Revitalize Your Relationship Coaching

Recently, I asked my community to share with me the challenges they are currently experiencing in their marriage or long-term relationship.

"He made me so mad/sad/annoyed" is a lie that is destroying your relationship. Did you know that when you are “mad at someone” it isn’t because of what they did? I know you probably aren’t going to like hearing this, but it is actually the best news I can give you when it comes to restoring your relationship. And its true whether you are in a marriage, a business partnership or basically any other encounter you can have with a human being. Here is what I mean. Let’s imagine your husband is supposed to be home at 6pm so that you can go out for dinner with a friends. At 5:45 he texts you, still at work and says he is going to be a few minutes late. At 6:25 he walks in the door and there you are ready to go at the door, red hot with rage. You walk past him without a word and race out to meet your friends but you are now in a bad mood and spend the first hour of your “fun dinner out” complaining to your friends about him. Now, I know that some of you reading this are thinking; “Well, YEAH I would be mad and I have every right to be!” It’s true you have every right to feel anything you want. But when I coach clients a question I often ask them is “Why would you choose to feel that way?” We learned this lie that other people can make us feel things by their words and actions from a young age. If a child on the playground laughs at you and then you have a negative emotion you were likely taught that their laughter “made you feel bad”. This line of thinking is a big part of our culture and a very hard concept to challenge, but I want to do it because this is the key to making every single relationship in your life better.

Relationships often start as one thing and transform into something else entirely. For some couples, their bond strengthens and grows with time. But for others the bond becomes thin and they grow apart. Many of my clients come to me and tell me the main problem in their life is "stress and overwhelm" and as we dig a little deeper through the challenges of navigating things like their career or parenthood many of them tell me that their marriage is struggling too.

Do you wake up every day, look at your partner and think "I am so grateful to be with you"? or do you wake up, look at your partner and think something a little less wonderful? Coupling with another human can be a challenge for many people and as the years go by, if you aren't paying attention it is easy to let your relationship with your spouse land on the back burner or worse, it deteriorates to the point were you don't feel like you have a partner anymore but instead an adversary. No one starts out wanting to feel that way and if you feel your relationship going down that road, I want to offer you a tool that might change the whole thing. This might be exactly what you need to save yourself from becoming disillusioned in your marriage. Read More

This past weekend it was my fourth anniversary. Steve and I had two weddings and we celebrate them both because both occasions were so meaningful to our lives and it's another excuse to eat a beautiful meal (I even managed to make a chai cake while he was out with the kids for a little while). I also think it is important, at least for us, to have these moments to reflect on our lives in one another's orbit especially after having children because there are some days when we get to spend about five minutes together total all day and we use it to figure out the logistics of the next day. The Problem Sometimes I feel like I won the lottery when I married Steve. He is a kind, fun, intelligent and supportive partner and an engaged loving parent too. If you don't know much about him, check this out and you will get a sense of him. Our relationship works but not just because Steve is amazing. I think the reason that some relationships flourish when children are added to the mix and others seems to shrivel has a lot to do with the learned parameters we have of what a relationship "should" look like and the checklist of expectations we hold over our partners. From "Love Langauge's" to Couples Retreat's, the search for connection with your partner in the midst of nurturing your career and raising children can be a challenging one (often made more challenging if you feel embarrassed about your relationship trouble). If this resonates, it might be because you were taught directly or indirectly that what your partner does has an impact on you. You probably believe, like many do, that your spouse should do things they know you will make you happy and never do anything that might upset you. The Manual In Life Coaching, we call this The Manual.

A few months ago I completed an incredible training to up-level the work I am able to do with my clients and students. Teaching yoga has been a powerful tool, but for many people it opens the door to a physical and spiritual awakening that we may not have the support to investigate further. For many people yoga is a way to "tune in" to what they are thinking and feeling and meet a whole different part of themselves. Not bad for just unrolling your mat right?! I wanted to be able to meet more of my students in that space through my work as a Life Coach because self-inquiry is another transformational branch on the tree of Yoga. And since opening up more space in my day to work with people I have noticed that many of my clients are saying the same things. The new mother who doesn't want to put her health, happiness and big goals on the back-burner for the next 20 years while she raises her kids. The entrepreneur who is juggling the pursuit of her passion, her relationship and trying to maintain an intensive spiritual/ yoga practice. The manager who can't seem to figure out how to close his computer and leave his work at work. Their lives look different, but they all tell me the same thing. "There just isn't enough time in the day." With a business of my own, two kids under three, a partner I love spending time with and a daily spiritual practice you might imagine I would be nodding along in agreement with my clients. But I am not, because an unexpected thing happened when I had kids.

When it comes to sticking to your commitments to yourself, are you any good at it?

Before the summer ends, I have a project I want to get finished. And because I am all about supporting other people live with purpose, I decided to open up my process and share it with all of you in a free Off the Backburner Challenge. The premise of this challenge is literally the key to how I get a lot done in a very short period of time. I have two kids who require most of my time and energy so the days of going to the gym for an hour, doing a full length yoga class or spending countless hours writing or working on my business are not in the cards for me right now. Not because I don't have the freedom to do those things, but because I actually believe I need 2 hours at the gym each day or a 40 hour work week to get the same results I can get by taking consistent baby steps. But as those of you who are part of the Off the Backburner Challenge (if you aren't you can join us totally free here) are probably starting to notice, 15 minutes a day spent on something sounds easy, but it is actually just as easy to talk yourself out of that time you aren't paying attention.  What is Really Going On Here? When the novelty of your new daily commitment to yoga, meditation, exercise, reading, a creative or work project starts to wear off, you might notice yourself having thoughts like: "it's just a short period of time anyway, it doesn't  matter if I skip just one day" "I really don't feel like doing this today" or my personal go to: "I can just skip today and double up tomorrow" They seem like fairly innocent thoughts don't they? You might even convince yourself that you have to feel like doing something in order to actually do it. 

If you have read my blog or listened to the Alive With Purpose Podcast, then you know I am very into self-care. Since becoming a parent, I think it is twice as important now in my life since the mental load of caring for children can be very overwhelming if you aren't paying attention. But as valuable self-care time is for me now, I also know I have to be more creative with how I make that space in my life than I did when I was single and didn't have kids. I recorded an entire podcast for you on my current self-care must haves which you can listen to on iTunes here (Get Episode 22 now). You don't have to be a parent to love these self-care rituals. I also made you a free cheat sheet where I have put everything together for you in one place. Head over to my show notes and click the magic pop over to get my favourite cookbooks, food blogs, my new fitness obsession, my daily face care ritual and more.

At the beginning of last month, there was a day I was awake for nearly 24 hours straight.  You might read that and think, "Gee, Erin why would you admit that while you are trying to teach me about self-care?" Well don't stop reading just yet. I wasn't staying up late to meet a deadline, or missing a night of sleep worried about something, I was travelling with my family to Hawaii where we spent a month together. The way it all worked out, we left our home at 8am and arrived at our hotel about 22 hours later. The weather, the land and the people are incredible and I feel so lucky that we were able to go back to one of our very favourite places on earth with both of our kids. As one would expect Hawaii to be, it was magical. We had beautiful days on the beach all together and I was able to carve out solo time to attend amazing classes and get some much needed mental space to think about how I want to shape the next few years of my life with my beautiful husband and children. But there is another side to the rosy picture here I need to highlight; Self-care takes work. Between home and the beach are about ten thousand practical details. A few times I caught myself joking to friends that, "After all the planning and travel back and forth I will need a month in Hawaii alone to recover". An epic trip like this takes careful planning and we spent many hours researching, booking places to stay, packing and unpacking everything a family of four needs into a single suitcase and a few backpacks. Then there is the reality of traveling with two kids under three years old.