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Maggie Reyes:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. If this is your first time listening, I’m so happy you’re here. If you’re a long time listener, I just want to say hello. We have listeners all over the world and that blows my mind. It is amazing.
I am grateful to every single one of you for being a person who’s decided to plant more love, more seeds of love in the world by listening to this podcast and spending some time with me and my amazing guests that I have on. Today I have another fabulous human. We are going to have so much fun. Angela Han. Is it Han?
Angela Han:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
Han, Han. Angela Han is on, and she’s a lawyer, she’s a Life Coach for lawyers, and she’s the host of The Fit to Practice Podcast, which is an amazing podcast. I had the honor of being a guest on her podcast. We will link to that in the show notes so you can hear that too.
We’re going to just talk about The Marriage MBA. We’re going to talk about some of her experiences in making her marriage stronger and better. I think we’re just going to have so much fun. She’s such a brilliant human. Thank you for being here, Angela.
Angela Han:
Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. So before we dive in, I always like to have you just say a little bit about what you do in the world and who you are. So tell us anything that you want to share first.
Angela Han:
Like you said, I am Angela and I can talk about anything, right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Angela Han:
So I just started Simone Seol’s Mastermind. Well, it is the mystery room and we were going through an exercise on who we are outside all of these social constructs. Then we had to come up with two to three words to describe ourselves. Went through this whole exercise and mine is called infinite light source.
Maggie Reyes:
Oh.
Angela Han:
Yeah. At first I was like, “Oh, it’s kind of corny. That’s some sort of Star Wars character sounding thing,” but you know what? I’m going to take up space and own it and claim it. That’s who I am. So that, in addition to all the things that you mentioned, I identify as infinite light source.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much. So a couple things. So Simone Seol is a brilliant business shaman and Coach and guide. She and I did an amazing podcast episode together called How to Argue Better. We will link to that in the show notes because it’s so useful, it’s so practical, and we just had such a great conversation about that.
So if you are listening to this podcast for the very first time and have never heard that episode, definitely you’re going to want to know how to argue better. I love the idea of first of all, taking up space, which is something we’ve been talking about actually in the podcast that has come up in the most recent episodes of just this who I am, this is what I’m about, and I’m going to just, whether it’s taking up space in a conversation, taking up space in a room, taking up time on somebody’s schedule, taking space.
So many of us shrink ourselves to take up less space and in our marriages, we often shrink to take up less space. It’s a self protective mechanism and it’s something that we do because it makes sense in that moment, but just an invitation, if you’re listening to this show today and you’ve been feeling like you were shrinking, let’s just start with we invite you to take up space.
Angela Han:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
As an infinite light source, what does that mean to you when you say that? What is its meaning to you?
Angela Han:
I think, well, at first it’s about possibility, infinite possibilities and light source means that you like to start off all of our marriage calls, not all of them, but a lot of our calls with our highest wisdom.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah and so that light source is my complete trust in myself. Even if I can’t feel the complete trust right now, at least practicing it by tuning that light source within me, instead of following the light elsewhere. That’s so good. I love it so much.
So Angela is in one of the current rounds of The Marriage MBA and I asked her to think about what are two or three of her favorite either concepts or things we’ve talked about in Coaching. Just something that has helped her. I’d love to hear what came up for you. What are some of your favorites?
Angela Han:
So there’s just too many to count, but I’m just going to just say what’s on the top of my…
Maggie Reyes:
Sure.
Angela Han:
Well, so I think the one recent thing that you helped me with was simply being able to articulate a problem. I think that is just so powerful. The fact that I was able to do that at this particular time, and for two reasons.
So first is the fact that it took me a few months to articulate the problem that I was going through was really powerful because it really helped me embody the truth that you can’t just identify a problem and then just solve for it and then move on. Part of our journey is identifying the problem and in identifying the problem, we get to become more clear about our own identities.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. Yes.
Angela Han:
That alone was so empowering and so clarifying because the next time I feel like something is problematic, I get to really just experience the problem and get curious about the problem and treat this “problem” as this massive ship, this vessel that care, that I get to explore. Part of that exploration is exploring myself and it’s just like a marker. Okay, that’s the next marker. That’s the next marker kind of thing. So that’s one.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. So before we move on from that one, I just want to give a little bit of context. So when I used to work in HR, one of the things we used to talk about a lot is about solving the right problem. In Coaching, we talk about root causes.
There’s symptoms and then there’s the actual thing, the baseline thing that we’re solving for. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes all we’re doing is softening the symptoms. Maybe somebody is arguing all the time and then I always joke around on the podcast, the argument that you don’t start is the argument you don’t need to recover from.
So maybe the first thing we do is just stop starting arguments, but maybe that isn’t the fundamental thing. Maybe the fundamental thing is there’s a values differential. There’s something that’s going on that…
I’m about to be interviewed in Spanish about having different religions in your marriage and how you navigate that in Latin culture. So sometimes there’s a fundamental thing that first, hey, you start with feeling better, because you’re not fighting all the time.
There’s a place for that, but then we keep digging and digging. Like you said, it’s this vessel that then you uncover other things as you start feeling better, but then we still get to the essential thing. Then we’re looking at is that a problem to solve or is it a situation to be managed?
That’s another distinction that I think is so important that I really learned more deeply from the Gottman Institute about how couples have unsolvable problems. When we spend a lot of time, if you’re a Democrat married to a Republican, to give you an example, because I have a lot of clients that are in that situation, we’re not going to change parties.
That’s not the thing that we’re going to do. It’s not a problem to solve. It’s a situation to manage. How will I align my values with my partner’s values in a way that is meaningful to both of us where we can both move forward? Where will we agree to disagree? Where will we meet in the middle about things that we do agree on? I think it’s so important to not oversimplify. That’s why The Marriage MBA is six months because like you said, it takes a minute to figure all that out.
Angela Han:
That is so true. You articulated it so well, because I don’t really truly believe in the word problem. It’s really more something that comes up, something that’s bubbling up. It’s a spiritual call that we can explore. So like you said, is this something that I want to manage? Is this something that I do want to solve? Then just even that curiosity.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Angela Han:
Helps us uncover more of who we are.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it so much. Okay. What’s another one of your favorite things?
Angela Han:
I think it happened early on in the container where I was having a hard time. I had COVID for the whole week and I had to stay home with the baby and I was pregnant and all of that and pregnant with my second child.
I was just struggling to keep myself afloat and I was, in addition to that, I was doing two things. Number one, I was denying that I was struggling. I was like, “No, I’m doing fine.” Second of all, I think along the same lines, I was judging myself for any struggle that was coming up because I was like, “I am so capable,” and denying myself that struggle was in my weird definition of compassion.
When I brought that up during our call and then you asked me, you said something along the lines of, “How can you be more compassionate to yourself?” That’s when I broke down and realized that I actually was not being compassionate to myself. I actually was judging myself.
So it was like, this is a popular word these days, gas lighting myself [believing something or feeling something that was actually not true. So I think that really opened up a lot of doors around how to be more honest with myself and how to identify what’s going on, my thoughts and my feelings more clearly so that I can sit with them and not analyze, but just love myself through it. Just having a cleaner experience.
Maggie Reyes:
What does a cleaner experience mean to you?
Angela Han:
It means being able to experience one layer of feeling at a time. So for example, if I am disappointed, then feeling just that. I mean, sometimes as human beings, it’s not possible.
Sometimes it feels like you can’t do that because sometimes we’re overwhelmed with a lot of different emotions, but when I am disappointed, now I’m in a place where I can tell myself, “I deserve to simply feel just that disappointment, honor just that feeling.” Instead of repress it with additional feelings of guilt, that less of a cleaner experience.
Maggie Reyes:
I think that it’s so important to talk about this because you described it. You had COVID. You had a baby at home and you were pregnant and you had the exhaustion and tiredness that would be absolutely natural and organic as a human experience to have, but then you had this layer of denial and guilt.
You shouldn’t have these feelings and I want everyone listening to really tune in to this idea that that additional layer of guilt or shame is optional. That is based on cultural narratives that we have, of this idea that we need to be superwomen, that we need to be able to balance everything and do everything and then feel fabulous at the same time. Let’s just dismantle that right here and now.
As you listen to me, please don’t feel ashamed of feeling ashamed because that would be… I know you. I know my people. Someone listening is thinking that. So it’s not an invitation to do that. It’s just an invitation to see. We get to feel tired. We get to feel overwhelmed if we’re overwhelmed. We get to feel whatever’s true for us in that moment without feeling guilty for just being human and having human reactions.
Angela Han:
Yes. Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
Is, is there anything you would add to that Angela, because I know you’re passionate about that?
Angela Han:
Yeah. So, that’s the thing. I think I was also judging myself because I was preaching that message to everybody, because when I Coach lawyers, I’m like, “You got to be compassionate towards yourself.” I felt so misaligned, so incongruent and out of integrity. So all of those thoughts of, oh, am I living the example that I want others to see?
I think what was really transformational was that it wasn’t that I got this new information or this new, I don’t know, system or approach or whatever. It was simply the fact that I felt safe and I had a space to feel safe where I actually simply just connected with my feelings and somebody was there. You were there to facilitate that. I think a big proportion of Coaching is that.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Angela Han:
Is feeling like you have the space, feeling like you are safe enough to drop into your body. So once I was able to have that opportunity to do that, because before then I was just preaching from my brain, but after that, I was able to gradually more and more teach with my whole body and not just with my brain. Of course, incidentally, my clients started getting more profound results.
Maggie Reyes:
Of course. Yeah.
Angela Han:
So when I first came into The Marriage MBA, I was like, “Okay, it’s just about my marriage. I don’t know if it’s really going to help me with anything else, but I know that I want to get my marriage really more improved than before to prepare for our second child.” That was my initial intention, but then of course the effect, me working on my marriage affects literally every other aspect of my life. You have to join.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. I was going to ask you at the end is there anything you want somebody who’s thinking about joining to know? So I’m just going to ask you that now, since you said you have to join. What do you want someone to know?
Angela Han:
Yeah. Like I was saying about, I initially joined because I thought that I was only working on my marriage. I initially actually didn’t join. I actually didn’t join. I was going to join the previous round, but I didn’t because I felt like it was unfair that I was the one working on the marriage, that my husband is not going to be attending the calls, and I felt like it was unfair, but then something was telling me that this was the way to go because this is about my peace.
This is about what I deserve. It’s not about me trying to control my husband or control the marriage or control my kids. It’s really about loving myself and that’s where everything begins. That’s how my marriage gets more love. That’s how my husband gets more love. That’s how my kids get more love.
So this was really simply a process where I mastered that for myself, which then improves all of my relationships, my business, my career, the results I create for myself, and the results I create for my clients.
So if you’re thinking about joining, I mean, an improvement in your marriage is really a bonus side effect. The core of who you are, the core of your being and your life is going to change 180 degrees. Not because there’s something wrong with you, but because you get to see more of who you are.
Maggie Reyes:
That’s so beautiful, Angela, and it’s so powerful. I think so many people have that thought. They have partners that maybe aren’t as willing to do some of the work that you are craving or wanting to do. Then they’re like, “Well, what do I do? Should it be me? I’m already doing a lot.”
My answer to always, you just go first. It’s not that you do all the work. You just go first. I have a whole podcast episode called the Power of One. We’ll link to that in the show notes. If that’s something that’s on your mind, I explain it in significant detail on that episode.
But really it’s your internal experience of your relationship is what we work on in The Marriage MBA. Then you bring that, when you externalize that, to your experience with your partner, beautiful shifts happen. So what is one shift that you’ve noticed in your relationship?
Angela Han:
Yeah, really just that concept of going first. When you were first sharing that in our container, I actually thought I would be upset about that, but when I first heard you transmit that to us, I felt empowered. I felt chills because that actually feels amazing.
The fact that I have full control. I get to love others first. I don’t have to wait on anybody else for me to love them. I think because I was swept away by that story that I have to wait on other people for me to express myself to love other people was the disempowering subconscious thought that was lodged in my brain.
So when I felt empowered by that, of course I acted on it. One of the biggest problems that I came to the program with was wanting my husband to read my mind and then me not communicating what I needed.
The other day, you were also sharing in one of our calls that it doesn’t feel romantic to communicate exactly what you want because we’ve been brainwashed that people are supposed to just surprise you with things and be spontaneous.
Then that actually turned out to be not romantic at all, because I’m just constantly waiting for the other person to take action. That’s just causing more strife and resentment. So when I went first and started communicating, “Okay, this is what I would like to see in our parenting. How can we become partners? I need time from you in this way. I need love from you in this way.”
I was getting exactly what I wanted because the reality was that he really wanted to give me everything that I desired. He just wanted to know. All I had to do was communicate. So I’m still, to be honest, I’m still working on how to be a clearer communicator because…
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, yeah.
Angela Han:
I never really learned how to communicate clearly in a marriage.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. Yes.
Angela Han:
So I’m practicing all the time. So one of the big takeaways is that it is actually not more work. It is actually more empowering to go first and to be that leader. Then that ends up uplifting the other person to lead with you.
Maggie Reyes:
That’s so beautiful, Angela. I love that so much. So one of the things I like to talk about on the podcast is how Coaching can be fun. Sometimes it’s confronting and challenging and sometimes it’s also fun to be in a group of other women who are cheering you on and to have a Coach who’s believing in you and just seeing the best of you on any given week.
Is there something that comes to mind, whether it was a homework assignment or something on a call or anything like that? I’d love to hear something that comes to mind that was a fun memory and something that felt hard.
Angela Han:
Yeah. I was just telling you how me breaking down.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Angela Han:
At the thought of the reality that I actually wasn’t being compassionate to myself was the fun experience and it was also the challenging experience, but as I’m talking, I feel like the fun and the challenges are every day. It might feel a little bit pretentious even to see that.
It’s like, “Every day I have fun. Every day I have challenges,” but it’s really, again, empowering to know that you get full control over how much fun you bring into your marriage and your day and how fun it is that you are capable of handling anything.
That’s also something that you are transmitting to us about how we can handle anything, whether it’s feeling inadequate, whether it is a childcare issue, internal, external, whatever it is. It would be almost, in my view, it would minimize the experience because this program, it really opened the floodgates for being able to choose the fun and being able to choose our own challenges at any given moment.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much. So good. So one of the things that you’ve done throughout the program is you’ve combined doing couples therapy, couples counseling with your time in The Marriage MBA.
I’d love to hear how you’ve used those two tools, those two resources to compliment each other, to support each other, anything that you want to share about that because I know there’s a lot of people who listen to the podcast who might be in couples therapy or want to start couples therapy, but they’re like, “I kind of want to do The Marriage MBA too. How would that work?” So anything you want to share about that?
Angela Han:
Yeah. I view Coaching and therapy as an exercise you’ll never regret doing. There’s no such thing as, oh my gosh, I exercised today. I shouldn’t have done exercise today or whatever, because every single call, both Coaching and therapy, it helps you implement and embody what you already know.
I mean, not what you already know, but the things that you think you may know by giving you more new perspectives and helping you feel the things that you think you know. So for example, I would get clarity during our Coaching calls in The Marriage MBA about what I actually want and then after the call, I would go implement and then there would be some successful trials and there would be errors as well.
So in those instances, what I would do is I would take that to couples counseling, where we share the base and unpack what’s going on because before couples counseling, I would feel a little bit pressed to make time and create time for both of us, come up with a list of questions or something like that, but that was not really happening.
So the fact that we have a separate space to talk through both of our desires, both of our thoughts based on our own separate experiences and how we learned from our own experiences and bringing it back to our shared space was…
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, that sounds really powerful. One thing that I notice is your internal experience, sometimes things that we unpack, have nothing to do with your husband. So the things that then you decided to implement there, you partner with your husband on parenting or something like that, but we spend time unpacking things that you wouldn’t even need to take that to couples counseling because that’s just your internal experience of thoughts and feelings and things.
Like, “He should be able to read my mind.” We can unpack that and see, oh, it’s so much more useful when I’m explicit, when I’m clear, when I use soul centered communication, when I’m uncomplicated. So many of those things, you unravel those things and then you get to the real. Like when we were talking, the difference between the root cause versus the symptom, you get to the root thing, and then you can go and work on that.
Angela Han:
Yes, yes. Exactly. Exactly and it’s kind of vice versa too where in couples counseling too, I notice, well, not vice versa. It’s me realizing just what you said. That even though I come to couples counseling thinking that we’re going to try to “fix each other,” I realize, as I’m saying my words, oh, actually this is mine. This is my thing that I need to resolve.
So it also, in that space, because my husband is also there, he also sees that as an example. I didn’t even ask him to do this. He also just simply becomes that too. Whereas, you know what, I will go first to here. This is also my thing, so I’m going to work on it too. So the fact that we are simply sharing that space to unravel and be honest and be aware of what’s going on was really helpful.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so, so, so much. Okay. One of the things I love to do in our interviews is ask a question from The Questions for Couple’s Journal and I cannot wait to hear your answer to this question. I’m so excited.
So in The Questions for Couple’s Journal, there’s different categories of questions and there’s a whole category of questions that is just fun, future based, whimsical things. This falls into this category. So it’s you get paid, imagine that you got paid to take a year off to write a book about any topic.
What would you write about? Everyone listening, you can answer this question just for fun for yourself, just to get to know yourself better. So Angela, what would you write about?
Angela Han:
So I actually am in the process of writing a book. It’s in its final stages and it’s called How to Be Happy, Even if You’re a Lawyer. So I don’t know if anybody’s into human design, but I’m a generator, which part of that I resonate with is that generators, they receive ideas and then we just get to choose it.
So it’s kind of what happened there, where I wanted to just share the love on what it means to be happy and questioning and challenging the notion that lawyers cannot be happy. I think that has been really exciting for me to experience. So even if I were paid to write, that is what I would write about.
There was a point in my life where, even last year as a Coach, I was like, “Okay, I was able to make money in a side hustle so I should teach people how to do that. I was able to help. I was able to get a very good job as a lawyer, so I should teach other people how to do that. I was able to get specific results and so I should just focus on that.”
But what I realized is that when you really connect with yourself and your emotions and your happiness, then all of those specific results are going to happen anyway. So then I really started becoming more invested in that and in discovering your magic so that everything else, whether you’re trying to start a side hustle, or change careers, or get married, or have a better marriage, or whatever it is that you’re trying to do, that will happen when you are in touch with yourself.
Maggie Reyes:
I think that sets the theme that we’ve been talking about today, which is when you go to the root, when you go to being at peace, and harmony, and loving, compassion with yourself, if you want a new job, you go get that. If you want to build a business, you go do that.
If you want to work on your marriage, you go do that. It’s so fascinating that all roads lead to Rome. If you go to the root cause, the byproducts are all these external things that we can enjoy. Internal success leads to external success.
Angela Han:
I 100% agree.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much. How can people follow you, stay in touch with you, find out when the book comes out? What’s the best way to stay in touch?
Angela Han:
Yeah. Actually this is the first place that I even talked about my book.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. You heard it here first, everyone.
Angela Han:
I don’t know when it’s going to come out. I was trying to rush it and be like, “Oh, it needs to be out before I finish maternity leave,” but really this is the essence of compassion where you have complete trust in not just yourself, but the universe and trust the timing of how everything is going to be created.
So I have no idea when it’s going to come out, but you can connect with me on LinkedIn. That is my primary home, under Angela Han. Of course you can go to my website at angela-han.com.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it so much. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much.
Angela Han:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Maggie Reyes:
Bye, everyone.