Executive Marriage Coach – This old fight again?

Have you ever wondered why you keep making the same mistakes or having the same arguments with your spouse or partner over and over?  These patterns are driven by motivations, needs, or unresolved issues that you are not fully aware of.  Becoming more conscious of these allows you to make different choices. But how can you become more aware of that which is not conscious to you?

One answer is to decide to become more conscious.  That means being intentional about learning from your experiences and from the teachers in your life.   Being intentional means you focus your attention on learning, open your mind to seeing things in a new way, and being humble enough to consider someone else’s perspective, especially about you.  You have many teachers all around you when you are ready to learn.  This is often an area where executive coaching is the most helpful.

Believe it or not, your spouse can be one of your best teachers because of the power of love.  Love is a force that focuses its light on the dark places inside of you.  It surfaces those parts of yourself that you try hard to keep hidden.  This is not comfortable and so you resist what love has to teach you because it doesn’t always feel like love and you are afraid.  When you stop resisting and defending yourself, you can commit to learning how to live and love more consciously. When the two of you commit to loving, learning, and supporting each other in your journey toward being whole, your marriage will become a great source of strength and joy.

Struggle for Integrity

A coaching conversation reminded me how difficult it can be at times to live with integrity.  Integrity requires not only honesty but also transparency and being integrated, which means you act in harmony with your deepest values and intentions.  Sometimes this requires choices that mean self-denial, risk of embarrassment, or conflict.  These choices tap into our fears of rejection, inadequacy, or exposure.

Consistently living in a state of integrity requires emotional and spiritual maturity. Those of us who had good role models in our lives will find this easier than those who did not.  But either way it is well worth striving for and it is something we can always get better at.  Integrity is fundamental for self-respect, credibility, trust-worthiness, and healthy relationships.  I’m interested in hearing your thoughts about your own struggle or ideas about integrity so please leave a comment.

Love and Respect

I watched a good movie this weekend called “The Painted Veil”.  This is a story set in the 1920’s and is about a British doctor who is a bacteria research specialist and his wife.   Shortly after they marry he takes her off to China to treat a cholera epidemic.  Part of the story is the drama of finding a way to fight the disease.  The real story, from my perspective is about the relationship struggle and growth process.   In the beginning, the doctor falls in love with her, asks her to marry him and move away before they really know each other.  She agrees to marry him to escape her parents.  While in China she is lost and bored and has an affair.  The doctor is hurt and the relationship is severely strained.   What turns things around is a growing respect they both find for each other working together to fight the Cholera epidemic.  Respect eventually grows into real and deep love for one another.

This got me thinking about love relationships and I have observed over the years that you can have respect for a person without being in love, but you can’t sustain love without respect.  If you lose respect, or worse yet allow yourself to fall into contempt towards your partner, your relationship is in serious trouble.  It will not be long before you find ways to disengage or engage in criticism and conflict.

People lose respect for their partners for many reasons, as we all have faults and failures.  However, one common factor is perspective.  Yes, the grievance may very well be real, and not everything can be overcome.  Many times, however, what happens is an insidious change of perspective.  You stop noticing the things you used to appreciate about each other and focus on the things that are wrong with your partner.    You become  judgmental and critical and find certain things about your partner unacceptable

A tag line from the movie states “sometimes the greatest journey is the distance between two people”.  To close the distance requires several shifts of perspective, including a shift  into forgiveness, acceptance of who your partner is,  and a shift to focusing on what you like and admire.  If you are able to make these shifts you can regain respect for your partner and respect in turn can and will deepen your love.

Desparate for Control

The theme of a couple of coaching sessions today was control, or the desire and need for control.  When things do not go as planned, we find ourselves in crisis, or there are  just too many stressful things going on, our natural inclination is to try harder to regain a sense of control.  Many times, however, we are in situations in which we cannot  control how they go or what the outcome will be.  The more we try to gain control in these situations, the more anxious and desperate we feel.

One of my clients had the insight to see that he was in these difficult situations because of choices he had made earlier.   Another client was chastising herself for allowing herself to put too much trust in another person and now was feeling scared and out of control.  These insight are useful going forward but don’t really help with the present circumstances.  The situation is being contaminated by emotions connected with past issues and default responses.

What is needed is a way to shift energy, get centered, and then deal with the situation for what it is.  Here are some suggestions that you will find helpful if you also are feeling scared and desperate for control.  First, recognize that you cannot control the outcome of your situation or what other people do, think, or feel, so let go of trying.  Second, focus on what you can control and influence in the situation and within yourself.  Third, separate emotions connected with past experience from current reality.  When you do these things you will be able to approach your dilemma from a more adult and rational perspective and make better choices.  Decide what’s the one next thing you can and need to do and then take concrete action.  As you do you will feel better and move forward, even if it’s bit by bit.

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