Episode 258: The Miracle Morning for Couples with Brandy & Lance Salazar

[INTRODUCTION]

 

Hal: And we are live. Goal achievers, what’s going on? This is Hal Elrod. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast, and today, you’ll never believe it. I’m excited for the people that I get to interview. Who would’ve thought? Actually, I’m excited. This is a special conversation because these are with two of my friends. This is with two of my friends, friends of actually my wife, Ursula, and I. We become close couple friends if you will. They are also the co-authors of the newest book in the Miracle Morning series which emerged very organically because, again, we are a couple of friends and we kind of realized that probably the most requested book in the series, or one of the most requested book has been a book for couples, The Miracle Morning for Couples, because people say, “How do I get my husband or my wife,” like people read the Miracle Morning on their own, one side of the relationship, one half the relationship, and then they come together and then they reach out and go, “You know, I’m doing this Miracle Morning. It’s changing my life like how do I get my spouse to do it?” and so, it’s been one of the most requested titles.

 

And my guests today are Lance and Brandy Salazar and 10 years ago they found themselves on the verge of divorce and giving it one last try when they were about to call it quits, made all the difference. And they committed to designing and creating a marriage that became legendary and they’re now one of the most the happiest, most fulfilled, and most emotionally-intelligent couples that I know and my wife and I learned a ton from them and I will say this. When I was going through my cancer journey, my wife Ursula reached out to Brandy early on and ended up Brandy became one of the biggest supporters, gave her the best advice and was there for her when she needed me. My wife had to drive three hours back and forth to come stay with me in the hospital when I was getting my chemotherapy, my treatment, and she has told me many times that Brandy kept her company on those drives. So, a little tangent, but very, very relevant to the type of people that Brandy and Lance are. And now Lance and Brandy are on a mission to help couples reconnect with each other and stay deeply in love while raising kids and they created a brand, if you will, Legendary Couples with Kids because they know firsthand how challenging it is.

 

If you’re married with kids, which I am, you can relate to that, but how challenging it is to keep your marriage a priority while juggling careers and being parents and their story is common, but their method is not. And four short years ago, again, they were nearly divorced and having kids is what abruptly de-prioritized their marriage and they lacked deep intimacy and connection. They were disconnected, frustrated, unhappy. Sounds like the typical marriage, sadly, in America, and they knew they weren’t modeling the marriage that they wanted for their girls. And so, well, now in 2017 they quit their 20-year careers, sold their dream home, began homeschooling their daughters and have dedicated their efforts to this mission, helping couples with kids everywhere create the most amazing and legendary relationships possible. And yeah, I’m excited to dive in with Lance and Brandy, introduce them to you, and dive into some of the content of the Miracle Morning for Couples.

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

Hal: So, Lance and Brandy Salazar, welcome to the podcast.

 

Brandy: Thanks for having us.

 

Lance: Thanks, Hal. That was great.

 

Brandy: And you didn’t tell me you were going to make me cry. So, next time.

 

Hal: I love when I can make someone cry in a positive…

 

Brandy: Right. In a positive and loving way. Thank you.

 

Hal: So, let’s start here. Just kind of start with your story. Four years ago, you guys were on the verge of divorce, and now you have one of the best marriages of anyone I know. So, I just would love to hear. Will you please share the story of how you went from where you were with that failing marriage to where you are now where you have a legendary relationship that our listeners model.

 

Brandy: Well, what’s interesting is I think you said it perfectly in the intro is that our relationship was very common. Where we sit right now and we have for a really long time is 50% of marriages end in divorce and then of those that stay married only 17% are actually happy and enjoying their marriage. So, it’s a really small percentage of people that get married and really enjoy being in this union. So, we were just like everybody else really. However, we had gotten to a place or I had gotten to a place where I have pretty high standards for a lot of my life or all of my life and our marriage just wasn’t up to par with some of the other things that we had going on. So, you know, the moment came where it was let’s call this relationship to the carpet and say if we’re going to do this, we’ve got to do it right and it has to be legendary. Life has to be legendary.

 

Hal: Real quick, I’m sorry to cut you off but talk about that where that the word legendary, that’s really what you’ve hung on to, that’s really how you define your relationship and what you aspire to and I know that originated, I believe, from a quote from Christopher Lochhead so I’d love for you to share that.

 

Brandy: Yeah. So, gosh, it was probably about a year, actually before we were separated that I went and spoke at a 1 Life conference and Chris was the keynote and I sat in the audience and listened to Chris speak and he said this line, “You either suck, don’t suck, or you’re legendary.” And I sat in the audience. I was like, “Man, I really don’t suck.” And he encouraged us to think about what life would look like if it was legendary. And so, of course, a lot of things came up. I left there and I quit my career. At the time, I left a partnership that I had been with for about 15 years and my life started to unfold in that moment, and legendary is living life on our terms, and living life in the best way that we possibly can. And so, although I had felt that in some areas, in our relationship, I definitely didn’t.

 

Lance: It was definitely a don’t suck to suck relationship. It always vacillated or cycled between suck and don’t suck.

 

Hal: On good days it didn’t suck, but on a lot of days, it sucked. Too many days it sucked.

 

Brandy: Right. Way too many days it sucked. So, on that whole pendulum or that scale of, “Okay. Wake up and read it from one to ten,” which I do regularly. It was always like, “Man, I can’t get my relationship above about four consistently. So, what are we doing? Like why are we doing this? And is this what we want to show our daughters?”

 

Lance: Yeah. You bring up a good point. And somebody asked us once when we considered separating, “Didn’t you think about staying together for the girls?” And we really said, “No, we’re actually getting separated for the girls.”

 

Hal: That makes sense.

 

Lance: We weren’t modeling the relationship we wanted for them down the road. We were better off not together, finding new partners that we could create legendary relationships with so that they could see that and strive and seek for that when they got older. When they were watching us either argue or just have this humdrum relationship, Brandy and I really focused on, “Is this what we want for them? Is this really what we want for them?” and the answer was no.

 

Brandy: Right. What’s interesting to the story, Hal, is that so that first year that I go, I meet Chris at 1 Life fast forward a year later, I meet you at 1 Life.

 

Hal: One of the greatest days of my life, Brandy.

 

Lance: Well, you know it.

 

Brandy: Right. And ours too honestly, I mean, very seriously. So, you and I get to know each other and you invite me to your first Best Year Ever Blueprint and my sisters do that same weekend and I can go. And so, I asked you, “Hey, what about sending my husband?” You’re like, “Absolutely. That’d be amazing.” You texted me like a coupon code and so I get home and I’ve got to convince my husband to go to this which Lance was not a personal growth go to events kind of guy.

 

Hal: Got it.

 

Brandy: And so, I go home and say, “Hey, this happened,” and at the time because we’re not in this great place, he’s like you went for it.

 

Lance: Yeah. We had already even though I haven’t moved out yet, we were at this point of what we called putting the marriage on the shelf where we essentially took all of the pressure off of intimacy and trying to “make each other happier” to try to grow our marriage and just working on ourselves. And I came to this conclusion that I needed to work on me because if I was going to leave Brandy or she was going to leave me, I needed to be a better person for the next relationship so I figured what I’m doing right now for myself isn’t working. And I watched Brandy even she was into personal growth and personal development stuff and I actually watched her with very jealous eyes in that. It was helping her business, it was helping her networking, and here I was really not happy with who I was as a person or in my career, any of that, so I thought, “Well, what the hell, I’m going to jump right in.” And actually, I went to your event, Hal. I knew nobody, not a single person. In fact, I remember the first day being there kind of standing like a wallflower with my head down in my phone kind of hoping nobody would come to me.

 

Brandy: That didn’t happen, by the way.

 

Lance: No. You guys organized it in a way that I have no other choice.

 

Hal: Oh yeah. We force engagement and interaction

 

Brandy: We did. Yeah. Absolutely. It’s like, “Man, well done.”

 

Lance: It changed my life. I mean, I came back home fired up and Brandy saw that in me.

 

Brandy: And he’s doing his Miracle Morning and he’s now got people in his life like I think about Julianna Raye and Nicole Keating and…

 

Lance: Jon Vroman.

 

Brandy: Jon Vroman.

 

Lance: All these people.

 

Brandy: Yeah. It’s all these people but he’s like comes home with and I’m like, “See, this is what happens.”

 

Hal: I’ve been telling you. Well, Lance, I remember you recorded a video testimonial at the event, right, which made it into the final cut of the promo for the event and it was my favorite video testimonial. It was so authentic, so from the heart, and I’ll paraphrase it off of memory here, but you said something along the lines of, “Come to this event. I’m not just leaving with a plan for my year that’s going to help my business. I’m leaving with that but I feel like I’m leaving here as a better husband and as a better father.” It was really deep and it was really meaningful and, yeah, so I remember that.

 

Brandy: And so, your event is in December, right?

 

Hal: Yes.

 

Brandy: Okay. So, that same December I hire Rock Thomas to coach me which was a big deal for me because I needed a very intense, masculine energy to kick my butt.

 

Hal: That’s Rock Thomas.  

 

Brandy: Right? I know. That’s exactly it. I was like, “As soon as we got off this phone call together about something else, if we get off this call,” and I was like, “That’s the guy.” I just knew. And so, as much as like we’re focusing on Lance and where he struggled in our relationship and struggled in his personal growth like I had so much DNA on the demise of our relationship and I was a very hard driving, very linear focused on external success person. So, I was really not only emasculating my husband but really making him feel less than on the regular.

 

Lance: I couldn’t win.

 

Brandy: He couldn’t win. Yeah. He couldn’t win for losing and it was like I was really hard to please. And so, not only was I hard to please but I was like off-putting and would put him down even energetically. And so, it was like I would come home from an event because it was something that I did very consistently. Regularly, I’d come home from an event, I’d be like, “Whoa, you need to this, this, this and this.” And then he doesn’t have that personality so he would just like shut down and be like, “Whoa, lady. Simmer down first off.”

 

Hal: I’d imagine that created like nothing I do is good enough for her vibe, right?

 

Lance: Well, that’s absolutely how I felt and when that happens in your marriage, it transcends a lot of other areas in your life. When you feel like you can’t win or that you can’t, you know, be yourself in a lot of ways in your marriage, it strips confidence in other areas of being a dad, a great dad. I lacked confidence in being a great dad and I started to lose confidence at work.

 

Hal: Nice planning.

 

Brandy: Yeah. And so, I went for this time, right? And I’m forever indebted to you, to Rock Thomas, to another dear friend of mine, Beverly Steiner because she was another one that kicked my butt. But, yeah, Rock really turned it around for me when it came to seeing my own personal DNA on the lack of masculine/feminine energy in our relationship and my lack of having gratitude and appreciation for what my husband was awesome at and for creating an ecosystem for him of support and encouragement for him to grow in this safe place we called our home. And I did the exact opposite with our entire relationship. And so, I started to shift myself right along with him and that’s really what got us to the point of and it was a coffee date that I had with my friend, Beverly, and she handed it to me as well and basically said, “You need to fix this.” I went home and said, “Not only are we not getting divorced but that Chris Lochhead thing, we’re going legendary here, honey. So, whatever we face, we’re doing it. We’re going all in on this marriage,” and if all the other things seemed to start to fall by the wayside then that’s okay but the marriage and our parenting, that’s going to be number one for a while and we did it in a very short period of time.

 

Lance: Yeah. So, we worked on ourselves and then suddenly decided we actually really liked each other.

 

Hal: Lance, how did that feel? By the way, I want to stop you.

 

Brandy: Yeah, go.

 

Hal: I would imagine that Brandy was the one kind of pushing for the divorce initially, right? Is that correct?

 

Brandy: Yeah, it is.

 

Hal: Okay. So, Lance, I just want to know from one human to another, how did that feel when she walked through the door and said, “Not only are we not getting a divorce. We’re going to make this marriage legendary?”

 

Lance: Well, it gave me life in a lot of ways to say but I’ve already gotten to a point where I wanted to kind of work on – I was working on myself and I had already kind of come to that conclusion of, you know, I detached from an expectation or unattached from an expectation.

 

Hal: Because you thought it was over. Yeah.

 

Lance: Well, no. Well, what it did is it allowed me to freely explore my own growth without having an attachment to how she was going to receive it, if that makes sense, but it gave me hope to say, “Well, then I can do this work and I can become who I was meant to be,” and that has the potential to draw Brandy back to me. And so, yeah, there was new hope that was breathed into the situation so that’s…

 

Brandy: Here’s what’s interesting, Hal, about that question. The Lance that hadn’t worked on himself and hadn’t felt confident would’ve had a lot more anxious excitement about me walking through that door than the man that I walked into the door and have that conversation with. Because he was more confident, he was more sure of himself, and so he was like, “Yeah. No, I’m in.” But it wasn’t this like which, I’ll be honest, was a point of contention and turnoff in our relationship for a long time was his kind of I don’t want to say over excitement but like almost inauthentic excitement that he would have in wanting things to work at a certain way, this expectation that he would have on things. And so, it was so real and so…

 

Lance: Speaking of place of confidence, I’m like, “Cool. Let’s do this thing.” Brandy and I set course to create that legendary relationship by recognizing some of the old patterns that we didn’t want to get ourselves back into. Remember when I said that things went from suck to don’t suck. Brandy and I were prior to, we’re constantly fixing things that were broken, “Well, this part of the relationship sucks. How are we going to fix that?” putting a Band-Aid on it and so we were constantly getting back to the starting line sort of that point zero where we weren’t moving forward. We just weren’t – it’s two steps forward, two steps back. I was getting back to the same place and we said, “Well, if this relationship needs to be legendary then what does that actually look like? How can we cast that vision out there to create rhythms, habits of plan, a vision, all of those things just like you would in a business or with your health?” We did that with our marriage and said, “We don’t want to get back in that same pattern, that same pattern of just plugging holes.” We want to create, we want to build, we want vision, we want to move forward.

 

Brandy: But you know what’s so interesting about that is that some of that just came from like John Maxwell stuff or just some of the other people that we had followed over the years, or Tony Robbins through Rock but it’s really an AI concept. And so, when we joined QLM and meet Berghoff it’s like, “Wait. This is exactly the approach that worked for us. Exactly.” It was instead of focus which I was wired to focus on what was broken and find solutions. That’s considered as a superpower for many years. Instead of saying past into the future, what would this look like, call it legendary, call it whatever, what would this look like if it were at its best? And that’s the difference in that first moment and what worked.

 

Lance: Yeah. Speaking to John Maxwell, we heard him say something recently that really summed up what we did for our marriage that started to work. We went through counseling before but counseling didn’t work for us. John Maxwell said, he said, “When you counsel people, we work on their weaknesses. When you equip people, you work on their strengths.” And the biggest thing that Brandy and I did was we focused on their strengths. Casting his vision was instead of looking at the weaknesses of the broken things, we said, “Okay. This is what we wanted to look like. What are you good at? What am I good at? Okay. Let’s combine those superpowers to move forward. We equip ourselves through our strengths to move forward.”

 

Brandy: Right. And equip ourselves to some basics like we figured out I love how Brian Johnson calls them the fundies where it’s like what are the fundamental things that we all need? And you said it in the intro and that’s a huge compliment is that we worked on our emotional intelligence and we worked on what our reactions were to certain situations. We worked on these things, some of these wounds and traumas that we have had whether big or small that was causing us to show up in a very immature way in our adult life. And so, not only equipping ourselves with the empowerment piece of our strength but also, okay, how can I show up better and work on some of those things and learn and dive in and grow?

 

Hal: So, in terms of how you got to legendary, I know that in the Miracle Morning for Couples book, you teach the four legendary relationship elements. It’s you, partners, friends, and lovers in that order. Can you explain each one of those and how they create that legendary relationship?

 

Brandy: Yes.

 

Lance: Well, yeah, it’s quite simple. I can just do it pretty quickly. You is that you need two happy, healthy, whole individuals who can stand on their own two feet to have a thriving relationship. No codependency. We’re talking about…

 

Brandy: High emotional intelligence.

 

Lance: Yeah. High emotional intelligence, working, growing, independently and individually, creating something awesome together.

 

Hal: And was that a big part of how the Miracle Morning impacted your relationship? You started doing it, right?

 

Lance: Yeah.

 

Brandy: Right. And I had started doing it prior. So, what 1 Life is really October and then your event’s in December and so I had started doing my own Miracle Morning just because you were coming as a speaker and whatever else. And then he starts after going to your event. And so, the Miracle Morning was and we say this in the book. It was really the introduction of the first thing that he and I did the same thing to move our relationship forward because I’ve been working on my things and as he starts working on himself, he’s going to CrossFit, doing all these other things that were working for him but it was the first thing that we both did that moved us forward, that we could start to have conversations about which were like little things like, “Hey, how did your meditation go this morning? Or what’s your affirmation right now?”

 

Hal: What book are you reading?

 

Brandy: What book are you reading? Yeah. Exactly. Like because we have the same system.

 

Lance: And actually, the structure of the book of the Miracle Morning for Couples on it’s why the You element is folded into like SAVERS and the sections, all on the first part that you write in there, that’s the you. That’s exactly what we did was all of those things you teach everybody in the Miracle Morning.

 

Hal: Got it. So, the first of the four legendary relationship elements is the You element which is simply that you’ve got to be developing yourself to be the most happy, healthy, confident, emotionally intelligent person that you can be and then if both partners are doing that and they come together, you have two really strong level 10 individuals that are creating that level 10 relationship.

 

Brandy: Right. Because I want to note something that what we’re working towards is legendary. We’re not trying to create a mediocre relationship. If you want to create a mediocre relationship, you’ve got one person trying to drag someone else through the mud or one person that’s trying to hold the other person back. You can have a relationship like that but that’s not the kind of relationship we’re talking about in this book.

 

Hal: Absolutely. What’s the next element, partners? How do you describe that?

 

Lance: Yeah. So, partners is that business side of your relationship. It’s the I call it the unromantic non-sexy part but it’s very vital because it’s where a lot of couples get stuck. It’s where a lot of marriages end is the battles that are happening in the partners element. It’s the finances. It’s the chores. It’s the who’s doing what.

 

Brandy: Taking care of the kids.

 

Lance: Who’s taking care of the kids? How are we parenting? So many couples get…

 

Brandy: I would parent this way. You would parent that way. How do we handle this situation?

 

Lance: There’s no shared vision in it. And so, the partners element is vital in order to get your crap together in those spaces. Not everybody’s the best handler of finances let’s say but transparency and talking about it and it’s uncomfortable but those things are important. Who is as simple as taking out the trash, who’s doing the dishes, how are we getting the kids to school, how are we parenting them? It’s all that business aspect of the relationship that the partners element is built on and that piece is so important because once those things, it’s like the calendar too, once those things are kind of in lockstep and firing in all cylinders, that’s when you free up the time, the energy, and the space to move into the more romantic and beautiful parts of the marriage.

 

Brandy: Right, which is the friendship and I think about the masculine and feminine energy. And a lot of times they say for women the time in the bedroom really starts in the morning. And so, as a woman, in order for me to feel that I can let go and really dive into being a friend with my husband, I have to know that the house is taken care of and the bills are paid and the kids are surviving. It’s like it’s innate, it’s in my animalistic nature that those things have to be taken care of because it’s survival. That partnership element is survival and if we don’t have our survival, our basic needs taken care of, it’s really hard to let go and be vulnerable enough to develop a deep friendship with someone else, especially the person that we’re having this reliance on for security and safety and childbearing. So, go ahead.

 

Hal: Yeah. When I used to do one-on-one coaching, and whenever we get asked about or if someone asked me about for my coaching on their relationship I said, “Look, I know this doesn’t sound romantic,” and they were usually, it usually wasn’t a marriage. It was off like, “Well, I’m dating this person. We’ve been together for a year. We’re not sure if we should break up or stay together,” and I go step back and assess them as a business partner, “You guys were starting a business together and the business was creating a life and a family, are you aligned? Are your values aligned? Are you on the same page? Because it’s the most important business you’ll ever create in your life.”

 

Brandy: It is.

 

Hal: And I said it takes the romance out of it but like that’s how you have to think of it is would you go into business with this person or are they just hot?

 

Brandy: Yeah, exactly.

 

Hal: That’s why we get together with them is like they’re hot and they’re charismatic and we’re attracted to them. If you have a business partner that’s hot and charismatic and attractive, but you’re not aligned on everything, that’s going to be a disaster and that fail a lot of marriages.

 

Brandy: Yeah. Or they don’t pull their weight. That’s the other thing. There has to be some balance in this partnership element. We’re all raised very differently, we all see things very differently, but we have to kind of have a bit of a give-and-take in creating a shared vision for these different elements in order to move the relationship forward or we’re constantly back trying to fight for what we individually believe is the best.

 

Hal: Yeah. Absolutely. Let’s get into the third legendary relationship element, which is friends.

 

Lance: Yeah. So, once those things are all kind of buttoned up and like Brandy described, things feel taken care of, that’s when the friendship starts to blossom and develop. It’s like, “Wow. We like each other. We enjoy being around each other.” It is just that. It’s being friends. It’s sharing secrets. It’s learning about each other. It’s knowing…

 

Brandy: Having fun.

 

Lance: Having fun together, creating joy, sharing gratitude and appreciation like you would’ve like at really close friends.

 

Brandy: Right. When we coach on this, a lot of times I use the example of think about when you were a little kid and you meet this new friend, what do you want to do? You want to hang out with each other all the time. You want to go and play together. You want to learn about them. What’s your favorite color? What do you like to do? What happens? How many siblings do you have? And so, we get to this place a lot of is why legendary marriage couples with kids is that at this kid point we get so wrapped up in the hamster wheel of doing this life that we forget that there’s no way that we’ve learned everything about our partner. And the more we learn about them and the more we get to know the essence of their soul and what they’ve been through and their trials and tribulations, the deeper our relationship gets. The more that we which takes us to the next element, the more vulnerable and excited and free we are in our intimacy level which is our lovers.

 

Lance: Right. When that friendship is like rock-solid where you are trusting of each other and feeling that closeness of like that close friends feel but now in an intimate married relationship, that’s when you can cultivate that lovers element where like the things that we only know about each other, it’s almost telepathic in a weird way. Brandy knows what I’m thinking half the time. She can look at me and say, “Okay. What’s bugging you?” That’s that deep intimacy level. It’s having that, like she said, even vulnerability to talk about things in the bedroom. It’s that piece of it and you can’t experience that deep, deep intimacy until you have all those other foundational elements built.

 

Brandy: Right. Because if I’m worrying about if the trash got taken out, I’m not vulnerable in those situations. If he’s worried about how are we going to pay the bills because that’s a very masculine thing, he does not feel free in the evening to really be engaged in that experience. I mean, it could be in the morning too but whatever the time is.

 

Hal: That’s the real Miracle Morning.

 

Lance: Yes.

 

Hal: People are going to think, “Is that what the Miracle Morning for Couples is all about is just sex?”

 

Brandy: Well, T for team is touch.

 

Hal: There you go. There you go.

 

Lance: Yeah. It means a lot of different things.

 

Hal: And I told you guys this recently. You interviewed Ursula and I for Legendary Couples with Kids and I told you that it was literally a few months ago. Ursula and I have been together for 14 years I think and married for nine or 10 of those. So, yeah, I have to ask her. But anyway, it was just a few months ago. We were at dinner. I was actually getting my cancer screening bone marrow biopsy and it was the night before we go out to dinner and she was talking and I think I had a beer so I had probably a little buzz which might’ve added to sometimes when I have a little tiny buzz from a beer, I get a little extra insightful but I’m sitting at dinner and I’m looking at her and she’s talking and like it was almost like a scene in a movie where it was like this filter was over her and it was like she was magical and like it was like everything she was saying was accentuated and her smile was like brighter and I just had this realization, this breakthrough, this perspective. I think this is so important for all couples and I went, “Wait. She is my best friend.”

 

And here’s what I mean by that. And you know if you think about it, when we meet our significant other, typically, we’ve already got a bunch friends who we have history with. And so, that kind of create separation like I’ve got my friends over here. I’ve known these people for years. We go deep, we’ve shared all sorts of experiences. Now, I have this new person that I’m dating that I really like and for me, I realized that after 14 years, I had shared more experiences with Ursula and more meaning. We birth and raised our first child together and we did that with our second child. We bought our first house together. We overcame the financial collapse of 2008. She supported me in writing The Miracle Morning, she supported me in my cancer journey, like we have been through, experienced, shared and overcome more than I have with anyone else in my life but I realized, mentally, I was still stuck as most of us are in our old paradigm.

 

Brandy: So good.

 

Lance: And in that moment I went, “Wait a minute. She’s my best friend,” and I’ll tell you that the lover component, that night was the best it had ever been because of what you just said, our intimacy like just by shifting that and ever since then, the last few months have been the best of our marriage, and it’s like we really are best friends now and we like talk like best friends and we didn’t have that before. And so, I think that for people listening, if you are in a relationship, step back and maybe even pull out your journal and write down why this person is your best friend. I think it’s important. It’s a conscious decision. It’s like anything. We choose our friends, we choose who our best friends are or our best friend. We have to consciously choose it, maybe use affirmations to cultivate it but, yeah, that for me the identifying my significant other, my wife as my best friend and then keeping that lens on all day, every day has been an absolute game changer for us.

 

Brandy: I love that you shared that because it’s so true and it’s so important. You said something that was said to me at that coffee that I had with my friend, Beverly, and she essentially asked me, you know, I want you to look at what you’re throwing away because Lance and I had been together about that time most of 13 years and she said that exact same thing. She said, “I want you to think about everything you guys have been through, all of the things that you’ve already done. And so, is that something that you’re willing to throw away because you don’t want to do the hard work?” I was like, “No, no, no, I’m not willing to throw it away because he’s a wonderful person. We had just disconnected. I had just gotten to a place where I was no longer willing to put the work in to be vulnerable and do the hard work and vice versa.”

 

Hal: Yeah. That makes sense and it’s so true. I want to cover before we wrap up our interview, I want to dive into the acronym that the two of you created, which essentially is kind of the foundation of the Miracle Morning for Couples. I’m doing the air quotes “For Couples”. SAVERS are still the foundation of the Miracle Morning but the foundation of Miracle Morning for Couples is this acronym TEAM, and that’s T for touch, E for education, A for appreciation, and the M is for meeting. Can you explain? There’s a chapter in the book dedicated to each of those. I mean, so you really go in depth, but can you tell us, A, how did you create that acronym? How did you create the Miracle Morning for Couples and take it from this individual practice to this practice that you guys actually engage in together? And then walk us through that TEAM acronym.

 

Lance: Yeah. I mean, I’ll try to distill it pretty quickly. Because the Miracle Morning was so pivotal, it was so altering and transformational for our relationship, we wanted more time together before our daughters got up and we started doing some of the SAVERS together and we noticed when we would just do some of the SAVERS together, we would like hold hands or just touch and ease.

 

Brandy: Right. Or meditating.

 

Lance: Meditating together and then we just enjoyed talking and half the time it was like, “Well, guess what I learned?” and then we were just sharing with each other things we were developing or reading like because reading is part of the SAVERS that we were oftentimes reading different things and we would just get together and talk about the things we were reading along with doing the SAVERS together.

 

Brandy: But then we also sort of to add things like we would check in with each other. Okay. So, what’s the day to day – well, yeah, how was yesterday? How did we do? So, it started so what we would do is we would just start writing these things down and say, “Okay. Well, let’s add that to our morning. We’ve been doing that for a few days. That really worked.” It’s like checking in with each other which is meeting. And just the simple act of touch which is one of the things we really lacked in our relationship when it was bad is just physical touch and intimacy.

 

Lance: She touched my knee when she was saying that.

 

Brandy: I did.

 

Hal: Lucky.

 

Brandy: So, yeah, so we started to add things too.

 

Hal: I touched my own knee.

 

Lance: Yeah. And we remember that a real great rhythm that we had together when we were rebuilding our relationship was gratitude, sharing that appreciation for each other.

 

Brandy: We did that every single night.

 

Lance: Every single night and we started doing in the morning. This is how I loved how you showed up as a wife. It’s how they are. And then sometimes it was just other things like I really appreciate how you handle this type of stuff for girls. And so, as we just started to bring then we started to say, “Togetherness and separateness. Separateness and togetherness are a big foundation of a healthy relationship,” and we kind of wanted to go back and do our own SAVERS individually, but we still wanted that time to come together and do things. And we noticed when we did that, we were touching each other, we were talking about the things we were reading. We were still doing that gratitude and we were then checking in going, “How are we doing as a couple? Well, what’s coming up today? What’s the schedule? Or how does the calendar look? How are the kids doing?” And we’re like, “Oh, wait a second. That’s touch, education, appreciation, and more meeting. It’s TEAM and that’s what we’re building. We’re building a team together.

 

Brandy: Right.

 

Hal: Awesome.

 

Brandy: So, that’s it, Hal.

 

Lance: That’s it.

 

Hal: That’s it. So, go ahead.

 

Brandy: Oh, that’s it.

 

Hal: All right. So, the book is The Miracle Morning For Couples: Create Legendary Connection One Morning At A Time. It’s available February 14, 2019, Valentine’s Day, very fitting, on Amazon. And Brandy and Lance, where is the best place to connect with you two crazy lovebirds?

 

Brandy: LegendaryCouples.com.

 

Lance: Yup.

 

Hal: LegendaryCouples.com. Everybody, check it. And if people go there, can they download a freebie or listen?

 

Brandy: Yes. Oh, absolutely. So, our relationship planning guide which essentially walks you through the four relationship elements and how to cast your vision, create a shared vision, and take actionable steps to reach your vision.

 

Lance: Find strengths in each other and make commitments to move that vision forward.

 

Brandy: Yes, exactly. That’s free on our website.

 

Hal: That’s LegendaryCouples.com?

 

Brandy: Yup.

 

Hal: Okay.

 

Brandy: Yeah. And then you can follow us on Instagram. That’s where we’re most active.

 

Lance: Yeah. The @legendary.couples of Instagram or follow Brandy @mrsbrandysalazar because she has one amazing Instagram account.

 

Hal: Mrsbrandysalazar at Instagram. And Lance and Brandy, I know everybody listening can’t see them but they are really a beautiful couple so if that means anything. So, yeah, Instagram would be a good place to follow for sure. Well, Brandy and Lance, I love you guys. It’s been an honor to co-author this book with you, to be friends with you, to have you love and support our family and my wife and receive our love and support. So, I love you guys.

 

Brandy: We love you too, Hal.

 

Lance: We love you too, Hal. Thank you.

 

Brandy: Thank you. Give Ursula our love and the kids.  

 

[CLOSING]

 

Hal: I absolutely will. Goal achievers, I am going to wrap up with one more lesson and I think Brandy, Lance will be forced to just sit here and listen to it. The biggest lesson that I learned, the biggest breakthrough that I had in my relationship and I do talk about this in the book, but it was the decision, the realization that I was living a reciprocity-based relationship. I think for most of us, that’s how we engage in life. It’s how we engage in our relationships with all people, and what I mean by that is we tend to reciprocate the same energy, the same mood, the same tone, even the same actions that people give to us. So, if somebody’s rude to you on the freeway so even with a stranger, you tend to feel those feelings and treat that person similarly. They call that road rage. In our marriage, in our relationships, we tend to reciprocate. If our significant other is sweet and loving and affectionate then we feel that way toward them. If they’re rude or they’re in a bad mood, we tend to reciprocate that toward them, right back. And I realized that about myself and I thought, you know what, my commitment, my new commitment, my mission, and my marriage is to selflessly add value for Ursula, for my wife, regardless of her mood, how she treats me, what she does or doesn’t do.

 

My commitment, my unwavering commitment is to every day selflessly add value to her life in every way that I can, to make her life amazing. And I put that an affirmation. I read it every day and now I do so many things. Well, every day I wake up and I go, “What can I do to add value to our life?” And it used to be where she woke the kids up, she put them to bed, because I was doing my Miracle Morning and I was in bed early. You know, she would make dinner, she’d do the dishes like she was super wife, supermom. And now I wake the kids up and I put the kids to bed and when dinner is done, I do the dishes and I put the food away. And these are little things, but the ideas that every day I ask myself what can I do today to selflessly add value to the life of my wife? And regardless again of her mood, how she treats me. In fact, I went as far in my affirmation as to say if she’s having an attitude or has a bad day, we all have bad days, I’m not going to take that personally and I’m not going to reciprocate that. I’m going to work harder to add more value to her life because obviously, she’s having a tough day and she needs it. And that has made all the difference in the world.

 

So, I encourage you to just consider that and kind of reflect on that and you pull out your journal and consider do you have a reciprocity-based relationship or do you go first every day, add value. When your partner is having a bad day, a bad mood, treating you poorly, do you reciprocate that negative energy or do you rise above it and love them even harder? I encourage you to consider doing the latter. So, one more time, the new book is The Miracle Morning for Couples: Create Legendary Connection One Morning At A Time. It’s available on Amazon. It should be an audiobook, paperback, Kindle. You should have some options there. And if you want to connect with Brandy and Lance, which after that interview, how could you not want to connect with Brandy and Lance, go to LegendaryCouples.com. Goal achievers, I love you, I appreciate you, and with this new book together we’re going to elevate the consciousness of humanity, not one person at a time, but one couple at a time. We’re taking it to another level. I love you, I appreciate you, and I will talk to you next week. Take care.

[END]