Maggie
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Marriage Life Coach Podcast. I am so excited to have Angela Naumann with us today. She is one of my brilliant clients. We’re going to talk a little bit about the work we’ve been doing together.
She is a Coach for the network marketing industry and I want her to tell us exactly what that is because I’m not really familiar with it, although I’ve seen posts about it. And she loves helping women build their businesses and become leaders in their businesses. So tell us a little bit about what you do before we dive in.
Angela Naumann
Okay, well, hi everyone. I’m Angela. And I am a Life Coach to the network marketing professional. I guess I can like go back a little bit. So like I’ve been married 22 years and in June’s gonna be 23 years. And we dated about four years before that. So we’ve been together longer than we were a part.
Maggie
Love it.
Angela Naumann
I know, I do, too. And so we have two boys, 14 and 10. And all of my life, I have been this personal growth junkie. And I spent so many years, well, the first 21 years of my professional career, I was a teacher. And during that time, I’d also had this real big entrepreneurial spirit. And I would always join network marketing companies or I’d start my own business.
And then I hired a Life Coach to help me with my business. And it was like, the heavens opened up and I was like, oh, I need to be a Life Coach. And I began Coaching. And actually, I didn’t see myself as a Network Marketing Coach until my Business Coach one day said, “Why are you not marketing just to Network Marketers?” I’m like, “What do you mean?” And she goes, “How many of your clients are network marketers?” And I was like, “All of them.”
Maggie
All of them.
Angela Naumann
And she’s like, “How many clients in the past have been network marketers?” And I was like, “All of them, except maybe one.” And so she’s like, “Okay, do you see a theme here?” And I was like, it just never even occurred to me that that’s who I was working with.
And it’s just because of my history of how it — and that’s people I had hung out with and knew because I’d spent so many years in the industry. So now I am a Life Coach. Just simply, I’m a life Coach to the Network Marketer. And also, an amateur wine taster.
Maggie
I love it. So good.
Angela Naumann
Anyway, just having fun. Living Life.
Maggie
Just having fun. Living life. So tell me um, why did you decide that you wanted to work on your marriage through Coaching? Obviously, you have a passion for Coaching, the seas parted, the violins played. But why did you decide that you want to work on your marriage through Coaching?
Angela Naumann
Well, a couple of months before I reached out to you, I’d already been listening to the podcast. I guess it was about six months before, my husband joined a Men’s Marriage Mastermind.
Maggie
That is fabulous. Does he love it?
Angela Naumann
He does. And he’s like in his third round with it and everything — third or fourth round. And it blew my mind because this is a man — I just, I mean, he wasn’t a talk about your feelings person. And so he started growing.
And so you know how it is when one spouse starts growing? It either pushes or pulls the other spouse along. And so I got in this place where I was realizing we were having — he was trying to grow, and I would trigger from it. And then I would be…but still being Coached, I would trigger and then I would go back and I would reflect and I think, and I could work my way through things.
But it was taking a long time. And I was really struggling to process the BS in my head about things. And our biggest issues were our sexual drives were in two different directions. Which, I think in a lot of marriages, I think that’s very common in marriages.
Maggie
Especially long term relationships.
Angela Naumann
Yes, yes. Yes, because different years, it’s different ways, right?
Maggie
Exactly. Yeah.
Angela Naumann
And his growth really just started spotlighting the issues. And I had to either choose to grow together or grow apart is really where it got. And along that same time, it’s amazing how things just come to life for you — one of my clients, her husband told her, “I don’t know if I love you anymore.”
And they started having their own issues and it highlighted for me that I really wanted to protect my marriage and I didn’t want it to go apart. And my client’s doing great — just in case anyone wonders — she’s doing great. So I made that choice and I reached out to you and I just sent you this message of like, “No look, my marriage is great, but it’s not great.” My marriage is great, but I need to talk to you.
I mean, I just we’ve been married 20 — like we don’t argue very much, our kids are well adjusted and are good kids and we, you know, everything seems great. I mean it does, other than our sex drives are extremely opposite and in the tension that, that just puts in communication and everything else.
Maggie
Yeah and here’s something that happens a lot. It’s like, it can be good in many areas and have that one area where it’s not good, and then that starts spilling over into some of the other areas, right? So anyone who’s listening who just loves listening to the podcast and is like, “I think my marriage is great, I just want to keep it great,” right?
That’s awesome, so if you listen for that purpose great, and also there is that one area — most of us have something — where we could really make it better and I so deeply just honor Angela for saying, “I think it’s time to make this better,” right?
Like for being able to see — oh I love the parts that I love — that’s awesome, it’s great — and we really do want to make this one piece of it better. So I always like to ask, what are some of your favorite things you’ve taken away from Coaching — whether it was a concept or whether it was an experience that you had. Anything from the Coaching container that helps you move forward, so what comes to mind?
Angela Naumann
There’s so many I have a whole notebook full.
Maggie
Love it.
Angela Naumann
I’ll tell you that the things I feel like have impacted me the most, in the way that I subconsciously think about them — they keep coming up during my week. I keep them in the forefront of my mind so it’s not just something I wrote in a journal or we talked about, but it is continually circling around in my life.
Maggie
Yes.
Angela Naumann
And one of the things, because sex was a big part of why I wanted to see you, because I have a husband who wants a whole lot more sex and then here I was just not even thinking about it — like it was never even crossing my mind.
Maggie
Yeah
Angela Naumann
And so you introduced to me the concept of padding my runway.
Maggie
Yes.
Angela Naumann
Girl, and I’m all about padding my runway. And he’ll, if he instigates, and I’m like, “My runway is not padded, you’re gonna have to work on that.”
Maggie
Okay so let’s explain for everyone what padding the runway means. So in psychology, researchers have discovered, or uncovered, that we have this thing called responsive desire or spontaneous desire. So what that means is, people who have spontaneous desire are people who at any given moment are ready to have sex. Like you just say the word sex, they’re ready, you know. I always joke around — you see a pencil, sex. Like anything in front of them could be a trigger for like, I’m ready now. That’s spontaneous desire.
Responsive desire describes the person who isn’t always ready for sex and the way I say it is: you have a longer runway. But once you’re into it, like once you’ve started and there’s, you know, whatever kind of connection — whether it’s dressing, kissing, whatever it is that your runway padding includes, then once you’re having it, you actually enjoy it.
So that’s responsive desire. Here’s something interesting I haven’t told you, Angela, but I just had this experience and I want to get your thoughts on it and I want to share it with everyone which is: I have started walking (like I’ve started walking on a treadmill) and I had this thought that it’s that I am never going to want to walk.
Like I never wake up in the morning thinking, “Oh yes, we’re walking on the treadmill today.” Like that hasn’t happened for me. It may someday, but it hasn’t now. But I had this thought of like, “Oh this is responsive desire with exercise.”
Like it’s the same idea. Like I was just thinking about: I never really want to, but once I’m on the treadmill, I actually do enjoy the walking, and then once I’ve done it, having done it, I just feel refreshed and I feel really good about it after. It’s like, oh what if I just don’t worry about never wanting to and just get on the treadmill knowing?
Angela Naumann
And that’s a really interesting concept like… I’m going to have to think on that one, too, because what would pad that runway? What would build that desire? Interesting. I love it.
Maggie
Isn’t it? Yeah, so good. Okay so now, Angela pads her runway which means she prepares, she thinks about… well, you tell them.
Angela Naumann
Well, so I got off our call. And I usually can’t talk to him right away about our calls like I need… usually there’s something I need to talk to him about that we discuss, but I need time to process. So when I finally got around to talking to him about responsive and spontaneous desire, he’s like, “Oh, yeah, I read that in this book.” And I was like okay…
Maggie
Great. So he was receptive to it. By the way, I want everyone to know when we do an interview like this, my instruction to Angela was: talk to your husband about what’s okay for you to share.
So we have his blessing for anything that… I just want to share with everyone. I know someone listening is gonna be really scandalizing — “Oh, my.” So I want everyone to know that we have his blessing. Okay, continue.
Angela Naumann
Yes. He’s very happy I’m working with Maggie. But so padding my runway for me, it actually just meant things like date nights.
Maggie
Yes.
Angela Naumann
Spending time together, like sitting on the porch after work having a glass of wine and visiting. It was just simple connection — cooking together and like, on a weekend, running errands together instead of doing things separate. So we’re just spending time in the car talking, sharing a podcast together.
It also meant for me, taking time alone. Time to read a romance novel, time to, you know, to do like, I — I don’t know, where you actually take the longer baths and you like, actually pluck your eyebrows and spend time doing the things you don’t always give yourself time to do? It was doing those things. It was listening to sexy music. I mean, it was small things. But over the course of a week add up.
So I’m more… I say pad my runway, you know, like the plane’s got to take off. It’s priming the pump is another way. You know, think about like the old water wells — priming the pump. And so it was really just all these little things together. It wasn’t like one big moment.
Maggie
Yeah, I think that’s so important. Like, we talked about this a lot in Coaching, which is like small tweaks. It’s one, you know, thank you said in the morning, or one hug given in the evening. It’s these very small tweaks that then lead to a deeper sense of connection or that lead to more closeness in the relationship.
And I love that we can be an example and really share with people that what is the most powerful is sometimes the smallest shifts. Yeah, I think that’s so so it is. Yeah. What else do you want to share? I know you have some.
Angela Naumann
Little things. So things, big things like concepts or experiences? Some of my — I’ve got so many, let me think. Part of one of the things I worked on were accepting things as they are.
Maggie
Yes. Okay. Let’s say that, again, accepting things as they are.
Angela Naumann
As they are. Noticing them. Like noticing what lens I’m looking through things and just like, what is the true circumstance? Without my emotions, without my defensive or worried or fearful thoughts involved?
Maggie
Yeah, so it’s like separating out the facts. It’s like, there’s a thing that happens. And we can know that it’s a fact like, if I’m holding a pen. Yeah, that’s a fact. And then there is all my story about whether the pen is good or bad. And does it glide on the paper?
And how does it — that’s all my story about it, right? And that idea of separating out a fact from our story about it. One of the things that’s most powerful is when you say wait, but if this story isn’t serving me, what other story could I have about this, right? It brings us back to our power. Yeah, go ahead.
Angela Naumann
So because for me, like I mean, it was in everything, right? You know, how we do one thing is how we do other things. And so even if it was in sex, was I trying to control the situation? Or if it was at work, how was I trying to control things? Or with my kids?
Was I complaining or being defensive in that situation? Or was I looking at it through the lens of love or joy? Because… let me think how I want to share it. Like, since — I’m gonna just share, it’s all about sex, right? It’s what we’re gonna talk about today for me. So sometimes one of the things I had to learn and this kind of goes into my next things, is that I had certain expectations of what sex should be.
Maggie
Mm hmm. As we all do. Yeah.
Angela Naumann
Like you have the vision where you really don’t know anything when you’re a kid. High School, you kind of form these skewed visions of sex in a relationship. And then we are, for me, then I start reading romance novels as an adult and then there’s another view of sex.
And so when it doesn’t look like whatever picture I’ve created, in my mind. Like, if you have bad sex, like, okay, let’s just talk about it — sometimes you have, sometimes sex is great. And sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. Like you just don’t connect. Everything’s not flowing. It’s just not — the connection’s not as deep or something.
Maggie
Let’s normalize that. Because if we’re married to someone, think about being married someone for 20 years. 30 years. 40 years, right? Not every encounter is going to be, you know, volcanic eruptions of joy. Let’s just normalize that. I think it’s so important. I’m glad you’re talking about it. Yeah.
Angela Naumann
It was, well, it was huge for me to realize, sometimes sex is great. And sometimes it’s not. And that’s normal. And I haven’t… here was the part I had to work on: I had to accept that sometimes sex was gonna be bad. And it wasn’t a reflection of me. Wasn’t a reflection of him.
And there was nothing I needed to feel shame about. Because I spent a lot of years in shame when sex wasn’t good. Or when I wasn’t desiring it to his level, shaming myself that something was wrong. Instead of not realizing my runway wasn’t padded, or those things, the other things going on, or the crazy thoughts in my head were affecting things.
Maggie
Can you share a little bit about when shame comes up? Does it come up differently? Or how do you manage it now? I think that’s something that everyone struggles with. And my friend Simone says, “There is no done. “
And I love how she says that, like in life, right? It’s like we can learn to have a different relationship with shame. And we can process it differently. But it’s not like we will never feel ashamed again, like there is no done. So how do you manage that knowledge?
Angela Naumann
Shame is a hard one I feel like, in a sense, because it’s all emotion. And apparently, I love my emotions. And I like to circle around with them and like, roll around with all those emotions.
Maggie
Many of us do that Angela. You’re not alone. Yes.
Angela Naumann
But one of the best tools that you taught me. And I don’t know, I wear a bracelet now. And this bracelet is about being true to my authentic self.
Maggie
Yeah.
Angela Naumann
And when I am being true to who I am, when I am saying what I want, what I think, what I feel, and I’m not hiding myself, then I wear it on one wrist. And when I start to feel things like shame creep up, like, I shouldn’t say my opinion at work. Or I should, after bad sex, feeling like, I did something wrong, I would move the bracelet to the other arm.
So that’s kind of how I’m processing it. Because it’s not really — what it does for me, is it makes me pause and think, “Okay, this is an emotion I’m having right now. And this is created by a thought.” And it just gives me that moment to stop and think and just kind of switch over into curiosity, non-judgement with myself.
And then I’m able to kind of ask myself things like: what do I want? If I don’t want to lay here feeling shame, what do I want? If I don’t want to sit in this meeting and not share my opinion because I think nobody wants to hear it, what do I want? If I don’t want to tell him — I’m laughing because I had this recently happen — we went on a trip. I’ve shared this with you. And I was like, we had totally listened to no convincing — the podcast on no convincing, the emotional weight loss. Yes.
Maggie
We’ll link to that in the show notes. The Emotional Weight Loss podcast. Yeah.
Angela Naumann
Yes. And we listened to the advanced one. So I’m sitting there and I’m like, hey, we’re driving home and I’m like, I saw a sign and it’s about a — we’d gone to New Orleans, and we saw a sign for a plantation. I’m like, hey, it’s four minutes down the road. We can run over there. Spend an hour or two, if you want.
And then I’m like, I know my husband will do anything for me if I ask. And so I’m like, how do I not convince him? Like so get all up in my own mind about this. And I’m like, whatever you want is fine. And he’s like, well, I just want to go home. And then my feelings were hurt and I was like, why was I so upset?
Then I was just mad and I’m like why am I so passive aggressively being mad right now? And I switched my bracelet and I just had to sit there in the car going, it’s because I didn’t say what I wanted. And so that’s how I’m dealing with my shame and/or with my not being true to myself is by just bringing awareness. Okay, some shit thought is going on in my brain right now — what is it?
Maggie
Yeah that’s so good.
Angela Naumann
And so that’s kind of where I am and then I was like able to tell him, “Okay I wanted to go, and I didn’t just own up to that.” And I love it and I said, “Because I didn’t want to convince you.” He goes, “How about you just tell me your request and I’ll take care of me not pretending?”
Maggie
Yes so, so good. So part of those podcasts is no complaining, no defending and then no convincing and no pretending. So they listened to the podcast together so he knows and has agreed to not pretend because that’s really useful in a relationship. So what a beautiful way to come together and for him it’s like, I can take care of my not pretending, you just don’t pretend and then I won’t pretend, right?
Angela Naumann
That’s exactly what it was. So I don’t even know if I answered your question but I did go down a nice little segway.
Maggie
Yeah, totally. So just to sort of recap for everyone listening, it’s like, asking questions, right? How do we process shame? We question whether it’s even the right emotion to feel at that moment. Like is the thought that’s leading to shame really a true thought that we need to consider that, that’s a possibility? That shame is what we should be feeling?
You know, if I did something that, you know, I felt was shameful and I feel ashamed and nothing has gone wrong, right? But sometimes we do a bunch of things that we feel shame over and we have thoughts about, well I should be ashamed about this or that?
And sometimes we’re wrong about that and you don’t need to be ashamed that you’re a human that has ups and downs and good days and bad days and sometimes you have better sex and sometimes you don’t. You know, you don’t need to be ashamed that you want to go, you know, have an experience that your husband doesn’t. You don’t need to feel shame over that. But many of us sort of overlap shame onto all of these different things.
Angela Naumann
I think we mix it up in all our emotions. Like we don’t know how to process some of our emotions. Fears control all those things.
Maggie
Yeah, so good. Okay, so tell us a little bit about what results you’ve created so far in your marriage or yeah, she’s smiling now. Tell us a little bit about the effect of Coaching, right? We want people to know — like a lot of people listen to this podcast and they’re aware, they’ve had a Coaching experience before, something like that, and some people this is the first time they’ve ever heard of what is this Life Coaching stuff? What do you do with that? So I’d like to share what kind of results you’ve created that you want to share obviously.
Angela Naumann
Well, continuing with the talk about sex, like we’re having almost weekly sex. Sometimes t’s really good, sometimes it’s not as good as the time before, but what’s good is I’m like, “Well that wasn’t very good.” He’s like, “Nope,” and we can kind of laugh. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s like we’ll try that, we’ll try again later, but that wasn’t it. So we were able to — I don’t know, it’s not stressful.
Maggie
It’s lighter, yeah.
Angela Naumann
I used to be stressed out when he’d want sex because I was afraid I was rejecting and all these other emotions that would come with that and now it’s not stressful.
Maggie
Yeah that’s so beautiful. I love that you mentioned laughing because one of my hypotheses is that couples who thrive laugh about things that other couples argue about. So when we get to the point where we can have something happen that we used to argue about and now we can just laugh about it together — to me, that’s one of the sort of side effects of thriving. It’s like oh, that means we feel so comfortable with each other we can talk about it. There doesn’t have to be an emotional charge attached and then we can move on.
Angela Naumann
Exactly, exactly. And then you can. And I think it allows for better communication, and that’s the other part for us has been — we talk so much more and we communicate more in a way where we’re not complaining, we’re not defending. Where it’s very — we laugh more together. It’s kinda like what you said, we do, we laugh more and it’s purposeful communication.
Like we purposely go sit on the porch and have a glass of wine in the evening to sit and talk. We purposely take date nights and that was the hardest thing to be able to leave my kids at home for an hour and a half to eat dinner with my husband, because we always just take them with us. And to allow myself to have a date night was hard, like it took a while for me to be able to take my cell phone and leave it in my purse.
Maggie
Yeah, that is so powerful. I’m so glad you’re sharing that because one of the questions I often ask clients who want to work with me is, tell me about the joy that you experienced just in the unit of the two of you, without the family or other pieces of your life involved, like, if you have a hobby that you both share, or you have some big thing or like the kids, right? Sometimes there’s a lot of joy with a family, which is awesome. But from my point of view, to preserve that joy with a family, we need to, like zoom out and have that cultivation of joy with just the two of you.
Angela Naumann
Absolutely, absolutely. And I would say it makes our family time better and closer and…
Maggie
How? Say more.
Angela Naumann
Well, because we’re communicating with each other, we are able to, I think, cultivate that communication more and more with our children, teach them things. I noticed, especially my youngest one, he’s more like me — he’s the talker and likes to… he will even say things like, “This is kind of making me feel like…”
Maggie
Great. Yeah.
Angela Naumann
He’s starting to use the words and things like that. The oldest one, he’s a little quieter and he’s 14, typical boy in the sense that he’s kind of introverted already. And now he’s in a 14 year old boy stage, like I’m going to stay in my room kind of thing.
And so it has helped us family wise to realize how Rusty and I get to create the environment that allows, that holds space for him to come and talk to us, that holds space for him to spend time with the family. So then, it’s amazing how even after a week of us trying to create that, how much more he seemed involved with the family.
Maggie
Oh, that’s so beautiful. Yeah. So it’s like when you intentionally create an environment between the two of you, then that helps you create intentional environments, however you want to create them with your kids, with the cousins, with whoever, that helps you have that skill, right?
Angela Naumann
Absolutely. Well, how we do one thing is how we get others.
Maggie
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So I always like to ask, because I think that when we’re growing and we’re finding things that we want to improve, we often will find out something about ourselves that we’re not delighted about, we’ll find out something that feels hard to hold sometimes.
When that has happened, how have you handled it? Like, I always think it’s important to like, I want to share, “Oh you could create these amazing results with Coaching, and it’s hard. And that’s okay.”
Angela Naumann
I’m laughing because I know there’s been times where you very lovingly and very gently like, pointed out something, and, I’m like, “Um, I don’t like this.” I don’t like this or you at all right now. I would say that most of the things I learned that I didn’t like about myself, I already knew.
Maggie
Yeah, at some level right?
Angela Naumann
At some level. I knew I had control issues. I thought that was normal. I thought that was just oh, that’s just personality for some people versus realizing that my control issues stem, often from fear.
Maggie
Yes. Yeah.
Angela Naumann
I’m really learning that I was spending time in shame. Because if you said, “Angela, do you –” I just, I don’t know what I’m saying here. I would never have considered myself someone who feels shame. I feel, generally, I think of myself as a very strong, confident, empowered woman. And to realize that I was carrying shame around in different areas of my life. I just, I had no idea. But, or maybe I just didn’t realize that was what it was called.
Maggie
Yeah, until we saw it. And then now you have a completely — imagine having a problem you don’t even know you have, that’s stopping you in different areas of your life and then knowing what it is and then it doesn’t have to stop you anymore.
Angela Naumann
I love that so much. That’s one of my — that’s something I’ve loved. Is that, just that thought of, okay, this is happening and that’s okay. I’m just gonna own this and move forward. Like, what’s my next step here?
Like, okay, feeling a little shame about whatever, like, my body or something like that. And like, just deciding, do I want to keep feeling it? No, don’t really want to feel this right now. Okay, well, it’s there, just gonna move forward. And like, sometimes that’s all I can do.
Maggie
Yeah, it’s just letting it be there. Just allowing that emotion, to just be present with it. And what I find over and over again is the more that we’re just present with any emotion, it just dissipates.
Angela Naumann
I agree. The problem is we don’t want to feel it.
Maggie
Yeah, we want — yeah, we do so much to avoid the emotion when allowing it is so much better. Here’s a new hypothesis. I don’t remember if I’ve said this to you on a call already, but I want to share it with everyone. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Emotions are like water. So when water flows, it nourishes everything, like everything on the planet is nourished in some way by water. And we are water right? So like flowing water is so important.
But when water stagnates, when it’s held, it becomes like, lethally dangerous, like we could die. You know? So if we think about emotions that way — it’s like when emotions flow, they’re healthy, they nourish everything, it’s fine.
Even the ones that we don’t like as much. When they flow, they’re perfectly healthy and good for us. When they stagnate when we try to hold them without moving them without letting them flow, then they really do affect us physiologically, emotionally, mentally, in so many different ways.
Angela Naumann
I think that’s exactly what happens. I can see that very much. It’s when we’re holding on to those I think, for me, personally, what was happening is it was also because it wasn’t flowing, using that example. I wasn’t, it wasn’t that I just wouldn’t be as open and honest and authentic with my husband. I wasn’t being that way with myself.
So how can I have that communication in my relationship, as a wife, as a mom, as a Coach, as anybody, in any relationship? When I’m not even open and honest with myself?
Maggie
Yeah. Yeah. And this is why we start on ourselves first. So much of our work, we think if our partner changed, everything would be better. We all have moments we think that. But the truth is, we start with ourselves, and everything is better than whether they change or not, or whether they respond however they respond or not.
So, so powerful. So you mentioned that you sort of debrief sometimes after Coaching calls with your hubby. What does he think about our work together? If you have any comments on that?
Angela Naumann
I asked him. I, you know, I told him we talked about me being on the podcast. And he just told me, he thinks it’s great. He said, all areas of life are connected. So this is a conversation we’ve had more than once. And how we do life is how we do other things.
So when we improved our communication, which he called it a huge improvement, we were more open, more honest about our intimacy. And other areas of our marriage. He — this is so funny — he said, your growth pulled him along. So he said his growth — that my growth pulled him along, which was funny, because I saw it the other way. His growth is what pulled me along.
Maggie
Yeah, it’s beautiful. This is how you both grow together, really. He grows and you grow. One of the things that I really see when someone wants to work in the relationship, but they’re like, “Well, why should I do this? Like they should do something.”
And I say, no, it’s just that you go first. It’s not that they never end up doing anything, it’s that you go first, you clear up your side of the table, you look at how you’re showing up, all the different things we’ve talked about today. And then they join you in whatever way they join you.
Sometimes they — like your hubby, actively joins a program and does a thing. And sometimes it’s just in response to how you’re showing up in the relationship. But it’s not that they don’t do anything. It’s just that you go first. And this is such a great example.
Like he went first and then you went and then in some things you went first and then he went. It’s just a beautiful thing to see is awesome. Is there anything else you want to add before I pull out a question from the Questions for Couples Journal?
Angela Naumann
I love the Questions for Couples Journal. Everybody needs to get that. Link that in the show notes.
Maggie
Okay. Yes, ma’am. What do you love about it? I know that you like using it. What do you love about using it?
Angela Naumann
I think because one of the biggest things we’ve been working on is the talking and the communication and that helps pad my runway.
Maggie
Yes, yes.
Angela Naumann
We go on a date night. We just randomly open the book. We snap a few pictures with our phone. We go on our date, and then we’ll pull up questions and we just — it gives us things to talk about that maybe we haven’t thought about before.
Maggie
I love that so much. Okay, so here it is. It’s the perfect question for everything we’ve talked about today: what quality do you think is most useful to practice during difficult conversations?
Angela Naumann
I don’t know why that makes me giggle. Listening and not, this is not one quality — I think you have to listen. And I think for me, I have to not be defensive. And because I’m very quick to like, “No, but here’s my thought,” and to hold my space like, “No, this is how I am right.” This is my control thing. And so instead of being defensive, but to listen with, what if he has something here to offer?
Maggie
Yes.
Angela Naumann
What if? What if he’s right also? Can we both be right? Can we both be a little responsible in this situation or something like that? So that listening without being defensive, I think, is for me.
Maggie
Yeah. I think for everyone on earth that would qualify as a good quality to have, right? So many times we listen to respond. We’re just like, “Wait, how do I get a word in?” or something like that, as opposed to just listening to really understand what the person is trying to say, asking questions about what they’re trying to say. Sometimes we listen, and we make up a story while we’re listening. Instead of just asking, “What do you mean by that?” Right?
Angela Naumann
Well, that’s exactly it. So like, as a Coach, I can do that with my clients. But when it came to my marriage, it was like a whole different world. Like it didn’t transfer over there. And even into my parenting, like, when the 14 year old got his first little girlfriend — friend that’s a girl — let me put it that way.
That’s where my mama heart is. I got so worried and Maggie, bless her heart, had listened to me go all my fears. Like, you know, because my brain was like, gonna tell me all the ways because he has a friend that’s a girl, I was going to end up dying alone, right? But a simple question is like, what does it mean to you to have a girlfriend?
Maggie
Right.
Angela Naumann
For me to realize what I’m thinking and what he’s thinking are way separate. That he really is still just this little… child.
Maggie
Yeah, he’s growing up. Yeah, so just a simple moment, just notice that we can just ask: what do you mean by that? Or what does that mean to you? When you say this, what does this mean? Just that moment in a conversation that takes less than, I don’t know, 10 seconds, can avoid three weeks of angst. And you know, pain and suffering, just from that one thing?
And if you’re really listening, that’s the kind of question you ask because you’re not waiting to defend. You’re just listening to understand that. That’s so good.
Angela, thank you, thank you, thank you for saying yes to being on the podcast, for sharing with so much love, with so much vulnerability, with so much openness. I know that so many people will be blessed by just hearing your example. So thank you for saying yes.
Angela Naumann
Thank you. I receive that with love and gratitude.
Maggie
And tell people how they can find you if they want to follow you. And if they’re in network marketing, and they want to know more about what you do, where’s the best place to go?
Angela Naumann
I’m on Facebook and Instagram, both places just under Angela Naumann.
Maggie
Love it and we will link to her Facebook and her Instagram in the show notes so you can find her very easily. Thank you everyone for joining us today. We’ll be back next week with more. Bye.