HAVING RELATIONSHIPS WITH CONFIDENCE

0:00:01.3 Trish Blackwell: You’re listening to the Confidence podcast, your favorite coaching podcast oozing with motivation, inspiration, and confidence to help you boldly take action on your dreams. I’m your host, Trish Blackwell, internationally recognized confidence Coach, best-selling author and founder of The College of Confidence, the most encouraging place on the Internet. I teach go-getters in life, how to take their thoughts captive, how to step out of the shadows of self-doubt and how to courageously step into their purpose with confidence. It’s time to pump our confidence muscles and train our thoughts, y’all. Let’s get started.

0:00:41.7 TB: You’re listening to the Confidence podcast, this is your host and Confidence Coach Trish Blackwell, and you are at episode 480. We’re talking about a subject that’s true for all of us and needed for everyone, and that is relationships. Specifically, we’re gonna be talking about romantic relationships, having relationships with confidence, and that is in tune with… Well, it’s love month, right? February we’re getting prepped for Valentine’s Day, and I hope that this episode will challenge you to love yourself more, your relationship with yourself more, your relationship with others, and your relationship with your significant other, whether you know your significant other already or not, or you’re healing from a breakup or you’re waiting for that future forever person, this episode is for you.

0:01:31.5 TB: We’re gonna be talking about, one, dating with confidence. I don’t often very specifically coach on dating, I do it in my one-on-one practice, and I help my members of the College of Confidence, we talk about dating all the time, however, we haven’t talked about it a lot on the podcast. And talking about knowing your standards and creating a relationship you love, how to have confidence in your own relationship with yourself so that you can have confidence in all of your relationships and marriage. Marriage with confidence. Y’all, marriage is hard. There’s a lot that goes into it. And here’s the great thing, I believe every marriage can be revived and renewed, and if both parties are willing to work at it, and that marriage and how we feel about people in our lives is 100% driven by our thoughts.

0:02:17.1 TB: I can create desire for my husband or disdain for him, based on how I’m thinking. And the same with you and the people in your life. We’re gonna dive into coaching very, very quickly. I do wanna remind you that if you want bonus episodes, there… One, there is two ways. I have over… We’re on episode 480, and I think only about 300 are showing in podcast apps. I have every episode from the very first one available on my podcast, go to… I mean, on my website, go to trishblackwell.com, you’ll find them all there. And then if you want more faith-specific episodes, you get those for free every month by being our supporter at Patreon. You can go check out Patreon and buy me a cup of coffee and get some bonus podcasts, that way it helps support the cost of running the show at trishblackwell.com/patreon.

0:03:08.6 TB: And then before we do the review of the week, you… This is the first time… I guess, this is the first time I’m officially announcing it. I’m very excited about what we’re putting together, we’re calling it Worth Week. If you want to step more into self-worthiness, and in worthiness and identity, and stop feeling less than, not enough, always behind, or like you’re just on the cusp of breakthrough, but you kinda believe in yourself but you don’t quite, it’s self worth that is weak. And I wanna teach you how to ditch the language of not enough-ness, teach you to stand firm in your identity as a human being, as somebody created, a masterpiece created by God. And so what we’re doing, you’re going live with me for five days. It is a tiny, tiny cost to the program, but I’m telling you, this is the most affordable coaching you will ever get with me, and we’re loading it up with bonuses galore. It’s all happening live, February 21st through 25th. Get in now because we are gonna cap the number of attendees. Note, if you are already a member of the College of Confidence, you get access to this for free, but if you’re not, it’s a great way to get a taste of what coaching to the next level looks like. I have so many of you actually reach out and say that you get all that you need on the podcast, and I love that, but I would also beg to challenge you, because when you take…

0:04:27.9 TB: When you go with the next step and you join a program of mine, or work with me in the College of Confidence, or do something like this, like Worth Week, there is… You put skin in the game. Your results change, you go from getting good results to great results because you’ve backed yourself, you’ve committed… It goes from a good commitment to all the way in. I’m telling you, it’s transformational. I had the same thing happen in my life, I was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m good, I’ll just read all these books, I can do it on my own.” And then someone challenged me to get a coach and it changed my life. I mean, it does. It shifts everything. So this might be what you’ve been waiting for, come do five days with me, we’re recording all the calls, so if you can’t make them, you’re gonna get access to them. You’ll get access, you’ll get the workbooks, and I’m gonna teach you a five-step framework to feeling worthy, loved and called to greatness. It’s a week where you’re gonna learn to see yourself how God sees you, how to drop the baggage and trash thoughts that are holding you back, and how to live a life of extraordinary enthusiasm, confidence and impact, how to believe that you’ve got enough to get started right now, that that’s enough. You sign up, go to trishblackwell.com/worthweek to get started.

0:05:35.5 S2: Now, before we start coaching, let’s talk about our listener… Our review of the week. It’s from Mariella Coleman, she says, This podcast is amazing. Here’s what the review says: I don’t know how I stumbled upon Trisha’s podcast, but I thank God every day that I did. Her content is so real and relatable, she does an amazing job delivering powerful yet assertive messages that have helped me grow my confidence so much more. Her words are encouraging, kind, and you can tell they’re coming from the heart. The best part is that her messages also share a word of the Lord. I honestly look forward to getting my notifications every Tuesday to listen to a new episode. I highly recommend it. Okay, guys, let’s talk about dating with confidence, we’re gonna start with dating, but I’m gonna refer to a couple of things. First and foremost, if you haven’t yet listened to last week’s episode, ‘How to Stop Playing Small’ and ‘How to Stop Settling,’ that if you find that you’re settling in dating and you’re dating people who are not good fits or who meet certain standards, but not all of them, you’re gonna wanna listen to Episode 479, so scroll back in your podcast app, or go to my website, go to trishblackwell.com/479. But I remember for years, thinking… I had friends go, “Oh, maybe you’re being too picky.” High standards and expecting…

0:06:48.4 TB: To actually have a good connection, to have certain things with this person you’re dating is not too much to ask. Okay? I believe more often, people settle ’cause they’re like, “Well, maybe there’s not enough good guys out there that exist, and maybe wanting to have… Share faith with me is too much to ask.” And y’all, it’s not. So here’s a couple of things. Okay, first, I gotta give you the best advice that was ever given to me by a friend for dating, was this: Just look at it like going to the movies. If you go to the movies with somebody, or if you go to a movie, let’s say you’re going with your best friend, and you get to the movie and it’s terrible to start, you know what? You can leave the theater. You don’t have to watch the whole movie. Now, maybe you watch a movie and you’re on this date, the date’s the movie, and you’re like, I don’t know, I don’t really… Like, the movie’s okay. You know, but it’s enough to… It’s enjoyable. It’s okay, so enjoy it.

0:07:45.1 TB: And you don’t have to watch it again. Or if you go to the movie and you’re like, “Wow, this movie was awesome. Okay, I wanna talk about it. It was so good.” Then, go enjoy the movie again. I feel like that was her giving me that advice. It was so simple, almost a ridiculous example, but it really did take the pressure off of dating. One of the reasons, just like you hear me coach on confidence in general, when we put pressure on ourselves, we choke our confidence. We’ve gotta remove the pressure and the expectations that we’re putting on dating. Let go over the pressure, be open to the adventure, be yourself. It’s an adventure, you get to meet people. And humans are amazing, so even if you don’t connect with the person and it doesn’t turn into a romantic relationship, it has… It still is worth… There’s still value to connecting with another human, learning how to have conversation with somebody, embracing the awkwardness. There’s so many takeaways. So if you are proactively dating, I wanna recommend that at the end of every date, you just ask yourself, “Hey, what are three things I’m proud of and three things I learned? I learned that I’m good in awkward silence. I’ve learned that I don’t like guys that have a personality that does this and orders for me.” Or, what is it that you…

0:08:57.5 TB: Or I learned that I’m really good at asking questions and I don’t like sitting with people who don’t ask any back. Whatever happens on a date, there’s always something to learn and always something… A story to tell, and so that makes it an adventure. There’s no pressure. And you don’t have to perform. And I think sometimes with dating, we’re like, “Well, I have to be the right person, what if they don’t like me?” Well, what if you don’t like them? So fundamentally, be yourself, be yourself, be yourself, be yourself, and accept that some people at the end of the day, no matter what you do, won’t like you. You’re a chocolate-covered strawberry, and if I was sitting across from you, and you were a chocolate-covered strawberry, I wouldn’t like you. You might think, What? That’s nuts! Trish, people pay so much money for chocolate-covered strawberries. I know. It doesn’t matter how expensive they are, it doesn’t matter how lush that strawberry is, I just don’t like strawberries. And so I think it’s really important that you… Sometimes with dating, we think, “Well, I don’t have the right style, I wasn’t cool enough, I didn’t say the right things, I was too quiet, I was too chatty.

0:09:53.0 TB: I brought too much baggage, I shouldn’t have said this, I shouldn’t have said that. They don’t think I’m pretty enough. They don’t think I’m skinny enough, I wasn’t cool enough, I… ” Y’all, all stories, all nonsense, all noise. And if they don’t like you, it might just be that they don’t like chocolate-covered strawberries. Another thing is to demand respect, and you demand respect by respecting yourself, not being somebody… Don’t play the games of dating, don’t play the games of, how long should I wait to text this person back, or to snap them back. Like, literally, it’s so childish what we do as adults. Just say, “Hey, I’d love to get to know you more. Hey, I enjoyed that. Let’s meet up again.” It’s vulnerable, it’s emotionally mature, and if you act emotionally mature and you demand respect and you’re just confident about what you want and what you wanna create in a relationship, you’re gonna attract respectful and mature people, not people who get in games, not people who are using relationships for their own security. You don’t wanna get into a relationship with somebody who just needs you as a prop. Look, and don’t settle…

0:11:00.8 TB: We already said that, but look, I made a lot of mistakes in dating, and I don’t know if I’ve ever told you guys this, but transparently, I know you’ve heard me say how insecure I was about my looks and if I belonged or not, and so much so that… I was thinking about this the other day, not that I think about who I dated often, but it did come up in my brain that when I lived in France, I dated the star of the professional rugby team, he was an Argentinian, and I still thought I wasn’t cool enough or pretty enough. And about a year later, maybe… Yeah, two years later. Oh, a year later, I dated a model who was abusive to me, that was my ex-fiance. So, still didn’t think I was pretty enough. And then I dated the starting pitcher for a major league baseball team, and still didn’t think I was enough. So take it from the girl who dated people for that status without knowing that that’s… Y’all, I say that now, and it sounds terrible. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. I felt that if they liked me, then I must be somebody. And so I wanna caution you to who you’re drawn to. Are you drawn to the person because you actually like the person, or are you drawn to what they mean or what that means about you…

0:12:23.1 TB: About who likes them and who is impressed by them, ’cause if they’re impressed by them, then they would be impressed by you. Y’all, let’s strip all of the thoughts and people’s opinions and go back to just, do you like the person and do you like being with them? Another thing you can do to date with more confidence is to pray over your future spouse. And I know for those of you who wish that that future spouse had come years ago, that’s okay. It’s all in God’s timing. Trust God’s timing, not your own. I think you guys have heard me talk about my husband in the past. If we had met at any other time other than we met, I would have never even given him the time of the day, ’cause he was a smoker, and I didn’t… I had a hard and fast rule, I will not date a smoker. And honestly, if we had met before we talked… He and I both talked about the timing, and neither of us would have been emotionally ready or mature in certain ways to meet each other’s true desires. And so, yeah, I felt like the time was ticking. I met him when I was 27.

0:13:20.2 TB: And ll of my friends in college got married at 21. I felt like something was wrong with me. Nothing was wrong with me, I just wasn’t ready, nor was Brandon. And so, trust the timing, don’t rush the dating, don’t think that you’re behind, don’t allow the sloppy narrative that something must be wrong or, I’m behind, or I should have been this, or I should have had kids by now, whatever it is that you’re telling yourself, because age doesn’t mean anything. And I think another important thing in dating is to shift from asking yourself the question, do they like me? To asking yourself the question, do I like them? And this is for my girls out there who wanna be old school and traditional. I’m all for that. I’m very traditional, but I also am very confident and I believe in taking initiative. Take the initiative. You have the ability to choose, you have the ability to ask somebody out, you have the ability to speak up and use your voice in what you wanna navigate in a relationship. And I wanna also tell you to keep an open mind, what matters… Know what matters in the long run.

0:14:19.4 TB: Sometimes we get so focused on like the short run and what to me is… Like in the long run, what kind of person do you wanna be married to? Who do you wanna spend your life with? What are the character… Get very, very clear about the type of human being you want to be with. I wanted a man of God, I wanted a man who was committed to his family, I wanted a man who would intellectually challenge me, wanna talk about literature, write stories together. Know what matters. For years, as I very, very transparently told you, I went through my superficial phase, but that superficiality was because I was so desperately insecure, I was so disconnected from myself, I was still just trying to get affirmation and validation, externally rather than give it to myself internally. And that is one of the things, guys, and in about two or three weeks with me, coaching on worthiness and how to give yourself the art of self-validation. I can’t wait to coach you on that. But look, when you’re dating with confidence as well, please don’t ignore red flags. I did, I did, and I paid some heavy, heavy prices, ’cause I was like, “Well, he’s perfect.”

0:15:25.4 TB: You know, it’s okay that he drinks too much, or he’s perfect. It’s okay that… I think he does some drugs, but I’m sure it’s fine. Or, this other guy was perfect, it’s okay that he doesn’t read his Bible and he always says he wants to go to church but doesn’t want to. I kept ignoring, and those were the things, like certain things for me, I’m not saying these things for you, but know your red flags and please don’t look the other way. Everyone is on their best behavior when they’re dating. So, notice, that’s… I mean, please pay attention and don’t look beyond ’cause you think that you won’t find anybody else. Sometimes we allow red flags, ’cause we think, well, all the good ones are gone. And that’s the furthest thing from the truth. And I think it’s really important also to live your life as if you’ll never find the one, ’cause if you live your life as if you’ll never find the one, you’ll be living a life that’s dynamic, that’s engaging, that draws people in and inspires them, that’s gonna… You will become the person that somebody wants to be with. So we don’t look for the person to complete us, we become amazing people, and then we meet somebody who’s also living a life that’s amazing, and together you combine. And address… It’s really important to date with confidence, that you address any false beliefs about your worth. We get sucked into this societal belief that we can be…

0:16:44.6 TB: Our value is in who we’re partnered with, and it’s not. And if I had discovered some of the growth that I needed before, I would have saved myself a lot of heartache, because I wouldn’t have put my worth in some of these external things. I also think it’s really important to own your style and feel good in what you like. That, initially, it skyrockets confidence. And when you go on a date, be in clothes that you feel good in, not what you think that person is gonna like, or the style. Maybe they were more preppy than you, or more chill than you. Be you, not a version of who you think that person wants you to be, just be you. And we need to also, guys, neutralize rejection as part of the process. I’ve already mentioned this with the strawberries example, but you’re gonna have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince concept. There are gonna be a lot of people who just aren’t the right fit, and that is not to discourage you or for you to be discouraged. It’s just part of the process, it’s… Sometimes, dating is just a numbers game, so it’s really important when you’re dating, to remind yourself that you’re fabulous. Know, tell yourself before the date, these are the reasons I’m fabulous. This is what I’m bringing to the table. I can’t wait to just have a great conversation with this person, to get to know them and to see if I like them. And then I also think it’s really… So, to practice, to be proactive, and to ditch the beginners.

0:18:08.8 TB: You guys might have heard me say this, or notice that… I think I told the story on Instagram, is that the only reason I met my husband is because I decided I was ready, and then I was transparent and vulnerable enough to tell my friends, “I’m ready to meet an amazing man. Who do you know? Who do you know? You got a blind date for me?” I pitched blind dates, “Hey, look, here, I’m looking for somebody tall, athletic, goes to church and likes to read. Do you know anyone?” I did, I went on so many blind dates. And at that time, by the way, this was 12 years ago, people didn’t really talk about this, online dating wasn’t a thing really, it was just starting to be, and it wasn’t… It felt very desperate to be like, “Do you know anyone? Do you… ” And so, I wanna tell you it took courage and emotional confidence for me to just say, “You know what? I’m not meeting this person on my own, I haven’t so far. Why don’t I ask for help?” I’m gonna be proactive, I’m gonna be proactive and say, “Hey, you know me. Do you know anyone who you think I might like?” And that is how my at-the-time friend and employee, Katie, said, I got this older brother…

0:19:20.0 TB: Everybody thinks he’s hot, he’s like a super nerd, and I was like, that signed me up. That sounds great. He and I had a blind date on a Tuesday, went to a restaurant and we couldn’t stop talking for seven hours, and so being proactive, whatever that looks like for you, maybe being proactive is getting back on the dating site, maybe it’s asking for blind dates, maybe it’s being proactive and rekindling relationships you’ve given up on, because you realized you… A lot of times we give up on things that are good because it doesn’t look perfect to start. Remember it doesn’t have to look perfect to be very quality, we’ve gotta allow people to be human, we’ve gotta allow for that level as well.

0:20:00.6 TB: Alright guys, hey, we just gotta take a quick break from this awesome conversation for a note from our sponsor. Hey guys, I gotta take a quick break to tell you about my friends at BetterHelp, is there something interfering with your happiness, you have been wanting to start counseling? ’cause you know I talk about it, you know, I recommend it. But you just don’t know where to start.

0:20:20.0 TB: Well, BetterHelp is where to start. They’ll help you assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. You’ll get to connect in a safe and private online environment, it’s so convenient and of course confidential, and once you sign up, you can start communicating with your therapist with under 24 hours. All this isn’t self-help. This is professional counseling. One of the things I love the most is that you can send your counselor a message at any time, you get timely and thoughtful responses, plus you get to schedule weekly video or phone sessions, ’cause BetterHelp is truly making it easy to get access to therapy, they’re licensed professional counselors specialized in depression, anxiety, stress, relationships, sleeping trauma, anger, family conflict, grief, self-esteem, you name it, they’ve got a specialist, and I want you to start living a happier life today, I want you to get into the resource of therapy that I so recommend and as a listener, you’ll get 10% off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com/confidencepod. That’s betterhelp H-E-L-P.com/confidencepod. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks.

0:21:38.6 TB: There’s a lot to love about being your own boss, but trying to figure out your financials on your own isn’t one of those things, luckily, there’s FreshBooks, the all-in-one accounting solution that’s built for business owners like you. FreshBooks takes the notes of different parts of running a business, from building and tracking your voices to organizing expenses and managing online payments and automates and simplifies them, saving you up to 11 hours a week in the process. FreshBooks has your back at tax time too, with a ton of reports to choose from, you’ll know exactly where your business stands, and you can easily hand the keys over to your accountant so they can take over when it’s time to reconcile everything for the year. Try FreshBooks for free for 30 days. No credit card required, go to freshbooks.com/confidence to get started today and to get more time back to build the business that you love. And the one final thing before we transition into, how do you know that you’re fabulous, I think it’s really important to you before you go on any dates to make sure you feel good, do something, whether it’s…

0:22:46.5 TB: You always go through a workout or you always take a bath, like and you’re doing it not for the date, you’re doing it for yourself to be at your highest energy level or your best flow and to feel like you’ve cared on and love for yourself. So I wanna talk about confidence in your relationship, you can only have a relationship with others to the measure in which you have a healthy emotional relationship with yourself, so what do I mean by that? Make the time for yourself, take ownership of your emotional responsibility, I think sometimes we go, “Well, there’s nobody good out here, or I live in a small town,” we blame, we blame me, we blame. Or we go, “Well, I’m with this person and they stopped trying like,” okay, so what are you doing? Where are you taking? You can’t control other people, but we can control our thoughts about ourselves and about our lives, and the actions that we take.

0:23:33.8 TB: I think confidence in your own relationship is also loving the person God made you to be and to be excited about who you’re becoming and how do you do that? You do that by guarding your thoughts, guard it from comparison, from criticism, from cynicism, it’s being different, if you want to live and have relationships that are different than most of the world has, most of the world we have, if you look at divorce data, it’s a lot of brokenness, there’s a lot of broken relationships, but the relationship with somebody else starts with you and your thoughts, and so when you guard your own thoughts and you decide to be different and minimize the amount of screens you watch and how much news you’re taking, the negative news, and are you gossiping and comparison that’s happening.

0:24:17.6 TB: So when you guard from that, you’re gonna operate in a different way, and when you operate differently and think differently and show up differently, you attract different types of people as well, and it’s so important when you… When you spend time with yourself and you learn how to become a friend to yourself, you will start to value what you bring to the table, and you’ll know your standards, and those standards are just gonna be… This is just what happened. This is just my standard. And you’ll be able to communicate it and you won’t dodge conflict, you’ll look at… You’ve heard me say this before in the podcast, I believe conflict leads to communication, and communication leads to connection, so often relationships get tarnished because we’re unwilling to communicate, we’re unwilling to have conflicts, we’re afraid of, what if that upsets them, or they leave me. All of that so much. It’s interwoven within security, that doesn’t need to be there. When you know that you’re committed to communication, then you won’t ever be afraid of conflict and when you are committed to communication with yourself, you’ll also be committed to communication with whoever you’re in a relationship with, and I think that’s where beautiful things happen.

0:25:25.0 TB: So let me talk… Let me touch briefly on marriage with confidence, I think it’s really important to date your spouse, that means… And I know for years, we heard this, and when my kids were super, super young, we had such a tight budget and such a little space, time, and some of the best advice we got from our marriage counselors or pre-marital counseling was always make time, even if you’re dating with a takeout meal in your house while the kids are watching a TV show, that’s what we actually… What we did during the pandemic, we still dated, even when we were in locked down, because we needed that time to just be Trish and Brandon together, not Trish and Brandon and the kids who have been inseparable. But just date your spouse, get curious, we have such vibrant relationships with people when we’re dating them, because we’re so curious, we are still discovering… I think sometimes marriages get stale because we think we’ve known everything, but think about this, I’m still learning about myself. Why would I not still be learning about Brandon, there’s so much to uncover together, and I think also it’s really, really to create more depth, just… I don’t even know the word, just energy and life blood to a marriage, is to create a joint vision together.

0:26:35.9 TB: I would create a five-year vision, a 10-year vision, and a 25-year vision. What do you want life to look like together, when is each one of you gonna retire? How much money do you want to retire? I really believe that the couples that do have marriage meetings and do financial Fridays and share their finances and their finances goals together, have powerful relationships because you’re working together in a team, you guys are working together on one goal, checking in and it’s, you… Each other against the world and creating meaning by creating financial legacy or telling your money how to work for you. Now, we actually just released the course in the college of competence on mastering your money mindset, and I covered a lot of how to do that… Of this, in that course, of course, you get instant access when you join the COC. To do that, go to collegeofcompetence.com, but I think also you can decide to have a different type of marriage than most people have. Both Brandon and I did that…

0:27:34.1 TB: When we got married, we decided to be… That we were gonna do it differently than what was set as an example for us, and one of the ways we do that is we put each other first, and when we aren’t putting each other first, we tell each other, “Hey, we just… We’re out of work here,” we go into marriage with servant’s heart and guys that we’re human and we mess up all the time, and hurt each other’s feelings all the time, and one of the best things I heard was to reconnect by saying, I’ve got some withholdings and what Brandon and I do is we say, I have a positive withholding and a negative withholding, and the positive withholding is the compliment that I was like, “Oh man, you looked so cute the other day”, and the negative withholding is like, “Gosh, I’m so irritated that you’re not, that this, this and this, you seem to be forgetting that we’ve committed to that.” So it gives you a space to share and say, “I’ve been holding this back,” ’cause what happens if you don’t communicate the withholding, it builds and resentment builds and then it bursts, so refuse to be a couple that doesn’t communicate openly.

0:28:39.1 TB: That communication is connection. And connection is what makes you feel secure and loved and confident in a relationship, connection and communication there will give you that freedom to say, “You know that you can say anything and that person is gonna love you.” You know that you can say this is where I’m hurting. And they’re gonna be with you. You know that you can say, this is what I’m thinking. And they go, “Yeah, let’s dream, right?” And so it’s really important to decide to have a different type of marriage and to refuse to settle into patterns of complacency. And one thing Brandon and I do to keep confident in our marriage is notice we call ourselves out as a couple. We’ve been pretty lazy about this, we’ve been complacent here, and we just say, “Hey, how can I be a better… ” Once a month, we try to connect in this kind of conversation and say, “How can I be a better spouse this month.” Like, here’s what I’m seeing, here’s where I see I can improve. What do you see? And here’s what I also where I think I’m doing well, we’d love to see what you see, and we do that and talking about relationship with ourselves, but also as a parent, here’s how I wanna be a better parent this month.

0:29:42.8 TB: Hey, do you see… What do you see? Would you see some room for me to… Some areas for me to focus. And it’s really important too to know your spouse’s love language. Right, is it… And if you haven’t read the books, the Five Languages of Love, so, so, so highly recommended. But do they thrive on words of affirmation or is it physical touch or is it access service or quality time or gifts. And so just because you get feel loved in one way, it doesn’t mean that’s how your spouse is going to. Connecting and understanding love language is so important ’cause it connects and you communicate at a different level, and that leads me to a quote that I heard from my swim coach for two years straight every day, and I was like, “Yeah, yeah, I get it”, I didn’t get it. It truly is one of the best pieces of wisdom ever given to me, and that is this, communication is the key to life. Communicate, communicate, communicate, communicate. And if you’re dating and you feel you can’t communicate with somebody, or if you’re dating and they’re terrible at communication, that’s a red flag, y’all.

0:30:47.2 TB: Or they shut down and stop communicating, red flag, I’m not saying we need to communicate perfectly, but we need to have a willingness to communicate, and it’s a skill that you learn, also, and it’s communicating, we’ve already mentioned about marriage, having a marriage meeting. Hey, how’s our marriage going, how can we improve? Doing financial Fridays, communicating about your finances, but also communicating about sex and pleasure and joy and truly being transparent about, “I like when this happens, and I like it when this and I… Let’s explore this and I have this desire.” We get to, in our marriages have this deep intimate connection, but we stifle it if we aren’t free in our communication about it, and no… I think what’s so cool when you communicate and you really get on the same page with each other, you get to know that your marriage does something, your marriage is a living thing. And I wanna challenge you to think about what your marriage does in this world, I believe it leaves a legacy, I believe it creates impact because two are better than one and two people who are focused together and creating love, that love and multiplies, that love magnifies.

0:32:04.5 TB: And so I think that’s huge, and to always tell the truth, always be transparent and always communicate, especially when you don’t want to, that’s a good sign that you… It’s the time to be vulnerable and to connect. I think for me it’s always been… I have a tendency and my brain is like, “Oh well, you should know not to blah blah… ” I make all these assumptions, and one of the things I’ve learned is, I can tell myself whatever story I want.

0:32:36.2 TB: But the story that’s most helpful for me and for the way I think about my husband, the way I love my husband, is to assume the best. I wanna control my emotions to be good ones, I wanna communicate when I need something to change, but I wanna give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s doing the best he can. And he always has good intentions. I think most of all, when it comes to marriage with confidence, is that we get the option and the ability to create desire for one another. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that you can have intentional thought creation about how that person sees you, an intentional thought creation about how you see them.

0:33:16.6 TB: So for the first couple of years of my marriage, Brandon would just shower me with compliments and I didn’t believe them, I didn’t believe him, I went, Yeah, yeah, you’re supposed to tell me I’m beautiful, you’re supposed to tell me blah, blah, blah. And then I just said, one day, what if I just believed him? In my thoughts, I can remember… Our thoughts create our feelings. So I feel loved by thinking about how great he thinks about me, when I feel cute, or if I’m coming in the kitchen, I actually go… I feel even cuter ’cause my thought is, “Oh, he thinks I’m really cute right now, that’s cute, this is fun,” and I see and then he looks at me and I feel his gaze more intensely and more lovingly than if I hadn’t thought that thought that I imagine the thought, I had intentional thought creation. “Gosh, my husband loves me. Look at him smile at me.” Now, if I had thought, “Oh, he’s irritated with me,” I would have felt like, “Oh man, like, Oh, he’s rolling his eyes at me,” it’s all about what you… You can create a lot of your own feelings, also though, intentional thought creation about how you see them, and this is down to even libido or if you feel connected emotionally, because if you’re only thinking thoughts of frustration, thoughts of irritation…

0:34:31.1 TB: Thoughts of the laundry list of all the things that that person hasn’t done, it’s a really… You don’t see them, your regard for them and your respect for them is gonna go down, your attractiveness to them will plummet, and you’ll start thinking about how they used to be, and the honest truth is that they probably have been this the whole way, you just were always thinking it’s such a positive way about them that you always felt so possibly drawn to them and engage with them and amazed by them. We can still do the same thing. Right, you guys have heard of, if you haven’t heard this example before, and the way I teach the team method, which is a reframing your thoughts method. TEA, so a cup of tea, thoughts, emotions, and actions. If my husband is… If I walk by the laundry room and I notice that the laundry basket, the socks, the dirty socks are on the ground balled up and they just didn’t quite get into the hamper, I’m like, “Oh, come on bro”, and I’d be irritated, then I’ll notice the other five things he hasn’t put away, and that the bed wasn’t made even though he was last to get out of it, and then if I think those thoughts, I’ll be, “Ugh, I do so much more and he does and blah, blah, blah, it’s not fair. It’s hard to be me.”

0:35:35.7 TB: And I start going down self pity drain and then he might have no clue and he comes out and he’s like, Hey, how’s your day going? I be like fine. So my thoughts of irritation created an emotion of separation, I was just irritated. My thoughts created the irritation, and the action was that I was snappy. And the result of that is I am disconnected from him and I didn’t show up as the life I want to be in, I don’t have the marriage that day that I wanna have, same scenario. Let’s walk through a different thought, I see the sock and I go, “Oh my gosh, I bet he was playing basketball with Baker, my four-year-old, they were probably hoping it up, he put the kids to bed last night, man, he’s amazing, what a good guy. I love that he does help me a lot with laundry.” And then I would see the plate and I’m like, Man, let me pick that he forgot to put his coffee cup away no big deal. He works hard, I love that guy. I love that guy because he doesn’t complain, and then he would come by, let’s say if those are the thoughts I feel affectionate towards him, I feel kindness towards him, the emotions, the lovey-dovey emotions come out, and then when I see him, I want to kiss him, I take action to kiss, I feel connected and want that.

0:36:45.0 TB: And the result is we have a beautiful symbiotic marriage that day. And so I share that example so that you can see, you truly can create desire for one another based on how you are thinking. And I know that so many of us have to think, well, it’s easier to have desire when you don’t have so many things going on, it’s easier to plan things or to have this deep intimate desire when… That was easier when you were dating. Well, you were dating and it was planned, you knew you had a date on Tuesday, so you spent three days looking forward to the date, those thoughts for those three days were creating desire for that person, it intensified the desire and the enjoyment you have with being with that person, and you can do the same thing, even if you guys are at work all day and you’re excited to spend time together on the couch at night, once the kids are in bed, it intensifies the desire by the fact that you’ve created thoughts to think about it, and you’re thinking all the things that you like about that person, enjoy about the person, appreciate about that person, and chances are, when you feel that you’ll vocalize that. When you vocalize that that person feels appreciated, they feel seen, they feel loved, they feel connected and your marriage, grows one deeper root of solidity and firmness.

0:37:57.5 TB: It’s a beautiful thing, what happens when you realize in your marriage, you can intentionally create desire for impatience for one another. So I hope that this episode excited you, I’m excited. Relationships are just such a gift and they’re ever-changing, there’s no such thing as a perfect relationship, so be kind to yourself, explore them, have fun with them, be adventurous, and most importantly, be yourself. I hope to be seeing you in Worth Week again, go to trishblackwell.com/worthweek to sign up to talk about dropping the narrative that you’re not worthy, that you’re not good enough, that you’ll never be able to achieve that thing that just… Let’s start realizing that you have everything you need within you to live a life worth telling a story about, to achieve your wildest dreams and to exceed them, I can’t wait to teach you, and again, that starts February 25th, our spots will fill up quickly, so go to trishblackwell.com/worthweek. Our listeners episode is Eiannieplans you all need to follow her on Instagram, her stuff is beautiful, Eiannie_plans. It’s Eiannie with an E-I-A-N-N-I-E. And she said this, I took Trish Blackwell’s affirmation workshop last night, and it was so inspirational and helpful. For those of you who don’t know, Trish hosts the POC confidence podcast, and is an outstanding coach and has helped me greatly since I discovered her podcast. Just a few months I’ve been listening, I already feel like I’ve grown so much.

0:39:25.1 TB: I highly recommend it for anyone who’s feeling down or discouraged in the same way, and Eiannie, I’m so proud of you, for the work you’re doing and for the transformation and the courage that you’re having, I can’t wait to see you continue to escalate and scale your business and impact out of… Just out of the park and exceeding your wildest expectations. And guys, if you wanna take the affirmation workshop that Eiannie mentioned, we have an instant access, I don’t know how long it’s gonna be available, but you can get it for free instant access today, just go to trishblackwell.com/affirmations, trishblackwell.com/affirmations. Guys, next week, we’re going deep on enoughness, how to feel enough and how to increase your self-worth. It’s gonna be a good one. I’ll see you there. Now, go out there today. Go be more of who God created you to be. Be you.

0:40:18.0 S2: Thanks for listening to the confidence podcast and allowing me to be your coach in your life. If you love the show, please let us know by leaving a review on iTunes, are you encouraged by what you learned, share this episode with a friend and let us know how this show is changing your life by connecting with us on social media, on Facebook @Trish Blackwell coaching, or on Instagram, @Trish_Blackwell, ready to take what I teach and really take it to the next level. Join us today in the college of confidence. The College of confidence is a land of rejuvenation and refreshment, where you go to be recharged, revived and re-focus on what is possible in your life and your ability to impact the world. We open up the vaults and depths of who you are, challenging you, inspiring you, pushing you and growing you to use absolutely every last ounce of gifting and talent God has breathe into you to the absolute fullest, and I will be there myself every step of the way, getting to know you and cheering you on. Get started at collegeofconfidence.com.