We all come up short when it comes to self love and relationships. In this episode of A Glimpse Inside’s Relationship Rescue series, host Wendy Perrotti coaches Megan around the many ways that negative self-talk and self protective behaviors interfere with happiness, confidence and the quality of our relationships. Tune in to learn how some simple shifts in how you think about yourself can have an enormous impact on your relationships with others.
Welcome to A Glimpse Inside. I’m Wendy Perrotti and you are listening to episode three of our four part Relationship Rescue series.Â
In episode two, we met Megan who’s working on creating deeper connections in her life. Ultimately, she wants a loving relationship. In this second coaching episode, we’ll see what Megan’s been up to for the past two weeks and we’ll help her use that to push the pebble forward.Â
For all of us, there’s a link between self love and relationships. We talked with Megan about that last time and I have no doubt that it’s going to reappear again today.Â
Before we dive in with her, I want to be clear though. While loving oneself unconditionally is of course a completely worthwhile goal for all of us, there is no finish line to this work. I don’t know that I’ve ever even met anyone who’s 100% there. I know I’m certainly not and I sure as hell don’t want you, Megan, or anyone else to feel that you need to achieve this huge thing before you can have amazingly deep, meaningful and loving relationships because nothing could be further from the truth.
Instead, we’re looking for all the ways that negative self-talk, that self-protection that we create can interfere with our happiness, with our confidence and the way we show up with others. So by untangling and rewiring some of those stories, everything starts to move into a happier, more peaceful alignment. We’ll be working on that today with Megan, I’m sure. It’s certainly something that we can all use in our lives.Â
So Megan, welcome back.
Thanks Wendy.
How are you today?
I’m okay. I’m just kind of okay today.
Okay. We all have days that are just kind of okay and the important thing is to realize that’s part of pushing the pebble forward too, right? Doing the work that we’re doing together is about making it work in real life in real time. That never unfolds as we expect it to. So we came up with some homework the last time we talked.
Yep.
How, if at all, and you know it’s completely cool to be honest with me about that, did you experiment with that over the past few weeks?
I think the thing that I focused on the most was the listening and tuning into others. So a lot of what we had talked about the last time was that’s really easy and effortless for me to do in my business. So transferring those skills over to my personal life and I can’t say that I had a ton of opportunity to do it in my personal life. I don’t know that I met much of anybody new in the last couple of weeks because we did have kind of the Thanksgiving break in between and whatever. But I tried my best to keep it sort of top of mind and I did. In the meantime, I had a couple of good business things that happened while I was keeping that top of mind. So that’s kind of where I am with it.
Okay. Let’s pause right there and tell me what you noticed, both with keeping it top of mind in personal interactions and what you noticed in the things that came up in your business.
Well, so I did a session at one of the local universities and it was an evening workshop that was open to other entrepreneurs. I’ve actually taught this workshop before. It was one of their best attended. So they asked me back. I just noticed that it was, as effortless as it usually is for me to teach these workshops, it was even more effortless and it just seemed as though the people in the room were much more interested in me, so to speak as I kind of doubled down on my usual take interest and tune in to them.
There was one gentleman in the room who kept kind of interrupting, which often happens when you’re a trainer and you teach workshops and there was a woman who often had this look on her face, like, I don’t know if I believe you, but she pulled me aside afterwards and told me how great the workshop was and what a wonderful job I did of handling this guy who kept interrupting because I didn’t shut him down. I didn’t make him feel that he couldn’t have an opinion or shouldn’t have an opinion. But I also didn’t let him take up the energy of the room, because by the end when he spoke up, the whole room started like ahh. That was their response. It wasn’t my response. I just answered him. So I think that’s one.
Then I had a one-on-one on Friday with a CEO for a big leadership retreat that I’m doing in January. There was a lot to listen to you because she has a lot going on that she’s trying to solve. I did a great job of listening more than I spoke. Then I had to ask for a favor of a family member who we’ve had issues in the past. You reminded me to go into it kind of loving and ask for what I needed and let it be okay if the answer was no. The answer was yes, and. The answer was yes, and I’ll do more than you asked.
What surprised you about that?
Well, because of things that have happened in the past that I really don’t want to go into on this call. The story that I was telling myself was that it would be annoying to her to help. I guess that’s what surprised me.
It’s really smart of us to do that because we know that if we put our hand on a hot stove, we’re going to get burned.
Okay. That’s really interesting that you bring that up in that way because that’s so often what gets in the way of us moving forward and really in our relationships. We’re measuring what we think is going to happen against what happened in the past and that makes sense, right? It’s really smart of us to do that because we know that if we put our hand on a hot stove, we’re going to get burned. We can measure that by what has happened in the past. We learn from experience. The problem is when it comes to people and relationships, we’re much more complex than hot stoves and the smallest nuanced changes in behavior can absolutely impact the result even when all other things appear to be equal. When we measure our experience of the past against what we think is going to happen in the future, we end up holding ourselves back from something better than what happened in the past. That make sense?
Yeah, it does. In a lot of ways, I wasn’t giving her credit for her growth. She’s let me down a number of times in the past. But we all grow in time. We all change.
It’s hard to see that, right? It’s hard to see that when we’re in our heads, when we’re in the default.
Yeah, it is. I think that the other thing is that, so one of the things, the thing that we really talked about on the last coaching session is I’m at a place where I’m trying to decipher the concept of, I don’t want just any relationship, I want a great relationship. Okay, it’s easy to find any relationship maybe, but it’s not able to find that one relationship. I think I’m feeling better about that. I think I’m feeling kind of over the hump about that as a possibility. So now, it is a shift to, okay. So now, how do I set that up to kind of attract that? We had also talked about the fact that, getting out and doing, and I’m going to say it again, Wendy’s going to get mad at me.
Oh, I don’t get mad.
I’ve seen you beat your head before. I’ve seen that.
A little forehead smack every now and then. It’s just for emphasis.
She really wants to smack me folks, in a loving way. No, I’m just teasing. Because I need it, but the thing of it is, is that I do remember saying to you back in July. It’s July and I still haven’t done anything. Well now, it’s 2020 for all intents and purposes. We had talked about last time the struggle when I get responses on various dating sites or apps or whatever, the struggle of responding, still a little bit of that is much difference, the Michigosh, the whole windy mess that is my head.
Okay. You know what, Megan? This is beautiful. You gave us some really beautiful stuff to work with in our coaching session today.Â
I love the quote, “It’s 2020 and I still haven’t done anything.” We’re going to dive right into that. I’m getting a little bit of interference. We’re going to dive right into that when we come back from our short break.Â
So far, we’ve been talking with Megan about what’s been going on for her in the past few weeks. When we come back from this short break, we’ll get right into the coaching and as always, I’ll give her and you some things to start playing with today that can help with your growth and transformation. Stay with us. We’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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