Maggie:
Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. Today, I am so honored and delighted to have one of my clients on the show. Her name is Jewelle, and she’s amazing. And I know you will love getting to know her today. One of the things I want to share on the podcast is how, even though so many marriage issues are similar, whether it’s communication or building teamwork or passionate partnership, there really are an infinite number of ways that marriages can come together. And as you listen to some of my clients share their experiences, even when they have things in common, their relationship, and even the way they use and apply the same coaching tool can show up so differently in their experience. And I really just want to speak to that because I think that we all have those moments when we think is it only me? Am I the only one who’s ever felt this way?
Maggie:
And my answer to that is always, no, it is not just you. And I really want this show to be like a lighthouse, just leading you home to yourself, where you can see things that you haven’t common with my clients that you have in common with me. And you can see the things that are unique to your situation and know that a five-star thriving marriage really is possible. No matter what situation you’re in right now, you can decide to have it and you can go about creating it. And it’s not going to look the same for everyone. And that’s beautiful and amazing. Just like we all have unique fingerprints. We all have unique marriages.
Maggie:
I just wanted to mention that as we get started. And now let me tell you about Jewelle. So Jewelle’s name is Jewelle Bejjavarapu. Hopefully, I got that, right? Yes, I did. Okay. And she is a certified life coach and an expert in people-pleasing, which I love. So important to learn how to not do that. And she helps really high achieving smart type-A, millennial women. She helps them really know how to be themselves and live their own lives without guilt, fear, or anxiety, and to really overcome their people-pleasing tendencies so that they really learn to please themselves instead of everyone else in their life. So welcome Jewelle. So I sort of said a little bit in the introduction, but I’d love to hear in your own words, tell us a little bit about what you do and, and you know, what your focus is in your own coaching practice.
Jewelle:
Yeah, so I’m a certified life coach as you mentioned. And my specialty is people-pleasing their parents. So if their relationship with their parents is a little rocky or they people please their parents they don’t really make their own decisions or really take ownership of their own lives. So I help them set boundaries we work on stepping into e emotional maturity. Processing a lot of emotions and uncovering childhood beliefs and childhood patterns that are still affecting them in their adult lives and that’s kind of running their adult life.
Maggie:
Yeah. And what I find and tell me what your thoughts are, is when you find people-pleasing, whether it’s your parents, your partner, your boss, whoever it is happening within your life, when you’re able to overcome that situation and learn how to set a boundary, or learn how to say no, or learn how to be okay with that other person’s discomfort. It often becomes easier to do that in other areas of your life as well. What do you think?
Jewelle:
Yeah. I mean, that was my experience when I learned how to say no to my parents, I got used to saying no to my bosses or to say no to myself, even for things that I need to boundaries with myself.
Maggie:
Love that. I think we never really think about, do I need to set a boundary with myself about this? That’s so interesting.
Jewelle:
Yeah. I find that I set a lot of boundaries for myself because I think I have a tendency to say yes, and yes and yes. And when I really need to say no and have my own time or like to not get overwhelmed, which I know we talked a lot about in marriage coaching was set, a boundary is like, nope, I’m done like put down the mouse, put down the computer and like step away. I consider that setting boundaries.
Maggie:
I love it. I love it. So tell me a little bit about why you decided to work with a marriage coach specifically. Like what inspired you to want to work on that?
Jewelle:
Yeah, so I got married about two and a little bit years ago. And like when we got married, there was a definite change in our relationship. It kind of went from black to white. Everything was really great. We never fought. And then we got married and like hell broke out. And I don’t know why that happened. I think it was a lot of like our fights were like to the death and we thought like, Oh, we have to set a precedent for the rest of our lives starting today. So we just got in a lot of like really intense fights and they just kept getting more and more intense. And I think when we started working together last February, I had like uncovered a lot of childhood trauma from my past and was feeling really out of control of my emotions and like my marriage really just out of control, out of control for everything. And yeah, I hired you because I was really ready. I knew that the status quo could not be contained for like the next 50 years.
Maggie:
Yeah. It’s so interesting when you think that a fight has to be the thing that determines the rest of your life for the next 50 years, and that’s how you fight every time you fight, it would feel so heavy and so important and so critical. And imagine if the fight is about like the mayonnaise or like where we’re going for dinner. That does happen and it’s just like one of the things to take a step back and say, what if we only make our fights about the thing that they’re actually about. Right. It’s just about the mayonnaise or where we’re going for dinner. Right? Precedent is for courtrooms, but not for family rooms.
Jewelle:
Yes. And that was what was happening to us. We were fighting about things that were like I learned in marriage coaching tomorrow’s problems and not today’s problems.
Maggie:
Yeah. Would you share a little bit about that? That’s a good one to start with. So one of the things, I have an idea of what Jewelle is going to say, I just sent her some, like, tell us about what you learned type questions. So tell us about tomorrow’s problem. Like what that was and how you applied that.
Jewelle:
So I remember you bringing this up in one of our sessions, my mind being blown because I was like talking about how we had to figure out something. We got in a fight and we had to figure out something that was not immediate. I don’t, I don’t even remember what it was honestly.
Maggie:
Far in the future. Yeah. It was like three years from now if this might happen kind of thing.
Jewelle:
Exactly. Maybe you remember, I don’t remember, but it was like far in the future and I was like, no, it has to be solved today. Like we have to figure this out, like this matters in our marriage and like, how do I solve this fight today? And I remember you being like, you don’t have to solve it. This is tomorrow’s problem. Like things can change between now and tomorrow. Things can change with you now in three years from now. Like what if you just let it be? And I was like, shocked. I was like what do you mean? And then I tried, it actually worked.
Maggie:
Is that the best? Don’t believe me, just try it and see what happens and come back. Yeah.
Jewelle:
I remember taking a walk and we had, we’re talking about again, like future problems and I was just like, okay. And I just let it go. I think he was pretty surprised, but I just let it go. And then I was like, Oh, and like, nothing happened like no fight happened. So I started applying that principle to the rest of things to me like, Oh, is this today’s problem or tomorrow’s problem. So that would be a question I asked myself a lot. Yeah. It solves many fights or stopped many fights.
Maggie:
That is so good. And I have to tell all of you, and I don’t know if I told this to Jewelle when I was telling her about, I actually learned that from my own husband. He’s an engineer. He’s very logical. He’s very linear. And sometimes, I don’t know when maybe it was only about the house and I wanted to like solve everything. And he’s like, no, but we don’t have to do that right now, that’s tomorrow’s problem. Like I had the same reaction you had, I was like, wait, what? And it’s like, Oh, that is tomorrow’s problem. So it’s just one of the things I also love to share in the show is how something so simple. Like that was a very simple thing to practice. It was a very simple thing to do. It was a very simple concept to apply simple doesn’t mean easy. Sometimes something very simple can be very hard, but how something so simple can have such a massive ripple effect, right? Where it’s like now there are half of the things that you may be argued about are tomorrow’s problems. So now we’ve eliminated half of those. Now we just have the other half to deal with.
Jewelle:
Exactly. Yeah.
Maggie:
What was another favorite? What are your top favorite things that you sort of took away?
Jewelle:
Yeah, I think another favorite thing was the very first session that we had. We came up with this future self-statement and it was, I’m a woman who’s experienced trauma, but I don’t let that define or run my life. And that was so powerful for me because up until then in my marriage, I had, let my marriage be run and defined by this childhood trauma. And I was just living in the stress cycle and living in this trauma cycle and like reenacting and repeating it over and over and over again. And so stepping into that statement of being, and becoming that woman who isn’t run by trauma was like mind-blowing for me and also still helpful because every single time something came up, I would ask myself, okay, if I’m that woman, what would I do now? Like how I would respond now. I had never really done like future-self work before, and that was, I think my guiding light throughout coaching. I kept coming back to that.
Maggie:
That definitely became something that as we went through different, you know, things that sort of come up over time, we always came back to that statement. It kind of like I was saying like that lighthouse where that statement was leading you towards who you wanted to be in the world, who you wanted to be as a wife, as a woman, as a professional, all of those things. And I’ll link in the show notes, I think it’s episode two on power questions. Sometimes that identity work isn’t so clear if you don’t have a coach, like actually guiding you through step by step, but you can do something really simple, which I talk about in the power questions episode, which is just what would love to do now, or what would a powerful woman do now, or what would a loving wife do now, or what would a resourceful person do now? Like you can sort of insert the quality that you want to cultivate in yourself in a very sort of simple way and you can start experimenting with that, like right now. So just for everyone listening, that’s kind of a simple way to do something that, for us to go a little bit of unpacking, but we got there. But what was another thing that you found impactful for you?
Jewelle:
So I think you do an episode about this as well that I listened to obviously the no complaining and no defending. And I remember we added to it, no convincing, because I do remember that first day when I tried not complaining and not defending, and I realized how much I did it in my relationship. And then, you know, coming kind of reporting back to you and saying, I tried this out and tell you about the fight. And you’re like, well, what about no convincing? And I realized that like all of our fights, like all the disharmony in our marriage was because I was trying to convince my husband to like, be different, do something different, take my side. So like, our team was be on my team versus, being on the same team. An when I took out no convincing It really like changed everything because I, I wasn’t allowed to do that. I’m trying to convince my husband that I was right. And all of my things were perfect and he needed to come over to my side. So it really helped us become a team, a real team versus a my side team.
Maggie:
Yeah. So let’s, let’s step back there are two things here that I think is really powerful. One is when you said we’re a team together like I’m on his team and he’s on my team. Like we are one team. It’s not just my team just for me or his team, just for him. And I talk about teams versus alliances, like why it’s so important to build a team with your partner, like for you both to feel like you’re on the same team, not on opposing teams. That might be the simplest way to say that. And then the other thing is when you said about no convincing, you made it a rule for yourself, and it’s kind of like what you said at the beginning where you created a boundary for yourself. It’s like this is my boundary, if I try to convince, I will stop. Right. This is what I will do, I will stop doing it.
Maggie:
Yeah. But I definitely want to mention that Jewelle is someone that every time we talked about something just took it and ran with it, and she’s really had amazing results in her relationship because of that. And that’s not always the case. Like sometimes our results are a little slower everybody’s experience is a little bit different. Like Jewelle just took it to heart and she is like, I am doing this. Right. And that’s why she’s created the results that she has was she just went all in. Right. So it was no convincing, it’s no convincing, no matter how hard it is, how much I have to self-coach myself on it, if I have to bring it back and we talk about it in multiple sessions, just like, how do I become the person who doesn’t need to do anymore? Right.
Jewelle:
Yeah. I was desperate. I was ready to do anything.
Maggie:
And then you did, and then you started like seeing,
Jewelle:
Yeah. It really has, like, I really have a five-star marriage now. And to me, it’s amazing. I think I didn’t even realize it when it was happening. And then I realized, I was like, Oh, wait, my marriage has been better than it ever has been. And so yeah, the results were incredible.
Maggie:
What else do you want to share?
Jewelle:
I know the last thing I remember we talked about was understanding doesn’t equal love. Another mind-blowing concept. And I remember you talking about how, like, we don’t always understand electricity, but we love it. We don’t always understand how I get all these messages to my phone and it’s great, but I still love my phone. And that analogy for me was super powerful because up until that point, I thought, Oh, someone doesn’t understand me. My husband doesn’t understand me then he doesn’t love me, or he doesn’t care about me or he doesn’t care about what I’m talking about. And this kind of goes back to the convincing cause I would try to convince him to get him to understand me so he could love me. And when you brought that up, it was, you know, a big kind of aha moment where, Oh, understanding doesn’t actually equal love. And he can just love me without understanding me all the time. Like that was so powerful and eliminated again, the other half of the fights.
Maggie:
So tell me a little bit, when you try to practice, like in the day to day of understanding does not equal love. Did you just look for things that we’re loving instead? Like how did you put that into practice?
Jewelle:
Yeah, I think I just tried to remember it. Cause I think a lot of times my default was to go back to like, Oh wait, no, like he has to understand that, he has to understand me. And so like, in the moment I remember Nope, understanding doesn’t equal love and just kind of like repeating that to myself. And so I would take a step back from the conversation or take a step back from the fight and, really process it and remind myself of it. Which is like a constant, like rewiring of my brain of like something that used to go together and pulling it apart.
Maggie:
It sounds like you were just choosing to be loving, like regardless, like whether there was understanding or not, you were choosing to be loving, and then he was also responding in a positive way to your choices to be more loving.
Jewelle:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Maggie:
In coaching, sometimes you find out something about yourself that you’re not delighted about. You know, sometimes we find out, you know, to the surprise of no one, I will say on the podcast, I can be bossy, shock. And sometimes you’re not delighted when you find out something like that. Oh, maybe I could relax a little about whatever it is. Tell me a little bit about how you approach that. I always talk about gentleness and compassion with yourself when you are confronted with something that isn’t the most delightful piece of information to discover.
Jewelle:
Yeah. I think I had to practice, a lot of that gentleness and a lot of self-acceptance. I think I was very ashamed of like how I showed up in my marriage and how I acted while we were like in arguments or fighting and I had to really like take a step back and I remember you telling me like, it’s okay if it gets messy. And that was like a big like lime I held on to, which is like, okay, this is a little messy right now. And that’s okay. And I don’t have to shame myself or judge myself, and really practice like unplugging from those thoughts and unplugging from those feelings and accepting myself, which was, I think probably one of the biggest things we worked on.
Maggie:
Yeah. That’s so powerful. I love that so much. What’s a fun memory you have from coaching either from a session or something you did for coaching homework, something that just makes you smile when you remember.
Jewelle:
So Maggie has this bell that when you have something brilliant she dings it and I loved that. I think that was so much fun. You take like heavy topics and make them so light-hearted and it’s serious work, but it’s also fun. So I think just working with you and your energy every session, but as far as coaching homework, I loved our weekend reviews. Maggie sends out this weekend review where you have to write your positive highlights, something you want to work on, and intentional thoughts you want to think. And it really helps me summarize it, summarize this week. And I was actually going through all of them the other day. And it really encapsulated like all the progress, like you could see from like one week to the next week, the next week, all the progress.
Maggie:
I love that so much. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. I also kept an evidence journal.
Maggie:
Okay. So that’s an example of something that like some of my clients I give them similar homework and some of my clients it’s just like something really applicable in different situations. And in this situation, I thought the evidence journal would be a good thing to experiment with. So tell us about that.
Jewelle:
Yeah. So I started keeping an evidence journal cause my mind was pretty negative and my thoughts were like, I’m making no progress, which was not true. And so every time, I made some sort of progress, even if it was super small, I wrote it down. That way anytime I like couldn’t remember what was happening or I couldn’t remember what was like any progress was being made. I would go back to the journal and I would go and like reread everything and be like, Oh wait, I am moving forward. I am making progress. It was really fun to like, look back on that now.
Maggie:
And to see right. It’s also like once you have that evidence journal, it’s like, Oh, the next big goal that I have in my life or the next big thing, I want to work on this next book of what I have done in a few months of my life. I can do this too one step at a time.
Jewelle:
Exactly. Yeah. It’s very empowering.
Maggie:
Yeah. I think that’s so important. What was, if you had to name one thing that felt hard just about being in the coaching process, what is one thing that felt hard?
Jewelle:
I think it was, I often felt like feelings just like, come and take over me and I wouldn’t know what to do. And I would get very overwhelmed by like my feelings. And so learning how to process feelings, learning how to sit with them. Noticing when I was feeling what I was feeling. Really noticing when I was overwhelmed, noticing when I was angry, I was frustrated on the spectrum of bad feelings that was, I think probably the hardest part for me. Once I noticed, then we could set a protocol and fix it and work to like do something with those feelings. But I had to like notice that I was even in that.
Maggie:
Yeah in the beginning, right. I think this happens to all of us. It’s like we have the awareness to a certain degree, but we don’t see our own blind spots. And it’s like sort of developing this skill to see more and more and more and more of our own experience of ourselves and how we’re showing up in the world. And it’s messy sometimes. Like that’s why it’s okay. It’s okay if it’s messy, Hey, it’s okay if you miss that one, like you’re still building that muscle. And I always like to compare it to going to the gym and building any kind of like a physical muscle. This is an emotional muscle. It’s like your muscle of awareness, your muscle of your ability to make a new choice in a familiar situation where the previous choice wasn’t useful. Right. And then you build that muscle a little by little in the beginning, it’s kind of a flabby and it kind of can lift a little bit, but then you keep repeating building that muscle. And eventually, it’s like super strong.
Jewelle:
Yeah, exactly. And so that was definitely a big thing for me, was working on building that muscle and retraining my thinking around my feelings.
Maggie:
And you had mentioned requests versus demands. Tell us about that.
Jewelle:
Oh yeah. So requests versus demands. I remember when you originally brought that concept, I was like, Oh, everything I’m doing, I’m only asking requests. And then when I actually started looking at it, I was demanding nonstop. Like everything I said was a demand, which really just means that I wasn’t requesting. Everything wasn’t optional. There was an emotional currency attached to that demand for that thing that I wanted. And so kind of having to like neutralize that emotional currency and recognize, first of all, recognize when I was demanding and then neutralize emotional currency and like take a step back and like slow down. So that was another big learning point for me as well.
Maggie:
And once you see that, like, I just think once you see something it’s like, you cannot unsee it. And then you’re like, Oh, maybe they don’t want to see it that way. Maybe I want to see it a little differently. That kind of thing.
Jewelle:
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely
Maggie:
Was there anything on your list that we haven’t covered yet.
Jewelle:
No, I think we covered it all.
Maggie:
So one of the things I like to do is ask a question from The Questions For Couple’s Journal, just for fun. One of the more fun light-hearted ones. So let me see, Oh, this is a fun one. If you could be the world champion of anything, what would it be?
Jewelle:
Oh my goodness. Can you go first Maggie, I’m trying to think of it.
Maggie:
Yeah, I can go first. Gee, okay If I was going to be all serious and professional, I would say the world champion of marriage coaching. Right. That’s what I would say, like my professional self, but if that was going to sort of being like whimsical and fun, I’d want to be like the world champion of, I don’t know, like romance or something. I don’t know a little bit more wild.
Jewelle:
Yeah. I think I would be like the world champion of like, I like love like traveling. And so the world champion of traveling places.
Maggie:
That’s so fun, an adventurer. Yeah. I love it. Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap up this episode?
Jewelle:
I just want to thank you and, and say like, definitely if you ever have a chance to work with Maggie, do it. Cause she’s pretty amazing. So thank you for all of your work with us together. It’s definitely changed my marriage for the better, for sure. So thank you.
Maggie:
You’re absolutely welcome from my height. I’m going to just take a deep breath. I get all teary-eyed like the goober that I am. Obviously, it’s a sacred honor to do this work. I always say that. And thank you for coming on the show for sharing your experience. I always do these types of interviews with the idea that someone is going to hear something they’ve never heard before. And even just listening to this interview can start the process that turned a marriage around. And I just thank you so so much for my heart for saying yes. So thank you for being here.
Jewelle:
Of course. Thank you so much for having me Maggie I appreciate it.
Maggie:
Just to remind everyone, we will link in the show notes to Jewelle’s website. It’s SimplyJewelle.com. So we’ll make sure that you can follow her on Instagram and follow her on her website. I will also link to the power questions and the two episodes you mentioned on no complaining, no defending, and requests versus demands. So we’ll link to that in the show notes, you can find those at MaggieReyes.com. In the meantime, everyone go out and love someone today. Maybe yourself. Start with that. Bye everyone.