You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 139.
Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it's all about real clients, real problems and real coaching. And now, your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.
Well, hello, my friends. So, here's how this has gone down. I asked you guys a couple episodes ago to give me reviews.
You did so, many of you did so. This is the Monday following that episode that I'm recording this. And so far, we have, I think it's 900 reviews or pretty close to 900 reviews.
So, my hope is that by the time you listen to this, we have 1,000. Yes, I wanna get 1,000 by the end of the year. So, I'm really hoping that that happens.
And I really appreciate all of you guys who took the time to do that. Here's the thing. I just got back from working with my coach, and that's always an amazing experience.
He's a very amazing, very kind person that pushes me very hard when it comes to my own self-development and my own business. So, I am on a whole new planet as I come back and record this for y'all. Today, I'm gonna talk to you guys.
First of all, let me just tell you something. I've been talking about this new course that I'm coming up with, and I'm going to be launching it very soon. I just worked with my coach on it, so please make sure you keep an ear out.
I'm going to be announcing it probably in the podcast after next. I'm gonna do a whole episode on the course that I'm gonna be teaching and the invites that I will have going out to you all. So, keep your ears, eyes and I guess not your mouths, but keep your ears out for that, all right.
So today, what we're talking about is someone to love. And the reason I decided to do a podcast on this was because of one of my students in my recent in-person training. Actually, there were two of my students who were having current struggles with their husbands and were frustrated and feeling like their marriages could be better.
And so we did a lot of coaching around it. And one of the questions that one of the students asked me was, so what's the point of having a husband then after I coached her? And my answer to her was, just so you have someone to love.
And it was stunning for her to hear that because I think a lot of times we get confused over why we're married. And we come with all of our expectations, we come with all of our needs and all of our desires, and we expect the person in our life to fulfill those things. And when they don't, we then use that for a cause of frustration.
So I'm going to go through in this podcast and talk about relationships. But one of the things that will be interesting for me to cover as we go through relationships is all of the other tools that I've already taught you and how they apply to your relationships. So for example, the manual and having a manual for someone and the model and taking responsibility for your own thoughts and emotional adulthood and how important that is and truly understanding unconditional love.
Those are some major tools that I've already taught you that really apply when it comes to our relationships. So let me start by reminding you what love is. If you haven't listened to the episode on unconditional love, I want to recommend that you do.
And for those of you who are new, I just want to let you know that we just added a new search option on our website. So if you go to the lifecoachschool.com, make sure you put the lifecoachschool.com and you go to the podcast page. There's a little search window there now where you can search for any of the podcast topics and they will come up for you.
You want to search for unconditional love if you haven't listened to that one yet, because if you're in a relationship that isn't going as well as you would like it to, you definitely want to understand that concept. I'm going to review it briefly here. It's very counterintuitive for us because of the way that we are raised when it comes to love.
To understand that love is an emotion that we feel. And when we feel the emotion of love, we take action from the emotion of love. Okay, so I sometimes like to say love is acted out of love.
Right? And so when we are feeling love, we act out of love. And when we are feeling love, the only way that we can ever feel love is the same exact way we can only feel any emotion.
So, let's review the model. Our thoughts create our feelings, which create our actions, which create our results. So the only way it is possible for us to feel emotions is with our thinking, okay?
If we are unconscious, we do not feel emotion. It does not matter what anyone says to us, what anyone does to us, what's happening in the world. Nothing happens unless our brain is consciously thinking.
Do not underestimate the power of this truth. So many of us think that we experience emotion based on what's happening in the world, based on energy fields, based on what people say or do or don't say or don't do. But that can't be true because if we're unconscious, we feel nothing.
Consciousness means we are thinking, okay? So the only time you will ever experience love is if you have a thought that causes it. I'm gonna break this down for you.
If somebody that you love, say your husband, says to you, I love you, you may falsely believe that the reason you're experiencing love is because he said that. I promise you, that is not the case. The only reason you ever feel love is because of a thought you have.
So the circumstance may be that your husband tells you that he loves you. You will have a thought when he says that, and that thought will either cause you to feel love or not. A lot of times, someone can tell you that they love you when you don't feel love because of a thought you have.
A lot of times people can tell you that they don't love you when you feel love because of a thought you have. You're always in control of whether you're feeling love or not. So, the question then becomes how often do you feel love?
And when you think about your relationship with your husband or with your wife or with your significant other, if you are not feeling love towards them, if you are not feeling love from them, quote unquote, with the from and the towards, it is only because you are not thinking in a way that causes you to feel love. So people will say, oh, I'm not loving him right now. And I'll say, why are you choosing not to love them?
That's always a choice. I don't feel love from them right now. Well, that's impossible.
You can't feel love from another person. You can only feel an emotion that you think about in your brain. Stay with me on these, you guys.
This is so important. You get to decide how you want to feel toward your husband or your wife or your significant other at any moment. So if you aren't feeling loving, it's because of what you're thinking.
If you are feeling loving, it's because of what you're thinking, not because of what they're doing. So, for example, my clients will come to me and they will say, I'm having an issue with my husband. And I'm using the word husband here a lot because the two women that I coach us on were women and they were married to men.
And so I'm talking about husbands, but please just insert whoever your significant other is into that terminology. So they were giving me reasons as to why they weren't loving their husbands. And those reasons were all because of the actions that their husbands were not doing.
And so they were saying, he should appreciate me. He should love me. He should care for me.
He should adore me. He should be more thoughtful. And what I asked was why, right?
This goes to the idea of the manual. If they were to act in this very certain way, then I would for sure feel a certain way. And so we start to believe that other people's actions dictate our emotions.
This is very bad news because then all of a sudden I have to control this other person in order for me to feel a certain way. And then I start turning in to a cray cray person trying to control and manage someone else's behavior, which nobody enjoys. And by the way, it's impossible.
They never comply completely with what you want them to do in order to make you feel a certain way. So when you think about the thought, like, I wish my husband was more appreciative. I wish he would remember my birthday.
I wish he would be more snuggly. I wish he would be more complimentary. Whatever it is that you're telling yourself, it may sound very innocent.
It may sound very sweet even. Oh, I just wish that he would recognize that I'm always doing all the laundry or whatever it is. But as soon as you put yourself in that position where someone else's behavior is determining how you feel, you will feel hopeless and completely out of control.
So, I was explaining this to a few of my students, and one of the students said, then what's the point in having a husband? If they're not there to love you, why in the world would you have a husband? And I said, even if your husband feels love towards you, you don't feel that love.
Those are his emotions. You don't feel the emotions he feels, you feel the emotions you feel. So, have you ever been in a situation where someone was feeling loving towards you and you weren't feeling loving towards them?
Yes, that's possible, right? Because we both are responsible and we both have full control of our own emotional lives. So, it's not your husband's job to love you for your sake.
Your husband's job may be to love you for his sake. And your job, my friend, is to love him for your sake, if that's what you want to feel. So, this is what causes issues, right?
I want to love my husband, but I have all these rules in place for what he has to do in order for me to feel love towards him. And what I tell people to do is to drop all the rules, drop the manual, and just let your husband's job be to be there so you can love him. I'll give you the example of my puppies, okay?
You guys know how obsessed I am and how much I love my puppies. Most people buy animals so they can love them, so they can experience love, right? And the dogs usually love us unconditionally and make it very easy for us to love them unconditionally.
Sometimes they're naughty and it's not so easy, but most of the time, it's easy to love a pet, right? And we always love having pets in our lives because they're such a joy and our expectations are low of them. And so we just truly get to enjoy the fact that this animal is on the planet, existing.
We don't get mad if it reacts a different way. You know, we don't think that we have to get rid of the dog if it doesn't love us in the proper way, right? It's just always like the dog gets to be the dog and we get to love the dog.
And I think that's why we have so much joy with our pets increasingly, right? And when it comes to our husbands, it seems like we make it very hard for us to love them. And when I say love them, I mean have loving thoughts about them, so we experience the emotion of love.
Now, when you experience the emotion of love, you will act in a loving way. And that's fun. Fun for your husband.
It's fun for you. You get to appreciate your own behavior. You get to appreciate your own feeling of love.
But you do it for your sake. It's actually very selfish. I'm always saying love yourself and him for very selfish reasons.
I've talked a lot about how when I would go to therapy, and when I would take classes in college, and they would talk about the idea that when you're doing couples therapy, that each of the couples should come and talk about what their needs are, and then tell the other person how they can meet their needs, and how I always thought that was such bondage. Like, I can't imagine me giving Chris, my husband, a list of all of my needs and expecting him to meet them. Or him giving me a list of all of his needs, God help us, and expecting me to meet them, right?
That would be bondage. It would feel like a job that I didn't even want, you know? Now, that doesn't mean that we don't say, hey, it would be totally great if you would do this thing.
I would love that. This is my preference. And then if it's fun and easy for me to do it, I'm happy to do it.
And then that's a great time. But Chris and I like to come together and say, hey, you know, I'll meet my needs, you meet your needs, and the rest of it is just a great time. Anything else is just gravy.
And I don't have to go around having conversations with you all the time about how you should behave and what you should do differently in order for me to be happy and blame my unhappiness on you. That's a lot of unhappiness. If I'm feeling unhappy, it's because of the thoughts I'm thinking, not because of something you're doing or not doing.
So I really want you to think about it. If you don't love your husband, that's on you. If you don't feel loving towards him, that's on you.
Now, I'm not saying that in some situations, you're gonna have to work a little bit harder than others. But when you own that, you get all your power back. Now, people always say to me, okay, well, if I love my husband, why would I ever leave him?
I say, because you want to. You don't have to hate him to leave. You don't have to not love him to leave.
You know what you get to do? Whatever you want. That is the truth.
You wanna stay with your husband, stay with him. You wanna leave your husband, leave him. And whatever you're doing is what you wanna do.
People say, I can't leave my husband. I say, of course you can. Financially, I can't do it.
The kids, I can't. I said, oh, it's not that you can't. You just don't want to.
You don't wanna leave because of the kids. You don't wanna leave because of finances. Tell yourself the truth about that.
Own that. Own the emotions that that creates when you think about it in that way. Love yourself and him for selfish reasons because you wanna feel love.
You want a relationship where you feel love all the time? You can have that immediately if you manage your mind. And you can still leave if you want.
Isn't that crazy? We think that we have to talk ourselves into hating someone, or we have to cheat on them, or we have to make it horrible so we have a reason to leave. Things have been bad for years or whatever we say.
But you can say, I love this person. I choose to love this person, and I don't wanna live with them anymore. I don't wanna be married to them anymore.
Whatever it is, you get to decide. But don't put yourself in a place of misery and then leave thinking that leaving will somehow make you more joyous. Because you will end up right where you are with that same brain in another situation.
I promise you that. The hundreds and hundreds of clients have watched it happen, okay? So what's the point of having a husband?
Just so you have an object to love, an object of your affection. Affection is an emotion you create. Love is an emotion you create.
Compassion is an emotion you create. So let me break this down for you. I can look at my husband, Chris, and I can think about all the ways that I love him.
And there are so many ways. And I will tell you, I have practiced loving him. When I first met him, it's actually quite interesting.
I was just talking to one of my friends about this, and she was saying that there are alpha women, and there are alpha men, and there are beta women, and there are beta men. And she had worked with a coach who had explained this to her and explained that she was an alpha woman, and that alpha women are typically very attracted to alpha men. But alpha men are not typically attracted to alpha women.
So usually those relationships have challenge in them, right? And she said, so what happens is sometimes alpha women, which I'm an alpha woman, obviously. I'm very like in control, powerful.
I want to be in charge. I want to be the one leading. I want to be the one making decisions.
And so what women like us, alpha women do, is we sometimes fall in love with what they call a beta man who's just more chill and easygoing, and we try and make that guy into an alpha. It's so funny when she said that. I'm like, oh my god, I totally did that to Chris when we first met.
He's just like, hey, I don't really care what we do. Like, yeah, it's you, and I don't really need to own my own business, but if you want to, let's rock it out. He's just so chill, easygoing, supportive, not wanting to go out there and make all the decisions at all.
It's just not his personality. But I would get all mad at him. I'd be like, you should make more decisions, and you should lead this, and you should decide where we're going on vacation.
And I talk about this a little bit on the podcast. I think it was last year, I talked about how I got to this point in my career where I was like, I just want him to lead our career, and I want to stay home, and he can go and go back. He worked at Hewlett-Packard for 19 years.
I'm like, he can go back to Hewlett-Packard. And everyone was laughing at me. They're like, what are you going to do, sit at home?
I'm like, yes, that's what I'm going to do. And so it's so interesting how I wanted him to be different so I could feel differently. And of course he was never going to change.
I mean, he never would change. He's like, I acted like a crazy person. And he would just be like, I don't know what you're doing, but I just love you and I love our life.
And I just want to support you and I want to live my life this way. And this is what I want for my life. And it's not what you want me to do, but that's okay.
And so that was a huge turning point for us when I really figured out that my happiness and my expectations of myself are what matter. And my expectations of Chris are really irrelevant when it comes to my own happiness. And I think that is really a hard thing for us to wrap our minds around because we have these expectations of other people in our lives and we're very disappointed when they don't meet them.
And as soon as I let that go in my relationship with him, we have had such a peaceful, wonderful marriage since then. And I could have really messed that up. I mean, really, had I kept my manual for him and tried to change him, he for sure would have been like, I'm out of here.
And I would have sure been increasingly frustrated with him not being more like me, is what I was frustrated about. One of my girlfriends told me, especially in relationship to my business, is she was laughing, she's like, why does he need to be more like you? You have you.
It was just stunning. Like, why does he need to be the strategist? Why does he need to be out there doing all these things?
You're the one that loves doing that. And I was, it was like, so good for me to know. And as soon as I stopped trying to change him into something I thought would be better and easier for me to love, then I really got to appreciate who he is, as he is, without trying to change him.
And that's when I, the love was just flowing all the time. So the thing that's amazing about Chris is he is genuinely one of the best people I've ever met. And I know that that's true because Chris doesn't say negative things about people.
He's always giving people the benefit of the doubt. He always has their back. He always wants to give.
The way that he treats customers in our business is unrealistic. Like he will call you at any time of day, he will respond to your email, he'll make sure that you're happy, he'll go above and beyond to make sure you're taking care of. Just yesterday night, we were sitting and we were watching the Cubs game and it was a really close game and we were both totally into it and someone called him on his phone wanting to cancel their membership.
I have a stop over drinking program and somebody wanted to cancel. And this was a Sunday that we were watching the game and I said, well, take care of that on Monday. It's not a rush.
He's like, no, I just want to make sure she's taken care of and like jumps up and like goes to a computer and make sure I'm like this is someone that's cancelling. This isn't someone that wants to buy something. He just wants to make sure that that person is taking care of and taking care of and, you know, in a timely manner and everything.
And I just love that about him. And I love how he always has my back on everything. He's always like, oh, I'll say, oh, I can't believe I did that.
He's like, oh, this is probably why that happened. And this is probably why you did that. And you probably had a really good reason and you're the best.
And he's always looking for the good in everyone. And he's such an amazing dad and the way that he supports our kids and is always home for them, is always willing to drive them wherever they wanna go and put up with their teenage attitudes, all of it. So, I mean, I could just sit here and go on and on and on.
Now notice when I think about my husband and everything that's amazing about him, I'm filled with love. He's not even here. He won't listen to the podcast.
He won't know that I've said any of this. He won't feel the love from this, but I feel the love from this because I focus on the things about him. I mean, it does not hurt that he's very, very good looking.
And I don't know how it's possible that men get better looking as they get older. I think it's a cruel joke, but he really does. I think he just gets hotter every time I see him.
And there's no other man that I ever look at that I feel that way towards. It's not like I have to like, you know, steer my eyes away and focus on him. I just want to, right?
So those are the decisions that I made. And Chris and I have always talked, we were just talking the other day and I said, oh my God, what if I like went somewhere and there was this guy and I like thought he was like better than you somehow, like amazing. And I like fell in love with him.
Chris is like, this is a really fun conversation. That I think about crazy shit like that all the time. And he's like, yeah, but you would have to decide to let your mind go there.
Okay, by the way, my husband doesn't do any of this coaching stuff, doesn't he? He thinks the model is so obvious. He doesn't understand why we all have to learn it, right?
But he's like, you'd to let your mind go somewhere with another man, you have to allow your mind to do that in order to be thinking about that guy in that way. And I was like, you know what? That's so true because I bet there are other men out there that I would be attracted to if I'd let my mind go there, but I just don't.
It's irrelevant. It's like I don't even see it. So some of you will come back to me and say, okay, so what you're saying is, I actually had one of my students say this to me.
She's like, what you're saying is, I should just have la-de-da happy thoughts about my husband all the time, even though he's not satisfying me, even though he's rude to me, even though he's cheating on me, even though he doesn't respect me, even though they'll say to me, I've fallen out of love with him. Like that's something that is involuntary that happens to us. And what I say back to them is, you are responsible for how you feel.
You are responsible for how you think. You are not responsible for your husband's behavior, but you are responsible for how you interpret his behavior and what you focus on. And you are responsible for how you show up based on how you're feeling.
So many times I hear clients say to me, my husband was rude to me. And I'll say, so how did you feel when you thought he was rude to you? And they'll say, disrespected.
And then I'll say, how did you act towards him? And they'll say, rude and disrespectful. The alternative is when you interpret the way someone else behaves in a way that serves you, when you take responsibility for it, then you can take responsibility for how you show up in the world.
It's not okay if you believe someone else is being disrespectful to answer with disrespect. It doesn't justify it. And it makes you feel twice as bad as the first thought that he was being disrespectful.
You're responsible for how you feel in your relationship. I can't say that enough times. When as soon as you blame him for how you're feeling, you lose all of your own emotional adulthood, all of your own power.
And then you start acting in a way that you're not proud of, and then your relationship deteriorates. If you decide that no matter what, you will love the person in your life, you will have more power than you can ever imagine in your own personal growth. And it doesn't mean that you stay, but you don't leave in order to get out of pain, because there's nowhere to go.
Pain is inside of you, it's in your brain. You can't run away from it. You don't leave pain in an old house, you bring it with you.
You don't leave pain in an old relationship, you bring it with you, because you bring your brain with you. What if your husband's only job was to live his life exactly the way he's living it, and to be the object of your desire? To provide you with a reason to feel loving.
People are like, what is she talking about? He needs to take that garbage out, he needs to pick those kids up, he needs to help me around the house. My husband's nothing like Chris, right?
Is what you might be saying. But the truth is, your husband is the person that you married, is the person that, or your boyfriend, whatever, is the person that you're with, and you get to decide how you want to feel in that relationship. How is it knowing that you get to decide 100%?
Now, I also want to give you a little tip. If you are constantly trying to control someone and have them be different than they are, if you are constantly criticizing someone for the way that they behave, so you can feel more appreciated, I want you to think of how they may interpret that and feel. So whatever it is you're wanting from that other person is exactly what you need to provide for yourself.
And then you get to show up for that other person in a way that's authentic to you, not in a way that tries to manipulate how they feel or tries to manipulate their behavior so you can feel a certain way. It's a huge difference. The other person's job, this is my answer to the question, then why even get married?
If their job isn't to appreciate you and love you and adore you, then why even get married? So they will be there for you to love. Your only job is to just live your life in the exact way you want to live it and let me love you on purpose.
Isn't that what we all want to be told? Isn't that what we all want to be a part of? But I'm telling you, it's really the only option if you want to be in love with someone all the time.
Because if Chris had to act a certain way in order for me to be in love with him, I would be screwed because he would never comply. But if all he has to do is show up and live his life exactly the way he wants to live it, now I get to love him no matter what. It's a beautiful environment to live in.
And it doesn't mean we don't make requests, and it certainly doesn't mean we don't falter, right? But if we remember that the end game is to try and feel love as much as we possibly can, and the best way to feel love is to think about our loved one in a loving way, then we get to experience that love. That's as easy as it gets and as hard as it gets.
But that is the secret to all lasting and wonderful relationships, is that you allow that person to be who they are, as if you have a choice, and then you spend your time appreciating and loving them for exactly that. If you don't believe me, try it out. I promise you, you will not come back to me and complain about it, because there's nothing better than feeling unconditional love all the time.
Feeling love all the time is the best. So do that for yourself and for the person in your life. I'll talk to you guys next week.
Thank you for listening to The Life Coach School Podcast. It is my honor to show up here every week and connect with people that are like minded, wanting to take their life to a deeper level with more awareness and more consciousness. If you are interested in taking this work to the next level, I highly encourage you to go to thelifecoachschool.com/how to feel better online.
It is there that I have a class that will take all of this to a deeper application, where you'll be able to really feel and experience how all of these concepts can start showing up in your life. It's one thing to learn it intellectually. It's another thing to truly apply it to your life.
I will see you there. Thanks again for listening.
