Hello everyone and welcome. I am so delighted to be talking to a very special guest today. Simone Seol is both my client and a brilliant coach. She specializes in teaching life coaches, had a market on social media by putting truth and love first. She has degrees from Wellesley college and Columbia university and is applying her Ivy league brain power to creating a revolution in how coaches market online. Now I just love Simone’s vision of how to use social media and I want all of you to learn it whether you are a coach or not. I want to invite you into her vision today. Even if you’re not a coach, you’re just a person online. I find it so refreshing to think about social media the way that Simone does. She believes social media is a place for us to go and find our common humanity and it’s a place where we bring the vision of the world we want to create and we lead first on our pages and our groups wherever we are online and I love that so, so much. So recently as part of her teaching in her Facebook group, which is called Fearless Marketing For Life Coaches, I will link to that in the show notes, so if you are a life coach, absolutely join and if you’re not a life coach, sorry just listen to this episode, pay close attention. In her group she shared a post about how to argue on social media in a more constructive and powerful way. And it was based on what she and I had been talking about in our coaching. And I asked her if we could unwrap that post here together and just go step by step through what she learned, why she feels it’s important and how she’s applying these principles in her life and her marriage and online. And Simone said yes. So before we dive in, welcome Simone. Hello. So happy to be here.
Yay. Yay. Yay. So here’s what we’re going to do. I like to lay out what we’re going to talk about. It’s kind of funny. I used to be in HR and I used to do trainings all the time. And our joke when we did trainings was tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them and then tell them again what you just told them. So that was ingrained to me in my HR life and I do it on the podcast now. So I like to say what we’re going to talk about. Just go over the points and then we’ll go step by step through each principal. So that’s the plan. Okay, lovely. Okay, beautiful. So here’s a little snippet of what Simone posted in her group. I’m just going to read you the intro so you all can transport yourselves into Simone’s beautiful brains.
So she said, Hey, do you ever get mad at people online? Yeah, me too. So, let me tell you a story. I’ve been working with marriage coach Maggie Reyes, Hey, that’s me! And one of the things she taught me is how to fight with my husband. Trust me, this is related. Fights happen from time to time. You put two stubborn, strong willed people together and it’s pretty much a guarantee, but they don’t have to ruin your relationship. Let me repeat that for those in the back, arguments do not have to ruin your relationship. So Simone says, actually I learned that fights when done well can bring you closer together. And my editors notice, yay. That’s the point. So as someone was saying in her post, depending on how I show up, fights can be resolved quickly with both of us laughing and loving each other even more.
So here is the part that just made my heart sing and I wanted to share it with every single listener of the podcast. She said, here are the secrets of how I fight well with my husband. And there’s five points. I’m going to read them first. And then like I said, we’re going to talk about each one. So the first one is remembering that he’s allowed to feel upset and it’s okay and that he’s allowed to feel however he feels. The second one is remembering that he might be upset because his brain is giving him some upsetting thoughts and it’s really not about her. The third one is remembering that she loves him and she’s on his side no matter what. No matter what he’s thinking and feeling in that moment. The fourth one is allowing herself to feel upset or angry and having compassion for her own feelings without trying to change them right away.
And the fifth one is asking herself over and over again what is the more loving thing to do. And one thing I want to do is we’re going to talk about this in the context of your relationship with your husband, but then let’s also talk about the point you were making about using these same principles on social media. Because basically almost every person who listens to this podcast is also on some form of social media. And I think it’s so, so useful as we think that just about husbands and partners, but also about family and cousins and friends and those moments. And we can use these principles on social. So we’ll do that at the end to. Absolutely. So the first principle you shared was remembering that he’s allowed to feel upset and it’s okay and he’s really allowed to feel anything he wants. And you said you trying to change his feelings. Just so you can feel better, would be tantamount to manipulation. And can I just say how much I love a woman who uses tantamount in a sentence?
Yeah. Something that when I first learned it from you, it kind of blew my mind because it’s so, I think we think it’s normal that if someone is around you and they’re not happy, you have to go fix it. Especially if you’re like, I caused it so therefore you’re thinking I caused it. They’re upset because of me and I have to go change how they feel. Yes. And we think that it’s for them. Like I want them to feel better so they can feel better. But really it’s so that I can feel better cause I don’t want to be around somebody who’s upset. Yes.
Right. And it was really kind of disorienting, but in the best way. When I first experienced, for example, my husband being really upset and, my instinct is like, okay, what do I do? I have to say something. Should I go like make him a cup of tea? Should I go say this? Should I give him a hug? Should I tell him like we should talk? Like should I do this? Wait, hold on a second. Can he just be upset without you having to fix it? And that was a magical moment when I realized, okay, he can be upset and I can love him while he’s being upset. He doesn’t have to be happy for me to be happy to be around him.
That’s so powerful. And that was hard for me to learn too. I am a total fixer. I am that person. That’s why we’re coaches, right? I’m like, but let’s fix it. Right. And I remember before I was a coach I was just a human on earth and the husband is having a situation at work and he was telling me about it and I was like brainstorming all these ideas. Right? And he turned to me, I still remember to this day, we’re in the car on a road trip and he said, I don’t even need you to do anything. I just need you to listen.
And when I think about that feels so good for the person who is being listened to because I mean I bet everybody has experiences like this. When you are upset, when you’re having all the feelings and the other person, whoever’s around you doesn’t need you to feel better for them to just keep feeling loving towards like, yeah, you can be upset. I still love you. Yes. Or you can even be mad at me. I still love you. Yes. Yes. It’s so rare. It’s not really modeled in our culture. It’s not really taught. Right. Cause when we’re growing up we’re always told, Oh you made your brother’s sad. Now you have to go like apologize to him and fix it. And I think we just have to stop and remember how that’s actually kind of selfish a lot of the time. Yes. Like we are all entitled to feel how we want. Like we can be upset, we can be mad. It’s okay.
This is why we’re talking today because these are the types of things that I don’t think people are talking about enough. The people who know about it might sort of unconsciously do it or feel better, but they don’t actually know why and how and so many people listening to this episode is going to be like, I never thought about it that way. What do you mean it’s selfish? So let me ask you, cause I can just imagine, I know my listeners, they’re thinking, what do you mean it’s selfish? So could you say a little bit more about that Simone?
It’s thinking about, for me, if I got really honest with myself. Okay. Dear listener, think about how you feel when someone is upset around you. Right? Like let’s say your husband is having a bad day, he’s mad, he’s whatever upset about and he’s around you. And think of that. Check in with yourself about how you feel. Cause I always felt so uncomfortable. Like, something is wrong or like I did something wrong and I, my emotions were negative and I was believing that how he was feeling was causing me to feel negative. And so for me to feel good, he has to feel good first. Right. Emotional, hostage situation. We become emotional hostages of each other, we totally do when we stay in that mindset. Yeah.
Yeah. So once you see that, oh, I am having, I am feeling bad and I’m making the his mood, the reason that I’m feeling bad, then that in itself is like an awakening and then you can decide if I can choose to feel how I want to feel, I can choose what kind of energy I want to be in, regardless of what he’s feeling. What would that be? How do I want to feel right now? When I asked myself that question in that situation, my answer was I wanted to feel loving. Yes. I could just feel loving by remembering, Oh, he’s a human being. He has feelings and he doesn’t need to feel any certain way for me to feel loving, I can just have loving thoughts about him and just feel love. And that’s it.
Yeah. That’s the key. It sounds so simple, but in practice to feel loving when your natural inclination isn’t to feel loving, right? That is a mastery of emotional wellness, mastery of emotional power. It’s so important. So let’s talk about, we kind of talked about it a little bit, but your second point, which is remembering that he’s upset because his brain is giving him some upsetting thoughts. And it’s not necessarily even about you, even when it is about you. It could be that he has upsetting thoughts about you or about the kitchen or about whatever’s happening at that moment at home when you remember that he’s just having some upsetting thoughts and you don’t make it mean anything about you. And we talk about, in Episode Two The Power Questions, I really went into depth about what am I making this mean? So listeners, if that’s, if this is the first episode you’ve ever heard, go back and listen to episode two. I thank you for being here. So when you remember that he’s upset just because he’s having these thoughts, what does that do for your, of his upsetness?
I think it’s, it makes me feel so much more compassionate and curious about his experience instead of like my knee jerk reaction might be, he shouldn’t be mad at me. Like he should be more understanding. It’s all these like shoulds, right. But when I remember that maybe this gets a little bit technical and coachy, so you tell me. But like I said before, we only ever feel emotions in response to the thoughts that we have in response to the sentences that our brains create. And then we respond by having an emotion. So when I am upset with my husband, it’s because I am believing the sentences in my brain about my husband. He doesn’t care about me or he shouldn’t have done that or whatever. And when he thinks that about me, it’s like, Oh, it must be because his brain is creating sentences that may come very upset right now. And it gets me, more than anything, it gets me curious about what those thoughts might be and then, having understanding for him as a human being who was just having a human reaction to those sentences as opposed to making those sentences be really like, take it really personally and try to fix those sentences.
Exactly. 100% so we just recently did a podcast episode on what not to do when you’re overwhelmed. And one of the not to do’s is do not believe your limiting thoughts. Do not believe the sentences in your brain when they’re not helping you.
Do we want to go into an entire rabbit hole of like, analyzing them. Yes, we believe them. We analyze that. Then we act on them when really the first thing is, wait a minute, hold on. What’s even happening here? Is that even true, and I see this a lot where someone will come to me and say, well, he doesn’t love me or he doesn’t act as if he loves me. And then this is a thought that they really believe and they’re walking around every day as if it’s true. And then I sent them on a hunting expedition. I’m like, okay, this week let’s just check in with all the different things that he’s doing that may be showing that he actually cares. Like he shows up every day. He brings you coffee in the morning. He does, you know, he takes care of the kids so you could have a bath. Like when we start hunting for all the evidence that he actually does care, I’ve never done that exercise where we haven’t found that evidence. It hasn’t happened yet.
Cause your brain will go, go look for evidence that whatever you, whatever sentence is happening in your brain is true. Exactly. Exactly. And so we have so much more evidence. Oh he actually does care, but we’re pretending like that’s not even real. Right.
I also want to share with your listeners something that think about that puts me in such a place of compassion for him rather than trying to fix it. So let’s say he says like he thinks and he lets me know cause he says it. Let’s say hypothetically, he says, I don’t feel like you understand me. Okay. You don’t understand me. Let’s say he said that. Okay. So I intentionally have the thought like, Oh what a painful thing to believe. Yes. Because think about it. Imagine like you married somebody cause they are like the love of your life and you think that that level of your life doesn’t understand you. Like once you’re believing that thought it is such a painful place to be. And I remind myself like that is a very painful place to be. And because otherwise if I’m not reminding myself of that, what I want to do is like, no, but I do understand you. Or like, well I don’t understand it cause you don’t understand me. And as opposed to like, Oh he’s having a reaction to that thought. And of course he’s upset about it. That’s a painful thought to think. So like separating yourself and him from his thoughts.
So powerful. Thank you for sharing. That’s, that’s exactly why we’re having this conversation right now. Thank you. So your third point was, and this is really the illustration that you just shared with your third point, is remembering that I love him and I’m on his side no matter what he thinks or feels at this moment. So even if you think something that feels almost quote unquote attacking, or it feels uncomfortable for you to receive the thought he’s thinking, you stay in the remembrance that you actually are on his side. Tell everyone exactly what you do to do that. Okay. First of all, this is challenging. Yeah. We want to say it’s hard and it’s okay that it’s hard. It’s worth it. Right.
Really hard and it’s really worth it. Yeah. Cause I am here as somebody who learned how to do this for the first time at like age 33 and it’s completely disorienting. Because when there is some kind of argument conflict happening, it happens in like 0.1 second. We just snap into believing that we are adversaries. Right. Or you are against me. And like how could you not be against me? You were thinking all these things about me that I don’t agree with and you did this and that. But then one of the most important things like that changed my marriage. I changed my life in so many ways. I learned from Maggie is what if you just assumed you’re on the same team? So I don’t know if you’ve talked about this on your podcast yet, but there’s that really genius analogy of like I think working as a team versus an Alliance.
Oh yes, you can say, I’ll do a whole episode on it so everyone stay tuned for that. But absolutely share your experience of practicing that.
Okay, so the way I understand it, the way I understand how Maggie taught it is, for example, if you have like an Alliance of nations, right? We’re working together in common interest as far as it benefits, it’s each party, but it’s really each country for himself or herself, whatever. So like I live in South Korea, South Korea is an Alliance with the United States, but we’re really in the Alliance for our own benefit and we don’t care about the United States and vice versa. Right. You care about what you get out of it as long as what you get out of it is what you wanted. You stay in that Alliance. Exactly. Whereas if you are the, I don’t know if you’re the on the English national football team and you are trying to beat Germany, there’s like different people in the team, but you’re all working for the common goal of beating Germany.
Yes. Right. So even if you have different rules, your end goal is the same. So you constantly are like, okay, if we’re trying to accomplish a common aim together, what’s our next step? So that way of thinking about it was like revolutionary to me. And I always ask myself, am I acting like unknown Alliance or, am I acting like I’m in a team? And so when I remember that, Oh, we’re a husband and wife routine, I’m on his side. What is our common goal? I like literally ask myself these questions. What is our common goal? Our common goal is to have like happy home life together and to create this life together as a couple to be a happy family. Oh, so we are both working towards that goal. All right, so then, then what? Yes, because then I went from I need to win in this fight and overpower him and be right to like what is my role in creating like a happy family life? Like what’s my next step towards that goal? And my brain is like, I don’t like that question. I’d rather wait right now. I want to win and be right.
And it takes discipline, it takes commitment, it takes up this calm focus on the bigger picture of what you want for your life instead of just indulging in that quick hit of, Oh, I could be right, but what is the effect of that on my relationship over time? Part of the discipline is recognizing when you are being a victim and deciding to step out of that. Yeah, right. Like, like you are when you believe that you’re under attack and you have to fight and you have to win and be right, right? Like imagine like two animals fighting in the wild, right? Um, and if you don’t, if you don’t eat, kill the other like animal, you are the one that gets killed. So you’re either like perpetrator or the victim, right. And this dynamic and displaying like, Oh that’s what’s happening and that’s prob ably not useful. So I’m going to get out of like this dynamic and I’m going to think about the whole, like you said, and what am I ultimately trying to do here? It takes so much maturity and I don’t, honestly, I don’t think I haven’t nailed yet, but it’s, I’ve worked really hard at it and I do get better and it’s the greatest feeling in the world. Like I feel so much more like mature.
I love that you said, I don’t think I haven’t nailed yet cause I don’t think any of us do, right? Like I teach these things and I always share snippets of things that happen both on the podcast and with my clients. Like the idea is that we’re more and more towards this way of living more often, like more time. We spend more time on what’s more important for us as a team on how will we get through this together. How can they be more loving? Imagine if you spent 80% of your time or 70% of your time or if right now you’re starting at zero, imagine if you just have 50% of your time or 20% of your time in that direction, you would still make so much progress. Yeah, yeah, totally. So when we talk about things I think is important to include, like it’s messy and it’s imperfect and we can talk about this today and you know, have a flub up tomorrow. It doesn’t matter what matters is it’s like we’re playing the long game here.
Totally. Yeah. I think it’s so important. What Maggie just said, if you are thinking in this like generous, you know, big, big minded, magnanimous, sort of like what are we doing as a team? Like that is so challenging and it’s worth it because it’s challenging. And if right now you’re doing that like zero, it’s such a huge accomplishment to get to like 15%. Yes, exactly. To really celebrate that and not make it mean I, Oh these coaches, you know, they must do it perfectly. We don’t and we don’t need to do it perfectly.
Yeah, 100% I love that. And this is the perfect segue to the next point, which is allowing yourself to feel angry or upset or disappointed or whatever feeling comes up for you while having compassion for your own feelings without running to change those either like trying to fix, Oh, I feel disappointed. I should never feel disappointed. Well, what if it’s okay if we feel disappointed sometimes and that’s just fine.
Totally. So when I recently had an experience where I was very upset, my husband, doesn’t happen often, but it happened and my brain like created all of these really dramatic sentences. Like you married the wrong person, you made a terrible mistake. Like there’s all these things and in that moment it’s really scary. And what makes all the difference is the same thing that I said I do for my husband, which is remembering, Oh he’s just reacting to some sentences in his brain and in this moment I am reacting to some sentences in my brain and that is a totally normal human thought, maybe I married the wrong person. Like it doesn’t mean I actually did. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with my relationship or me. It’s just a thought that happens when we feel we’re having like what Maggie would call a stress cycle. Yes. And I just get to be really upset about that. And I think this is a part that just in coaching in general, a lot of people try to skip over is that they want to skip right over to where they reframe it. Yeah. And they like try to be grateful and you know, they feel better about it immediately, but, it just doesn’t happen like that. Sometimes you just let yourself be upset and as long as the more you not make it mean something. Yes. The faster it kind of like you process through it and it dissipates. Exactly. And here’s the thing about just feeling a feeling to completion. I like to compare them to waves in the ocean. The wave comes and it goes and you just stand in it and let it flow through you as opposed to try and imagine being in the ocean and trying to push against a wave. It just feels like the ocean is coming at you even more strongly. But when you just relax into the ebb and the flow, it just comes and it goes and its own time and its own moment. And for us to allow ourselves to do that. Sometimes it’s challenging to just stand still sometimes.
I think the reason that it’s often most challenging for me is that when I’m in the middle of like a huge scary wave of, you know, emotion, uncomfortable emotion, I don’t fully trust that it’s going to be over soon. Right. If I just let myself give in. Yeah, right. Cause I think if I were to trust that, Oh this is a normal thing, it just, it dissipates. I can let myself experience this then you know, everything’s so much easier. But in that moment I have this fear of, It’s almost almost unconscious, I have this fear of this is the final reality of things. It’s going to be like this forever. Yes. And that’s what makes me resist it even more and makes it last even longer. It makes it very sticky when it doesn’t need to be.
I love that you added that distinction because we are afraid that it will overpower us and then we will become disappointment or anger or resentment or whatever feeling and what happens is in our zeal to not become it, we magnify it. We have a fight and we get the thing we don’t want, which is we become more and more often associated with that emotion. Totally. Yeah.
You can have a whole range of uncomfortable emotions as a human being, a rage and disgust and resentment and all of these horrible things that we think we don’t want to feel, but listen, everybody listening is human. They are just like part of the menu of emotions that we all feel. Yes. It doesn’t mean anything bad about you. Yes. Okay. Yes, and we can take loving action in spite of a negative emotion so we can feel disappointed by something that happened in the morning and come home at night and say, I want to be loving tonight. I’m purpose, which is point that we’re going to talk about, which is you remind yourself over and over again what is the more loving thing to do? And also really hard.
Tell us about that. Tell us about your that. So I asked myself this, this question a lot when I’m arguing with my husband, which again, it doesn’t happen a lot. Thanks to Maggie’s coaching. But sometimes it happens cause you’re like, we’re two very strong willed people. But, when every time I ask myself this question, the answer is almost always what I don’t want to do. Cause what I do want to do I get to win. Yes, it’s so fun. It’s so fun. I get to feel righteous. But then, what’s the more loving thing to do? It’s like, okay, maybe the loving thing to do is just leave him alone for a while. And I’m like, but I don’t want to do that. I want to fix you. The loving thing to do is that maybe admit that he didn’t do this to you and maybe your thinking was in there somewhere too. And it’s not all his fault and my brain is like, but it is all his fault. Right? Our brains are so much fun and I just hear Maggie’s what we said in my head. And I don’t know if it’s exactly what she said, but this is how I hear it. My head is like what would wisdom do? Like what would love do? Yeah. The love never wants to do exactly what I want.
But the thing, the wonderful thing is that you can always hear it. Yes. Open yourself up to hear it. Even if it’s not what you like to hear. You’re accessing that inner wise self that all of us have that we should have shut down when we want to be. Right. And when we say wait, what would wisdom do? What would love do? We’re asking that why is part of ourselves and then that part of ourselves always answers. Totally. And the thing it gets so tricky because when we are listening to the sort of fear based like the egoic part of our minds, we can talk ourselves into anything. We can justify anything that we want to do right. Cause like when you are angry and you feel justified, you feel like a victim and you feel defensive, you can do all, you can say all sorts of really cruel things.
Yeah, right. You could do things that would be like the intention to harm the other person even if you love them because it’s like, well screw you. You know, anger can make us do lots of things and it’ll feel so justified, like you wouldn’t have done the same thing going to be circumstances. Right. You cut through all of the twisted logic of that fear based part of the mind. When you ask would love do this, does this sound like a good idea? Yes. You were to ask love and it’s like probably don’t want to say that thing.
Right. Exactly. Exactly. I have to ask you this question. As you were talking, I was thinking about all the listeners, all the different questions that will pop up for them and here’s one that I hear often and I’d love to know your take on it. Obviously you want your marriage to thrive. That’s why we work together. That’s why you like not only learn these principles but made your own version and are sharing it with the world, which is amazing. Right. What would you say to the person that says, why should I work harder? Like he should do all the things. Why should I be the one who thinks about these things and implements these things? It’s like I should just send him this podcast, listen to as opposed to me doing it. What would you say to that person?
That’s so interesting. Cause as you were saying the question, my mind was like, I still think that a lot. That’s why I asked. It’s easy for me to say, as a marriage coach, listen, it’s just so much better for you if you just take emotional leadership, but for your experience, tell us what you think about it.
Okay. So you know, I’m not gonna lie. I often have thoughts like my husband needs coaching. I haven’t thought a lot. And really, at first it doesn’t feel fair, but I think that somebody has to decide to invite more love into the situation. Yes. As, Maggie says, to pour more love on it. Yes. Somebody has to be the leader of love. Yes. And if I am saying, well he should be the one to change. He needs to dah, dah, dah, dah. He should get coaching in that moment. I’m being like justified, I’m being self righteous, I’m not being the one bringing the love. Right. And learning how to be the one who brings the love is so empowering. Yes. It’s unfair quote unquote. I have like air quotes. It’s unfair to our fear-based minds where everything is a zero sum game and if you lose I win and if I win you lose. Like it’s that mindset that keeps us in the fighting, you know, state of mind. But it’s just a decision that you make. I get to be the one bringing more love. Yes. And you magically, if you get coached by Mag or if you just listen to this podcast and you become a student of her teachings, you will see that the minute you decide to be the one bringing the love being the energetic leader. That’s another thing I learned from right. Yeah. Be the energetic leader of the situation. You watch your relationship dynamic magically transform before your eyes and you watch your husband becoming a softer and more loving. Maybe softer is not the right word, the more loving version of himself. Only because you initiated the bringing the love into it. Yeah. So you don’t have to do any of these things but you get to.
Yes. So good. Yes. And one thing I want to mention cause I could just hear someone thinking, Oh magic mumbo jumbo. Here’s what I want to say. It’s called The Marriage Life Coach Podcast cause we use life coaching principles to help you have a better marriage. So everything that sounds like magic at the end of it is actually based in science. So in systems theory and psychology, when one element of a system changes, the other elements in that system respond to that change. And that’s fundamental to the type of work that I do is my clients will come back like Simone and say, it feels like magic. I don’t know what happened. He’s so nice or whatever the effect is. And it’s because you started showing up differently thinking what would love do 54 times a day and suddenly he’s responding to this loving energy that you’re putting in pouring into the relationship and now he’s responding differently, not from manipulation or from trying to force or control just as a natural byproduct of you being more loving.
Totally like magic. It kind of does feel like magic, but I just wanted to sort of lay it out for, I know I have a lot of scientists and engineers and logical people that follow me and I just want to break down what is the magic that is really what the magic is. Okay. So those were the five principles when it comes to your marriage. And I want to spend just a few moments more with Simone to talk about how you can apply this in social media because all of us are in social media, especially we’re living in a world right now where the way that we connect with each other due to social distancing and all the different things happening is through social media. So how do you apply these things? When you go online and you read something that maybe triggers you or you’re seeing someone that has a different view than you and you just, you laid these principles out again and you said, Hey everyone, this is how I do it with my husband and this is how you can do it online. Like, remember other person’s allowed to feel upset. Remember they’re upset because they’re thinking thoughts that are just upsetting them in this moment that are not useful for them. Remember, I can love and wish them well no matter what they think, even if they disagree, right? Even if they believe things, I don’t believe I could still love them. So can you just share a little bit about your approach of being this way on social media.
Yeah. So I think all of the principles apply exactly the same. Sure. You’re not married to everybody on social media, right? Like when you think about being a team, I definitely do think about it in terms of, okay, we’re not married, but we’re part of the team of being the human race. Yes, yes. Yeah. We’re all human. We all have the same pains. Like you know, so much of our, we have a lot more in common than we don’t. And I just think, I just love everybody in my social media world. Not necessarily. I love them like I wanna invite them over for dinner, but I just have basic like regard and respect for them as human beings and a basic love for my fellow human being. Right? So in that case, that’s how I think of us, me and that person being on the team.
And especially if, I don’t know, I think most people in my sphere are good people who want the best for the, for each other and the world. And sure we might disagree on specifics, but here we’re all on the same team. This is the place that I take my brain to. Yes. And secondly, I ask myself all the time because my brain also being a human brain always wants to be triggered, wants to feel attacked, wants to feel beleaguered, wants to feel at the effect of what other people are saying and doing and just blaming things that other people are posting for the way I feel because I’m sort of relinquishing responsibility for the part where I get to choose what I think about it. So then I asked myself the magic question again. Like how would love respond?
Yes. Right. And the thing is this, I get to really practice this when somebody says something and my brain is like, they’re attacking me there. They are undermining my authority. They are being brat. Like how dare they? Like they know who I am like, yes, my brain wants to go there. And what I remember, Oh they’re just having thoughts. It might even be like a painful thought for them. And then I have get intuitive curiosity and a bit more compassionate. It’s like, okay, so if I love this person, how would I respond? And that question like opens me up to such a bigger perspective of you know, what this persons intention might be. And I basically get out of the mode of like feeling attacked and wanting to attack back. Yes. I have had some beautiful moments, result from my deliberate decision to feel loving instead of attacked and the other person’s sort of like aggressive or you know, animosity that kind of instantly you see it like dissolving before your eyes because they kind of like expected a fight. But then I just loved them and they’re like, what is happening?
Okay, pause right there. This, the same in our partnership. They expected a fight and then I was loving and the other person is like, what is happening right now? I don’t know what’s going on. Yeah, it’s so, so, so powerful. Okay. I have a question because I think you’re brilliant at this online and I wish the whole entire world understood this. So let’s help the world understand this. You have the most beautiful boundaries on your personal page in your group. You just practice it with such grace and elegance. And when we were talking about what would love do, I want to make this very clear, we want to love the other person. Totally. That’s the whole point. But we also want to ask what would love to, if I loved myself, if I was being loving towards me, would I allow this behavior or this conversation or this type of language or whatever it is on my wall or on my page or wherever it is that we’re talking about your favorite social media and you have this really beautiful way of saying, Hey, that’s all cool and good, but here’s what’s okay in my world. Can you talk a little bit about how you maintain those really impeccable boundaries? Because I think that like following you and seeing how you do that is just a beautiful experience.
Yeah. I think that having really strong boundaries that are actually enforced with love is definitely a prerequisite for like creating the kind of experience you want in, in social media, probably also in your marriage too. And, although I haven’t thought about that as much, but, um, for example, that the big part about like bringing love and assuming love is also that when you see yourself as worthy of love and when you decide love as the being loved as the baseline, you expect everybody to love you and not like in an entitled way, but it’s like, of course they would love me because like I’m a lovable person. And when someone brings something that doesn’t feel like love, you get to say, wait, this isn’t right. And what a lot of people will do is they’ll just, you know, kind of people please.
And they’ll kind of be uncomfortable but not say anything. But I decided, you know what, if this is my social media page, this is like my house. And no matter how much I love everybody, I’m not just gonna let whoever like walk into my house and do whatever they want in my house cause I like my living room clean. I like my garden like a certain way and going to be let into my house are the people who love me and respect me and honor the fact that, you know what, I just like the Asian style we leave the shoes outside and you’re like, Oh of course I would do that for you cause I respect you and respect your house and I’m honored that I have been invited. And those are the people that I around. And if I say no, shoes in the house and everybody’s like, well, I like having shoes on my feet and they just like walk into my house with their muddy shoes on they’re never going to be invited again even if I love them. So my hidden boundaries are always enforced with this. Okay, you don’t, I’m going to delete your comment and I love you, right? I’m just going to not have this conversation and I love you. And I think a lot of it is what we talked about before is like letting people be uncomfortable, letting people have thoughts about you without needing to fix it. I just enforce my boundary and, it feels clean as opposed to like argumentative. If I know that I’m coming from love for myself and my decision to delete their comment or remove them or whatever, it doesn’t come from like me hating them as a person. It’s like this behavior, not something that I’m going to accept in my house and you don’t get to hang out here, but I still love you as a person.
I love that so much. I think that’s a different way to experience social media and I’m so glad that you’re sharing that with us, not just for your marriage but also for our lives online. So thank you for that. Last question for today, what has been the most surprising thing for you about marriage coaching? Like you’re a coach, you’re a business coach, marketing coach, you coach people all the time. You’re around coaches all the time. Well, it has been something that has just been a surprise for you.
I thought marriage coaching was about marriage and it is, but it’s also so much more because how you do your marriage, what I learned from coaching with Maggie is just a reflection of how you do the most important intimate relationships in your life. And you have intimate relationships of course with your spouse, but you also have it with your business. You have it with your parents, you have it with your children, your best friends you have, you know, just one important big way, but it’s just one way that shows up. And when you get to study yourself in a marriage, when you get to study yourself, arguing with your husband, feeling victimized by your husband, you just get to learn about how you do relationships with everything in life, period. And when you learn how to come into power, when you learn how to be the leader of love, be the one bringing the love, bringing the grace, everything into it. You just learn how to show up that way everywhere else in your life, including the love, the relationship you have with yourself. So, I hired Maggie because I wanted a better marriage, but I really got better. Like everything else.
I love that. Thank you for sharing that. You’re welcome it’s the truth. So beautiful. Okay. So how can people find you Simone? So most of my listeners are not coaches, but I do have some coaches who love to follow this podcast. So if you’re a coach and you want to follow Simone and please tell us how can people find you.
Okay. So a really easy way to hang out with me is to go to Instagram and look for my handle, @simone.grace.seol that’s my Instagram handle. And from there you’ll find all the links to my everything else. And if you’re a coach, you simply have to come hang out. In my Facebook group called Fearless Marketing For Life Coaches. It’ll come up if you search and we have so much fun. And we learn how to use our coaching businesses as a platform for greater change for the good in the world, and also make money at the same time, which is great.
I love that. So this will change and make money and help people. I love it. So we’ll put Simone’s Instagram handle and the link to her Facebook group in the show notes for anyone who wants to check those out. Thank you so, so, so much for saying yes to this. I think this conversation will help so many people and I’m so grateful to you for being here. I can’t say how honored I am. It’s been so much fun.
And everyone listening, remember, you need three things to have a thriving five-star marriage. You need perspective, partnership, and pleasure, and they are all in your control. See you next week.