Hey Julia Woods
Join me, Julia Woods, a couples coach and wife of over 3 decades, as I share some of my client's stories and my own so that you can be encouraged, inspired, and gain new results in your marriage.
Hey Julia Woods
#1 Cause of Conflict
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Welcome to Hey Julia Woods Podcast. I'm your host, Julia Woods, founder of Beautiful Outcome, a coaching company focused on helping couples learn to see and understand each other, even in the most difficult conversations. On my podcast, I will share with you the real and raw of the messiness and amazingness of marriage. I'll share with you aspects of my relationship and the couples I coach in a way that you can see yourself and find the tools that you need to build the marriage you long for. Welcome to another episode of Hey Julia Woods. Today I am wanting to talk to you about a very, very basic yet extremely profound transformational distinction. So, you know, many couples come to um work with me or connect with me saying, you know, we just need tools. We just are not good at communicating, and we need tools to help us communicate. And what I explain, what I do is I don't offer tools. Yes, that is what people may call what I do, but it is quite different than tools. It is what I offer is called transformational distinctions because tools are what help us change. And I don't experience that change is really that lasting. Think about it. When was the last time you tried changing something in your life that actually really changed? Like it's it's as human beings, we're not great at changing. What I have found to actually produce lasting change, because because ultimately it's about the mindset. Like, do I go into it? If I go into something trying to change something, I wind up entering into what I experience as behavior modification, where I'm gonna try, I'm going to change um the way that I um, you know, eat. I'm gonna change the way that I eat. So, you know, the way my brain works is when I decide I'm gonna change something, I make it this big elaborate thing, right? I'm gonna change the way I eat. I'm gonna, I'm gonna cut fat and I'm gonna cut carbs and I'm gonna focus on protein and I'm gonna change the way that I eat. That's kind of the way my brain works when I decide I want to change something. And what happens is I'll do that for a few weeks, and inside there'll be all this complaining about, oh, well, what am I gonna do when we go to this restaurant uh this weekend? Like now all of a sudden I can't have what I said I was gonna have and all this or what I want to have. And now all of a sudden I'm mad that I've got to change this thing and I've gotta, you know, punish myself into changing. I hope this resonates with someone listening because this is how my brain works when I decide I want to change something. Well, I got really tired in about my mid-40s of just realizing was probably my early, maybe my mid-30s, my early 40s, where I was just like, change just sucks. Like, there's no option to change anything because changing is just it doesn't really work, right? Like the amount of um tombstones in my New Year's resolution graveyard is it got to be quite depressing. And so I needed something different, and I needed to see what I didn't know, I didn't know about what it means as human beings to actually experience change in our life. And that led me into the world of transformation, and transformation is very different than deciding I'm going to change something. Yes, transformation does bring about change, it does change the results that I'm experiencing in my life, but the difference is I start from a heart of wanting to transform something rather than wanting to change something. Like what I know is the end result will be different if I come from a place of transformation. So, what is different? Well, what's different is that transformation starts at the root, change starts at the behavior, right? Like when I want to change something, I decide, okay, here are the things I'm going to do differently. And then that's going to make this whole thing in my life different. Transformation starts with the belief. If I can get to the root of who I'm being and look at that, look at what is it that I'm actually bringing. Who am I being in a situation that's actually producing these results? I start at the root. Many of you have heard my transformational train analogy, where I look at transformation as a train, where in the engine we are in the engine, we have what we believe. In the car behind that, we have what we think. And in the car behind that, we have what we feel, and in the car behind that, we have what we do. Behavior modification, or when I focus on changing, it's usually because I'm trying to feel different about something. I'm trying to force myself to feel different, right? Like I'm so angry at my husband. I'm just going to try and not be angry, right? Or I am tired of the way that I explode in conversations. So I'm just going to change the way I am in conversations and I'm not going to explode anymore. Well, it's like trying to change the direction the train is going from the caboose. A chain train doesn't change directions or drive to a new destination. When I start, when I go, you know, from the caboose, when I try and focus on feeling different or acting different, the train keeps driving to the same destination. It keeps driving me right back to the same result that I said I didn't want anymore. Because lasting change happens when I start from the engine. And as human beings, what we are doing is coming from what we're believing, who we're being. And what I'm thinking, the thoughts that I'm thinking, and the feelings that I feel and the actions that I do, they all start from the engine of what I'm believing. So as a transformational coach, I don't offer people tools. What I offer people is transformational distinctions. It is ways of being. It is what's happening in that engine that's driving me to produce the results that I'm producing. So as couples and spouses come to me and they say, we want tools. We are terrible at communicating. We can't communicate. We don't communicate. I need some tools that are going to help me communicate better. I say, Well, I get you. I don't think that you're terrible at communication. I think that what's happening is there's some things in the engine of who you're being, of what you believe to be true about yourself, about your spouse, about communication, about marriage that's driving you to think certain thoughts, that's bringing you to feel certain feelings about communication, that's driving you to do what you're doing in communication. One of the most significant things that I find consistently in common with people who say they're terrible at communication is they say they believe that conflict or tension is bad. Well, if you believe conflict and tension is bad, you're definitely not going to be very good at it. That becomes really obvious, right? But the truth is that belief that tension is bad or conflict is bad is what where the transformation actually begins. If you'll begin to investigate that belief, and is it true that tension is bad? Is it true that conflict is bad? Look at it in nature. If you start by looking at simply in nature, like if you've ever been in the birthing process of birthing a baby, man, there's a lot of tension. The body is fighting what wants to happen. There's a lot of conflict, right? The body's not fighting, it's our head that fights the birth process. Our body, if we actually work with our body, our body, body will birth this baby. It's us in our brain fighting against it because we believe that this pain that we're feeling in childbirth is a problem. That's a whole nother story. I'll get into another time about what I learned through childbirth and birthing my four children. Um, but the beauty is nature teaches us that tension is a gift, that everything that is birthed, growth happens in tension. And when you begin to shift that belief, when you begin to wrestle with the deep truth of how what we long for is grown and developed and birthed, all of a sudden tension becomes the gift. Tension becomes like, oh yeah, okay, here's a tension. All right, growth is wanting to happen here. Let's be with this. And when a cup, when I've watched it time and time and time again with the couples that I coach, when they begin to shift their beliefs about tension and the gift that it actually begin to let themselves be with the gift that it actually is, all of a sudden their communication begins to shift. So what I want to do is offer you a transformational distinction today. If you've been following me for long, you've you've probably received the transformational distinction of get of that tension is a gift. That is a transformational distinction. As you begin to be with the power of how growth happens in tension and everything worth having is worth fighting for, you begin to show up newly. The transformational distinction that I want to offer you today is the power between two mindsets. I want to offer you the transformational distinction of a growth and learning mindset, the mindset of growth and learning. That's the transformational distinction. And in order to get to that or really understand that, we need to understand the belief or the way of being that is the opposite of a growth and learning mindset. The opposite of growing and learning is proving and protecting. And as human beings, that's where we most commonly find ourselves is proving and protecting. And this proving and protecting mindset is the number one cause of most conflicts in my experience, is that whenever we go to proving and protecting, which is where we naturally default to, is proving and protecting, we wind up conflicts are very painful. And I want to come back to this birthing analogy. It keeps coming into my heart. I am just sharing with you from my heart this morning. And I want to the the birthing experience keeps coming back. So I think it's actually meant to help you. Someone who's listening. And so, you know, I had two. Um I tried having a natural birth with all four of my children. My first two labors, I wound up having a Caesarean section. And each of those labors, the first labor, I think I got dilated to four centimeters and had excruciating pain in getting dialed in that process of getting dilated to four centimeters. And um, a long story short, they wound up taking that baby by cesarean section. Um, and then I had my second child and I was determined I'm gonna have this baby by a natural birth. I'm not going to have a Caesarean sexon. Notice I was trying to change the behavior. I started at the caboose, but I was sure that something was going to be different. And I wound up dilating to six centimeters, I believe, with that child and was in intense pain. And they wound up, we wound up doing uh Caesarean with that baby as well. Well, by the third baby, I was like, if I don't shift something much more deeply, then nothing's actually going to change. And so I I moved more into transformation. I got more to the beliefs. I focused more, I did a um training called um uh husband the Bradley Method. And in that method, they really focused on the beliefs of what and and really educated educated you on what it what the body is doing and what it means to actually relax and work with the body, to flow with the body. And so as I learned over a long period of time leading up to the birth, what it what it meant to relax with my body, I wound up having my third and fourth baby all natural. And it was beautiful. I never I did not have pain in my third and fourth childbirth, going all the way to the baby being born. I did not have pain. I felt a brand new awareness of what labor is. But the pain wasn't there because I wasn't resisting the um what my body was doing. I was working with my body rather than resisting what my body was trying to do. Because in my head, I was kept telling myself in the first two labors, I kept telling myself, you know, just breathe, just do this thing that you're supposed to be doing, just grin and bear it, like clinch down and and um endure this pain. What I didn't know is I was working against my body. But in the third and fourth uh childbirths, I was working with my body. I wasn't clenching down. I was working really hard to not clench down. I was working really hard to breathe with my body to stay relaxed in my body so my body could do what it needed to do. So why am I telling you all of that? Hopefully, I have not like, you know, overwhelmed you with the details. Why I'm telling you that is because that's what conflict is. When you begin to give yourself to the beauty of what wants to happen in tension, all of a sudden you can begin to experience the gift of what wants to happen there. And one of the most significant ways that we resist what wants to happen in tension is through proving and protecting. Tension, what wants to happen in tension is growth and learning. That's what it's made for. That's what every conflict in your marriage, every time you have a fight, every time you feel like, ooh, we're not aligned, we're not on the same page, or ooh, they see this different than I do, or ooh, I gotta make them see my way because my way is the right way. This is the tension. This is the birthing process of growth coming to you, inviting you in your marriage. But here's what we do as human beings. We think based on what we believe, if I believe that tension is bad, if I believe that I'm not worthy of love, if I believe that I'm not enough for knowing how to work through this conflict, if I believe that I'm too much, if I believe that other couples don't fight like we do, if I believe that other couples don't have the problems that we do, if I believe that um, you know, my spouse is the problem. And until my spouse changes, this marriage isn't going to be resolved. If I believe that um my spouse doesn't care about me, right? All of these things that are in the engine of the train, that's what's driving who I'm being in the conflict. And all those things drive me to protect myself against the imminent threats that my beliefs are informing me are there. So what proving and protecting is, let me explain that in a in a deeper, more broken uh break that down a little bit. So as human beings, what we are our nature, what we are most driven by is our ego. We always want to ours our ego is the another way of saying our ego is our survival system. Our survival system is focused on our survival. And what we make up our survival is, is looking good, feeling good, being right, being in control. That's what our survival needs are. Think about it. If you're gonna go into, let's say you're going to a party and you don't know anybody there, and what are you gonna do? You're gonna try and look your best, right? You're gonna grab a drink, you're gonna wanna try and feel good. You're gonna try and tell people there what you know, right? You're gonna focus on the things that you know that you think you're right about. That's what you're gonna hope you can direct the conversations to. And all of those are forms of control. I want to look good so you'll like me. I want to feel good so I can try and look like I'm relaxed, and I want to be right, so I'm gonna try and make sure we talk about the things that I know I'm right about so that I can control how this goes, so that you can like me, so that I can survive this event, so that I can walk out feeling like I'm lovable and that I matter and that I'm good and that life is good and that people, you know, want to be around me. This is at the heart of what our survival needs are always up to. And we're always up to that. Whether you're in, you know, a physical intimacy with your spouse, whether you're in a conflict, whether you're trying to make a meal for your family, what every single thing that you're doing, your survival needs are trying to drive the ship. They're trying to drive the train to make sure that you look good, feel good, are right, and are in control. So, and at the heart of those, the biggest one that drives us is the need to be right. We want to be right about whatever it is that we've decided is true. Okay. So let's say that you believe that your spouse doesn't care. And I'll turn this back to me because I believed that and and can still wrestle with that. That that belief's never gonna go away. I've just learned a lot more about the destination that belief drives my life to and who I become when I believe that belief. And I don't want to be that person. So I work really hard. I worked really hard to rewrite that belief. Um, but I have lots of examples uh with that belief. So that's the one that I'll use. So when I believe that my husband doesn't care, then I am going to show up in every conflict with an agenda to make myself right that he doesn't care. That's what proving and protecting is. I show up in a conversation, and the moment he makes a certain expression, I go to protecting myself from who I've decided he is, and I go to proving myself right that see, I knew it, he doesn't care. Right? Another way that this looks is that if my spouse says something I don't like, then I'm gonna go to proving and protecting myself. Like maybe he says, like, you know, uh it seems like you're being controlling. Woo! I'm gonna draw, I'm gonna jump right into proving and protecting, right? Like I'm gonna protect myself that that's not right. I'm not trying to be controlling here. Well, the very tone in my voice tells me that I am, right? But I don't want to look at that. So I'm gonna go to proving that he's wrong, that I'm not controlling, and I gotta protect myself. I've got to protect this belief of my flattering myself, right? That my of my self-flattery, that I'm not who he's decided he is. That's an example of what proving and protecting is. I'm working to prove and protect what I've decided is right moment by moment. And we do this nonstop. Well, it is my pride, it is my bitterness, it is my repressed anger, it is my loneliness, my apathy in the relationship. It is all of these things that are driving my defensive reaction to prove and protect. And what that's going to do is keep driving the train to the same destination. You know, you have those conversations, those arguments that are like a broken record. They go round and round, the same destination. They end playing the same sad song. In my marriage, it was the play, it played the same sad song of me storming off in the other room in self-pity, how terrible it was that my husband would do what he did. And the broken record for him was shutting down and sitting in his isolation for hours or for days about how he just didn't have a voice and he couldn't say anything right. Because at the heart of his train was the drive in the engine of his train, was the belief that he didn't have what it took, that he wasn't enough. And at the the core of what was driving my belief train was I'm not valuable, I'm not worthy. And so every conflict drove us to the same destination. I got to storm off in the other room with a whole new bucket full of evidence that I wasn't worthy of love, that he didn't really love me, that he didn't really care about me. And he got to walk off with his bucket of evidence that, see, there she goes, storming off, storming off in the other room. And, you know, I said the wrong thing and I shouldn't have said anything, and it's just best if I don't say a word. And the train drove to the same destination because we were in proving and protecting. We were proving what we believed to be true, and we were protecting it. That's what proving and protecting does. Now, whenever we prove and protect, we're going to keep getting the same result over and over. So, what's what's the alternative? Well, the alternative is to shift out of the proving and protecting mindset into a learning and growing mindset. A learning and growing mindset takes the a complete shift in the way of being, right? And if I want to learn and grow, it's going to require humility, it's going to require vulnerability, it's going to require openness, it's going to require curiosity. And in order to get there, it takes me being willing to shift a belief, right? So my belief that I'm not worthy, my belief that my spouse doesn't care, the more I'm willing to look at those beliefs and ask myself, are they really true? Yeah, it is true that I can show up acting unworthy, believing I'm unworthy. But the truth is I'm a human being that's worthy of love, just like every other human being in the world. But if I want to believe I'm not worthy, then yeah, I can show up acting unworthy. And I'm probably going to attract a lot of people treating me as though I'm unworthy because I taught them to treat me that way, because that's what I believe about myself. But when I began to consider what if I am worthy of love? What if I am, what if my opportunity is to be a vessel of love? If I can stand in the truth that I'm loved, I actually will show up being loving. And yes, my husband can show up at moments not caring. That is true. He is human, just like me, and I can show up in moments not caring. And yet, the truth is, I do see evidence that my husband does care about this marriage. He's here, he's in it, he's wanting to be in the conflict with me, he's wanting to improve his ability to show up in the conflicts because he does care about us, he cares about our family. So when I begin to do the deeper work to argue the other side of the case of what I've decided I'm right about, like if I wanted to, I've I've spent the majority of our marriage fighting, building evidence for the side of the case that my husband doesn't care. But when I start building the other case as just as hard, fighting for the case that he does care just as hard as I'm fighting for the case that he doesn't care, then all of a sudden I begin to show up in the tension with humility. I begin to show up with curiosity. And all of a sudden, I shift out of proving and protecting. And I start having new capacity to live in the mindset of learning and growing. Like, oh, that face that he just made, I've always thought that face was pure evidence that he doesn't care. But what might I be able to learn about that expression? And I can say, hey, that face you're making, I'm making up that that means you don't care, that you are so um, you know, angry by what I've said. But is that true? What do you mean by that expression that you're making? And much to my surprise, when I've been willing to do that, I found that his expression was more about his own sense of inadequacy, that he was actually feeling shame of toxic identity, that he was going to his own place of um, you know, inability to be in the moment. And I'm like, oh, that's not what I was trying to say. That I that's not what I feel in this moment. And simply by wanting to be in the moment, learning and growing, the train drives to a new destination. Not because I was trying to be a better communicator, not because I was trying to not be defensive, but because I was actually committed to learn and grow what I might not know, I don't know, about how my husband does care, about how this conflict is wanting to grow new love about what how could I be love in this conversation? And as I show up in the desire to learn and grow, in the desire to be right, that my husband does care, be right, that I am worthy. Whoa, all of a sudden, as I start to build a case for what is true, I show up in the transformational distinction of learning and growing, because I'm there to learn and grow, not to prove and protect what my villain wants me to believe that is true, that I'm not worthy, or my husband doesn't care. And so I was sharing with someone the other day this transformational distinction of how I could see that in a conflict. With my husband, I was there trying to prove and protect. And like multiple people, it just blew their minds. I was like, wow, this is very simple yet very profound. And I don't know that I've shared it on my podcast. And so I decided to share it with you today. And I just invite you to consider this week as you are sitting with your spouse in conversations, and maybe something gets triggered, maybe a past hurt gets triggered, or a fear gets triggered, or a hurt gets triggered, or an unresolved conflict gets triggered. What might there be for you to learn? How might that be happening as an opportunity for you to learn and grow into who you want to be, into the marriage that you long for? And so I just invite you to consider to wrestle now with look at a conflict that you recently had. If you want to start applying this right now, I invite you to just call into your mind's eye a recent conflict that you had and sit with it. Look at it from like a bird's eye view, like go above the conflict, watching it as though you're filming it. You're the cameraman and you're watching it unfold as a movie. Look at yourself. Where do you notice you might have been defensive? Where do you notice you might have been bitter or resentful or trying to be right about what you decided was true or trying to control what was happening? Just observe that with grace, with empathy, with compassion for yourself. No problem. You're human, you're gonna do that. But what if you weren't, what if you took your eyes off of your spouse and began to put on the learning and growing mindset and begin to explore what could you learn about what was happening for yourself? What could you learn about what you were thinking, about what you were believing about yourself, about your spouse, about conflict, about whether you have the time to talk about this right now or not? And just be with the beauty of what you can learn and grow. What was actually going on for you? What if what you thought was was happening or what your spouse was doing or what you thought was true about you, what if it actually isn't true? What might be more true? And would you let yourself uh uh like cultivate and mine the gold in that conflict that just happened and start learning and growing from it? And maybe that's gonna lead you to go and share with your spouse what you recognize you were wrong about, or what you recognize you did that's not who you want to be, or what you said that now you recognize, man, that was really hurtful to say. That's the fruit of a learning and growing mindset. When we live in a proving and protecting mindset, we'll keep looking at past conflicts as for more evidence. See, look at how immature they showed up. See, look at how they said that. See, I can't believe they acted like that. That's the proving and protecting mindset that happens. That we're in the proving and protecting mindset when we looked at a previous conflict like that. But we're in the learning and growing mindset when we look at a previous conflict conflict as, okay, let me look at me. What was I contributing to what wasn't working? And even if it was only 5% that I was contributing to what wasn't working, I'm committed to learning and growing from that 5% of what I contributed so that I can contribute newly in the next conversation. I hope this has been helpful for you. I am grateful for the work that I get to do. It that one of the things, the thing that I love the most about the work I get to do is it transforms me. As I get to stand with others and walk with them in transforming their marriage, I get to transform my marriage. I get to transform me and how I show up in my marriage and working to grow that learning and growing mindset and my ability to be in that more consistently. And so I thank you for being here today. I want to invite you to have grace and empathy and compassion on yourself in this growing process. And if you want a community and more transformational tools, I want to invite you into the marriage growth community. And you can find the link below in the comment section or in the podcast description underneath this podcast. And if you like this podcast, would you share it with a friend? And would you just let me know that this episode made a difference for you? And thank you so much for joining me today. Happy learning and growing. That's gonna do it for this episode of Hey Julia Woods. Now, I have a quick favor to ask of you. If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five-star rating and a quick review in the app that you're using to listen right now. It just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable marriage growth tips and interviews here. This episode shares the power of what can happen when a spouse takes responsibility for who they are being, one conversation at a time. And if you want the marriage that you long for, click that first link in the show notes, and this will take you straight to the resource that's going to solve that for you. I can't wait to connect with you inside my membership where you can get the support you need to grow the marriage you long for 247. All right, that's gonna do it for the show. My name is Julia Woods. I'll talk to you next time.