Maggie Reyes:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Marriage Life Coach Podcast. I am supremely delighted to bring you an amazing interview with an amazing human that I just have the honor of having been her Coach for a whole year.
She did two rounds of The Marriage MBA with me, and she is going to share her experiences. We were just talking as we were about to start recording about so many things that she has learned and so many amazing, beautiful reflections that she has.
She’s just a brilliant wise woman. First, I’m going to tell you who she is and then we’re going to dive in. So her name is Rachel Joy Okura. I hope I pronounce that correctly.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yep.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. She’s nodding, so we’re on the right track and she is a Life and Business Coach. She’s also the co-founder and co-owner of Illume Life Solar, which is a solar panel company, which I’m so fascinated by that technology. I think that’s so amazing.
She is an attorney, a realtor and a real estate investor, like truly a Renaissance woman that has varied interests and lives a beautifully, bold and rich life, which I think is so amazing. She is a bride to be, as we record this. She’s currently engaged and we’ll probably talk a little bit about that during the episode.
She is the mom of a blended family of six kids. She has a lot on her plate. If you’re listening to this and you have a lot on your plate, this episode is for you. She loves to dance salsa, travel. She’s very playful as do I, both playful and the next thing, which is she loves to read spiritual and self development books, and I do too. I am all about it. I literally have The Four Agreements on my desk as we start the episode.
Rachel Joy Okura:
I have five different books on my desk right now.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. She is the creator of a concept I’m totally going to ask her about in this episode called loveset, which is a state of being grounded in deep love for yourself, for others and for your business or your work life. I want to know all about loveset as we get started. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Thanks so much Maggie for having me. I’m super excited to talk to you about all the things.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. That was the introduction of all the different roles you play in life. If you wanted to introduce yourself with something from your heart, what would you say?
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, I would say that I am on this amazing, beautiful, horribly difficult journey that we all are on and I’m just doing my best to figure it out and to live a life of joy and meaning.
Maggie Reyes:
I want everyone to hear this. Rachel is a very humble, but wildly successful person and she’s just doing her best like all of us are. I think it’s so important for us to hear and I just imagine myself at different stages of my life and I would be like, “Wow, she has everything. She’s got it figured out.”
It’s so beautiful to just hear you say, “I’m just doing my best on any given day.” So powerful. Before we dive into all the other things, tell us about loveset. I need to know immediately.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah. I created this concept, probably about a year ago. We always talk about mindset, right? We’re mindset Coaches, so mindset. I was like that’s great, but I realized you can use your mind and willpower to achieve something without any love or being attached to that.
I’m always about being is primary, doing is secondary, the doing, the actions is great, but it’s more about who you’re being and then doing things from being that loving person, that grounded person, the person who isn’t acting from ego. I was like what if there was more of a different way of thinking about it or doing things that’s from loveset?
Where it’s not just your mind and creating these things from your mind, but that’s part of it. But, it’s about being love. It’s about being love, being in love with yourself, being in love with your clients, being in love with your business. That is the key to success, versus doing all the things from this willpower from your mind.
Maggie Reyes:
That is so incredibly powerful. Who are you being in your life, in your marriage, in your relationships? Right. We talk about it in The Marriage MBA is your identity, right? What is your vision for who you want to be and then how are you showing up from that vision? But, I love the idea that you don’t just have a mindset, you have a loveset.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes. Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
It’s we’re working on our loveset, just like we work on our mindset. Am I connected with love right now? Am I disconnected from love right now? How am I expressing love right now? I could just see all the possibilities, Rachel.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because we know that happiness doesn’t come from anything external and sometimes we use our mindset to create all these things we think are going to make us happier or make our lives better, when really joy and peace come from who we’re being. It comes from within. When we do everything from that space, then there’s meaning behind what we’re doing. There’s this truth to it that’s eternal. That’s how I feel.
Maggie Reyes:
I love the reminder that happiness doesn’t come from anything external. Even though we talk about that all the time on the podcast, we always need to be reminded. There’s this longitudinal study they did at Harvard about happiness and what creates happiness. At the end of the day, it’s your relationships.
They studied these people for, I don’t know, 50 years or some really long period of time. No matter how much money they made, what titles they had, the promotions or all these external things of success, what ultimately was really the thing that made people happy was, do you have someone in your life who has your back?
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, that connection.
Maggie Reyes:
That connection. Of course in a marriage, we would love her to be your partner and you play that role for them. But, just being connected to other humans and loving community is all the things. It’s what we do everything for.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
You’ve heard me say this. One of my favorite quotes is, “To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition.” That’s by Samuel Johnson, who I don’t know, lived in the 1800s or something. But, I always come back to that quote, because it’s what we do everything for. We’re doing everything. When our head hits the pillow, we feel happy at home. That’s the whole purpose of all the things and sometimes you’re like, “Why am I doing this thing?”
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah. It’s home as in your home, your family, but also home as in yourself.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes, yes.
Rachel Joy Okura:
This is your home and that’s the first love relationship that needs to be there in order to have the beautiful love relationships with everyone else in your home and outside-
Maggie Reyes:
Yes, to be happy in the home of your mind, in the home of your heart.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
In the home of your body.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
To be happy at home in the places that belong unequivocally to us, no matter where we are on earth in any given moment is the ultimate result of all ambition. It’s what we do everything for.
Rachel Joy Okura:
That’s so beautiful.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, it’s so good. I know that you have a whole bulleted point, checklist have checklist kind of list, as would I.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Type A woman here.
Maggie Reyes:
Type A. What I’d love to know are some of your favorite experiences or things that you learned inside The Marriage MBA, what kind of results did you create? It’s like, everybody’s curious what happens? How does it work? What do you actually create in your life? Go ahead and just start with the first one and we’ll just talk through whatever comes to mind that you want to share.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah. A year ago when I first sought you out and I was like, “I think I want to do this, but I’m not married. I’ve been married. I’m divorced. I’m in a relationship. Can I even do this?” And you’re like, “Yes, definitely. It will, you’re in a relationship. This can help you.”
So I was like, okay. I really, I came to you really wanting to figure out if I wanted to get married. It was like I wanted to want to get married again, but because of all the pain and everything that happened in my past marriage, I wasn’t sure if I wanted that again.
Because I had marriage, in my mind and in my body, marriage meant a lot of things that I didn’t want. I was like, “Well, I know it can be amazing and I know it can mean something else, but I don’t know what that is.”
I came to you wanting to figure out if I wanted to get married. I don’t know if it was I wanted to just see what everyone else was doing and how they were handling their marriages and why they’re even married, or why they’re still married.
It was cool to come in and it was just, I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was life changing, really the first round. Then that’s why I went again for the second round. I just feel like I learned so much. It’s so, in the last year, I’ve learned more about relationships than I have in my entire life.
I would say, and I got what I wanted. Out of the first round is towards the end, towards the end of that first six months, I really discovered what marriage meant to me, which is, right? I mean, it’s something different for everybody, but I want to figure out what it would mean for me.
I discovered marriage to me meant oneness and that’s really what I wanted with my partner. I loved him. He loved me. We had a great relationship. But ultimately, I was like, “Yeah, I want oneness and I get to make marriage mean that.”
That’s when I decided I do want to get married, even though it’s scary, even though it’s hard. He had wanted to get married for a while and he didn’t pressure me or anything. But, it was like, he was just there, whatever I wanted to do. I was like, “Well, I do want to get married. I do want to have this oneness.”
Through my discovery of working with you, it helped me just be very intentional about our relationship, because I feel like if you’re not focused on something, you’re not intentionally working on something and talking about something. The default is nothing, like nothing happens.
For me, I was like, “I want to figure this out.” And because I was focused on it, I was able to do that. It’s been really beautiful to have that new meaning of marriage, because before marriage meant pain and hardship and unhappiness. I get to create a new meaning of marriage with a new person.
Maggie Reyes:
What I love so much about that, I mean, I love so many things about it. But, one of the things is we get to decide what marriage means to us.
Rachel Joy Okura:
For you, it means oneness. For me, it might be teamwork. For somebody else, it might be a completely different thing. It doesn’t matter. I think about being a Marriage Coach in this century and basically helping women be part of an institution that initially treated us like property.
I think about the meaning of taking ownership of what a marriage can be and deciding what you want it to be and then going out and living that. I just think, especially in our times, I mean, it’s never been an easy time to be a woman on this planet. Yeah.
Yeah, yep. Amen.
Maggie Reyes:
Right. These are the kinds of things that we, I don’t know. I grew up thinking you grow up, you get a job, you get married. You have these thoughts, these cultural narratives that we are fed and it’s like, but what do we actually want? What kind of marriage works for me?
I think it’s so important to have diverse voices of, “I’m married and we do it this way. I’m married and we do it that way.” Everybody can be different and create the marriage that works for them. I think that’s so important. The other thing is when you said, if you don’t actively focus on something, then you get nothingness. I think about it like relationship inertia.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
I did a whole podcast with my husband on relationship inertia, which was all about that, which was basically like whatever you’re doing right now, so everybody is listening, think about how your relationship is going right now. If it’s going amazing and you do nothing, it will stay amazing, just doing the same things you’re doing every day.
But, if it’s not going amazing and you do nothing, it’s just going to get less and less amazing, because it’s inertia. It’s going to go in the direction you’re already focused on. It’s like the more that you focus on the things that matter to you with intention and with love, the more you create the things you want.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
What’s so incredible to me is a tiny amount of focus, like we meet an hour a week, right? If you think about all the things, the list of all the things that Rachel gets done in a week with her company, her Coaching and her kids and her hobbies and all the things.
We meet an hour a week and then sometimes people are like, “Well, is there homework? What are you doing?” I’m like, “Yeah, you could do it.” If you love journaling, listen, I will give you plenty of things to think about. You could do any kind of homework for as much as you want.
But, sometimes the homework is just how you show up in the next conversation. The homework is how do we want to spend our weekend? Where do we want to go on vacation? Who do I want to be when this thing is coming at me, whatever’s happening in life? How do I want to show up? That’s the real homework.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yep, yep.
Maggie Reyes:
Right?
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yep. Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
I just wanted to mention that. Go ahead.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah. No, that’s so true. For me, I didn’t even have to do, and sometimes I would, do the homework and things. Sometimes I wouldn’t and it’s like it didn’t matter. I loved in the beginning, you’re like, “Anyone can do it anyway they want to right. There’s no right or wrong.”
I’m like, “Yes, this is awesome. But, I still got so much. Every week I was breakthrough after breakthrough, after breakthrough. I’m like, oh my God. I think one of the amazing things about this is it’s a marriage group Coaching program.
But, it really is, yeah it’s a focus on your partner and your marriage, but it’s really improving your relationship with yourself too. I learned so much about myself and that was amazing. I wasn’t really expecting that. But I mean, it makes sense now that in retrospect.
But, it was all these things that I improved my relationship with myself, or I understood things about myself and made these changes for me. That’s what your goal is, to empower women in their marriages to have the marriage they want, regardless of our history of why we were even married. Why we used to get married and how disempowering that was for us. It’s working Maggie. It’s working.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it. Okay, tell us what’s next on your list?
Rachel Joy Okura:
I have, oh, for me, a big thing was breakdowns leading to breakthroughs. Couples have arguments. Couples have breakdowns and I tend to have all or nothing thinking a lot. I was like, “Oh, we have breakdowns. It’s over. This isn’t going to work. This is a dysfunctional relationship. This is not right. It shouldn’t be this way.”
I think you helped me realize, no breakdowns are normal and as long as they’re leading to breakthroughs, then that’s what’s important. I was like, “Oh, all of our breakdowns do lead to breakthroughs and we are able to become closer.” I actually started becoming almost grateful for the breakdown.
Eckhart Tolle says in his Enlightened Relationships, Chapter in The Power of Now he says, “Be grateful when the unconsciousness comes up, because it’s showing you what you are not aware of and what needs to be worked on.”
Then you helped me realize, “Yeah, breakdowns are normal. It’s okay. We always make sure they lead to breakthroughs.” That is what makes our relationship so amazing is that we’re not just stuck or stagnant, or holding grudges, or stuck in this place. It’s like we’re continuously having breakthroughs together from the breakdown.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I love that really adding intentionality to it is the only difference. We do have breakdowns that lead to more breakdowns. The only difference is when you add the intentionality it’s like how can you find the breakthrough here? What is it that will help us move forward here?
Literally just asking a question like, “Hold on. This is coming up. We fight about the same thing five times in the last six months. What do we need to look at that we haven’t looked at yet?” That’s how a breakdown will lead to a breakthrough. It’s just purely from having the intention of like, “Wait, can we use this to grow closer? If we did, how would we do it?”
It’s both that simple and that complicated because sometimes when you’re in the thick of it, it’s just we all have to pause and breathe. We all still remain human the whole time. That all or nothing thinking, I love that you mentioned that because all of us have all or nothing thinking about different things at different times.
I always tell people it’s so pervasive that psychologists have studied it and quantified it. All or nothing thinking is something that it’s a glitch in our human system that I think about it like a software program, “Oh, there it is again. There’s the all learn nothing glitch.”
It’s so easy to have a bad day and think then you have a bad marriage. If you have a bunch of bad days in a row, it’s so easy to then go to it’s never going to work and go to that doom and gloom narrative. It’s just useful to say, “Wait, but what if it did work? What do I want here? Do I still love this human? Is this relationship still important to me?”
If it is, what if it isn’t all or nothing? What if we all have shades of gray and what if we all have moments where we’re not delightful?” I certainly have moments when I’m not delightful. What if we love each other through those moments too?
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So beautiful.
Maggie Reyes:
So cool. So powerful.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay, What else?
Rachel Joy Okura:
One thing that I was really surprised about I did not think would happen, is in the first round we talked about internalized patriarchy in the marriage. I love that you incorporated that into your Marriage Coaching, because it’s so important. I didn’t even know what that was.
I understood what patriarchy was, but I didn’t know what internalized patriarchy was, is that I am oppressing myself by the conditioning of my society around it. Then I asked myself how am I oppressing myself in our relationship and just in general, it’s usually on the woman to use birth control.
To make sure that if you don’t want to get pregnant, that it’s on her. She has to have the hormones and all of these things. I was like, I was using birth control. I was like, “I don’t want to. I don’t like how it feels my body. I want to have this natural.” Nothing against people who want to use it and that’s fine.
But for me, I was like, “I don’t want to. Why am I doing this, just because I was told I have to?” A part of me was scared, even though my partner’s amazing and he never makes me do things I don’t want to do or tries to, I was oppressing myself thinking I had to. That he would be upset if I didn’t want to. I just got the courage to, it was a breakthrough during one of our calls.
Then I had that conversation with him. I was like, “I don’t want to use birth control. I want to do this naturally.” He was like, “Yeah, go for it. Take care of your body. Get that stuff out of your system if you don’t want it.” And I was like, wow, that was easy. But, I had to be the one to just realize I was oppressing myself. Since then, I’ve been off of it and I’ve learned how to do things naturally. That was so empowering for me, that I didn’t realize that, that would come up. That was a huge surprise for me, yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
That is so amazing. It’s such an example of so many things. One is just having an insight from Coaching. I get to choose. That’s the insight and then taking action on the insight. What is the choice I need to make right now? Then making a beautiful choice that honors your body and that honors your intentions and honors what you want.
Here’s what’s fascinating too, is I teach the self-Coaching model, which I talk a lot about on the podcast and we talk about it in the program too, where we look at how your thoughts and your feelings impact your actions and create your results.
One of the things we say when we go through a whole model is the action line is important, like it matters, but it also doesn’t matter. It’s this paradox, it’s like, it’s so important, but it also doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. When you explain what you just explained, it’s the action line for somebody else it could be super empowering for them to do birth control.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
The action line is for one person could be to explore all the different kinds of whatever birth control they want to use. For somebody else, it could be to do all the different kinds of natural methods they could use.
It’s the action line matters, but it also doesn’t matter because the thought and the feeling is, “I’m a powerful woman and I matter, and I’m going to explore what I want and what I want to do with my body.” Then whatever actions, even over time can change and fluctuate. This is such a beautiful example of that.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes, yes. I’m so glad you said that, because we’re all so different. What’s empowering for me, that action could be completely opposite from somebody else. But as long as it’s intentional and it’s coming from this empowerment, that’s what matters.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. That’s what matters. It’s so fascinating. Then I really didn’t understand the internalized patriarchy either. I am so grateful for the work of one of my Coaching mentors, Kara Loewenthweil, who created a whole training, an advanced certification in feminist Coaching.
She really distilled down how some of the cultural narratives we receive just growing up as humans on earth, then become beliefs that we adopt. We have this belief that now lives inside us and that we judge ourselves over.
But, the context in which that belief occurs is the messages that we’ve received from parents, from media, from institutions, all these different things. If I think about, for example, a woman being angry versus a man being angry. In our current westernized culture, if we look at a man being angry, men are encouraged to be angry. It’s the one emotion they’re allowed to feel and encouraged to have.
Rachel Joy Okura:
That’s true.
Maggie Reyes:
If a woman, so I’m thinking about my time in HR. If a woman raises her hand in a meeting and very passionately argues against a plan of some kind, right? She’s aggressive and it’s a problem. If a man raises his hand in a meeting and very passionately argues against whatever the project is, he’s just being assertive and-
Rachel Joy Okura:
He’s a great leader.
Maggie Reyes:
And he’s a leader, right? That is patriarchy. The reason that we take these two things and label them differently is patriarchy. Now, when we feel guilty as a woman, like I raised my hand and I said what I had to say, and then I feel shame or guilt or bad about it, that’s the internalization of the message that it’s okay for the guy to do it, but it’s not okay for me to do it.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
That is when we have those moments that we don’t even know. It’s completely an unconscious thing until Life Coach like me comes along and tells you, “Hey you know why you feel ashamed half the time? Because somebody in society told you shouldn’t feel that way. Guess what, it’s not just you.”
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yep. Yeah, it’s such a good realization for me and now I see it everywhere. I’m so aware of it.
Maggie Reyes:
Right. Yeah, once we see it, we just can’t unsee it. It’s so incredibly powerful to have conversations about that. Then to think about some of the mindsets and lovesets that we take into our marriages. Then we’re disappointed by something our partner does or doesn’t do. We’re like, “Wait, is that internalized patriarchy? What is that about? I, for example, don’t cook. I’m not the-
Rachel Joy Okura:
Me either.
Maggie Reyes:
I don’t cook. My husband took a women’s studies class in college. He was the original feminist in the family.
Rachel Joy Okura:
I love it.
Maggie Reyes:
When I didn’t really know I was a feminist he’s like, “Have you met you, like hold on.” It was really funny. He has dismantled some of that internalized messaging because he is like, “I love cooking. Why don’t I do it?” It’s just like, but we could see and I’m sure someone listening to us right now, imagine not cooking and then feeling guilty over not enjoying cooking. That’s internalized patriarchy.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, yes. Yep.
Maggie Reyes:
When there’s something that’s inside of you that you don’t enjoy, it’s a preference you have of your nature and then you feel guilty, or bad, or ashamed for some role that someone in society said you should have, that’s internalized patriarchy. I just wanted to give people some examples, because sometimes it’s like you say those words, like what the heck is that?
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, it’s funny because I don’t cook either. I’m a good cook and I can, I just don’t like to spend my time cooking and my partner’s cool with it. He doesn’t cook either, so we figure it out and our kids are alive. We’re all good. We’re healthy.
Maggie Reyes:
Winky-wink. Yeah, I always tell my husband, I can warm things. You won’t die of hunger. I can warm things, but you know?
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah. But I mean, that was a huge issue in my past marriage and in a lot of people’s marriages, right? It’s like the roles. I’m like, there are no roles. It’s just, what do you want to do? What do you not want to do? Then believing that’s okay.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, what if there were no rules? Everyone listening, just think about what if there were no rules, what would you actually want, and what might your partner actually want?
Rachel Joy Okura:
That’s so good. That’s so good. That leads me into what I want to bring up next is my fiance and I, we own our solar company together. We’re not just romantic partners and engaged and going to be married and raising a family together.
We own a business together. We’re business partners. That is very interesting too, when it comes to roles. Who does what and how? Yeah, so that question, it’s like if there were no roles, then just what do you want to do? What are you good at? Then being okay with that and figuring it out. It’s been really good for our relationship and also very hard to be business partners.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Rachel Joy Okura:
It’s becoming more of a thing too. I’ve noticed a lot of couples are working together, start businesses together, whether it’s a side hustle or a full-time business. Even some of the people in our company, they’re bringing on their spouses, because everyone within our company has their own business too. Then they’re running their business together. It’s really cool to see this, but there’s a lot of challenges.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay, before we go on, tell us the name of the company and is it only in one state, or if someone’s listening to this and they’re like, “I want to work for a company and have my own business too,” just give us a little info about that.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, it’s Illume Life and we are a solar company. We do everything from the sales to the installs and we’re just in Utah. Yeah, so I mean, we do have some remote people that work. But, for all of our sales and installations, we’re just in Utah right now and we’re growing really, really fast.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay, so definitely when this episode comes out, we’ll link to Rachel’s Instagram in the show notes and you’ll be able to follow her and know anything you want to know about solar panel technology. I just think it’s amazing.
I know a lot of people listen to the podcasts that are in STEM fields and stuff like that. I love this idea that you have your own business within this business, where you get to run your little part of it and you get to really take that as far as you want it to go.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I could talk forever about our business.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, no, that’s awesome. Yeah and I think it’s such a good role modeling. You are a person who has many passions and you work them into your life in a way that works for you. I think so many of us, here’s another internalized patriarchal notion of we do one thing, that’s the only thing. We can’t do something else. If I do this, I can’t do that. It’s like, “Nope, I like life Coaching. I like solar panels. I like this. I like that. I’m just going to make a mix where that works.”
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yep, yep. Like I told you, I incorporate Coaching into our business. Things I learned from you even, I’m Coaching our team on it, because everything, just all the awareness that we get from the Coaching, it can apply to every area of your life. Anyway, it’s amazing.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. Love it.
Rachel Joy Okura:
But yeah, so that’s been challenging for us to be business partners, but it also is beautiful because I feel like we’ve been together a little over two years and it feels more like 15 to 20 years sometimes, because we’ve done so much in such a short period of time that we say we feel like we’ve added time to our life already.
Then it’s we feel like we’ve had … I was in a long marriage. He was in a long marriage and then we got divorced and came together and it’s like, we feel like we’ve already been together, like 15, 20 years. It’s amazing to do that.
But yeah, it’s been good. For any couples out there who are working with your partner, or you have a business together, or you want to, it’s very rewarding and I would encourage it. It’s not easy, but it’s definitely rewarding.
Maggie Reyes:
I’m going to tell you something that came to mind, which is going to sound odd. But, as I was listening to you, sometimes people talk to me about, and I’ve Coached on things like ethical non-monogamy, when people have more than one partner. I tell them, “Listen, the thing is with that is you cannot be sloppy.”
When you have one partner, you can get by with not having clear boundaries and your communication can be so-so and you can still make it work.” But, if you’re in a situation where there’s more than one person, you have to be so pristine in all of your communication, because everybody needs to know what’s happening when and how it’s all going to flow.
As you were telling me about working together, I’m like, that’s another scenario where you cannot be sloppy. Your boundaries have to be clear. Your communication has to be clear. If you want to turbocharge your relationship, work together, because you will have no choice, but to work through all the things.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, yep. Then a lot of your boundary work has come, worked really well for us of like okay, I’m like, “It’s 11 o’clock at night. I don’t want to talk about business right now.” We got to like create these boundaries and these times like, “Hey, when are we just the romantic couple on a date and we’re not talking about profits and numbers and business and employees?” It’s been quite the experience, but I’m really grateful for it. Your Coaching has definitely helped with that for sure.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it, so good. Okay, what’s one more on your list?
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, so a big, big thing for me throughout this journey has been cultivating safety and trust. You know that’s been a huge issue for me and in relationships, especially romantic relationships. I mean, my partner Chris, he’s great. I always talk about how amazing he is, how loving he is, how kind he is.
He treats me like a queen and he really wants to just make me happy and love me. He’s not perfect. We’re not perfect, but he is so amazing and really the man of my dreams. Even though he’s the man of my dreams, I don’t feel safe all the time, or I don’t feel trust all the time because of my previous trauma that I’ve had. This work has really helped me realize that he’s not responsible for making me feel safe.
He could do all the things and not do all the things and I could still feel unsafe. Working with you has helped me learn to take responsibility for my safety and realize that, not only am I responsible for my safety, that some things are not going to feel comfortable, but it doesn’t mean that I’m in danger.
That was something you helped me realize recently is this is uncomfortable and I’m safe. That we always, I think as human beings, we want to attribute our feelings to circumstances. That is why we Coach, to realize that’s not the case. I think what he does or doesn’t do makes me feel safe or unsafe and that’s not true.
But, you also helped me realize that I can also communicate with him about the things that contribute to my safety and don’t, but realizing that ultimately I’m responsible for that. That has been really important for me, because when we’re not safe and you talk about stress cycles, is I just feel like I turn into a different person when I don’t feel safe.
When I feel like I can’t trust someone and just realizing that it’s all about the self trust. Do I trust myself that I can handle anything that happens? Could I trust myself that I’ll be fine no matter what, knowing I can’t control what’s going to happen, what he does in our relationship, no matter what. Even though he’s the most amazing guy, anything can happen.
Because I think a lot of women, especially after experiencing trauma or having a difficult relationship where there was distrust or disloyalty, I think a lot of women shut off and close off because it’s too painful to want to be in a relationship again, to love, to open up to. It’s just not worth it. It feels too dangerous.
But also, like you said, the happiness is in those relationships and connection and having a beautiful love relationship makes life so much more rich and beautiful. It’s like if I’m not willing to open myself up and feel these things and possibly get hurt again, then I’m missing out on all this beautiful experience that I could have. It’s been like this.
That has been my biggest struggle over the past year, is trusting myself, trusting him, feeling safe and knowing that anything could happen, but I’m going to be okay no matter what. And, if I’m choosing to be with him and this is what I want, why would I do it halfway?
Why would I be guarded and just love a little bit and miss out on all the beautiful experiences we could have by having a deep, intimate, loving relationship? That can only happen when I’m vulnerable and open up and able to trust. It’s been a big thing for me.
Maggie Reyes:
One thing that you mentioned, and I just want to really highlight, is that we don’t get to 100% on this scale. We trust and then we have moments of distrust. We feel safe and then we have moments of unsafe.
What we do, I like to always think about it like building a muscle. We build the muscle, the safety muscle gets stronger and stronger and stronger, can lift more and more and more. That still means we still have to work it out all the time. We still have to keep it strong or it’ll get flabby.
It doesn’t mean it could lift anything at all. It just can lift more than it could yesterday. I think the idea sometimes is we’re like, oh, we add our all or nothing thinking to some of these things. We think if I’m not like this 100% of the time, something must be terribly wrong.
It’s like, no, your muscle just gets stronger and you can sustain more things happening and knowing that you’re going to be okay and knowing that you will be okay, because you’re going to take action on your behalf to be okay.
Something you said really stood out at me that I was like, “Whoa, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about this like this before.” You talked about when you’re upset, it’s harder to find that safety or that trust. I was like, oh, think about being in a nervous system activation, so in fight, or flight, or freeze, or something like that, and then layering all or nothing thinking on top.
Here I am in fight like, “This is wrong and I can’t trust this.” Then I’m thinking, “And it will always be wrong and it will never be right and it’s always going to be wrong.”
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
So, we feel awful. When we notice we’re having a natural nervous system response, nothing has gone wrong there. Then we’re layering all or nothing thinking on top, it’s like, “Oh, what if it shall pass. This too shall pass.”
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
And we just want to have awareness, “Oh, and I’m activated. I may not want to make any big decisions.”
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yes, that was one of my bullet points.
Maggie Reyes:
Tell me. Tell me.
Rachel Joy Okura:
We do not make decisions when we’re in a stress cycle. That was huge for me.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Because that’s when I was like, “I have to make all the decisions right now.” When you said that, I was like, “Oh, that is probably very wise to not make decisions when we’re in a stress cycle.” I have been working on that, yes.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it, yeah. I just recorded the welcome videos for the next cohort and I was like, “Never cut a tree in winter,” which is my favorite quote about that, which is like in winter it looks like crap. There’s only branches.
You think that tree is never going to bloom again. It’s never going to have another flower. It’s never going to give another fruit. Then spring comes and it blooms and it’s amazing and it’s awesome. When it’s spring, if you still want to cut down the tree, then you cut down the tree. No problem, but not in winter.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was big for me. I was like, “Oh, that makes so much sense. Why has no one ever told me this before?”
Maggie Reyes:
That’s something I love that you mentioned that, why has no one ever told me this? Because I think some of the things we talk about are really simple. I think nobody’s talking about them.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Nobody.
Maggie Reyes:
That’s literally my thought about it. It’s like, “Why aren’t we saying these things to people?”
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, yeah. It’s amazing.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I just want to also say like in the program, the things we do are very simple. If you hear Rachel talking, it’s like, we pause, we ask questions, we add an intention. These things are not rocket science.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
But, they’re incredibly powerful for changing the course and the direction of how your relationship can go.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I do have to say though, it’s not rocket science, but you are a genius Maggie. Your Coaching is so phenomenal and I’m not just saying this. Seriously, your Coaching is so powerful and you’re so intuitive and you have all the science and the tools and the resources.
You really are a relationship expert and an amazing Coach. Those two combined is just like, it’s so powerful what you’re able to do for your clients. Thank you for all the work you’ve put into becoming the best Coach you possibly can be, because you really are changing lives and marriages. Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
I have to say for everyone listening, my goal is always to empower my clients and to teach them to receive and to teach them to own their genius and their power. I have these moments occasionally, like what’s happening now where it’s like, “Oh, I have to take my own Coaching. I just have to sit in that and receive it and it could feel a little bit uncomfortable,” and I just have to be with the discomfort of receiving a beautiful thing.
Sometimes we think discomfort is all about the hard things we’re going to go do. No, sometimes discomfort is something amazing happens and you just have to sit in the receiving of that. I just want to give everyone the interior experience of receiving such a beautiful gift, like the beautiful things that Rachel just said is like, “Okay, let’s breathe.”
This is the perfect segue actually for my next question, which is what is something that was hard? I love to give the realistic. I think this is from my days as a recruiter, we used to do this thing called the realistic job preview.
When I was going to hire someone, I would tell them these are all the amazing things about the role and the team and all that. I would tell them, and these are all the hard things. These are the things that on day one, you should expect that you’re going to have to deal with and do you want both the good and the hard? Are you sure you want this job? Are you sure? All that.
I think that has carried over into not just by Coaching around marriage, the good and the hard that we acknowledge that there’s always going to be both, but even in a Coaching experience, it’s like I, as a client, love having a cheerleader, someone who’s on my side, wants to see me win and all those things that’s really fun about Coaching.
But also, I’ve had times that I’ve been super confronted, that I’ve finished a call and started crying. That I’ve been on a call and cried in the middle of the call, in a group program with everybody just holding space for me while I just process those tears. I never want to skip that part. Rachel is telling us, “Oh, I did all these things and I feel amazing.” I never want to skip the part where sometimes it was just hard.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I love Coaching and I love getting Coached and I’m such a big believer in it. I don’t know if hard is the right word, maybe it is. But, I think it’s the hard thing in Coaching and in the program, it’s always just taking responsibility.
When you realize I’m like, “Oh, that is actually not on them. This is on me if I want to create this. I create my reality. I create my results.” I think we often want to blame people or circumstances. Every single time it happens, every session, right? It’s like, “Oh, shit. Why do I got to take responsibility?” And realizing, and sometimes it’s easier than others.
But sometimes yeah, it is hard to be like, “Yep, that’s on me. If I want the five star marriage, if I want the five star relationship, I go first. How do I do these things? I can’t just expect him to do everything, because he already does a lot. Where do I need to be taking responsibility and taking action and not putting it all on him?” Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, sometimes that definitely it can feel challenging. I think for so many of my wonderful listeners and I really relate to this too, is we feel like we’re already doing so much and it’s like, “Oh, I’m going to do one more thing.”
But, as you know, from being in the program, one of the things we look at is what are you doing? Is it working? What can you stop doing to make space for the stuff that would actually move you forward? It’s not like we just pile one thing on top of another. It’s like hold on. Let’s just assess what’s happening here and then determine what are the parts that are useful for you to engage with and take more ownership over and stuff like that.
I know I was talking to someone recently where they were planning date nights or something. Then she was the one who always planned them. She was like, “When I didn’t do it, then he never did it.” It’s like, “Okay, what if he just sucks at planning? Are you willing to just give up date nights for the next 30 years because you just married someone who’s just not good at that?” We just want to question it.
Somebody listening might say, “Yeah, I don’t want them.” Okay, no problem. We just want to question it and see, “Okay, what do you want instead? How do you want it to work? What is something maybe that your partner is exceptionally good at and that you could just have nothing to do with instead? Where is the trade off?” It’s not about doing everything. It’s about figuring out what are the trade offs that make sense for the relationship you want to have?
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, totally, totally. That is good. As you were saying that, one thing I realized is that I think it doesn’t really feel hard for me because I always get so much clarity. Clarity feels easy. Yeah, there might be that little, “Oh, what am I doing or not doing, or how can I take responsibility?”
But, it doesn’t really feel hard because I always will get clarity and that it feels easy and that feels light, and that feels like, oh, even if I still have to do some things to make my relationship the most amazing it can be, the clarity feels so easy and I get that every single time from your Coaching.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it, so good. Okay, I love to wrap up our interviews with a question from The Questions For Couple’s Journal. I have a really fun one for this today, which is what are some fun activities you can do as a couple to maintain your physical health?
Rachel Joy Okura:
Chris and I, we actually, we met dancing, salsa dancing, and that is something we do together. It’s really fun. I’ll do some ladies, I did a ladies’ team, he did a men’s team, but we also dance together. We go out dancing almost every weekend and we take classes and yeah, it’s really fun.
But, we’ve also had to have the intention of having fun, because sometimes even activities that are supposed to be fun, we make them heavy, or serious, or we point fingers, especially when it’s something you got to do working together.
I think for us, dancing has been great and that has helped me learn to just, “Oh yeah, this is supposed to be fun.” And to have fun, instead of making it like, “Oh, you messed up or whatever.” That’s something great. Then we love to just go on walks and hike together. It was good weather a couple days ago. We just went up to the mountains behind our house and had a beautiful walk and got to talk and connect. That was really, really nice too.
Maggie Reyes:
That is awesome. That’s so beautiful. Rachel, how can people find you?
Rachel Joy Okura:
Yeah, so my Instagram is RachelJoyOkura, O-K-U-R-A, and I’m on there. You can go ahead and follow me and I’d love to meet all of your listeners as well. I’m just glad that there’s so many people who have been influenced by you and who listen to your podcast and have learned so much.
I know there’s so many people who haven’t even done your Coaching programs, but have already learned so much from your podcast, which is beautiful. But, I just want to put a plugin for The MBA Marriage Program. It really is life changing and I’m so glad and so grateful that I’ve done it. We’ve talked about a bunch of different things, but I could go on for hours about all the things that I learned, days right?
Maggie Reyes:
I love it. I love it.
Rachel Joy Okura:
It was really, really amazing. thank you so much, Maggie.
Maggie Reyes:
Thank you, Rachel, for just sharing from your heart, from your loveset. So good, I love that. I will be quoting you.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Okay.
Maggie Reyes:
Thank you so much for sharing from that really generous kindness from that anchoring and love that you have and that you bring to everything you do. I know that so many people listening to today’s episode will leave just so inspired and to inspire is to breathe life into. I always love to remember that we breathe life into people when we share from our heart.
Thank you for being here and I’m just so grateful and thanks everyone for listening. It is such a joy and such an honor to be with you on your walks, when you’re doing things around the house, all the different places that you take the podcast.
Sometimes I get the charts where it says all the different places that people are listening to us all over the world. I just want to just do a shout out to just everyone who’s listening in whatever country that you’re in. My heart is with your heart right now and I just send you the biggest hug. Bye everyone.
Rachel Joy Okura:
Bye Maggie. Thank you.