Episode 155: Transforming Your Relationships with Stacey Martino & Brandy Salazar

[INTRODUCTION]

 

[00:04:17] Jon Berghoff: Goal achievers, welcome to episode 155. It means we are one week away from the three year anniversary of the Achieve Your Goals Podcast which is a testament to Hal Elrod who’s been delivering value for years at this point and I’m honored to be standing in for Hal during this time where he is healing. If you are jumping into this episode and you are not aware of the full story, you are welcome to go back and listen to episode 152. Yeah it’s 152. Today I have a dear friend of Hal’s, a friend of this community and somebody who is going to be sharing wisdom with us around a topic ‘relationships’ that I think is so important for many reasons for all of us. I’m just going to bring her right on. We have today Stacey Martino.

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

[00:05:09] Jon Berghoff: Stacey how are you doing?

 

[00:05:11] Stacey: Good, Jon I’m so excited to be with you today, thanks for having me.

 

[00:05:16] Jon Berghoff: It’s awesome to have you. I realized that the last time I actually saw you was when I was watching somebody was showing me a Tony Robbins infomercial and I know that he is somebody who is actually a fan of your work as you were chiming into one of his infomercials talking about the work you’ve done around relationships. I know that today we are going to ask you about, drumroll, do we have sound effects? The release of ‘The Miracle Morning for Transforming Your Relationship.’

 

[00:05:48] Stacey: Woo hoo!

 

[00:05:48] Jon Berghoff: Yes super pumped I know that this community has gotten a ton of value from all the miracle morning book series. And this is one that, I was just talking to Hal about this yesterday. We have a feeling this one could be special in that it touches home in a literal sense in a way that many of the others just have not yet really approached miracle mornings. We are going to ask you about the book and I want to start with giving you a chance to share your journey of how you got to this place of being somebody that so many people turn to for advice on relationships, such a big topic, so pumped to see where this goes.

 

[00:06:28] Stacey: It’s so funny I wish I had a more beautiful and inspiring answer to that question but the truth is I kind of got here kicking and screaming. This is not something I chose, it definitely chose me and it’s one of those situations where sixteen, seventeen years ago now, my husband Paul came home to me to tell me that he was leaving and it was a huge breakdown for me moment. Our relationship was crap back then, I wasn’t the girl that you know me to be now. I was the ice princess back then, very achiever, black and white, no emotion, drive, push, get it done. That didn’t exactly come with a handbook for phenomenal romantic relationships and as Paul continued to tell me exactly now for the talk as to why our relationship wasn’t going to work out, logically I knew everything he was saying, “I don’t need me for anything, I can’t get close to you, bla bla bla, absolutely, yes.”

 

That didn’t surprise me but I started to have a really emotional reaction. I started to break down and cry which sounds like a normal reaction for normal people but Paul had never seen me cry in those four years and honestly I hadn’t cried in like ten years prior because I was in a place in my life where I was just done with being hurt, done with all that, not going to let anybody in. So I hadn’t really felt anything. I had this big breakdown and break open so to speak. I felt this surge of love for Paul and really wanted to take a try at like really jumping into my life like Jon Vroman says, not living in the back row. Let’s live in the front row, I want to actually start living and jump in. Not just going through life trying not to get hurt. Of course I was having this huge spiritual awakening. Paul was like, “Look I really just wanted to break up with you and leave elegantly and you are having this total breakdown I’m not even sure how to handle you.”

 

[00:08:30] Stacey: I was having a moment where I needed another chance at doing this not just for Paul but for me. Like I need to figure this out. So back then Paul’s perspective was, “Look, if you want to go fix yourself by all means. There’s nothing wrong with me but you want to do it.” I did, I jumped in and I got everything I could get my hands on. I read, I was in programs, I listened to audios. Some of it gave me really good relationship advice, some of it got me a lot of trouble. Other things worked really well and I stumbled my way through transforming myself and ultimately it ended up having an impact on Paul. Back then I didn’t know one person who could transform our relationship. I was doing it accidentally but through that work that I did eventually I did transform myself, I started bringing out the best in Paul, he was loving it and so inspired that eventually he jumped in and then we created what we now have our unshakeable love and unleashed passion.

 

Several years ago my husband came to me and said, “Look we cannot just watch parents with young kids all around us breaking up when if they had just known what we knew they might not be. Those two kids could be sleeping down the hall from two parents instead of one but we cannot sit here quietly. They won’t really get the relationship education that we got we have to start teaching.” I was scared and reluctant and all kinds of fears came up but we eventually jumped in and I’m still grateful that we did because by now we’ve helped tens of thousands of families and it’s a total blessing and I’m just blessed to be able to do the work that we do.

 

[00:10:05] Jon Berghoff: Wow, that’s a cool story and you just revealed something that I feel we need to go back to here because I am thinking about myself. I’ve been married to my wife Mara for, I always have to stop and count, is that normal? Is that bad?

 

[00:10:21] Stacey: Paul and I don’t know actually the date that we even got married anymore.

 

[00:10:25] Jon Berghoff: Here is the funny thing, I know the date because we got married on eight, eight, eight so I always just have to stop and do the math. I can’t forget that date but I always have to stop and do the math. The reason I am thinking about myself is because you said something and I’m guessing a lot of our listeners are in relationships of any type they probably jumped a little with curiosity or excitement. I did when I heard you say what you did and I think about my relationship and like marriage is really difficult. For me it is and really it got harder every time we had a kid and we had three of them and it’s challenging. It’s a very real challenge and I find that my marriage brings out both the best and certainly the worst in me. I was just sitting with an integrated nutritionist the other day who we spent half the time talking about my psychology.

 

She read me like a book. She is like, “Let me guess, you treat your wife worse than everyone else.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh you must have a hidden camera in my home.” How did she know these things? She is, “Look, people have challenges at home that are deeper than anything they deal with when they are not at home and that’s actually normal.” You just said something that to me almost sounded controversial that your story was, wait because I think I heard you say you can change yourself, your partner doesn’t have to change and that can actually change your relationship. I want to hear more about that. That sounds different than what I thought I had to do which was change myself and my wife needed to change for us both to be happier. Tell me about that.

 

[00:11:58] Stacey: This is the ultimate in freedom is that it truly only takes one partner to transform a relationship and you do not need your partner to do the work that we teach, the tools and strategies that we teach. You don’t need to do this work in order for you to get all the results that you want in your relationship. I know that’s like a game changer because so much of what we’ve been taught and brainwashed is that it takes two to tango, you both have to want it bla, bla, bla but it I was like that literally doesn’t even work today. Even if it were true which it’s not and I’ll show you in a second, it doesn’t even work today because it’s very, very rare. I’ve been around the world a few times now, it’s very, very rare to find two people in the same relationship who both want to do the same kind of thing on the relationship at the same time.

 

What happens is good people end up stuck because they are in a situation where they are feeling like, “Okay, either my partner is just not into it, won’t do any kind of development work no matter what or they don’t even think there is a problem and I do. What do I do now, am I just supposed to settle for the way things are or am I just supposed to be a big jerk and upheave all my family and cause all this pain because I don’t want to settle.” Both of those alternatives seem to suck.

 

So what we offer people is a third alternative which is stay and transform in a way that you don’t need your partner to participate. The way that that works because all of our programs of our books, our programs, all of our events are all designed for one partner to do the process and create the shift is because, and everybody has this experience we just don’t have words for it, there is a situation I’m sure this has happened to you Jon but you tell me. Where you go through the day you are rocketing, your inner zone, everything is awesome, you are having a great day and then all of a sudden you come home or your partner comes home or you see them and they are in the crapper. They are complaining, they are negative, they are all that and what happens to your state?

 

[00:13:53] Jon Berghoff: Yeah, it changes. It’s contagious.

 

[00:13:58] Stacey: It’s completely contagious and next thing you know you are saying something to them like, “Hey why are you going to do this? It’s not so bad, you can turn this around,” and then they come back at you, “You don’t know what real problems are, you don’t know what this is about, you don’t really get it.” Back and back and forth we go, round and round we go, nothing changed in your world, they triggered you and then changed. One person is always shifting every relationship through the most powerful human force in human relationships, triggers, always. It doesn’t matter, your kids, your folks, people you work with, your spouse, triggers are constantly impacting the other person.

 

All Paul and I do is teach you one, the invisible things that you are doing to unknowingly trigger the crap in your partner that you don’t love and how to stop that. Two, how to use the power of triggers but to truly come from a place that appreciates and understands how your partner is actually wired and trigger the best in them, trigger a response from them that you want instead of the reaction that you don’t. Nobody gives us that education but at this point now we know it, we can teach it, it’s learnable and so that’s the way we approach things.

 

We just give people the tools, our strategies that really work in real life as busy parents where not all the bills are paid and they have all kinds of stress and crap and yet you still can have that unshakeable love and unleash passion. What better time to have one than when you have young kids and all their stress and not all the bills are paid and we are both supposed to work and somehow we supposed to have this magic fairytale of a relationship too. It’s about creating it and learning how to do that in real life.

 

[00:15:38] Jon Berghoff: Yeah so when you mention these triggers I laugh at myself because I think about how smart I am and how I’ll make a commitment, a personal commitment that, “Okay I’m going to treat my wife this way, I’m going to be this way,” and then I do exactly what you just described. I like that you point out that it’s unconscious because it would make me a kind of an asshole if I was consciously doing these things. I don’t know, maybe sometimes I am. Give us some real examples.

 

What are some of the most common examples so that all of us who are listening, and this is really selfish for me, everyone realizes Jon really needs help in this area, what are some examples? And I love that you said there is these negative triggers, that’s my word and positive triggers too so what are some of the most common triggers in relationships that our listeners could immediately walk away and go look for? And go maybe I should think a little differently about how I do this, maybe an example or two of a positive trigger because that sounds…

 

[00:16:37] Stacey: Absolutely, so we teach hundreds and hundreds of these but one that I’ll give you that you could probably relate to the quickest and actually start using today before you are going to see a noticeable difference is around one of the key differences. A lot of the differences that we teach between the masculine and the feminine are the biggest because in relationships you can have the most positive attention like you said Jon, “I make this commitment, I’m going to treat my wife,” but still you are going to treat Mara in the best possible way. You are the filter of a dude, treating her as if she’s also a dude that you want to treat well because if you don’t have an education on what the feminine is thinking which I honestly right now is pretty opposite of what you are, you are going to with the best of intentions which is what so many of us do with the best of intentions still trigger the crap out of our partner because we are so different.

 

One of the key differences that we teach is around help because one thing that is off the radar for both masculine and the feminine is that the masculine does not want unsolicited help when he doesn’t ask for it, right? If you don’t ask for help and somebody just starts helping you, very often the masculine will perceive that as like, “You have no confidence in my ability to handle myself and get it done.” It can be really taken in the wrong way. It’s not taken very nicely whereas the feminine has been trained since birth that if you want to be a good girl you better offer help all the time and even if someone doesn’t welcome your help then you need to just step in and start helping anyway. A very common scenario, a wife sees her husband is about to take on some kind of project or do something at home and she is like, “Hey I can help you with that. Hey let me do this.” He’s like, “I got it,” because he is like, “I’m doing this for you, this is my service, just appreciate it. I got it.”

 

[00:18:33] Stacey: She is like trained to offer help and it causes her this kerfuffle even though she is trying to be a good girl and he’s trying to be the guy and say, “I’m doing this for you, I got this, you don’t have to do it.” Everybody has positive intention but what happens is she offers help he denies it, it’s triggering him but she doesn’t have enough confidence to just leave him alone and she sometimes will just step in and start helping anyway because when you are a really good girl that’s what you are trained to do. Even when somebody says no I don’t want your help you just jump in which is very unmasculine for a man and now we have kerfuffle because what happens is…

 

[00:19:12] Jon Berghoff: I like that word kerfuffle.

 

[00:19:13] Stacey: Kerfuffle, that’s our nice word for crap and all of that. What happens is, this is off the radar for most men, is that a woman and you are feminine want to help all the freaking time, all the time. We are trained never to ask for help unless like the refrigerator has fallen on us and it’s a life and death emergency. We are not deserving of asking for help all the time. We don’t want to be a bother but we always want to help and since women help other women all the time when our man doesn’t help us all the time we feel like you are being a bad girl.

 

If you were a good girl you’d be offering me help all the time. This causes a lot of kerfuffle because women won’t ask for the help that they want but they are like, “You see me trying to pack three lunches, I’ve got this bag, I’m doing this thing, I’m trying to call and you don’t jump in and start helping me, you don’t care about me.”

 

Whereas a man who has a woman that he actually respects would never jump in and imply that you don’t have your stuff together lady. I will never do that. If I did that to another guy I might get hit. I’m certainly not going to do that to you, I respect you.” Both people have the most positive intentions but they are going head to head causing kerfuffle. When men start to understand that women want help all the time and just start to offer it no matter what and when women can shut our mouths and stop offering unsolicited help to our men, everybody can flourish.

 

This goes beyond husband and wife, this goes to mother and son. Every time that Johnny is trying to tie his shoe and he doesn’t and mommy swoops in and ties it for him Johnny is learning mommy doesn’t think I can tie my shoe.

 

If mommy lets him figure it out on his own and ask now he has confidence and she’s learning how to respect the masculine and cultivating that in her child. This is across the board, this is at work in masculine and feminine relationships all the time. And it’s just truly about learning and appreciating that the masculine and the feminine are strictly different because nobody ever trained us on how to use these tools and strategies to get great results instead of unknowingly triggering kerfuffle.

 

[00:21:21] Jon Berghoff: Wow that’s so interesting. I can see some of what you are describing but when I think about how I relate with my son who’s seven and my daughter who is five. He has far less interest in getting help with anything than she does. It’s really, really interesting. Stacey I’ve heard you talk about how any relationship could be transformed, no matter what situation it’s in, there’s still a chance, there’s still a possibility. Share a little bit about that. How is it that there’s not some point of no return? What have you seen? You’ve worked with so many couples.

 

[00:21:56] Stacey: What we know for sure at this point is that every relationship can be rescued and should. What I will tell you is that not every marriage is meant to last, not every marriage is your forever love, that’s just a fact. However, every relationship can and should be healed because what happens is that, we see this all the time where the relationship is so far gone that we think there is no coming back but the truth is a lot of this builds up because of examples like I just gave you and 1000 others that have happened over time because people just were not equipped to navigate real life. When they are and they do the work, we have an eight step process that we take people through. By the time we get through step five and we’ve truly gotten the working implemented, you will heal the relationship with your partner to a very large degree.

 

When you heal the relationship with your partner to the point that you have compassion, heartfelt compassion, love and understanding and peace in your heart for that person, only from that energy will you then know one of two outcomes. Either, “Okay I really do love you and I want to create our unshakeable love and unleash passion. We just didn’t have the tools before but now I have the hope that we can,” and you want to move forward and rescue the relationship and marriage. Or from that place you recognize that, “We are not aligned as long term forever love partners. However, I am so ready to happily and peacefully co-parent with you for the rest of our days and I do attract my forever love that I now I understand will be aligned for me and we add that to the beauty of our family and we move forward.”

 

If you have children, I take a stand for this all the time Jon, if you have children, leaving from negativity and you take you with you for the rest of your relationships by the way and your children and you also deserve better than that because to be able peacefully co-parent which is not what we see a lot of today, that’s what we teach our clients to do, is the greatest thing you can do for yourself and your family is to be able to peacefully and harmoniously say, “I’m so glad I get to be mom and dad with you for the rest of our lives and I’m going to go fall in love with that person who is aligned with me and I’m ready to do both.”

 

[00:24:13] Stacey: No matter what, it’s never too late because unless you’ve done the work you are not ready because you don’t know whether its option one or option two until you get there but you have to do the work because either way whether its option one or two you’ll be at peace with either option when you get there but not if you don’t do the work.

 

[00:24:33] Jon Berghoff: Wow that’s such an empowering possibility that I feel like you are creating for couples whether they stay together or they don’t and we should just be real. There’s a lot if they don’t stay together so I think that is so empowering instead of saying, “Well it’s an either or, either we save it and that’s great or we don’t and that’s not great.” I love how you put that there and I also just like going back to your point of no matter what the state of the relationship is, we have to come from a place of truly loving and caring about the other person. It has to start from that place, that center and that is so cool.

 

[00:25:15] Stacey: It’s so true and as I’m sure you can imagine many, many people come to me and they are past the edge and when you are in that state nothing’s going to feel real good and a lot of people want to make this decision to leave a marriage from a place of really, really, really bottom of the barrel state. Honestly at that point everything is going being looked at through a filter of pain and hurt and fear and we need to get you to a place of peace with it and love and harmony before you can really think clearly and not to do something as life changing as that for yourself.

 

[00:25:52] Jon Berghoff: Wow, so Stacey I want to ask you about the book here. I got ask you about the book. I know that so much of your wisdom is in the book, this community who we’d encourage all of them to go find you. By the way I’ve written it down here somewhere but just tell us. Is it relationshipdevelopment.org is that right?

 

[00:26:13] Stacey: That’s correct relationshipdevelopment.org you got it.

 

[00:26:17] Jon Berghoff: They can find you there and the wonderful thing is whether or not they can afford to invest in your different levels of coaching they should check all of that out. They all now going to have ‘The Miracle Morning for Transforming Your Relationship.’ Tell us a little bit of the journey of creating that book, how that book came about, maybe any insights that are in that book anything we haven’t yet talked about today that just creates value for our listeners.

 

[00:26:43] Stacey: I love this book, Paul and I really went all in for this book. It came about in a very funny way and I tell the story in the introduction. It’s so funny because you and I have a mutual good friend Jon Vroman, who’s one of my closest friends and your best friends and it was probably ten years ago but I was literary in this office but my desk was this way so I was facing that way. I was in this office when Johnny had called me and said, “Hi my buddy, Hal is creating this new life morning ritual process. Do you want to test this out with us?” I was like, “Of course, of course.” I remember this spiral notebook that I took out and I just feverishly started scribbling down what would be in the miracle morning.

 

And started put it into practice as my daily morning ritual as well and then it was some time last year that I was walking out the door and I got a text message from Hal saying, “Hey can I talk to you about two of your books ‘Relationships to the miracle morning?” and we just started having those conversations. It’s very surreal to actually write the book right here in the same space where I originally scribbled down ‘The Miracle Morning Process’ never realizing that it would really come full circle.

 

It’s been a truly amazing journey. One thing I would share of the book is where Paul and I really wanted to come out with this message in the book is really what you and I have been talking about today, coming out strong with, “It’s time for everybody to know that it only takes one partner to transform a relationship.” but more than that couple’s work doesn’t work and very often couple’s work does so much more damage than good and  I know that that’s not going to be a very welcome message in every community but real people, real parents with busy lives where work wants to be first and the kids want to be first and your wife wants to be first and your family, everybody wants to be first in your life and it’s so busy, we live in the busiest most high-paced time in the history of humans and it’s so hard to have an amazing marriage with all of these pulls and demands.

 

[00:28:52] Stacey: It really needs to be said finally that couple’s work doesn’t work and it’s causing a lot of damage. I can’t even tell you how many people thousands of people come to us after almost pretty much losing it all trying to do couple’s work and the reason why couple’s work counter-productively doesn’t work is because when you ask your partner to participate in something, and I use a funny example of this in The Miracle Morning book where I say, if I were to call you Jon and say, “Oh my gosh Jon I’ve got this amazing event I’m going you should go with me. It’s called the ‘be better looking’ event and I’m definitely going but you really need to come. I really think we should do this together because let’s face it, we need this right now.” That implies a lot.

 

When I call you up with that what are you getting from my implication of why you need to go with me? That you are not good looking enough and it’s very personal for people when a partner that you are married to, that you sleep with starts to say something like, “I think we need this, I think we need to do this work, I think you need to do this with me.” Immediately that makes people go into the defensive like, “You think that I’m not good enough. You don’t want me or I’ve got a problem or something needs to be fixed in me?” Or they go into the sadness, “I knew it, I knew I wasn’t good enough, I knew you didn’t love me, I knew you thought you were better than me, I knew this wasn’t going to work.”

 

One of two reactions happens and very often it starts to drive people more distant and if they do get to go to couple’s work which honestly very often is the last nail on the coffin when people will go to couple’s work together when they feel like all hope is lost and it’s their last ditch effort, very often the couple’s work will then fail because nine times out of ten if you look at all the studies it shows that when people go to work with one person and it’s a couple with one professional, very often one of two things will happen.

 

[00:30:47] Stacey: Either one partner will feel completely and totally aligned with the therapist or the counsellor and feel really, really connected and the other person will feel ganged up on and misunderstood and then the work fails. Or both people will feel completely misunderstood by the therapist who doesn’t even understand their real life and therapy fails. Unfortunately when that happens, the person who was dragged there and really didn’t want to go feels like now I have permission, this didn’t work, we are done. Very often it is the worst thing that happens in a relationship because they look at it and say, “I don’t need to do anything more I now have permission to turn my back on this.” We turn so much of it around but it’s really time for people to stop using something that doesn’t work and start doing the work themselves which creates phenomenal results.

 

[00:31:35] Jon Berghoff: I love your passion and your conviction for this and I bet like many listeners hearing you talk about what you are talking about it only is inspiring me to go read the book. In some ways you and I talked about its controversial to say that couple’s work doesn’t work and what I think is beautiful about the approach that you are suggesting is that I think there is some sort of undeniable truth to the idea that I have to be willing to take total ownership for myself. Regardless of how that’s going to work, how it’s going to work compared to any other of the infinite number of approaches we could take, it’s undeniable that I have to be willing to take total ownership over myself and there is something empowering about getting that reminder when it comes to relationships.

 

[00:32:26] Stacey: That really is theme of the book that we put in there. It’s really about your personal responsibility and empowering yourself which is really hard in a romantic love relationship. Honestly it’s very, very easy to blame the other person and want them to change to make you happy but that is actually the number one thing that people hold back. In a relationship it’s about when you realize your ownership, taking 100% personal responsibility and that both people can do it. We have plenty of clients where both husband and wife or husband and husband or wife and wife are going through the program but the work is done individually so they feel the freedom to be on their own journey without somebody watching and then it just flourishes that much fast.

 

[00:33:08] Jon Berghoff: That’s cool. Stacey I’m going to wrap us up here and I just want to remind everybody, The Miracle Morning for Transforming Your Relationship is being released like right now at the date that this comes out, what’s the exact actual date?

 

[00:33:22] Stacey: Valentine’s Day February 14th on Amazon.

 

[00:33:28] Jon Berghoff: Okay let me look in the calendar here I would like to attempt to be close to accurate on this. Okay I think our episode is coming out on the 15th so that’s awesome. Go check it out, go pass it along. Wait, should I not suggest that they buy it and give it to their spouse? I guess that’s the point.

 

[00:33:44] Stacey: That is my point unless you want to imply yourself they are not good looking enough.

 

[00:33:50] Jon Berghoff: Does it count if I just leave a copy hanging around?

 

[00:33:54] Stacey: That also counts so what I would suggest Jon is read the book, dive in, make the shift, be the hero of your family, create an elevation in your relationship move it forward and then when your partners says to you, “What is going on? This is awesome.” Then say, “I’m reading this book.”

 

[00:34:13] Jon Berghoff: That’s awesome. I want to close with, everything you said today reminds me of a great lesson from Joseph Campbell actually who famously introduced the concept of the hero’s journey to the world. I was just talking about him on another podcast episode this morning for Hal. One of the things I read in his books was somebody asked him about, “How do you convince people to believe in what you are teaching?” And he said, “In all of my lifetime I finally discovered I’m never going to convince anybody to do anything. The only way they are really going to change is if they see the change happen within me.”

 

That’s what I’m reminded of so Stacey this was awesome, thanks for being here I know Hal appreciates it and as we’ve entered our last three episodes I just want to ask everybody who’s listening to send any positive loving healing energy not only to Hal and to his family but to anybody and everybody who needs it including those close to you as you think about the topic of relationships that we were privileged to be with Stacey today so Stacey thank you. This is awesome.

 

[00:35:22] Stacey: You are welcome.

 

[00:35:22] Jon Berghoff: Cheers.

 

Alright, so we just finished our conversation with Stacey Martino talking about The Miracle Morning for Transforming Relationships and we have next Brandy Salazar. Brandy say hi to everybody.

 

[00:35:38] Brandy: Hi everybody and hi Jon.

 

[00:35:41] Jon Berghoff: Hey Brandy, it’s good to be with you. This is cool, this is my first ever I don’t even know what this is called, like a compilation episode where we have two amazing interviews on one episode so thanks for being here. This is going to be great. For those of you within the Goal Achiever Community or the Miracle Morning Community if you’ve never met Brandy or Lance today will be a privilege for you. I got the chance to meet Brandy and her husband Lance. I’ve since spent time with their beautiful daughters Huly who’s eight, Natalie who’s five who are both awesome rock stars full of personality. Everyone who knows Brandy and Lance knows them as an amazing couple, wonderful people to be friends with, to do business with and what a lot of people may or may not have known is that they had a really interesting journey.

 

If you just heard me interviewing Stacey and you heard me rambling about my own challenges as a parent and as a husband I’m sure many of you can relate to this. If you are here right now and you are in a relationship and you have kids I really want you to stay tuned for what we are going to talk about because Brandy’s story is one of growing up in a really dysfunctional environment, dealing with challenges that many of us might not be able to relate to, turned her situation around, was really successful at a young age. Then she and Lance got married at a young age and then they had kids and then now they were facing another set of brand new challenges.

 

That’s the point where I’m going to invite Brandy in to share with you a little bit about what she discovered because she and lance just launched yesterday their legendary couples’ program, their relationship reset program which you can find on legendarycouples.com. Brandy, pick up the story wherever you want. You had some major challenges, made some incredible discoveries and it’s led you to now creating a course that’s going to help a lot of parents out. I’m super excited about that.

 

[00:37:41] Brandy: Oh Jon thank you so much for that amazing introduction. Yeah I found myself married with two kids at the pinnacle of my career and I realized that I was really unhappy. What had happened is I had defined success in a way that was a result of my programming and my childhood and I felt that if I found financial success, had a successful husband and two beautiful children I have made it. What I didn’t realize was that I was packing way too many things into my life and I wasn’t taking care of things that really mattered. What had happened is, Lance and I had a pretty full life before we had children. We were having a lot of fun, we had these great careers but when we added our first daughter into the equation we realized that something had to squeeze.

 

The careers didn’t budge and what was starting to suffer was our relationship and our connection with each other and we found ourselves stuck in this place of frustration and bickering and dissatisfaction in our relationship. We then had our second daughter and as you know when you bring the next one in it becomes even worse, better…

 

[00:39:16] Jon Berghoff: It’s like the Jim Gaffigan skit. He talks about having a fourth child…

 

[00:39:23] Brandy: This is so funny

 

[00:39:23] Jon Berghoff: And he says, “Having a fourth child it’s kind of like you are drowning and then somebody hands you a baby.” I think that happens with your first, second, third so I totally…

 

[00:39:36] Brandy: And I think we are all cut out for different things. I often believe that maybe I was a one kid mom and so we have this second beautiful amazing daughter and by about one I am done. I am at my wits end, I am blaming the marriage for everything and come to find out I had misaligned my priorities and I had misaligned what I was spending time on and so was Lance. We both were and what we realized is that we just needed a complete relationship reset. We needed to redefine what success was in our lives as parents, as a couple and figure out what it would take to get there. And that’s what we did.

 

[00:40:24] Jon Berghoff: I love that and I want to ask you about what it is that you teach because as soon as you say ‘relationship reset’ it reminds me of twenty years ago when I played the original Nintendo. When the game gets stuck and you have to go push the reset button and it just makes me think, “Wow there’s so many times and areas in my life where I would love to have somebody show me how to hit reset because sometimes you are stuck. What are some of the things that you teach for couples who are parents and how to push that button?

 

[00:40:59] Brandy: I love that you brought that analogy because I say the same thing. I also teach a balance class and it’s same thing, it’s called the balance reset, the life reset. We have to reset our closet when it gets out of control, we have to reset our health when we’ve been on vacation and have had too many indulgences. We have to reset all of the time and what we are talking about is intentionally resetting. Resets happen anyway so we can choose to draw that line in the sand and say, “I want to go in this direction or we can continue to just let life drag us through.” What a reset is is first and foremost deciding what the optimal vision could be for that area, optimal vision for your closet. What would be an amazing closet layout? What would it take to get there?

 

The same thing with your relationship. What is the vision that you have for your partnership together on how you take care of your kids and how your household’s run, how your finances are handled? What is your vision for your friendship together? How are you connecting, how are you having fun and playing together and having adventure in your lives and same thing as lovers? What does that look like for your relationship to be at a level ten? Once you go through a process of defining each one of these areas, start to create the plan on what types of habits and what types of goals do you have that gets you to that vision, to make that vision a reality?

 

[00:42:37] Jon Berghoff: That’s awesome and I love that you take a positive approach. You are not saying, “Hey start by making a checklist of all the ways that our relationship is screwed up.” Maybe you do actually.

 

[00:42:51] Brandy: You know what’s funny about that and I’m glad you brought that up. When you and I first met I was like, “Jon this speaks to my mind, it speaks to my heart because I went so many years with that mindset with my relationship and every time we’d sit down I would give him the checklist, “You know what, you didn’t take out the trash, you didn’t do this for the kids and why did you do that and why didn’t you do that.” It was constant and it was getting us nowhere. And it was that day that I walked in and I said not only are we not getting divorced but we are going to make this amazing so let’s talk about what that looks like. That moment everything changed.

 

[00:43:29] Jon Berghoff: That’s awesome and so for our listeners think about this in your relationships but this goes outside of our relationships as Brandy is saying. It’s just a way of viewing life, that when we have any situation we have a choice of what lens do we put on through how we look at it and we could focus through what we could call a deficit lens, what’s missing, what’s broken, what’s wrong. And there will always be answers and if we ask those questions that’s what we’ll see but what Brandy just shared that I love around our relationships is to start by asking, “What would the idea look like? What would the vision of an awesome partnership, friendship when you have these different levels which is cool?”

 

That’s awesome that you are guiding people in that way. I’ve heard you share with me how important it is to get clear on priorities and commitments. Talk about that for a minute. What role do those play in our relationships?

 

[00:44:24] Brandy: This is such a good one Jon. What I realized is that I felt as if I was living from a sense of priority. I felt that I had my priorities straight. I know that my health, my faith, my kids and my relationship with Lance was my priority. I knew it but the reality when I looked at my schedule and what I was actually giving my time to those weren’t the things that I was giving my time to. I was waking up thinking about work, I was going to the office coming home stressed out.

 

I was bringing the energy that I had from the office into my home regardless of what had gone on. It could have been a horrible day and then I’m showing up with this energy of whatever baggage I brought when I’m thinking that my priority is all of these things that seem so obvious but I wasn’t giving my time and I wasn’t giving my best self to those things that I thought deserved it. Now I know they do deserve it. Your relationship with your spouse deserves your best time, it deserves to be a priority.

 

[00:45:31] Jon Berghoff: For our listeners think about a couple of the lessons that Brandy just shared with us. Number one think about asking yourself and maybe with your spouse what is your vision for your future? What are your priorities? Such simple but important questions and Brandy I’d love to make sure that we don’t forget to tell everybody where they can go find your course which just launched yesterday on Valentine’s Day. Where can they go find you to hear more about this?

 

[00:46:00] Brandy: At legendarycouples.com

 

[00:46:03] Jon Berghoff: Legendarycouples.com, love the word legendary. That’s awesome. Can you leave us with one tip? Let’s say someone’s listening now and… Oh and I just have to say this too. I was talking to Brandy before we pushed record. The prices to offer these courses for this launch if you are in a relationship and you have kids, even if you don’t have kids or you are not in a relationship you should just go check this out. You are going to be really well off and it’s going to be well worth the crazy minimal investment. Brandy last thing, if somebody is listening to this and they have a date night tonight, what’s one tip, one takeaway, one idea whether its, “Hey don’t do this or do this” What’s one idea to excel on my date night tonight?

 

[00:46:48] Brandy: Stay really present, active listening and being all there I think that’s one of the things that I hear about more often than not in times that people… In a relationship you don’t have a whole lot of time together when you have kids and so when you have that alone time actually listen to what they are saying, actually be all there.

 

[00:47:10] Jon Berghoff: I love that, what’s interesting is when we recently had our first Front Row dads retreat and Lance your husband was there… And by the way he shared from, we brought him up on stage, I think it was day two and he shared with the group just some personal stories that were really impactful I know for me and for others but what was really interesting is when we asked everyone there to share stories about some of their most positive moments in memories and experiences as a dad and as a husband, everybody shared a story and then we dissected the story and we said, “Okay, what’s the commonality? What the theme?”

 

It wasn’t always, “Well there was an amazing dinner or some cool thing that we did.” It wasn’t always about something that somebody accomplished. It always came back to being present, was what led to the quality of that moment. It’s super cool to hear you sharing that too. What a great reminder at a day and age where we are not really more connected than we’ve ever been but also causes us to be more disconnected.

 

[00:48:16] Brandy: Disconnected. That’s exactly it, you see it all the time. We all struggle with it and the other thing I would say is have grace and don’t take things so seriously. It’s not always about you.

 

[00:48:28] Jon Berghoff: That’s so good. Brandy legendarycouples.com, oh and I forgot to mention… If anyone’s listening and they want to hang out with you and Lance for three days in March in Austin… I forgot to mention. I don’t even know if we still had the quick advertisement at the beginning of this episode but there were three spots that Hal and I were opening up for private masterminds this year which is for entrepreneurs. You and Lance are both in our group. Any couple sentences or last anything you want to say to anyone who might be listening who is thinking about applying to maybe get one of those spots to be in our QLM this year?

 

[00:49:06] Brandy: Yeah actually I want to say a couple of things. One you are the sum of the five people that you spend most time with. So if you need to up level who you are hanging out with QLM is the place to be. Number two, if you are a couple that is needing personal growth together which we all do I’ll tell you that QLM has been one of the most impactful things for Lance and I to do as a couple. We have a group of friends that all care about their marriages, all care about up-leveling their parenting and to be surrounded with a group like you guys has been huge for us. Who your tribe is it means so much and QLM is a pretty amazing tribe.

 

[00:49:47] Jon Berghoff: It’s awesome, that’s so cool. Thanks for sharing that Brandy. Thanks for being here and to all of our goal achievers today was your relationship episode. You heard from Stacey, you heard from Brandy, lots of resources, great ideas. Brandy have a great day.

 

[00:50:05] Brandy: You too Jon, thank you.

 

[END]