Hey, everyone, welcome. Today as a very special day. I think I feel that about every podcast. But I feel that today too. Today I’m going to share a communication framework that I have been developing and testing with my clients that I think is going to be an absolute game changer for your marriage and you can apply it to all of your relationships. It’s so useful, I cannot wait to share it with you. I’m going to give you the basics, the overview today, so you can start playing with it and applying it right away. I’m going to teach it in depth in my Marriage MBA program, the marriage mindset breakthrough activator. If you have been thinking about applying, definitely do that right after you listen.
Enrollment is open until October 30 of 2020. It is a small group coaching program that will help you with whatever you’re stuck with in your marriage right now. Wherever you feel stuck, we will get you unstuck, we will activate some breakthroughs. And we’ll be together for six months, I will guide you through how to apply so many of the things I teach on the podcast directly to your situation in your relationship. And what we’re going to talk about today is definitely going to be one of those things.
Okay. Let’s start with shout outs. Every week I get these reports on where the podcast is downloaded. And this week, this is so exciting, I’m just so excited about this. We are number 22 in the Czech Republic, which is amazing. Hi, Czech Republic, hi, everyone. We are 66 in the United Arab Emirates, hello, United Arab Emirates. And we are number 81 in Canada. I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing it is to know we have listeners all over the world. Wherever you are right now, it is such a sacred honor to spend time with you every week helping you make your marriage stronger. I am just sending you all so much love right now and feeling so deeply inspired to know we’re creating a worldwide community of women who are becoming emotional leaders in their marriages and working towards cultivating five star love. I just believe all of us together adding to the love on Earth, there’s no more important more powerful thing that we could do. My heart is so full and so grateful. Thank you all for listening.
And remember, I’m doing a giveaway, I want to talk to you all. I’m doing a giveaway on Instagram, you can find me @TheMaggieReyes, share your favorite episode of the podcast, take a screencap add it to your stories tag me or review the podcast wherever you listen to it, take a screencap of that and tag me, I will be giving away a 30 minute laser coaching session. I’m so excited that ends October 31 of 2020. So get that in now, if you listen to this at some other point in the history of life, you can absolutely pick your favorite episode and tag me I’ll be delighted and happily surprised to see that. However, the giveaway will be over. Okay, we will do that session on zoom by the way, so you can enter from anywhere in the world. So if you’re listening in the Czech Republic and you want to tag me, you can do that. And you too can win. I am so excited to get to know more of you on Instagram. So definitely remember to check me when you share.
Okay, let’s dive in to soul centered communication. Here’s what happened. Back when I had the free Facebook group, I would ask everyone who joined what is the one thing you would improve in your relationship? Like how do you want to make your marriage better? Why did you join the group? How can I help you? And about 80% of the answers were related to communication in some way. So I would ask where do you get stuck? Is it the speaking? Or is it the listening, right? Like communication can be a little complicated, but it’s really speaking, listening, right? But over the years, I really compiled a bunch of answers. And women would tell me where they got stuck with their husbands got stuck, all kinds of things where maybe they were overwhelmed and they couldn’t speak up for what they really wanted. or other people would say they would just get loud and yell and then it will turn into a fight they will get so just consumed by whatever was going on.
Sometimes it was their partners who had a hard time listening or they had a hard time sharing what they wanted, it was hard to like get to a resolution. Or they would walk away when something felt too emotionally intense. So I just really compiled all these answers and just started looking for patterns and started looking for what’s happening where people getting stuck when they communicate. So I think I had the group about three years or so something like that. And I was just observing and thinking about it and coaching my clients and looking for patterns. And if you’ve listened to the Better Marriage Masterclass, which, we have a podcast episode where we did the podcast edition of that I will link to that in the show notes. If you’ve listened to that, you know that I teach that most communication problems aren’t actually communication problems, they’re really safety problems in disguise. And that reminds me that I owe all of you a podcast episode on creating safety. I will add that to my list of topics to write up and record very soon.
Anyway, most problems look like they’re communication issues, but they’re really something else at the root cause and you know, I love to go to the root, find out what the real issue is and always solve for that. But even then, there are still times you have to communicate. So what do you do? A few months ago, I sat in my office, and I just started brainstorming around this idea of if I could teach my clients a simple way to approach any communication situation, whether it’s a conversation or a text or an email, what would be the simplest and most powerful approach that I can give them? And honestly, I really believe that God smiled on me that day. It’s like, God smiled on me the day I met my husband, God smiled on me the day that I came up with this. Big thank you, God.
So here’s what came to me. It’s called SOUL Centered Communication. And the SOUL spells out four steps. And the centered part is the fifth step. And I wrote it out, I thought about it. And I started sharing it with my private coaching clients. And they started applying it in their marriages, in their families with their kids and business meetings. And they started reporting back how they use the framework and how clear it kept everything. So now that I’ve sort of thought about it and tested it, I want to share it with you. Okay, I’m going to teach you or tell you today, what each part is. And we’re going to go one by one, so you get a big picture view of how to approach it.
If you’re thinking about joining Marriage MBA, my students in Marriage MBA, I will coach you on where you get stuck using any one of these. But I really want the whole world to have this framework to think about communicating through. So here’s how the SOUL part works. The S stands for solution focused. The O stands for open hearted. The U stands for uncomplicated, and the L stands for loving. That’s the SOUL part. The centered part represents being anchored in grounded centered love and not being inside of a stress cycle. So you can communicate, but you are not practicing SOUL Centered communication, if you or your partner in the communication are inside of a stress cycle when it’s happening. And I’m going to explain this, we’re going to go one by one on each one. So let’s start with solution focused.
So many of us, and I’ve totally been this person so I include myself in this, can be problem focused, right, we can focus on the problem and want to talk about it and see it from every angle. Think about your work colleagues, or your honey or a family member. So many people just want to talk about the problem often incessantly, and yes, I have done that too. But in SOUL Centered communication, you want to pivot to the solution. You want to ask questions like, what is the result we want to create here? What is my goal? What is my desire? What is your goal, what is your desire? You want to ask yourself, you want to ask the other person, and you really want to identify potential solutions that you can work towards. And that will give you so much clarity just pivoting your focus from the problem to the solution. Just doing that one step will give you so much clarity.
Now sometimes the solution is the person or you just want to share your experience. You just want to be heard and that’s okay. But then you check in with yourself if you’re the person wants to share, what is the purpose of your sharing what you hope to accomplish? Just be clear on what your goal is. And it’s something that you also might want to check in with your communication partner. What is their goal with whatever it is that they’re sharing? That will give you so much clarity. Sometimes they’ll tell you their goal and you’ll be like, oh, well, here’s what I need to know to accomplish that goal and then that shifts your communication forward. Okay, so that’s the S and SOUL Centered, is for solution focused. Next is open hearted.
So you can identify the goal but be really stubborn about how to accomplish it. And I always say I am a Cuban-American woman who is also a Leo, I fully understand the power of stubborn. It is not my best look, but I know it really well, okay. So for open hearted, if I was still in HR and sharing this in a team meeting or something like that I might call it open minded. But since I’m a marriage life coach, it’s open hearted. And here’s the best shortcut I have found to articulate what I mean by open hearted. So you can immediately identify it, you can immediately know whether you are you’re or you’re not. Ready? Okay, here it is.
Are you huggable? If the person you’re having the conversation with asked for a hug right now, would you give it to them? If the answer is no, you’re not open hearted right now. Check that, like, have fun with that, you’ll see and immediately you’ll know, it’s so simple. Now, I’m going to give you some ideas for what to do when you aren’t open hearted when we get to the centered part. But right now, I invite you to consider what would you need to believe about yourself and about the person in the conversation. In this case, I’m thinking about husbands and wives, right. But whoever you’re talking with, what would you need to believe about them, to open your heart to their idea or to whatever they are sharing. Sometimes the simplest way to approach something like that is to assume positive intent, which is really remembering that you’re on the same team, you’re not adversaries, your teammates. So whether it’s a work situation, a family situation, husband, wife, situation, whatever that is, when you go back to like, wait, we’re on the same team. let me assume positive intent, then it’s really easy to go back to a space where you can open your heart to listen to the other person.
Okay, that brings us to uncomplicated. How many of you, I have also been this person, bring up the history of the moment from when you first met to today and all the things that happened in between in a conversation and have 10 things you want to resolve and five things that you’re upset about. So uncomplicated means you’re practicing SOUL Centered communication, when you discuss one thing at a time. One thing, not two things, not three things, five things. One thing at a time. One thing in the present moment focused on the goal of the future moment, because you’re being solution focused. One thing then you finish that thing, and you go on to the next thing, and you’re always in one thing at a time, you’re always uncomplicated, whatever it is. Now, sometimes we do have complex things that we have to figure out. Absolutely, we still have to figure it out. If we’re in NASA, and we’re sending a rocket into space, we still have to solve each math equation, one math equation at a time. And I’m telling you this example. And that’s because we just watched the movie Hidden Figures. If you have not seen that movie, you must watch that movie, it is so good. I cried multiple times. Anyway, so I’m thinking of NASA, they’re sending rockets to space, and they still have to do each calculation, one at a time. No matter how complicated is to send a rocket to space which is incredibly complicated, we still need to take it one thing at a time. So that’s uncomplicated.
Next up is loving. SOUL Centered communication is loving communication, but with a twist. Most of the clients and I would imagine that most of you listening to this podcast are so good at putting other people first, and leaving yourself out of the equation. So SOUL Centered communication considers that being loving is a circle. So imagine a circle for a moment, where inside that circle, you’re loving towards yourself and the other person. So you absolutely are loving towards the other person. Like we don’t take that out. We just add ourselves into the equation. So here you pause and ask, if I was being loving towards me, what would I want here? Or how would I approach this? This doesn’t mean you’re not loving to the other person to right, you just include yourself when you’re thinking about what is the most loving thing to do.
And then want to be clear. Sometimes love is fierce. Sometimes the most loving thing is uncomfortable or difficult or it creates discomfort. It can be so loving to tell the truth, right? It’s so loving to practice acceptance and it’s also so loving to set a boundary or say no. So when you think about being loving think about being powerfully loving like a queen or a head of state, right that would consider what would be benefit to all what is for the greater good, what helps us reach our goal, right that has that big picture. What is the most loving thing that includes everyone who’s affected by whatever it is that we’re talking about? Okay, so that is the soul part of SOUL Centered communication.
Just to recap, its solution focused, open hearted, uncomplicated, loving. If you practice doing those four things, just as you spend your day in communication with others, immediately you will elevate the quality of your interaction just with those four things. Now let’s add the centered part of being soul centered. Soul centered communication does not occur inside of a stress cycle. I’m not going to go super in-depth on distress cycles in this episode, but just to be clear, a stress cycle can include fight, flight, freeze, or appease, and it’s completed when we come back to center. So if you’re in a stress cycle, or you notice the person you’re communicating with is in a stress cycle, then that is an opportunity to do one of four things. Either renegotiate reassess, reschedule or influence safety.
So you might renegotiate the scope of what you’re talking about right? To simplify it to go back to being uncomplicated. You may reassess How important is this? How do I want to handle it? Is this the conversation I want to be having about the thing I want to be having it about? You might reschedule the conversation. Or you make go back through and check, are you being solution focused? Are you open hearted right now? Are you uncomplicated? Are you loving in a powerful, loving way? And then see, maybe the loving thing is to pause and ask the person, what’s coming up for them? or how did they envision proceeding with whatever it is that you’re discussing. What you don’t do is push through the stress cycle without re-centering yourself, or looking for an opportunity to help the other person find their own center. So we can only resolve stress cycles for ourselves. We can’t resolve it for another person, just like we can’t think their thoughts or feel their feelings. But this can be as simple as saying something like how can I help, right? Where that person can then relax, can know that you’re on their team, and can hopefully continue the conversation with you.
Now, whenever you’re in a conversation that feels like it’s going in circles, you can step out of the circle by checking in with yourself and walking yourself through these steps and seeing which one you need to refocus on. So sometimes it’s being solution focused, right? Sometimes it’s, oh, I’m to focused on the problem let me go back to what is my goal. Sometimes it’s being uncomplicated, right, I want to do too many things at once, how can I just narrow it down to one thing I want to make progress on, leave the rest for another moment and go back to uncomplicated. Other times, it’s finding the place in your heart, where you can be open and genuinely listen with your heart without judgment, just considering all the angles considering the greater good or the greater goal.
And then other times it’s including yourself in the equation, and really being powerfully loving towards yourself and the other person. Remember to imagine the circle, you’re both in it, you both get a piece of the circle, you both get powerful love directed towards both of you. Then other times, it’s really remembering to not push through a stress cycle, like really committing to renegotiating or reassessing or rescheduling, or influencing safety as best as you can. And you can usually do that by acting as if you’re both on the same team. And if that were true, doing whatever you’re inspired to do next. Okay. That is the communication framework that I developed. It took me three years to get here. But as soon as I started sharing it with my clients and coaching colleagues, I got such powerful feedback. I knew I wanted to share the basics with the world so everyone can use it. And then of course, I will teach you and support you and how to apply it inside my paid containers, whether it’s one on one coaching or my group program.
I am so excited to support you in implementing this. Okay, go out into the world use it in your relationships, start playing this framework, seeing what comes up as you use it. I definitely want to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram @TheMaggieReyes and remember to share your favorite episode of the podcast or leave a review of the podcast post a screencap tag me to enter the giveaway for a 30 minute laser coaching call with me. And as you listen to this episode, if you’re listening in October of 2020 when it first came out enrollment for Marriage MBA, the marriage mindset breakthrough activator closes October 30. You can go to MaggieReyes.com/group to apply right now like right after you listen to this episode, because I’m taking applications on a first come first served basis. So get yours in now.
Especially if you’ve been thinking about it, reading and rereading the sales page and you just haven’t applied yet. Apply we’ll have a conversation if it’s a great fit for you. I will tell you if it’s not a great fit, I will tell you that also, but get your application in now. So remember, tag me on Instagram @TheMaggieReyes to enter the drawing, go to mega carriers comm forward slash group to apply to the Marriage MBA program. And I will be back next week with more tools and resources to help you make your marriage stronger.