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relationships as spiritual growth

If you want to heal your relationships, you first have to heal yourself first. In this episode I encourage you to see relationships as spiritual assignments for self-development. I offer advice on how to heal conflicts by addressing our own internal triggers and wounds first. The takeaway is that changing ourselves from the inside out is key to transforming our relationships for the better.

In this episode you’ll learn:

  • How to perceive the difficult relationships in your life as spiritual assignments for personal growth
  • How to become more self-aware and resilient, so you aren’t so easily triggered by other people
  • Why showing up for your own discomfort and growth is crucial if you want to break a cycle of dysfunctional relationships
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This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

dear gabby #190 Feb 05, 2024 relationships

how to have great relationships

to put my, my dear Gabby hat on to go big with relationships.
 So before we start Josh I just want to brag a bit about my relationship expertise Listen, I've done a lot of work on myself as we all know Listening to me here on this show or reading any of my books or being part of my app well, you guys know that I've done a lot of work on myself and I really pride myself in The changes that I've made in myself, and as a result of those personal changes, I've experienced dramatic changes in my relationships.

So I'm going to go out of the gate saying this. If you want to heal your relationships, you have to heal yourself. Because you are the point of attraction. You are manifesting, at all times, the perfect spiritual assignments for your personal growth and well being. And so if you've got a lot of relationships in your life [00:01:00] that are pissing you off, You got a lot to look at to say thank you.

Thank you difficult relationships for revealing to me what it is that I still need to heal. And I look at all my relationships that way. I'll look at it from the perspective of what part of me is activated in this relationship and instead of pointing the finger outward. Listen, everybody's got their own stuff.

Everybody's got their own parts. Everybody's got their own drama. So instead of pointing the finger at somebody else, because that's the quickest thing we want to do. We want to blame and shame others so that we don't have to recognize what we have to heal within. And so instead of doing that, maybe I'll do it for five minutes and then I look inward and I'm like, what part of me is activated right now?

What is happening inside of me? That is making it difficult to really show up for this relationship, but most importantly, show up for myself, right? So, as we open up this conversation, I want you to take a deep breath, [00:02:00] everybody listening, Josh take a deep breath, he's doing it, and just acknowledge that relationships are spiritual assignments for personal growth and radical development.

And when we accept that, fully and completely, we can start to show up for ourselves and as a result. Our relationships will heal, but the healing begins with us. Now, of course, couples therapy, couples work, and of course, we expect our friends and partners to be healthy people in our life. But the thing that's so cool is that you don't have to really change anyone.

You just have to change you because as you get healthier and stronger and more resilient and more self fulfilling. self aware. The people that used to trigger you, one, stop triggering you because you're in a healthier place. They also are no longer a match for your vibration. We are picking [00:03:00] up what we are putting out.

So if we're super codependent, we're gonna consistently attract relationships that are probably pretty  hard to nail down. Right? We're going to attract what we need to heal. if we're someone who's a real people pleaser, we're going to attract somebody who's really needy. And so we might sit around being like, I'm so pissed off that this person's so needy and they can't do anything for themselves.

Well, look at your side of the street. What is it that you're bringing to the table in that relationship? Are you trying to? Be that people pleaser. And are you finding all your value in being a people pleaser? So start to take a moment before we even begin to just settle in with noticing the things and the relationships and the situations in those relationships that make you, that activate you.

that trigger the shit out of you. So Gabby, along those same lines, the question is, how do I deal with my partner's avoidant attachment when I have an [00:04:00] anxious attachment style? I love this question. Okay. So a while back we did a whole episode on attachment styles, which you can go back and listen to.

If you're hearing this language, and this is new to you, your attachment style is your relationship style. It's how you show up in relationships.

There's the anxious attachment style, there's the avoidant attachment style, and there's the secure attachment style.

Secure those folks that are super confident in relationships. Anxious are the ones that are clinging for dear life, like stick around, don't leave me. And the avoidant attachment style is the one where they do not want that neediness or that clinginess and they run for the hills. So, And this person, typically this happens where an anxiously attached person finds their way into an avoidant attachment style relationship.

So they've got the avoidant attached person in the relationship with the anxious attached person and it creates a lot of chaos. So if you're the person who's in that anxious state. what I would really recommend is that you do whatever you can [00:05:00] to help yourself feel safe.
Because what you're longing for most in your avoidant attached partner is a sense of safety. And for you, safety means that the partner sticks around. Safety means I'm not complete without that person. The work really about being in relationship to anyone when you're anxiously attached is to access safety from within yourself.

Because when you start to garner that sense of safety, you feel less reliant on others to be your savior. So that safety can come in through a community, like a yoga community, or if you happen to be in any kind of 12 step recovery, or it can come through in a spiritual community, that safety can come through in your meditation.

That safety can come through when you read a book like Happy Days. That safety can come through when you do something like the Relationship Challenge with me. You can get a greater sense of safety with the lessons that I'll teach you. [00:06:00] So, the reason I bring up the word safety is that If you don't heal the parts of yourself that are so anxious and so afraid, then all attachment styles are going to trigger you, particularly the avoidant attachment style,

I also want you to just smile and just thank the avoidant attached boyfriend for being the perfect spiritual assignment for you. Because when you attach to your opposite and you are triggered in all ways and you feel super uncomfortable, that's often your opportunity, that's your moment to let that discomfort reveal to you what it is that you need to heal.

I'm revealing it to you now, telling you there's a lack of safety in your system, and it's a time now to let the discomfort of that relationship be the catalyst for what can be your greatest change. I genuinely believe that all relationships are assignments, and when we show up for them, [00:07:00] we have growth opportunities.

When we show up for those assignments, we can learn, we can grow, we can become new. But when we avoid those assignments, we wind up attracting the same partner over and over again, just in a different body. We wind up feeling as though we're a hamster in a wheel because we haven't shown up for the discomfort.

Lewis: Literally felt like there was a ball of pain in my heart and chest for a period of time. And then one day it's, I don't know how else to explain it. It felt like something unlocked in, in that pain center. And it just felt like it was kind of moving throughout my body, but it was like this trickling and disintegrating.

And then I was like, huh, the [00:08:00] pain literally in a moment went away. Now it took. Five months of intensive training, uh, and integration for me to feel it go away, but it was literally a moment when it happened and it didn't come back. What do you think it was in that five months that allowed you to get to that moment?

I think it was a lot of, I had a lot of emotional support with my coach slash therapist. I was. Also, I changed something in my life for the first time that I'd never done before. And that was, I stopped abandoning myself. And for many, many years in relationships, I would abandon myself to please someone else's emotions and feelings.

And I would change who I was. I would change my most authentic self to make someone else feel more comfortable, uh, or make someone happier or whatever it might be that they wanted. And the thing that I did is I. I loved being single because I felt peace when I get into relationships, I want to [00:09:00] feel peace.

And I realized that it wasn't the other people, you know, nothing wrong with the people I was choosing, but it just wasn't in full alignment of my highest self and my vision. And so. I was too afraid to, uh, have someone not like me or love me or accept me. That was my biggest fear was not being accepted by someone that, you know, I had chosen to be in a relationship with.

And therefore I wanted to, you know, make sure they were always were happy and make sure they felt good and make sure they felt comfortable and all these things. But I would do that at the expense of my authentic self, my values, my vision. What I felt like my, my mission in life was at that time. And, um, and then I was the one that was suffering in the end when I would do that.

So again, there was, there's never anyone else's responsibility, but my own. I just didn't have the tools. I didn't have the wisdom. I didn't have the integration of how to implement that and sit with the [00:10:00] discomfort, the uncomfortable feelings of someone I care about, or I'm in a relationship with upset with me.

About essentially my identity about who I am as a human being and again, I just chose poorly, uh, based on a wounds based out of insecurity based on a familiarity of what I was comfortable with, as opposed to being 100 percent courageous in who I am and communicating. My, my values courageously, uh, knowing that it's not for everyone and being okay.

If someone doesn't want to be with me. And I think that was the lesson that I learned with Martha, where I was just like, okay, I'm going to essentially be alone for the rest of my life and, and be completely happy with that, or be a hundred percent authentic to who my values are, to who my. My, I am as my vision and align with [00:11:00] someone who fully accepts me in that space.

Otherwise, what am I doing? If I have to constantly change and adapt and shift to and walk on eggshells to make someone accept and love me, that means they don't accept and love me. And so 1 of the things I said to Martha when I. After about three months of dating before we became like exclusively committed, we were hanging out a lot and, uh, I did a few things differently in, in the dating phase that I'd never done before.

Um, but one of them was, I was so honest about. Everything from my past and everything about my dreams for my future. And I was just like, I'm not going to hold back anything. And I think doing, and I thought I would scare her away by just being truthful. But she was like, wow, it's really, it's really refreshing.

And I was like, are you sure you accept someone who's this driven and who's got it on a mission to help people and who has people around them all the time. And, you know, living this lifestyle, are you sure you want to accept someone? And she was like, yeah, that's the person I've always been [00:12:00] looking for.

So I think it's just making sure that we're in alignment with the relationships in our career, our business partnerships, our, our intimate partners.

In addition, my experience of this beautiful woman here, Nancy Levin, is that when I first was introduced to Nancy, I was introduced to her in a very different form.

She was the head event producer for Hay House. She was a firecracker. She still is, but in a different way. if you ask Nancy for something, you knew that it was done yesterday. her mantra was, I already did that. You always felt very held, very taken care of, very loved, very nurtured, but deep down.

She wasn't caring for, loving, and nurturing herself. We all missed the old Nancy caring for us. I tried a little tonight. She tried, she tried. And finally I was like, Nancy, sit down. Stop doing things. [00:13:00] And it's still in her and she will always care for us.

But now what's best is that she's caring for the world And that she's able to bring her gift to life

......So I want to begin at the beginning. Nancy tells a story, and it was funny for me to read it having been on the other side of this story. And this story of, of really being boundaryless. Nancy said to me backstage, if I, if I, I couldn't have done that job if I wasn't as boundary less as I was.

This story of Nancy with Wayne Dyer, and I'm going to let you tell the story because it's a beautiful story. I'm reading it and I'm visualizing it because I was probably there. I mean, I don't know. Maybe. And, and it actually brought, it brought a lot of sadness to me because it was remembering this part of you that as strong and powerful as you were, now seeing you in this really profound strength, I can recognize.

What it means to have come this far. So [00:14:00] I'd love to hear where you were and what happened and where you are now. So, you know, I was someone at that time really driven by external validation. And so I was chasing all the gold stars. And what happens when we chase the gold stars is no amount of gold stars will ever be enough to fill the void that is inside of us.

So everything that we're seeking externally needs to be resolved internally first. But there's this hunger, there's this chasing, there's this Really, what I would say is it's about putting, putting your worthiness in someone else's wagon. So, letting someone else be the determiner of your value and your worth.

And, my, my job as the event director at Hay House gave me a lot of gold stars, gave me a lot of accolades, gave me a lot of attention in that way. And so, what, what it really becomes is like an addiction. It becomes chasing the high. And so, you know, like you said, the motto was, you know, I already [00:15:00] did that, you know?

Exactly. So on this, this one particular event I was on tour with Wayne Dyer and we had done an event in Atlanta on a Saturday afternoon. And then the whole entourage, my team and his and his kids were with us. We. We did the event, we flew to Detroit, got to Detroit that evening, and we were preparing to do another event in Detroit on, uh, Sunday.

And we had dinner, we all checked into our rooms, everything was going fine, and then around 10 o'clock at night, Wayne called me and said, I, I don't know where my briefcase is. And he wasn't blaming me, but he also was really insistent and emphatic that he absolutely needed that briefcase in order to go on stage tomorrow.

And he's like, all my notes are in there for my talk, all my notes for my next book, you know, there was some money in there, there were all these things in there that he needed and he absolutely [00:16:00] needed it. And he was in a little bit of a panic, quite frankly. And so. He said, you know, we have to figure out, we have to find this briefcase, first of all, and we have to figure out how I'm going to get it.

So again, 10 o'clock Saturday night. I'm in Detroit. The briefcase is somewhere else. I'm convinced that it's in the back of the van we took to the airport in Atlanta. So I call the van company and they said, well, that van's not going to get back here till midnight. So midnight rolls around. And in the meantime, I'm on the phone with my travel agent who is in the, who's on the West coast.

And we're trying to scheme about the way we're going to get the briefcase to Detroit once I even find it. And. I call back at midnight, they go out, they come back, and they tell me the briefcase is not in the van. And I said, you know, I just know it is. It's black, it's dark, can, it's in, I bet it went all the way from the front seat to all the way in [00:17:00] the back seat.

I know it's in the van. So, I hold on again, and they come back to me, and sure enough, lo and behold, the briefcase was in the back of the van. So now, I say, can you have someone Fly it here, and they said no since 9 11. It's you're not allowed to fly someone else's stuff, and I said okay Let me figure out what's happening, but at least we know where the briefcase is and somewhere in the middle of the night I had let Wayne know like I'll figure it out.

I'll find it go to bed get some rest And I was on the phone again with the travel agent. No one's going to be able to get it here. No FedEx, no air cargo, like no freight. Like, there's just no, I'm getting a no. I'm getting the no for the answer. But I won't take no for an answer, because I deliver. So at four in the morning, I find myself On the way to the airport.

And in the back of the taxi, I find myself booking myself a ticket. And there was only first class round ticket, and I thought, well, Reed Tracy, the president of Hay [00:18:00] House, won't mind that I book myself a round trip first class ticket. Because that's all there was. And I book the ticket, and I get to, I, you know, go, I fly to Atlanta.

The guy meets me in baggage claim, I grab the briefcase, I go back through security and of course because I just landed in Atlanta they have to, you know, do the whole pat down and they've got a, they're very suspicious, why am I turning right around and flying back, and I'm on the plane now getting ready to fly back.

And I called Wayne, and I said, Wayne, I have got your briefcase. And he said, Nancy, where are you? I said, that is not important. He said, did you do something crazy? And I said, I will see you at the venue. So, this was also the first time I'd given up sort of any control of my job, and I had let Molly, who now has my job, uh, I gave her all the information of how to actually do my job.

for that event in the event I didn't get there and right as I was pulling up in the taxi with [00:19:00] the briefcase, Wayne is pulling up in his limo and there are like thousands of people. I'm not joking. There's thousands of people around him. And he gets out of the car, and I walk toward him to hand him his briefcase.

And he's, he looks at me and he's like, That? I don't need that! And he was pulling my leg. And so what did I do? I flipped off the father of motivation.

Well, what would Boundary Nancy do today? Right. See, this is the big difference because what would Boundary Nancy wouldn't be doing it for the accolades and the approval and the validation. If I was to do something like that again. It would be coming from a very different place, and I would quite frankly say that in, that who I am now would have said no.

Who you are now would have either said no or [00:20:00] said, Oh, I'm just booking first class. Right? Right. Right. Exactly. Right. Right. Yes. And it's about the, but it is, it's about the undercurrent of the motivation. Right. What's having me to make this action? Right. Correct. Because it wasn't pure, you know, it wasn't purely out of service to Wayne.

No. It was out of this undercurrent of I want, of I want to feel valued.​