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Maggie Reyes:
Hello everyone. Welcome, Sarah. Thank you for being here.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
I’m so excited. It’s a pleasure and an honor.
Maggie Reyes:
Sarah is an amazing human that I know a lot about, but I want all of you to know about as well. So before we get started on experiences working on your marriage and about the Marriage MBA, just tell us who you are and what you do and I might chime in to add some superlatives.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
I am a long-time Maggie admirer. And I am also a coach. I work with women on people pleasing, and I have done a lot of like really intense work on my marriage in the past, and it just kind of got to this place where it was good, but then there just seemed to be like a couple of places where we would just get stuck over and over and over and over again.
And I think for a little while I was like, you know what? It doesn’t suck as much as it used to. There’s just these few little places that we kind of end up. And so really, I just started watching you, like watching what you would post, watching your take on marriage. And it just, it just made me really curious like what if? We have done a lot of therapy and I think therapy is fantastic.
I think most of the time we left our therapy experiences kind of like, well now what, what do we, what do we keep doing? We learned a lot. We would read books and, and, and it felt like just a lot of learning with, and, and that’s what therapy gave us. But there was always kind of a, well, like, now what? Now, what do we do?
And so that’s when I started following you.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. I love hearing this. I’m just gonna say, Sarah Bybee Fisk is a master life coach in her own right. She teaches on people pleasing. She is an expert, and I wanna say this out loud because a lot of times we inhibit ourselves when we are highly accomplished in any area of our life, in our profession, in our passions, and it’s okay to get help.
And I just wanna be a voice for that too. Like I was thinking about last year, there was a point at which I actually had four different coaches supporting me. I had a health coach, I had my business coach, I had an EFT coach, and I had a trauma coach. Like I’m so grateful to have had all of that support during a very challenging moment, a chapter of my life.
And I’m also a very highly accomplished person and I know that’s one of the things that sometimes is hard for us as accomplished people that we are to be like, actually in this one area, I do need some help to figure some stuff out. So I just wanted to speak to that.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Oh, absolutely.
Maggie Reyes:
To really just deeply honor you for the amazing human that you are and what you contribute into the world. And just to say that as well.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Well, and I think that goes to a lot of the angst that I was feeling like, I am highly professionally accomplished. I am the president of an international humanitarian organization. I know how to get things done. And it just kind of didn’t fit with, there’s just these couple areas in my marriage that don’t feel like I have a lot of control over or like I’m able to have a lot of influence.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. So let’s just say nobody teaches us these things in school. Like, like that’s just something I talk about in Marriage MBA is like, these are the things you never learned in school.
Nobody teaches, like, it’s okay that we don’t know the things that nobody has ever taught us.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Yeah. And nobody teaches us when we get married. Yeah. Unless you have someone who like recommends therapy, I mean, in a lot of cultures and for a lot of people, not necessarily you know, mine, but my husband was like, why do we need therapy?
And so. You. Just you. Yeah. Where else are you gonna learn these things?
Maggie Reyes:
So this is one of the reasons the marriage MBA exists is because when I was engaged and was getting married – I got married a little older, I was in my thirties and I think I was 31 if I’m doing the math correctly and I really didn’t wanna mess it up.
And so my husband and I read a bunch of books, did a bunch of things, right? We sort of piecemealed a bunch of things together and I was like, what if we didn’t have to piecemeal together? What if we had it in an organized fashion where we talked about the things that are the core things that will help everybody succeed?
And we’ll talk a little bit about some of the topics that we cover in the Marriage MBA, but that was kind of one of the reasons that it was born was because of that. I mean, I had the same problem. I was like, wait, how do we figure this out? So one of the things is you touched upon therapy.
I wanna dig into that a little bit further before we jump to something else, which is, many of my clients do the Marriage MBA alongside therapy, and sometimes use the work that we do in the Marriage MBA to prepare for their calls. To unpack things that have happened in therapy calls so sometimes it’s a beautiful, beautiful compliment. And sometimes I’ve also had situations where people come to me and they say, I’ve tried, I’ve done all these other things and it doesn’t stick. Yeah. And then they come into the Marriage MBA for six months.
It’s very sort of immersive. Where we’re really talking about different things, different angles of your marriage, you may not have considered unless you had a life coach saying, Hey, you might wanna think about this. So I do wanna honor both of those journeys. Like sometimes it’s super useful to do it as a compliment, and sometimes if you’re frustrated cuz you haven’t gotten where you wanna go, it’s also just a very different approach because we’re concentrating on you.
You don’t have to worry about navigating the conversation with your partner. You don’t. I always think about, sometimes that you need to vent about something, but your partner doesn’t need to hear that. What are your thoughts on that, Sarah?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Like one of the things that I learned in coaching, even before I came to work with you directly, was that one person can change your relationship.
And our therapy had always been the both of us. And I actually feel like at some points that was a problem because you have an hour and usually I tell my side of the story, then he tells his side of the story, and then, you know, it’s 20 or 30 minutes later. And so it was really actually for me, very nice to just take him out of the equation for a little while to not have to.
And it’s not that I wasn’t worried about what he was thinking or you know, feeling; of course, I was but it was really nice to just focus on me.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much. It’s really nice to focus on yourself sometimes. And it’s also the thing, you have like a hundred percent control over, right that’s really useful too.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Maggie Reyes:
Something that really struck me in our cohort and you were the person who said it. So I think it’s like really interesting to talk about a little bit is when you’re in a cohort with other women who are working on their marriages, you also hear their issues.
They’re familiar like you said, you just hear like, oh, these are problems everybody has. It’s not like I’m a unique person on earth that no one has ever suffered over this. But also a really fun thing that happened was somebody gave an example of something and you were like the husband in that scenario.
And that was so comforting to everyone in the room. It was like, wait, I can. Let me ask you questions: What were you thinking? What is your thought process? Can you just share a little bit about that? Because that was really impactful for so many of us.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Yeah. Before I say that, I will also add, sometimes you hear other people’s problems and you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m so glad like I don’t have that one. I got ninety-nine problems, but that ain’t one of ’em.
And so it’s that, that is helpful also. And I don’t remember the subject matter either but I was like, ‘Hey, I’m, I’m the one who acts like your husband in that situation.’ And everybody was just like, Ugh.
And then to offer some perspective and some, you know, potential for her to work with him on that. It was just, it was, it was really interesting.
Maggie Reyes:
It was such a fun surprise. Like it was really just a fun surprise like this person was so frustrated and you were like, hold on. I might have some insights here.
That’s to me, one of the best parts of being in a group, like my philosophy is I facilitate the group, but everybody learns from everybody in the group. And some of the biggest takeaways are just everybody else sharing their own experience, the things that they’ve, they’ve done, which is awesome. Yeah, I love that.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Because what, I just wanna say exactly why that is. Because when you’re being coached directly, your brain is doing a lot of work. It’s thinking, it’s defining, it’s analyzing, but when you’re kind of, your brain is more relaxed when someone else is getting coached, and I find in that relaxed state I can actually make connections way more easily.
I can learn from other people’s coaching because I’m not like in the spotlight. And that it’s you. You learn two ways. You learn from getting coached directly and then you learn from the experience of other people getting coached and sharing.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much. That’s so good. So once you decided to sign up, what was it, did you have hesitation about signing up?
If you did tell, feel free to share. If you didn’t. Feel free to tell us that too.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
No, and actually I had no hesitation number one, cuz I had just been following you for so long. I followed you for like a year before I did. And I always knew like someday, someday, someday. But I was ready. And also I thought it was just me.
Like there’s no pressure for him to feel like this is a success. Or like my husband is, is very, very brainy you know, like we’ve talked about our husbands, their spreadsheets have spreadsheets and he always weighs like, is this a good investment? Is this, and I’m like, I know. I already know that we’re just gonna focus on me.
I have the capacity to make positive changes. And I trust Maggie.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much. And you like knew for a year all of the different things about my approach. That’s why I’m always telling people, listen to the podcast. Sometimes people apply for the Marriage MBA and I’m like, actually, listen to a couple of podcast episodes.
I want you to be really clear on what my approach is and how I coach through things, and I want you to know that my approach resonates with you. And then if it does, come on back. Right?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Yeah, I had done all that. I love that so much.
Maggie Reyes:
So tell us maybe three favorite takeaways, whether it was a concept, an aha moment, or just some of your favorite things.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
The biggest one, which is so simple. You just asked me one time, do you wanna make this a thing? And my brain at the time was really thinking like, look, if I don’t mention this, every time you do this, you’re gonna forget or you’re gonna do it again. Like I have to point this out to you every single time you do this.
And you’re like, but do you, does it, does it have to be a thing? And that is such a simple thing. But I would ask myself like, does this have to be a thing? Does this have to be? And sometimes the answer was, yeah, but it would make me stop and ask myself, like, why does it have to be a thing? Do you like your reasons for why it has to be a thing?
And oftentimes I was like, actually, it doesn’t, it just doesn’t have to be a thing. I can let it go for reasons that I like, not because I’m burying it or ignoring it. So that was a big one for me, just asking the question, does this have to be a thing? The other thing that came out of soul-centered communication for me, um, I tended to want to solve multiple problems at once.
Maggie Reyes:
Mm-hmm, like all of us do.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
I was like, I know we’re talking about, you know, that I wanted your help with dinner and I didn’t get the help I wanted, but remember, this and this and this. And so I would bring in a bunch of problems that seemed related to me, right? Because they’re all under the category of problems, right?
But it actually just exhausted both of us. Our brains were going in too many directions at once. And so having one outcome, like what looks like success here? What does resolution look like? And a very narrow, like, we’re gonna focus on this one thing. That was super, super, super helpful. And it taught me that we can make progress on one thing and oftentimes just a little bit of progress just bleeds out into lots of other places.
And I dropped, I was able to drop the anxiety of like, oh my gosh, this is my chance. We have to talk about this and this and this and this. So that was really helpful. The other thing that was really helpful was some of the meditations. That was just so nice to have like a minute. Time for myself and the meditations.
Maggie Reyes:
Is that the beginning of the calls or the ones that are recorded?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Both. Like you started every call with the meditation, and that was really helpful at the beginning of every call, but also the ones that you sent out.
Yeah, I love those.
Maggie Reyes:
So everyone, I just want you to hear a couple of things and what Sarah’s saying. I always describe the Marriage MBA as simple and doable, and I want you to hear the examples that Sarah’s giving that were so impactful for her relationship. Were pausing, asking a question. The uncomplicated part of soul-centered communication, which is just doing one thing at a time.
Just setting the intention. Wait, is this the one thing? Okay. Wait. What is the one thing? Like this is how simple it is. What makes it hard is doing it over and over and over and over again and showing up for that result over and over and over and over again. The meditations, we do a very brief invocation at the beginning of every call.
My philosophy as a coach is that you are highest in your wisdom is what matters the most. No matter what I teach you. And I reinforce that on every call. It’s just part of my philosophy and I think it’s so important. We live in a very hierarchical society where there’s like the teacher and then there’s the students, and I, you know, I’m married just like everyone in the group.
I have cloudy days, just like everyone in the group. I share those stories as they happen so that everyone can have a good laugh very often with some of the things that we do, but I think it’s so important.
So we start that and then there’s literally, at this moment, there might be more that I add, but there’s literally like two meditations, but they’re very powerful. They’re very short. I think one of those 10 minutes, and one of them might be 15, and they’re just really directly related to what we’re cultivating and what we’re learning. So one of them is on love, safety, and belonging. Love, safety, and belonging is something that we’re cultivating in our relationship, in our life, in the group, and whatever’s happening in our life, and it’s just something to have that touchstone to support you.
I love guided meditation, just one of my favorite supports for my own coaching, and so I love that’s something you do as well. I’m just delighted to hear that.
So tell us a little bit about what kind of results did you create? Like what was the difference or what’s the difference now?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
I think the biggest, and I just pulled out my marriage MBA journal because I wanted to remember specifically, I circled it and it’s kind of highlighted like asking explicitly for what I wanted to create a way to win.
Because so often our conversations would just, oh, I’m getting a headache just thinking about it. Like drag on and on and on. And it was like, are we done yet? Have we resolved it yet? Are we finished? And because I was usually the one bringing in, well, what about that thing? And to me, it related cuz we’re all just talking about problems.
But I think we were exhausted and we would just kind of finally stop talking without a clear win. And that I think is one of the things that has changed the most is if I say like, look this feels like winning to me when I feel like you understand what I’m saying. And we have a clear way, let’s you know they were talking about dinner again, we have one clear thing that you’ve agreed that you’re gonna do. And that’s a win.
Maggie Reyes:
And what is beautiful is it’s a win for both of you. Both of you get to have a win. Like you get to either have the resolution of knowing what’s happening and then move on. Or your husband gets to like win and do the thing and be the hero of the story, which I love whenever we can make our partners the hero of the story. I’m here for that.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
I know. And I think so often I would just talk him to death. And if he’s watching this, he’s probably like Uhhuh and there was no way for him to win. Because there was no clear goal.
There was no clear what do you want? And so that’s been a big game changer.
Maggie Reyes:
One thing that has emerged throughout my one-on-one coaching and through the Marriage MBA, is usually the partners are delighted. Like at the beginning they’re like, what are you doing? Some program? And okay, fine. And then at the end they’re like, oh, that was cool.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Yeah. Yeah. That was I, that’s for sure what he would say.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. Sometimes in coaching, You find out something about yourself, you’re not delighted about, or there’s a moment where we just, it can feel confronting. It can be challenging, like I think it can be so much fun to feel loved and supported and held, and we really focus a lot on that.
But also sometimes, as you know, I will say something like, stop talking or something where we just need to hold our horses and redirect something. Tell us a little bit about how you handled that when you either felt like you just came across something that was not delightful that you had to work through.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
It was really vulnerable for me to admit how badly I just wanted connection. And how, you know, in my logical brain, I’m like, well, no I want help with the dinner. I want your attention on this thing. I want your help with this thing. And all of that was like the surface stuff. But I really just wanted connection and it, it was really tender for me and still is a little bit to just realize how badly I wanted that and how in my communication style, I was actually creating disconnection on purpose. Because I feared that was what was gonna happen. And it’s like I would go in fighting, or I would go into a conversation already like hostile. So that I wouldn’t have to face what I thought would be eventual disconnection.
I don’t know if that’s making sense.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, it makes sense to me cuz I coach on it all the time.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
It’s like, connection in the beginning so that I wouldn’t have to feel it at the end.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. We’ll push someone away or we’ll pick the fight or we’ll be a little snarky in the moment. And it’s a self-protective measure.
It’s like, oh, I’m gonna push you away before you push me away. And sometimes if we are not aware, if we have no awareness that that is happening when we see it, or when your coach asks you to slow down and be like, ‘Hey, but what’s going on? Why is that happening? Tell us more.’ That can be a moment of great discomfort that we wanna hold with so much tenderness and so much love, and we also want to see it so we could do something about it.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Yeah. So when I, when you helped me see that, I think. It helped me to see that what I wanted, this like precious tender thing, this connection, I just didn’t know how to just ask for it. And so I was just hoping for it. But then when I didn’t think I would get it, I would just create the disconnection to begin with so I wouldn’t be surprised by it at the end.
And it’s been a lot easier for me to just say out loud like we have. We have this thing we need to talk about, but I want it to be you and me together facing this thing and not me against you and me against this thing. Cuz that’s typically I think that’s a fair description of our dynamic. It was me against him arguing with him and both of us against this problem that we were trying to solve.
And it’s just made it so much easier to be like, you and I are on the same team and it’s us against this. And if we’re talking about this in a way that’s heading toward disconnection, we can just stop. We can take a break while we’re still in a good place before we both throw up our hands and we’re done.
Maggie Reyes:
And that is so powerful. I love hearing that. I just had a little, a little twinkle in my heart just hearing that. Yeah, it’s so powerful because like you remember you’re a team first. Yeah. And then you go and do all the things and sometimes we just need to remind ourselves, we’re a team first. How do we wanna handle all these things? Yeah. And it just changes the whole conversation you have about the thing.
So what is a fun memory, either from a session or for something you did for coaching homework. Sometimes I give some pretty wacky things… I send people on dates, I have them do experiments, a lot of things. But what’s a fun memory that you have from the coaching or from being in the group?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
I mean, that day when I raised my hand and I was like, I’m your, I’m the husband. That was pretty funny because I, we tended to think like, well, that’s male behavior. So that was, that was a good one for me. Being in the presence of, and we were very different, right? Yeah. Like you’re from very different backgrounds, different cultural groups.
But just being in the presence of other women who could sit with me and like, there were a couple of times when I was crying. So not necessarily, I mean you asked me about fun, but what, where my brain goes is like, it just felt so good to be in the comfort of the company of other women who also cared about their marriages and were working on it. But who could also just witness and say, yeah, that that’s a hard thing. That’s a hard thing.
Maggie Reyes: Ah, the holding loving space for it. Yeah. It is fun. I don’t know, fun is the word, but it is, it is. It does feel good to be held. Yeah. And if we’re the ones always holding someone else to experience in our group is incredible. And something about, I think almost every cohort has had, it’s like, I help type A women, usually very driven, very checklisty type people. But the variety, like you said, cultural backgrounds in that group we had from millennials to like a grandmother and like everything in between. And usually, it’s like we have very similar values, it’s why you’re attracted to my work or why you’re attracted to doing the program. The backgrounds and the experiences and all of those things are so wildly different and yet almost seeing like our humanity in each other is to me, it moves me every time.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Yeah, okay. I just thought of one though. So we had a participant who was older and she talked about initiating intimacy with her husband, and we were just like, yes. We were just cheering, celebrating her and that was actually really fun. And so to know that different people were working on different things and to see them come back and kind of report about how it went.
And the other thing that was really fun is sometimes another woman would be talking and I’m like, oh, Maggie’s about to say stop talking. And to hear myself, like in my own, like real life, like if Maggie were here, she would say – ‘Okay, stop talking.’
Maggie Reyes:
That inner voice, that loving inner voice.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
My inner Maggie.
Maggie Reyes:
Your inner Maggie.
I always think that I am like the placeholder for the part of you that sees you as your most resourceful, you’re most powerful, that like loves you infinitely, and also wants to protect you from dangerous talking. Right. I’m just like the placeholder, like the symbol for that. But it’s really like that part of you.
But it’s so much easier to say, okay, Maggie would do it, but it’s really you would do it. Yeah, it’s so good.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
But I also will say like you are that the person, the coach who believes in my highest wisdom, my resourcefulness, my ability to make progress on that, and I think all of us felt.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that.
I love that so much that all of you felt that. I always joke that I have like a crush on all my clients. I’m just obsessed with everyone. I think everyone is a superstar, everyone is amazing. Like that’s just the truth of what it is. And of course, we’re gonna figure it out. Whatever it is, of course we’ll figure it out.
Okay. Let’s see. What surprised you if we haven’t talked about it yet.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
What surprised me was how easy it was to talk. I always say that I’m a people person, but people ruin it for me. And so ever since, I don’t know if it’s just pandemic like I had some, not some nervousness, but like, oh, it’s gonna be interesting to be in front of a group and to talk about like some pretty intimate heavy things for me, and it was just easy. Everybody was really willing to share and be open and be honest.
So that part of it I think was surprising. What was also surprising was how much progress you can make just by little teeny, tiny corrections like, and not even corrections, just changing, like 1 or 2% over six months. That’s a lot of change.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I love that you mentioned that because it’s like, the program can be intense depending on what you’re going through in your relationship.
Like everybody’s sort of going through different things and sometimes you have to have a really difficult conversation and that can be intense. But really it’s kind of a gentle program. It’s like you’re not reading 64 books or doing a report at the end. You’re not writing a thesis even though it’s called the MBA, you know?
And it’s kind of like you show up to the calls, you pick one thing to do, you play with it back and let us know if you need help. Course correcting, right? I think that, I love hearing you say just making 1% tweaks. I’m always about doing the simplest thing that’s available to you to do. If you need to do a hard thing, great. But whatever’s the simplest thing in front of you to do, I’m the biggest fan of doing that. Yeah.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
I think sometimes when you’re really stuck in what feels like an intractable marriage problem, you want it to get fixed like now. But the wisdom and, actually the doability… like I can remember leaving therapy and just feeling like we have this big thing we have to do. And a lot of times it wouldn’t get done because it was just so big and overwhelming.
And so to have simple and doable things and that’s not, you know, knocking therapy at all, it’s probably just the way my brain was thinking, like, this huge problem has to get fixed, but that’s not your approach. And that was really helpful.
Maggie Reyes:
I love hearing that. I myself get overwhelmed if it feels too big.
So I’m like, I would never want somebody else to feel that way. Like how do we make it simple? What part of this can we do? What part of it feels doable? And I give this speech, I give it all the time. You’ll hear it in the Marriage MBA, but I say, coaching homework or anything that we’re working on it should feel like a stretch, but not a snap.
Like, and I always tell you to imagine a rubber band, everyone listening and watching. Imagine a rubber band. If you stretch it, it fulfills its purpose. But if you stretch it so much that it snaps, it can no longer fulfill its purpose. We never wanna get to the point where it feels like we’re gonna snap the rubber band.
We always wanna be just a little stretched, just enough to make that 1% progress over six months. Suddenly right, becomes, I don’t know, 30% progress, 60% progress, whatever it might be. Okay, I love that.
Okay. Next question, What is something simple that you wish everybody knew either about themselves or about their relationship? Like that isn’t always obvious. What is something simple? You just wish everybody knew?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
That what matters is the feeling. I think I, in my logical, you know developed capacity, I would always start arguing the facts, well, you said this and then your face did that and then it reminded me of this. And he would say, ‘No, no, no, my face didn’t do that.’ It was, and so we would spend so much energy arguing like the facts or the sequence of events or what happened first, you know, second, third, and inside I’m like, I just wanna hug. I’m just feeling really sad and as I got more comfortable with feelings, then I got more comfortable saying, ‘You know what? I’m just really sad right now. I’m feeling disconnected.’
And for us, the minute I, and it’s hard, I had to do it first, right? I had to, I had to go first. And that was my brain got a little hung up there a little bit for a while. Like, well, why do I have to be the one to do this? But I was the one in the group. So once I could understand like what I want most is connection, what makes me saddest is when I feel like we’re disconnected.
We’re spending all this time, energy, and effort arguing the facts or the chain of events when if I can just say, I’m feeling really sad right now, and I would like a hug. Then it’s like, The facts just cease to matter almost. I mean, sometimes there’s something you do wanna address but so often it’s just about how we wanna feel with another person and how they wanna feel with us. And I’ve found a lot, we have found a lot of success in getting to that place faster. By just saying it, ‘I’m feeling really sad.’
Maggie Reyes:
So everyone listen – You get there faster by just saying it out loud. Whatever is in the way between you saying it out loud, that’s what we need to coach on.
That’s why you joined the program. We worked through it and we figured it out. But what happens in the outside world, happens in your relationship and you just start saying the things that you haven’t said yet. And that’s incredibly powerful.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
And for me, it was how I was feeling. For someone else, it might be something different, but yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
And I think, I love how you talked about, and I talk about this all the time, about going first where people will feel resentful or annoyed, it’s like, oh, it’s one more thing for me to do. And one of the things that I always talk about is you’ll actually end up doing less things because we’re gonna question all the things you’re spending so much time doing and check if you should really be doing all those things.
And so that you have space for yourself in your own life, in your own relationship, like that’s really important. We want you to have space for yourself and then you go first. It’s not that you do everything, it’s that you go first and then your partner responds. Yeah. And most often, I always say most of us are not married to jerks.
We’re just married to good people having hard days. And usually, it becomes really apparent cuz we soften and they soften. We show up with loving Care. They start showing up with loving care, and if they don’t, somebody listening to me right now needs to know this. If they don’t, that’s information you wanna have.
That’s something you wanna know. What are they available for? What are they willing to do?
What do you want someone who is listening to this now, who’s considering joining the Marriage MBA, what do you want them to know?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
The quality of your life is what happens in it every single day. And like I said, I mean in my marriage, I felt like it was good and some days it wasn’t fine another day. But that upping the quality of my marriage is actually upped the quality of like my overall life.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay, slow down cause I really want to be present to that upping the quality of your marriage has upgraded the quality of your whole life. Okay, say more about that.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
One of the things that I remember you saying a lot is, you know, the fight you don’t have is the fight you don’t have to recover from. There are lots of fights that we’re just not having anymore because I’m asking myself, does this really have to be a thing? Or how can I set up this conversation so that there’s one clear outcome that we can both say, you know, yay success. And so the overall quality of my life.
Is just better because there’s less fights, there’s less to recover from. I would actually feel like physically sick when we were, when we had periods of like disconnection and I would have to cover it up with a lot of like huffing and puffing around and pretending to be angry and underneath I was just sad, right? And I just wanted to hug, like literally. So there’s all of the, like, that’s just not happening. As much anymore, or if it is, it’s for much shorter periods of time, and I’ve lost kind of the awkwardness I think about just saying what I want. It was awkward at first and saying what I want.
Like the other day, my husband and I had a misunderstanding. I turned around and walked outta the room and then I got as far as the kitchen and then I turned around and walked right back in and I just said, I just wanna hug. And so what could have been and would have normally been like, he would’ve left for work, then we wouldn’t have talked all day. And then we get home and kids, you know, there’s stuff to do with kids. And then maybe that night we would’ve talked. I mean, maybe not so just that just doesn’t happen anymore, and so the overall quality of my life is so much better.
Maggie Reyes:
I just love thinking about what you have more space for when you’re not pushing away or trying to be protective and you’re just having that space, you have more space for more connection, for more love. Like you said, you went right back in which when you, when you said that, I was like, yes. One of the things we talk about a lot is do-overs. There is never a bad time for the doover. There is no expiration date on do-overs you can do it the moment that you realize something is going on.
That is not how you wanna be in the world. It can be during a fight. I’ve had clients during a fight to see like, oh, this is not who I wanna be -standby, and just change the energy at that moment. Call time out, reboot, reset and so there’s never a bad time for do-overs, and that’s such a good example.
It’s like you walked outta the kitchen, you’re like, well, it’s nope, this is it. This is not it, you walked right back in and created a moment of connection instead of like, who knows how long of disconnection. It’s so powerful. It’s incredible.
Ok. I’m gonna ask you a question from the questions for couples journal.
I’m gonna pull it out and I am going to ask Sarah, is there anything you wanna ask me before we wrap up?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Ask me that question first and then I’ll think of something.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay, something fun. Oh my gosh. Okay. This is so silly. Let’s do this one. You get to play only one board game for the rest of your life. What do you pick and why?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Okay. My husband and I actually had to throw away our UNO game about two weeks after being married, cuz we have more fights over Uno. Then like we literally threw the game away and it was a big deal. Well about five years later, I presented him with a new UNO game for our anniversary because I was like, I think we’ve matured enough to be able to play Uno.
It’s so funny, both of us are really competitive. And as long as I don’t make his competition like against me, yeah, we can play any game. Um, but I would have to say Uno just has so much funny history.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay, so Sarah and I are both Leo’s queens of the jungle. So I will say this, you think you know me until you’ve played Uno with me and then you really know number 1.
In our family, Uno was also a thing that we have played where these words have been spoken. We were playing with some cousins and I don’t know what it was, I think, I think my husband got a reverse and then sent all the things to like the opposite direction of where I was. And our cousin was like, why do you do that?
And he was like, I like being married, I enjoy my life. We’re going in that direction. So yeah, we love Uno.
I would say Scrabble. If I could only play one game, it would be Scrabble, but Scrabble in English cuz Scrabble in Spanish. One of our cousins lives in Costa Rica and sent us Scrabble in Spanish.
And even though it was my first language, my husband beats me in Spanish but I beat him in English.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
I just know way better words in English, he’s so funny.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, so funny. Okay. Anything else on your mind?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Yeah, I have a question for you. What do you feel like your greatest strengths are as a coach?
Maggie Reyes:
Oh let me see, I think that I hold this space that change is possible no matter how dire a situation may look or feel or seem when it comes to marriage and relationships. I have seen so many miracles and I have just held space for so many things that I also am able to maintain equanimity. No matter what the like day to day drama might look like, I think that that’s something that can be very powerful for someone when you’re going through something tender.
So I think that’s one quality. And then I think that one of my goals with the Marriage MBA is to make it like your favorite call of the week. Like how could working on your marriage be something you actually look forward to doing? And how could we add lightness to something that sometimes feels really heavy?
And I think that that is something that we do accomplish as you all can see and hear, as you hear us talk about fun things that happen and deep things that happen. So I think that’s something where one of my skills is to say, take something, or even when I’m giving an example and I give you wacky examples and analogies and things that’ll make you laugh and just have a moment of levity while we’re working through something that could feel really heavy.
I would say those are two of the things. I feel very confident and capable as a coach. And then honestly, I was a training director in a law firm for many years and trained lawyers, which was like herding cats. And there’s an element of the Marriage MBA that involves a lot of teaching and I love making what you’re learning fun.
So when I’m teaching soul-centered communication, or we’re talking about do-overs or any of the different things that are actually the teaching portion, I think that I am a coach who’s also very comfortable as a teacher. And I think the fact that you learn at the end, that you internalize it and it just becomes.
I remember one time, I’m gonna give everybody this example to illustrate this point. So one time Sarah was like, you know, I did that social subject communication and I remember, but I don’t really know what it was. And then she basically told us every single step in the thing, and I’m like, actually, you just internalized all of it and now it’s natural to use so you don’t have to worry about memorizing the notes.
And that was like one of my most glorious. Delighted moments for me as the teacher, that’s the goal. You don’t have to say the words that I say. You’re just out in the world doing it. And so for me, the teaching part is fun for me and I think it’s effective. When you hear stories like that and when you see people just out in the world doing the things like, oh, I was in the kitchen I turned right back around, it’s like, you don’t have to remember that. You’re doing a doover. You’re doing a doover.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Yeah, that’s one thing that I just wanted to make sure is one of my favorite things about you is you have the ability, you’ve thought about these things so deeply and for so long to take the complex and make it simple.
Maggie Reyes:
That is definitely one of my goals.
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Yeah and sometimes marriage just feels so complex. It feels so hard, so heavy. There’s so many things I don’t understand. Why is he acting this way? Why am I doing this? Yeah. But you can take the complex and make it simple and that was, for me, really helpful.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that.
I love hearing that. That is definitely one of my intentions on how do we take some of these things that feel so uneven so this doesn’t have to be a thing. It’s like how simple was that? That was like so simple, but it’s kind of like we could all get into the theory of letting go and thinking of this, or we could just be like, hey, does this have to be a thing?
Just cut through all the rest. Yeah, I love that. Okay.
How can people find you, Queen, of stopping people pleasing?
Sara Bybee Fisk:
Sara Fisk Coaching on Facebook and @SaraFiskCoach on Instagram. It’s like you love talking about marriage, I love talking about people pleasing.
I love, and the other thing that I just wanna say is, we both did certifications in feminist coaching, and that was also one of my favorite things that you did, is that you would always remind us, like, look, these ideas that you have about how your marriage should be, these gender roles, these gender identities, you’re not just having them because you’re choosing to have them.
There’s bigger context, and so that was really, really helpful for me as well as was to be reminded of that. So I love and I love you.
Maggie Reyes:
On that note, I love you too, obviously. Thank you everyone who watched us live. Thank you, everyone who’s watching in the replay. If you watch on replay and you have a question for Sarah, she might not be able to come and answer it, but I can answer it.
So if you have a question for me, for sure, I will check the post. Just put a hashtag replay, ask any question that you have. I’d love to hear from you. Thank you all to everyone. Bye.