's get your neurophysiology calm first and you can do that with meditation breathing with exercise, gym workout with creating space that, okay, we're both too hot now.

2:23Let's just get some fresh air. Let's resolve this at the latest. Let's create mental, physical space. There's so many ways of doing that. There's so many great sort of meditative breathing. Find something that works for you. It may not be the same thing. Mac and I like to just create space and I like to do the three, seven breathing thing that gets my neurophysiology under control. So you breathe in for three and out for seven. You push so much oxygen to the front of your brain and it's a very good way of calming down your neurophysiology you can do that in i call it a 10 second pause you can do it for 60 to 90 seconds so it's 10 seconds that you do six to nine times great little formula for calming down neurophysiology those simple things that i know we know but are we doing them or are you trying to push through i've got to solve this now i used to be like that and so i had to learn to hey no you don't have to fix it now.

3:14Is it possible to fix something when you're in chaotic thoughts? You can, but it's more difficult. Then the next thing that's very practical is you can focus on good stuff. So it may just be good stuff about yourself. Part of mental health is not just detoxing stuff. It's also building healthy stuff. If you've now calmed down your neurophysiology and you now go and focus on something that you know makes you feel great, that means you're pulling this up. When you pull this up amazing things happen in your brain you change all the delta theta alpha beta gamma frequencies you calm down think of the waves of the sea they build they're deep and big and then they build on the beach crash make little waves we want that kind of energy going through our brain which activates good neurochemical flow the endocrine all that stuff you have put yourself into a really good brain state mind brain body state not just brain state but you've got a very good flow were happening are you still as irritated as hell it's okay it's okay to be messy so third thing tell yourself it's okay to be a mess it's okay I can be a mess it's normal but how am I going to manage the mess so give yourself permission to be the mess feel the mess analyze the mess I'm frustrated what's my emotion what's my body feeling what's my perspective in this moment what am I doing go to all five why am I feeling like this write a few things down do a recheck Okay, this has happened.

4:33What can I do? Action. Okay, I'm ready to talk. So step one is brain prep. Step two is think of something good. This has activated our natural resilience. You could think of something great about your partner. Think of a great memory, which is a really good addition. Then do a neurocycling yourself. You can do this in three minutes, in 10 minutes, an hour, whatever. Then reconvene. Okay, now we're going to do this. What happens if we want love, we want to be in a relationship, We want connection. We want intimacy. But we don't believe we're deserving of love. As you're talking, you're just prompting all these clinical experiences.

5:10I've had a very successful, incredible person, wonderful in every single way. Could not keep a relationship going. Always start off well and everything. And at the end of the day, the core issue, once this person had worked through, was that they didn't deserve love. And it came, unfortunately, a lot of it comes from childhood. Really? 12 to 18 is the most difficult part of the entire human life cycle. At that age, your relationship with your friends and potential partners are a lot more important, but are more important than your parenting. They supersede. So you can have this great foundation.

5:43Amazing parents, no trauma. Yeah. Fun all the time, peace, harmony and home. Sorted it out, did the real thing, just great parents. And then you get into a relationship where someone who's broken is attracted to you, and you're attracted to them, and you swept off your feet either way. and their brokenness is put onto you in your informative years and you get told you're not good enough. How does someone overcome that feeling of, I'm not deserving of love? It's very often in the 20s and 30s where you get into the workspace and you start actually really forming deeper relationships and then you start getting to the point where you're thinking, okay, well, my friends are getting married.

6:19Everyone around me is in relationships and I'm the only one who's not in a relationship. I can't seem to keep a relationship. What's wrong with me? That's when you need to sit down and do the work over 63 days and multiple cycles of 63 days. You'll get to the point where you'll see, okay, what is the root? The root was either a childhood issue or an adolescent issue. Maybe it was you with a new kid in town and everyone laughed at you because you wore glasses. You were mocked, so you were too scared to actually show that guy or that girl that you liked them. You have to have a way of them being able to process and express their feelings so that five-year-old needs to be able to say, hey, I feel sad, or have a point of context, something.

6:57You need to make a person feel validated because you need to say to that child, whether or an adult, this is not who you are. These behaviors that I'm seeing that are impacting us, the rest of the family, yourself, your friends, or whatever, you divorce the behavior from the person. From the person. And that's really critical to create that safe space. So I'm going to help you work through this. You know, like you have a sitting room and you watch TV and that's your place of relaxation. You need a mind management place in your home. You've got a gym, you've got a whatever. You need a mind management center in your home, which could be a beautiful little couch or a little beanbag next to a pretty plant.

7:31Something that you as a family create and choose. And everyone, adults say, whenever you go there, there's no judgment. There's only safety. And if someone's sitting there, they're needing support too. Creating that environment and then having like a toy like this, transfer that over to the toy, then the child can then act and carry it out and show you what's happening. It divorces it from them directly and it enables them to try and enact it without feeling threatened or scared or externalizing. And you can also model for yourself, oh, mommy, you feel sad today and this happened. And so you model and you actually walk through the five steps without saying them, but you do that and you model.

8:04So that allows them to have the space, oh, mommy also sometimes gets mad or dad also sometimes gets mad or uncle also in that space.

8:23Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

9:12Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.