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Maggie Reyes:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. We’re going to have such an amazing conversation today. I am so excited to have Jewel. Is it Hohman or Hohman?
Jewel Hohman:
Hohman.
Maggie Reyes:
Hohman, to have Jewel Hohman here. One of the things I try to practice in my life is I call it name honoring. So, if I get a name wrong, I just ask people, just like I did now, what is the correct way to say your name? How do we honor the name of each person?
So, if you take one thing away from the podcast, you can start taking that away, right from the beginning. So, Jewel is here and Jewel is a member of The Marriage Mindset Makeover, my $97 self-study program. She is going to share a little bit about her experience, what she learned, and some amazing things she created in her life, going through some of the things that I teach there.
She is a friendship expert and we are for sure going to talk about that, because friendship is so important. One of the most important pillars that I teach is this idea of sexy besties and how important friendship is as the core of any thriving relationship.
Friendships are also so important as a support system in any relationship. I always talk about how you can’t put all of your emotional eggs in one basket and how sometimes people will come into one of my programs and I’ll give them Coaching homework.
One of the most common ones that I give is go make a friend. So, I definitely want to talk to Jewel about everything related to being a friendship expert and how that works. She is a professionally certified Coach and she helps people stop overthinking in their relationships and become really confident in just being themselves so that they can create relationships and friendships that really thrive and that really contribute to their life and that they contribute to everyone else.
And one of my favorite things about Jewel’s mission is she is on a mission to end the loneliness epidemic and we’re going to talk about that too, because I think people feel lonely, but they don’t realize they are not the only people who feel lonely. We think we’re the only ones and then we go out into the world. It turns out there’s lonely this epidemic by the way. Hi. So, we’ll talk about that too. So, welcome, Jewel. I’m so excited that you’re here.
Jewel Hohman:
I’m so excited to be here, so excited, raving fan. So, it’s so fun.
Maggie Reyes:
I said a little bit at the beginning about being a friendship expert, but tell us a little bit about what that is.
Jewel Hohman:
So, I spent a lot of 2020 when the pandemic happened, I realized that I was a lot lonelier than I realized. So, I really dove into friendship research. I worked alongside the leading friendship expert for a while and created the friendships of my dreams.
So, now that I know that that’s a process, I just want to share it with everybody, because so often people think friendship just happens or it doesn’t and that couldn’t be further from the truth. Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I love that. I think sometimes we are worried about things in life. I always think about, “What are you worried about at 2:00 AM?” We don’t think, “I need a friend.” So, we don’t go make one. Because if we really realize that having a friend would help you, we would just do it more.
I think we feel lonely or we feel sad. We feel these other things and we don’t realize how much healing can happen just by making a friend or having a friend. So, I love that you’re bringing more attention to that. I think that’s so important and I’d love to hear a little bit about what you found out about the loneliness epidemic.
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah. So, right now, about 70% of all Americans feel lonely on a regular basis, which is a number that was still really high even before the pandemic. Most adults don’t have a close friend or they have one to two friends.
Whereas historically, we were used to being in tribes and being in communities and being in all of this connection. Connection’s such an upward spiral. It’s so good for us emotionally, mentally. So, people say where we thrive is five really close friends and again, most adults have zero to maybe two. So, yeah, that’s something that is super prevalent right now.
Maggie Reyes:
I know that we have a lot of centers all over the world. So, if you’re not in the US, just check in, do you have five close friends? If you don’t, go get a friend. If you don’t, let’s start working on it. So, it’s so interesting to think about the stats just in the US for a moment around that’s most people.
70% – most of the population feels lonely and what I see happen often is people often feel lonely even when they have a big family, even when they married maybe the love of their life or they married someone that they felt really close to at one point.
So, this idea of loneliness requires not us just going out and making a friend, but it also requires us to open up, to get vulnerable, to share something that might be uncomfortable, to go through so many of the things that you and I, I’m sure, talk about as Coaches all the time. What have you found is the biggest obstacle in people making a friend?
Jewel Hohman:
I think the biggest obstacle overall is again, that misconception of, “Oh, friendship just happens.” So, you might meet somebody later today at whatever time someone’s listening to it, if they meet somebody later today and they’re like, “Oh, I really like that person,” or we all can relate to really enjoying somebody’s company and then it never going anywhere.
So, so often, I think the biggest barrier is not creating or even reaching out to creating more consistency with that person. We think it’s just supposed to be really organic. That’s actually why I love our topic that we’re going to talk about today, because it really relates back to that of being the one to go first, being the one to initiate.
I think so often, people have thoughts in their head of like, “Oh, I don’t want to be weird.” We’re so afraid of being the odd one out. So, it’s like, “Oh, if I admit that I want more friends or if I reach out to this person, I might have some thoughts about myself doing that.” We think, “Oh, it should have just happened.”
Maggie Reyes:
It’s so interesting to hear you talk about that just in friendship overall, because definitely, in marriages, I see that all the time. We think it should be organic. We should automatically get along. We should automatically want to do things together. It should just be there.
It should just appear as opposed to the idea that we have to intentionally make decisions towards the relationship we want and that doesn’t matter how long you’ve been married, what has happened in the past. Whether it’s something difficult or something delightful, we still have to make those constant decisions on a regular basis.
I think it’s so important to see that holistically, whether it’s friendships, whether it’s family relationships, whether it’s your intimate relationship, that idea of I think about them or I like to label things. If you listen to the podcast, I like to name things all the time.
So, I think about it like deliberate loving action. We have to take deliberate loving action towards the relationships you want. So, I think that’s good to just see it in another place and be like, “Oh, yeah, where am I just expecting it to happen to me instead of actually taking action towards it?”
Which brings us to the topic of the day. So, I asked my members in the Makeover, what was their favorite concept from the program? What was their favorite thing? How did they apply it? Jewel said her favorite thing was the idea of going first.
One of the questions that I get asked all the time and I talk about it in The Makeover in depth is, “Why should I do something?” If my partner is reluctant and doesn’t want to work on the relationship, why should it be me?
My answer to that is number one, because you want something different. Many times, our partners just feel lucky to be with us. They feel lucky that we gave them the time of day. So, if you want something different, that’s one reason.
But also, it’s not that you are going to do everything. It’s just that you’re going to go first. So, tell us how that landed for you. What was the impact that had? Just walk us through your experience at that, Jewel?
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah. So, I remember I really wanted so much more for my relationship. I remember feeling extremely disconnected from my partner who is now my ex, but I remember feeling super disconnected to him. The thought of going first, when I remember hearing you say that… It wasn’t in The Marriage Mindset Makeover. It was on a podcast somewhere.
I remember hearing you say that and I was like, “Oh, I don’t want to do that,” because the thought was, “Why should I have to be the one?” But also, I was so afraid of if I go first, which I know as a Coach as well, involves a lot of thought work.
So, if I go and I change my thoughts, am I just going to end up being blind and missing the things that I don’t want to have? Am I going to end up, for lack of a better word, settling? I was so afraid of that. So, I was very resistant to it at first.
I love what you just said actually about how your partner just feels like lucky to be with you, because that was so huge for me listening to that in the program. You say it in The Power of One. You talked about that. It was so mind-blowing for me, because I knew that my partner cared about me.
I knew that my partner was deeply committed and I had all of these thoughts about, “Oh, he doesn’t care. He should be doing this,” feeling super disconnected to him and honestly, very resentful. Hearing that was like, “Oh, I do know that to my core. That’s why I am still here. I do know that he cares. I do know that he’s very committed.”
What you say is that I wanted something different. He was fine. He was so fine. So, hearing that was like, “Oh, of course,” because I think I was taking it and making it a feminist thing, where I was like, “Oh, but I shouldn’t have to be the one. Oh, here it was women again doing all the emotional labor,” but it’s so not the case.
If anything, it was a very feminist thing to take control over this is what I want. This is what I’m going to create. It makes so much sense that I’m going to take control of that, because this person’s fine. He’s absolutely fine with things, how they are going.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I love that and thank you for sharing all of your experience with that. Something that popped out at me is just this idea, we do all this work, never to go against our own values or our own highest inner wisdom. That is not the goal.
I like that we’re recording it explicitly and really delving into that. When we question our perspective, which is something I do on a regular basis on the podcast and the Coaching programs and anything that I do, the purpose is for you to come to your perspectives from the most powerful, most resourceful part of you. I call it your highest inner wisdom and from that place make decisions.
One of the things that touched me so deeply about your story, which we’re going to talk about as we discussed the different things that you implemented, is how you did all these things. And then you realized spoiler alert that you didn’t want to stay together, but from a place of total power and love versus from a place of resentment and anger.
To me, it’s such a testament to when you want to decide who you want to be in the world, how you want to cure yourself, what you are about, then you get to decide what kind of relationship you want. The goal is not necessarily to stay in a relationship that doesn’t work.
The goal is to thrive in your relationships, whether it’s this one or the next one. I think it’s so important to talk about it. For me, my work with marriages is never to just save a marriage at all costs. It’s always to see, “What’s the highest and best marriage you can have and then do you want that?”
So a very different proposition, which is very different from some of the other things of the marriage world and things like that. So, I love that we’re talking about that. So, tell us a little bit about what happened.
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah. So, I mean, branching off of what you said too, I heard you say that, because you would say… I forget the first part. Of course, the last part resonated with me, but you would always say, “Make your marriage better or you get clear.”
I was like, “I get that. I can understand that logically,” but I was still very, very afraid of really shutting myself down, not really listening to what I wanted, and just settling almost at the effect of thought work and the opposite happened.
So, when I started going first and for me, what that really looked like a lot of the time was giving myself the feelings that I wanted, that I was like, “You should be doing this. You should be making me feel this way.”
But giving myself a lot of the feelings that I wanted to have and really giving myself what I wanted from him like, support, validation, affirmation. Giving that to myself first was so helpful and then going first and you talk a lot about being… Which we can get into this later too.
You talk a lot about being enthusiastic and you have a great example in your program about getting promoted. It was so true. I heard that and I was like, “Oh, I’m so called out.” Because the example that you give is okay, if somebody is like, “Oh, I will show up differently. I will show up to my job after I get promoted,” then you’re not going to get promoted.
So, what I’m doing is I’ll show up enthusiastic and loving when he does, when he’s got to do it. Instead again, especially because being a feminist, this is what I want. I’m going to take charge of what I want. I’m going to create it. So, going first to create the relationship that I wanted helps promote that in a lot of ways, because truthfully, our relationship when it ended, it was the best it’s ever been.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. You have to say that again, because I have had that experience with several clients and it’s a little bit mind blowing, where I have a client right now who’s getting divorced and she’s like, “Our relationship is the best it’s ever been. We like each other more. We get along more. We don’t argue anymore. And from this place, we’ve just decided we don’t want to be together in this way anymore.”
I just want to slow down for everybody to hear that. You did all this work and the relationship did become the best it has ever been. It took another form and all of those things are beautiful.
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah, I can’t assume on his behalf, but to speak for me, I felt so connected to him in our process of breaking up, because I was so honest with myself about what I truly wanted and I was inviting him honestly.
He at one point did tell me, he was like, “I never thought about these things until you started talking about them,” things that he wanted for himself, for himself. So, I invited a space for him to get really honest about what he wanted most as well and I got the opportunity to hear that and see that and again, feel that connection right there.
How we got there though, because again, I was being so afraid of being blind, is that once you do that and your relationship starts to get better, once you aren’t delegating so much responsibility to your partner and you are taking responsibility, you’re taking emotional leadership, I stopped spinning. A
gain, I was afraid of… I keep saying being blind, but the clarity really came from because I wasn’t in this problem solving mode anymore where our relationship was such a problem. Because then what happens when you’re in that energy is you go down all these rabbit holes.
You’re trying to fix it. You’re also feeling really resentful and thinking about all the ways that it is problematic. So, the clarity from going first, from our relationship getting better, so much less spinning. I really want people to hear that, because I remember hearing this concept and I was like, “That sounds really great in theory.”
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Jewel Hohman:
I really want people to hear that. That’s part of the reason why I sent you that, because I feel so passionate about it. It’s so amazing how calm you are and how less spinning, because you’re not trying to solve a problem anymore.
So, it’s so much easier to get access to what you really want, what you really value, and then like you said, to make that decision. So, yes, a roundabout way to answer your question.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. I love that, and definitely, I love the emphasis that you gave on the calmness and when we stop spinning. So, for anyone who’s wondering, what do you mean by spinning? It’s like if we’re constantly looking for a problem or we’re constantly turning in our heads, the problem.
I think about it like an omelet. We keep turning it over one side and the other and one side and the other. That’s what spinning could look like mentally. It’s like we’re constantly spinning and this happened and that happened and then the other thing happened.
How does he really feel or how do I really feel? We don’t make any progress. We’re just going around in circles, spinning, to this that Jewel’s describing, which is from a calm place. Spinning always has a little bit of a frenetic energy or a graspy energy.
It’s a little bit unsettled energy and it’s very different to make decisions on your relationship when you’re in this spinning omelet cycle versus when you’re calm and you’re clear and you give yourself the space to get calm and clear and then you give yourself the space to decide what you want.
Something that Jewel has alluded to but that I’ve definitely experienced over the years with different clients is people will come to me and say, “Well, if I do this work, what if I want to leave? If I do this work, I’m going to have to make a decision.” I’m like, “Yes, correct.”
First of all, you don’t have to make a decision. You can do all this work and decide you want to stay exactly where you are and you can keep spinning if you want. You are free to do that. But I always think about the idea of if your relationship is never going to thrive in the way that you wish it would, I think it’s awesome if you have that information sooner rather than later.
It’s just my personal thoughts on the matter. So, to get this clarity, when you get that clarity, you get to decide, “Oh, it’s never going to go the way I want it to. What do I want now? Do I want to choose wanting something different and wanting it the way that it is or do I want to choose something else?”
I think about it sometimes, because I have such a background in HR and did so many things there. I had a company where I applied for several promotions and I never got them. And I was like, “Well, this is not going to happen here.” I got the message loud and clear. It’s just not going to happen here.
I could decide to stay there and be in that job or I could decide to leave. What ended up happening was I made the very difficult decision to leave. And then the next company I worked at, I got promoted within the year.
I was like, “Oh…” Now, all of that was hard. It had hard moments and difficult times and I’m sure there were tears in between and all the things. So, I just want to say that to people. You can choose to stay in any situation with your eyes wide open as opposed to from a place of spinning.
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah. Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much. Okay. Thank you so much for saying your worry about becoming blind or blinding yourself to what’s happening, because I do think that when we question our own thoughts, we come to this place where we can convince ourselves about almost anything.
If we get really good at it, we can convince ourselves that almost anything is a good idea. To me, it’s almost like if it was a magic wand that you have to be careful where you pointed. If I’m going to turn anything into gold, I don’t want to turn my heart into gold. It’ll stop beating, right? We want to be careful where we point that thing.
So, it’s so important to know when you’re questioning your thoughts, you’re always questioning your thoughts from the point of view of your own highest good, the person’s highest good. It’s a never to twist yourself into a pretzel, into a situation that isn’t genuinely what you want.
I don’t think I could say that enough and in enough ways. I think it’s so easy to think, “Oh, I could just change my perspective and then I’ll just accept this thing that I never wanted in the first place.” That is not the goal for the record.
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah. Yeah. It was so interesting, because again, I could understand that logically, but this impacted every other area of my life as well because I now can access, “What do I want?” What do I think without putting that other layer on top of it of, “Oh, could I just change my thoughts?” It’s almost gaslighting yourself in a way. Could I just convince myself of this? I now know the differentiation, whereas honestly, before, I didn’t think I had that at all.
Maggie Reyes:
That’s so important. So, because I do so much cognitive work and we’ll link in the show notes to the episode called Thought Work and the Self-Coaching Model so that you can just hear me explain it step by step if you’re into what we’re talking about. That episode will just walk you through how to question your thoughts in a really compelling way.
But I think that this idea of gaslighting is questioning your reality and where it comes from is some movie or something where the guy was constantly making the other character made the other character question their reality on a regular basis.
Okay, sometimes it’s useful to question our reality, but never to violate our own agency. That’s not the point. We want to question it to see what else could be true. Is there a more generous interpretation of what’s happening? Is there a more compassionate interpretation of what’s happening?
So often, we get really upset at our partners for a variety of things and we think about how we’re experiencing it, but we forget that they’re human with traumas and worries and insecurities just like we are.
So, often I just invite my clients and my students to question, “Is there a more compassionate view? Could they just be having a bad day or could this be triggering some big thing for them where it’s really not even about you?” Just accessing compassion for yourself and the other person opens up an opportunity for connection instead of an opportunity to just fight over another thing.
Jewel Hohman:
Right. It was so huge in that because I had to do that with myself first. So, one place that I started that I think in the past would’ve been counterintuitive for me is when I would notice that I would feel resentful or upset or hurt, instead of pushing it away or reacting to it, one question that was super helpful for me was like, “Why does this make sense?”
Once I gave myself the space to acknowledge what I was feeling, to notice it to be compassionate with myself, then it was so much easier to go into the, “Okay, what else is true?” It was so much easier to be, again, really compassionate with him as well and really increase our connection.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that so much. So, everyone write this down. Why does this make sense? Because when we look for that and why does it make sense in the context of our partner’s life experiences, family history, all of their adventures in life, why does it make sense?
Oh, why does it make sense that I’m hurt? Sometimes we need to ask it of ourselves. So, often we start with ourselves first. So, I think I’ve talked on the podcast other times about how one of my wounds is abandonment, because I didn’t grow up with my dad and everything that entails.
Sometimes some things will touch me in places where that wound is still alive and I’ll ask myself, “Why does that make sense?” Oh, that makes so much sense, because that wound is there and now we can go forward from it, instead of just being in the wound.
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. It separates you from it. It allows you to have understanding, almost like empathy for yourself. Empathy doesn’t mean again that you believe it, you stay in it, you react to it.
Maggie Reyes:
So yeah, we create empathy and compassion to have a little bit of loving space and then we can decide what to do with it, right? Then we can decide what’s the new story we want to tell about this thing, whatever it is that’s going on. So, you mentioned that you did all of these things, got closer, and then decided you didn’t want to stay together, but you had this beautiful parting. Tell us anything you want to share about that part of the process for you.
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah, so I felt a lot closer to him. I felt a lot more appreciative of him and there were certain things that I knew I wanted in a relationship dynamic. So, specifically, I love talking about emotions. I love talking about humans really in general.
Conversations like that, philosophical conversations, more emotional conversations of, “How do you feel about this?”, that was something that I wasn’t going to have with my ex. That was something that was not in his… I don’t want to say ability, but something that he enjoyed really. So, that’s one example, but there were a bunch of other things as well. I want to try to be respectful.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. We respect his privacy. Yes, absolutely, but that’s a great example. I’m going to stay on that one, because I think that one just covers so many things. There could be something so fundamental to who you are that it really is necessary for your partner to either accept it or be able to be a part of it.
I was interviewed recently for a Spanish radio station in Arizona and we were talking about, “What happens if you have different religions and could you still have a relationship?” My philosophy is absolutely, you can negotiate. Anything is possible in this world if you’re willing to make the trade-off to make it happen, but that comes with a caveat.
So, the example that I gave is I have some friends who are deeply religious. Their religion is a part of their every day, every moment of their life, that they are in church on Sunday. They’re in church on Wednesday. They are volunteering on Thursday where someone who wasn’t a part of the fabric of that particular part of their life would just not be a good match for that. They just wouldn’t.
So, there’s some things where I think about them like nice to haves and must haves. That’s something to think about as you think about your own relationship right now. Are we categorizing some things that are nice to have as must haves and are we ignoring some of the must haves that maybe we need to pay some attention to?
So, I think just thinking about it a little bit more zooming out and thinking about what are our must haves and our nice to haves is a really good place to take our brain, especially if we’re feeling unsettled, if we’re not sure what direction we want to take in the relationship or how do I make it better.
We will link to my dealbreaker’s episode here, because if that’s coming up for you and you really want to think it through more deeply, there are some great prompts in there for you to think about what are your deal breakers if you have deal breakers. But I think that’s a beautiful example, Jewel.
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah. Yeah, it was and it is a must have for me, having those conversations. I identify it for me anyway as a must have, because what I thought about what I wanted most for myself and my everyday life and we were not married, part of the reason why I cannot be in the marriage. I went to The Marriage Mindset Makeover is we were not married and we were talking about a future and things together.
When I really thought about it, it was like I have this one life and that was something that I really wanted to be a part of the regular routine because I could and I was going to other people to get that desire and that connection and that want match.
Part of the reason why it’s so important to have friends, we were talking before about not all your eggs in one basket, but that was still something I really wanted to share with my partner in life.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. I think that’s so beautiful to just recognize, “What are my must haves?” and to spend some time thinking about that. I think sometimes we get into relationships when we haven’t even thought about that. We just think the person’s nice and we’re like, “Yeah, let’s spend more time together,” and then we’re like, “Wait, what kind of life do I want to live? How does that go together?” Yeah.
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah. Yes. Dorothy Johnson, she is a breakup Coach. She’s brilliant. I know you know her, but for everybody else. So, she has this great analogy of a sundae. What do you want on your sundae and an ice cream sundae? What are the things that are most important?
Can you build that for yourself and then have your partner be the cherry on top rather than you need your partner to build that sundae? It’s been so helpful for me now, because now it’s been a while since my relationship ended and now that I am dating, I know what I want for myself. What kind of lifestyle I want to live. I know the most important values. I know what the nice haves are and I know what the must haves are.
So, as I am talking with people, I’m having such intentional conversations now. It’s so fun. It’s so fun. It’s extremely different. I mean, I haven’t dated since college before this, but I can imagine it being extremely different than how I definitely would’ve approached it in the past where it’s like, “Oh, I really like this person. Oh, we get along.”
No, it’s so intentional. I was talking to a friend about this the other day and they said something that I loved that it was not like, “How many boxes does this person check off?” But what about the boxes that they don’t? Having that question of, okay, as I’m dating, these are my most important boxes though. So, if they don’t check that off, it doesn’t matter. You know what I mean?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. It’s not about the number of boxes. It’s about the quality of the boxes, instead of the amount. I always like to think about when I was single and I was dating, one of my friends gave me these CDs back in the day. You would put CDs in your car. This was before Spotify existed.
There were CDs from Dr. Phil who’s a psychologist who does a lot of relationship work. I remember I was driving along and Dr. Phil was telling me how it is. He said, “Look for 80%. Nobody’s going to be 100%.” He’s very blunt.
So, he’s like, “You’re going to sit around at home alone forever if you wait for 100%. Look for the 80% that matters to you the most.” It’s that same idea with the boxes. What are the things that matter to you the most? Look for those things.
If you’re already married and you want to make your marriage work, it’s like, “Hey, what are the things that matter to me the most? Do I have those things? If I do, how can I reconcile these other things?” And then you just work on that.
I want to mention something that you pointed out is even though it’s called The Marriage Life Coach Podcast and it’s The Marriage MBA and The Marriage Mindset Makeover, I do have people in domestic partnerships, people who are together for long periods of time and a long term living relationship.
So, you don’t have to be married to be in one of those programs, but you do have to be in a primary relationship that you want to obviously work on and improve, because it’s not theoretical work that we do there.
It’s like you have to practice, but I just wanted to mention that I know some people will be listening and be like, “Oh, can I do it?” It’s like, “Yes, you can, you are welcome to apply. And if for some reason I think it’s not a good fit, I will always just tell you what my thoughts are about that.”
I have one more question about The Makeover and then I’m going to ask you a question from The Questions for Couple’s Journal, which is what was your experience of doing the work as a self-study? Because this particular program, currently, in 2022, it’s $97. You may be listening to this at some point in the future and I make no guarantees, but right now, that’s how it is. You purchased it.
Everything is available on demand and you just walk through. There’s emails that I send you and there’s guidance that I give you of how to approach the program, but it is a self-directed self-study program. I’m just curious as to what your thoughts are. What did you find challenging about being self-directed and what did you find good or helpful about being self-directed?
Jewel Hohman:
As far as challenging goes, my friends and I joke around, “Are you a spewer? Are you a spewer for how you process?” So, the challenge that I found there was not having conversations, I guess, about it to really process what I was thinking.
At the same time though, I got that from other people in my life where I was able to talk about the material from the program. I was able to write about the material from the program and still get that processing.
What I found really helpful about it is sometimes something will hit you. Again, when you first said, “Okay, you’re the one that wants the change,” I was like, “Oh, shoot.” I wanted to go back and hear that and really hear it again and think about it again. So, having access to it on demand, that was so helpful.
I had listened to truly The Power of One video in the program over and over again for that reason to really, really wrap my mind around it. I found that to be so helpful. You also give a lot of prompts in the program.
There’s two diaries in there. You have thoughts to think on purpose. So, that was in there as well. For me, also, a recovering perfectionist, I see that and I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, look at all this homework. I got to do it all.”
So, one thing that was helpful too is just to pick some that were really standing out to me and having that skill of learning how to do that in this program was helpful. Yeah, I think too, another thing that I would say that was really helpful about it was I could go back to it and revisit.
There would be times where I know I said it was on demand, but there would be times where it had been a couple of weeks since I’ve watched it or even spent time in it. I could always just go and dive right back into it.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I love that. I just want to say, I love how you distinguished how you process and people process by talking about things and some people process journaling or thinking about things or there’s so many different ways that we just process.
So, definitely, for the community aspect, The Marriage MBA is a better fit. If you’re listening to us and you’re like, “Oh, I really want to be able to talk to another human about things,” that’s really where we have a community and you obviously can come to the Coaching calls. We do a lot of workshopping and different things there, but then you can also make a friend.
Now that we’ve done multiple cohorts at that program, there’s several cohorts where people are reporting back to me now. It’s like, “Oh, I just had lunch with so and so,” or “I just met up with such and such.” That’s amazing.
One of these things of the homework is go make a friend, it’s more easy to do that when you’re in communities. I love that you point it out, both the challenge and what made it useful for you to be able to listen to things over and over again and all that. That’s awesome.
So, now I’d love to ask you a question from The Questions for Couple’s Journal. I randomly went through the book and just picked one, but we’re so excited to talk about this because it’s one of our favorite topics.
So, the question is: name your top three personal values. Everyone who’s listening to us now, I just invite you to answer along with us. If you just had to, off the top of your head, think about your top three personal values and let them be okay for today, you can always go back and change them and edit them, what comes to mind just right at the beginning? So what comes to mind, Jewel, for you?
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah. So, right at the beginning, what comes to mind is authenticity. I think, again, the story between my ex and I is so representative of that, but authenticity. Another one is self-responsibility also relating to today, and truthfully connection, understanding presence.
And obviously, as a Friendship and Connection Coach, it’s important, but everywhere, I’ve never felt as connected to myself than I do now. I owe a lot of that to your work in the world, more than just The Mindset Makeover, your work in the world. So, thank you.
Maggie Reyes:
That is so beautiful. Thank you, Jewel. I’m so happy to hear that. I get emotional. If you’re listening to this podcast, waiting for your time, people will see these beautiful things and I’m always telling my clients, “You have to learn to receive. You have to open up. It’s a process. Sometimes it feels uncomfortable.”
To be honest, it’s beautiful to receive something like that and it also is a little bit uncomfortable. So, I just want to normalize that for everybody listening, someone can say something so beautiful to you and you have to slow down and take it in.
Even I who teach you to receive have to go through the same thing, because I’m still human too. So, I just want to say that out loud. So, tell us how can people find you? How can people learn more about friendship and having thriving friendships and really end the loneliness in their life if they’re feeling lonely?
Jewel Hohman:
Yeah. So, you can find me at jewelhohman.com. That will always be there. So, to spell it out, J-E-W-E-L and then H-O-H-M-A-N.com. You could find a lot about friendship and connection. I primarily work with people who want to feel really comfortable socializing. They really want to get out of their heads.
I work with people that are again, in that mystery of, “Well, what happened?” So a lot of us know how to meet people. Not a lot of us know how to make deep friendships. So, on my website, that website, you can find a lot of information about how to do that right then and there on the website.
Maggie Reyes:
I really love that so much. We’ll definitely link to that in the show notes. So, it’s jewel and then H-O-H-M-A-N.com. Something popped out at me, which is a lot of people have social anxiety. If you feel uncomfortable in social situations, of course, it’s going to be harder to make friends because you’re freaking the freak out when you’re in the social situations where you would make the friends.
So, if you have social anxiety or you know someone who for sure has it and you know that they need to be making some friends, send them to Jewel’s website.
Jewel Hohman:
Yes. Actually, my one last thing… Can I use another moment of your time?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Jewel Hohman:
Because it’s so helpful is that you articulated something, again, a lot of what we talked about today, I could logically understand, but I deeply, deeply know be through this process. Understanding my must haves, the things I don’t want to have without, all of this was so helpful.
It helps me articulate something that’s so important in my work with my people is one thing that I really work with them on is how to feel safe when they walk into a room where they don’t know a lot of people.
Because so often, we have a fear of being judged. It makes sense primitively. Of course, we walk into a situation. We don’t know people. Of course, we’re going to be on edge. We’re not going to feel as safe. I was always saying, we want to be the one that’s inviting. We want to invite other people to feel safe too.
We want to invite other people to be themselves too. So, you saying, “Okay, the Power of One of going first…” You have an episode with Melissa about systems theory where you talk about that there. All of that is so helpful for social situations too, because once you can know and be the one to go first and to be safe, you invite other people to do the same. It’s the best thing ever.
Maggie Reyes:
It’s so important. One of the things in The Makeover is there’s a little 10-minute love, safety, and belonging meditation. That if you really feel anxious about a variety of different things, it’s really designed to help you start cultivating the physical sensation of safety in your body.
There’s lots of different approaches that we can take to that and one of my favorites that helps me is guided meditations. So, there’s one guided meditation in there that’s just quick and simple and that helps you cultivate that.
The episode you’re referring to is with Melissa Parsons and it’s the Power of Going First. We’ll definitely link to that in the show notes because it’s something where she worked on her marriage. It’s so interesting.
I was actually just talking to her today and someone asked her, “What was it like to do marriage Coaching with me?” She said, “Well, I used to hate the sound of the garage door going up when I knew my husband was getting home and now I look forward to him getting home.”
It gave me chills all over. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh.” She’s like, “Yeah, you can share that with people.” So shout out to Melissa because I know she’s listening to the podcast and thank you for letting me share that. So, that’s what happens in marriage work, right?
You can look forward to that noise as a beautiful welcoming sound or you can dread it. You can do that, or like Jewel’s beautiful example, you can have the best relationship ever and from a beautiful loving place, decide you want something new in the next chapter of your life. That’s such a beautiful note to end on. Thank you so much for being with us and for joining us today.
Jewel Hohman:
Thank you so much for having me. I was so excited to talk about this, because again, it’s so important. Thank you for allowing me to share this story, because it really was life changing for me in so many areas, not just my relationship. So, thank you so much. If anybody’s thinking about that program, it’s so good. Maggie gives you so much in that program honestly. So, definitely go and check it out. It’s only $97.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. Listen, everyone. I want you all to become my clients. I want you to do the program, get the results, and then when you’re ready to go deeper, do The Marriage MBA. It’s on purpose that I give you all this stuff. I’m delighted for you to use it all up and then come and join us for The MBA as well. Bye, everyone.