Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I’ve been having so much fun bringing you some epic interviews lately. And as I record today, I have gotten so much great feedback on the Re-Entry Episode with Dr. Michelle Pierce on navigating life together after COVID, even while we’re still in the middle of COVID. So I will put a link to that show in the show notes so you can listen to that one if you haven’t already.
It is also a really good values check-in episode. If you’re listening to this years after the pandemic has passed, that episode gives you some great questions and prompts you to ponder when you’re thinking about what kind of life you want to create as you enter any next chapter. So definitely check that out. Thank you for all the feedback.
I am excited to be here with a solo episode today. And I decided to go with something I found really fun and really profound for today’s topic. And I grew up in the era of the Friends TV show, if you remember that show, I grew up watching it. And by grew up, I was already an adult when it was out. So to be clear, it was a show that was meaningful in my television history watching adventures.
As today’s episode title is a total shout out to Friends’ episode titles, and I really just wanted to have fun with it. And I hope that you have fun with it, with me today. But before we dive into the wisdom and lessons learned from a very fascinating cucumber experience, I want to tell you another short, fun story from behind the scenes of being a Life Coach, and a podcaster, and just having fun adventures with the hubby.
So the hubby is not only a frequent guest on the show, he listens to every episode, which is usually a very wonderful thing, but sometimes it makes us laugh. So a while back, I did an episode called Closed Loop Communication. If you haven’t listened to that one, we’ll put it in the show notes. It is really good.
And this weekend, we were checking the grocery list and we keep our grocery lists super organized in a Google Doc. We bold what we need to buy and then we update it by unbolding different things. And so I went in and I bolded something and I didn’t tell him that I had done that. So he was asking me about it.
And I said, “Yeah, I bolded it, it’s done.” And he said, and I quote, “You may want to use words.” Cracks me up. He said, “I heard this podcast on Closed Loop Communication. It had some useful things in it.” And he said this with so much love, it was the sweetest thing. He was totally deadpan. It was just like an episode sitcom.
And we just laughed so hard because I said the useful things. I was the one who said all the useful things. Those are my useful things. So we had the best laugh with it and I wanted to share it with all of you. I really love keeping it real and just sharing that even though I teach these things for a living, I am so completely human. I make all the mistakes. I have all the bloopers and that’s just part of the adventures of life on Earth.
Okay, one of the things that I love thinking about is how nothing has to be perfect to be awesome. We can be messy and have an amazing life in the middle of all the mess. So whatever mess is going on for you today as you listen to this, nothing has to be perfect to be awesome. Remember that.
Okay, so I hope you found that as amusing as I did. Next up, if you’re listening to this in June of 2021 (when it originally airs) enrollment for the Marriage MBA is officially open. And if you want to join, you need to book your appointment with me now — like now, now. So to do that, you can go to a MaggieReyes.com/group and you will find all the details there.
The link to book your appointment is there. You will definitely want to do that just immediately, as soon as you listen to this episode. The Marriage MBA –for those of you who might be new to the podcast, welcome — it is my six month Coaching and mentoring program that helps you take the themes we talk about in the podcast every week, bringing them alive in your relationship to make your marriage stronger.
I teach things that I only teach my private clients and my students in the Marriage MBA as well. So we mix a little bit of some other things you’re familiar with, and then some things that we go very deep and in a different angle in your specific situation in your relationship. So we are in open enrollment right now.
I want to just celebrate that, welcoming some amazing ladies that have already registered and are going to be in the next round. To all of them, I know they listen to the podcast, too. So welcome, welcome. I’m so excited to have you.
And I want to share what one of my clients from the very first round of the Marriage MBA had to say about her experience. Her name is Jules Clancey. She is amazing. We will link to her website in the show notes as well. She’s all about healthy eating and has beautiful recipes and resources. She’s just an amazing human. And we’re coordinating to get her on the show soon, soon.
But in the meantime, I wanted to share what she told me about her experience in the first round of the Marriage MBA. So here’s what she said: “Before I decided to join Maggie’s Marriage MBA, my marriage was the area of my life that I was the least happy with. Even though I’m normally a pretty relaxed, happy person, I found myself predominantly feeling angry and resentful with my husband.
At the time, I was considering investing in a Business Mastermind. But at the last minute, I realized that my marriage was causing me more pain. So I invested with Maggie instead. I can’t tell you how glad I am with that decision. Six months later, my marriage is 100% better. I can’t remember the last time I was angry or resentful.
Instead, I’ve learned to lean into acceptance so I’m able to appreciate my husband exactly as he is. If I ever slip into judgment, I remind myself that he’s doing the best he can. That change of perspective helps me come back to love. We spend more time together as both friends and lovers. We are working as a team, especially in the way we parent, which has improved things in that area as well. A lovely side benefit.
I am excited about what the future holds for us. If you’re thinking about working with Maggie, I can’t recommend it enough. She is an amazing Coach. So wise and supportive. I loved the whole experience of being part of a group and getting to know other like-minded ladies working on improving their marriages as well.
Yes, it’s an investment, but it’s work that will completely change the trajectory of your most important relationship for the rest of your life. It is so worth it. It’s amazing how much can change in six months when one person in a relationship decides to get help to do things differently.” I’m just gonna read that last line again: “It’s amazing how much can change in six months, when one person in a relationship decides to get help to do things differently.”
Jules, those words will be a treasure in my heart forever. It was an honor to just read them and experience them and an honor to do this work with you. So shout out to Jules and I just have to say when I read things like that, and when things like that happen, it just makes me fall in love with this work even more.
I show up with so much love and my clients show up with so much commitment, and we just rock it out. So if you want to have that kind of experience, if you want to dig deeper into your relationship and do the things that you can do to make it better, definitely go to MaggieReyes.com/group to book your appointment with me. And let’s get you enrolled in the next round of the Marriage MBA now.
Okay, let’s dive into what I learned from a cucumber that moved me so deeply that I wanted to make a whole episode about it. I now present you: But what about the cucumber? So a while back, I found out that my blood pressure was really high. And everything is okay now. I’m doing well, so no one needs to worry.
But when I found out my blood pressure was really high, I cried. I was completely freaked out. It was not a happy day in Maggieland, and I was very worried and very unsettled about it. And after I finished crying, I decided to start working with a Health Coach. She is amazing. I will definitely be sharing more and more about my journey with her soon. And one of the things that I have been diligently working on the last few months is really eating healthy and moving regularly.
So on my path to healthier eating I eat, as you can imagine, way more salads and veggies and things like than I used to before and I’ve been having cucumbers way more often. So you know how you can have a cucumber either peeled or unpeeled. And I was having the cucumber with the skin. And I wasn’t really enjoying the experience.
And so this week, this past week, for the first time that I can remember, I peeled a cucumber. And I’m a pretty confident person. If you listen to this podcast, you know. But when I walk into the kitchen, it’s like I’m six years old, and everything makes me nervous. Everything seems too complicated, everything seems scary. “I can easily mess it up,” is the thought that is in my brain when I step into the kitchen.
And as I was thinking about this experience that I had and preparing for today’s episode. I really realized that I have like, negative zero kitchen confidence — like below zero in the negative numbers. And I’m fascinated by that just as a person who, you know, thinks about the brain and how our thoughts impact our reality and what we create in our lives.
And, you know, if you ask me for help with, you know, deep things about, you know, fighting less than your relationship or overcoming infidelity, or, you know, taking your relationship from, you know, a moment of struggle to a moment of breakthrough — all of those things, I’m there. You know, we’re here for that.
But you ask me to do something simple in the kitchen, and I become this scared child afraid to mess up. And so when it comes to the kitchen, I basically know how to warm things and mix things and order things. That’s about it, right? So between warming things, mixing things and ordering things, and my hubby who is the official chef of the family, we make it work.
But this week, something happened that really lit me up. So I just decided I want to enjoy my freakin cucumbers. I eat them so often. And one of the things that I do with clients all the time is ask what delights them and help them reconnect with their delights.
And I also ask: what could it be in your life (so take a moment, think of this) that you are reluctantly tolerating? That you maybe have very little interest in, but you’re tolerating it, you’re allowing it. And what would your life be like if you stopped doing that? So I was tolerating cucumber skin, because peeling it felt so hard.
So remember, my six year old brain has taken over when I walk into the kitchen. My usual scrappy resourcefulness has disappeared. And first of all, if you peel things, you know how this story ends. It isn’t actually hard in actual reality, right? But to my brain, my six year old, unconfident (I don’t know if that’s a word, but we’re making it a word today) — a six year old, unconfident kitchen brain. That was a very high mountain to climb.
And this week, I remembered that I have the ability to learn things, which seems obvious, but it didn’t seem obvious in the kitchen, right? And so I have the ability to learn, and I really like peeled cucumbers. And I remembered that when I was a kid, my grandmother would let me peel potatoes, you know, sort of help her after school, and she’d be making whatever she was making for dinner. And I actually did know how to do that.
So I had this theory that we all get situational amnesia. Just sometimes from time to time, there are these things we actually know how to do. But we get amnesia about them. And we genuinely forget we know how to do them. Like when our friends ask or when something comes up. And part of our job in life is just to remember, right?
So if you’ve ever had situational amnesia, I’ve had it too. So I snapped out of my amnesia. I found the peeler in the kitchen. I peeled that cucumber like I was the chef in a five star hotel. I just went at it and it took me one minute. I timed it. It took me what — it might have been one minute, 30 seconds, but pretty much one minute.
So let’s take that in for a moment, right? I was eating something I didn’t actually enjoy for weeks, because I thought the fix was going to be so hard and so difficult and so overwhelming that I didn’t even try. And then when I snapped out of it, and my higher inner wisdom took over from my scared six year old self, it was done in one minute.
And it was way easier than I thought it was gonna be, right? I thought it was gonna be so hard and potentially dangerous. So remember, just imagine right? Amnesia six year old self, freaked out in the kitchen. I could cut myself. There could be actual blood involved. I am obsessed with the TV show 911 and my brain can make up the best stories of all the things that could go wrong, right?
And I know how silly this fear sounds, okay? Even as I’m telling you the story, I think it sounds ridiculous. But I also find it a little bit hilarious. But imagine anything that you have ever been afraid of and someone you love telling you, “Of course, you can! You’ve got this! This isn’t a problem. You’ll do great!” Right? When in the history of ever have irrational fears made any sense, right? Never. They never make any sense.
So just to be clear, my name is Maggie Reyes and I have irrational fears. This isn’t even the only one. This is just the one we’re talking about today, okay? So there was all that cucumber fear and there also was such a simple fix. My mind was blown. Walking through that fear and knowing I could just peel the cucumber anytime I want, right?
For weeks, I think for a month, I didn’t realize that was available to me, right? My brain could not see something that was right in front of me, because it was so blinded by fear. I know this happens to all of us. I just want to point out: there could be something, right in front of you right now that is there for the taking. And the only thing between you and that is the fear that’s standing in the way.
So I was telling my hubby this story about how it turned out to be so much easier than I thought it was. And as we were talking about it, I remembered a client of mine who was so scared of doing any work to make her marriage better, that she was interested in working with me for months. She reached out, she told me, and then she didn’t make her appointment until months later.
And I’ve come to this point in the way I think about things and the way that I think about life, that I just really trust you all — you listening right now. You will know when it’s time. When you’re ready to dig into this work. And what I try to do with stories like this is just let you know that it’s not as scary as you might think it is before you start, right?
So that client, when she finally started Coaching, she found that both the actual Coaching — like the sitting and talking about it, and looking at what was going on, and strategizing and thinking about it differently, and all the different things we do in Coaching — she found that the Coaching and the actual things she took back into her relationship were so much easier than she thought those things would be.
She mentioned that to me recently and then I had that experience with a cucumber. And I really felt in the cells of my body, how we can build up something so big in our heads and be so afraid. And yet when we face that fear, it’s like this huge, heavy weight is lifted, and even just taking the smallest action, the energy just dissipates. It feels so much easier. It’s a completely different experience.
So all of that brings me to you today listening right now. I invite you to think about what feels hard for you right now in your marriage, or in any relationship that is important to you and that you might be struggling with. Like six-year-old-afraid-of-a-kitchen hard.
And then ask yourself: what if it’s way easier than you think it is to do something about it? To take that first step, and then the next one, and then the one after that. What if it really and truly is easier than you think it’s gonna be? It doesn’t mean it may not be hard, but it’s easier than you think it’s gonna be.
Just imagine this. If I had tried to peel the cucumber with my fingers, I would still be peeling to this moment, right? I looked for the tool that would help me. And once I used it, I got what I wanted. And it was so simple, right? I got the peeler and I went crazy. I flew like the wind with the peeler and the cucumber.
Then imagine trying to peel cucumber with a shoe. I know that sounds crazy. You wouldn’t get very far, right? Sometimes we think we’re bad at things and in reality, we might have six year old level fears, or we might be using the wrong tools. Then, you work through the fear, you use the right tool, and suddenly you have a salad, or a better marriage depending on the day, right?
I know so deeply that the power of Coaching is the tool — one of the tools, right? — that can make it easier to make your marriage stronger. And I want you to have it. If you know you’re ready to go deep, definitely apply to join us in the next round of the Marriage MBA. Just go to MaggieReyes.com/group and you’ll get all the details.
If you just discovered my work, if you’re new to the podcast, definitely check out my Self-Study Program: The Marriage Mindset Makeover. It has five workshops that will change the way you think about marriage forever. I do not say that lightly. I really do believe that it will change the way you think about marriage forever. And I did that as a live workshop where I had over 100 amazing ladies listening to the workshops, interacting with me, and I know all of the mindsets and things that they shared.
So I say it with a lot of confidence. And I like to keep things super simple and super powerful. So you will definitely want to check that out. We will link to both the Marriage MBA and the Marriage Mindset Makeover in the show notes. The makeover is at MaggieReyes.com/makeover if you want to check that out. All the video trainings are there. They’re available immediately. You can start dealing with that cucumber situation right now.
Okay, so there you have it. That is the story of how a cucumber taught me the power of moving through fear and using the right tools to get what you want. I hope you had as much fun with this episode as I did. I want to hear — message me on Instagram at @TheMaggieReyes. If you’re not following me on Instagram already, go follow me on Instagram and let’s hang out together. I want to hear your thoughts so definitely message me.
And thank you for being here. Not just for this episode, but I know a lot of you listen to the podcast. It’s just part of the fabric of your life and it’s such a sacred honor to just be with you as you’re running errands, as you’re working out, as you’re doing things in your day to day life.
I am so grateful to you for wanting to create more love in your life, more love in your marriage. I am sending you so much love today and I am knowing that whatever situation you’re in right now, your highest inner wisdom will guide you to your highest good. Until next week, remember nothing in your life has to be perfect to be awesome.