24: Why Nothing Changes

What’s The Episode About:

In this episode, Paul and Stacey will share with you one of the biggest reasons why nothing changes for you.

They hear these statements from people all the time; “I’ve asked a million times, but nothing changes” or “We talked and agreed to X, Y, Z, but still nothing changes.”

Often it comes down to how YOU interpret and respond to the situations that you are presented with. Paul and Stacey will dive into how you can begin to see things in a positive light and alter how you respond to these situations that once would trigger you.

If you’ve ever experienced that yourself, then you need to listen to today’s podcast.

Key Points Discussed:

Something so simple turned into a big kerfuffle (02:24)
Owning what it is that you want to change; Why nothing changes for you (03:50)
Reframing what your partner says to you that triggers you (07:30)
The world changes according to the color of the lens that you’re wearing (10:09)
You have no power when you’re focused on getting others to change (12:07)
Shifting how you show up to change how your partner reacts to you (17:39)

Where Can I Learn More:

Have you signed up for The D.I.R.T. ?! http://bit.ly/2KlobXZ
Check out our programs: www.RelationshipDevelopment.org/Programs
See our upcoming events: www.RelationshipDevelopment.org/Events

When Did It Air:

October 3, 2019

Episode Transcript:

Disclaimer: The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

Paul: 00:00 Hey relationship transformers. Welcome to the Relationship Transformer podcast. Today, Stacey and I are going to share with you one of the biggest reasons why nothing changes for you. We hear it all the time. I’ve asked a million times, but nothing changes. Or, we talked and agreed to X, Y, Z, but still, nothing changes. Have you ever thought that yourself? Then you need to listen to today’s podcast. And remember, if you get value from this podcast today, be sure to share it with someone that can use it. So let’s cue up the intro and dive in.

Intro: 00:33 So the big question is this, how is it possible that one person alone can transform any relationship, save their marriage, great their unshakeable love and unleash passion, divorce, proof their family without needing their partner to get on board and do this with them and yet still get to be happily, authentically you without compromise. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer.

Stacey: 01:02 Alright, so the other day, one of our students came to the Q&A call with an awesome question. So, pretty much, this was her question. She said, “Okay Stacey and Paul, tell me what I should do differently. The other day, my husband and I had a kerfuffle. I was talking to him about something and he said to me out of nowhere, we were working on the computer, and he’s like, you know, I’m just going to call our daughter because she’s better with computers.” And, I was so taken aback and I went to him later, and I had to cool down, and later I went to him and I’m like, “You know, I know that when you say, you know, our daughter’s better with computers like, that to me just makes me feel so slighted and so insignificant, like I don’t even matter. I know that’s my trigger and I’m working on it, but in the meantime, if you could say something even like, she’s good with computers instead of she’s better at computers or something else that would not hurt my feelings as much, then I would really appreciate that.” And her husband looked at her and he said, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. You’re crazy.” And she’s like, “What? That’s even more dismissive. Like, what do I do about that? Like, this is… I don’t know what else to do. What could I do differently?” And so, we want to start there by talking about that reaction that, that response.

Paul: 02:23 Yeah.

Stacey: 02:24 Right?

Paul: 02:24 And we’re paraphrasing, of course. That might not have been actual, but that’s the fundamentals of what happened, and what’s interesting is when this question was being asked, and it’s from a really good student, and that’s a really key point to make here. It’s a good student, good intentions, but we’ll circle back on that in a minute, but when that question was asked, I’m thinking to myself and the struggle that was being presented, I’m thinking to myself, he said, “… because she’s better at computers”, and I’m thinking, maybe just better than he is. It had nothing to do with her. And, it could have been just that simple, and it turned into this big kerfuffle. Right? Then it sort of compounded because I had another layer to it.

Stacey: 02:58 So the meaning that she was giving it, that somehow he was making a judgment about her not being enough.

Paul: 03:04 Yeah. And that… you know, that’s one of the key things about what we want to talk about today. So, when this happened, you know, she’s a student who has a lot of knowledge. She’s a student who is actually a great student and there’s probably like 10 layers I could see on this, 10 different angles at which this situation would not have led to a kerfuffle. And one of the biggest things that were probably in front of us was the masculine-feminine differences on this one. But this is a student who knew, right? Knew these things. Why did it turn into a kerfuffle if this student knew, and has been aware of let’s say, 10 different angles, at which this situation wouldn’t have led to a kerfuffle, but it did. The root of that was something known as owning it. Owning what it is that you want to change.

Paul: 03:50 So here’s the thing. If you want to change something until you fully own it, until you own it at your core and realize, no one’s going to come fix this for me and I choose to do whatever it takes to fix this until you own it. In that way, your situation probably isn’t going to change. So why? Nothing changes for you, right? Because there’s an element of us wanting someone else to change to make us happy. And then we sit and we wait. Powerless for things to come around our way. And sometimes it even gets even more complicated as we saw on this one. It wasn’t for a lack of knowledge, it wasn’t for lack of good intention. It was for lack of ownership of what was already known. And what that comes from is us waiting for someone or something outside of us to change in order to please our situation, our current blueprint, our current way of seeing the situation.

Paul: 04:43 And that leaves us powerless. That’s why until you totally own whatever it is that you want to fix, it’s not likely to change for you. So that’s the key. Really at the root of this kerfuffle was not a lack of knowledge, not a lack of good intention was a lack of ownership. Owning the situation, meaning whatever happens that you don’t like, recognizing that it was you who had the experience, recognizing it’s you who needs to draw upon something else in order to fix the situation for yourself. Most people do not take personal ownership to the point of even being uncomfortable, let alone hard. And yet if you think about it, you’re having repeated kerfuffles or something coming up over and over, and unless you totally take ownership for that, you won’t have the drive that it takes to overcome the inertia of what’s already been the case. Your current patterns, the current situation. You’ll just be waiting, thinking to yourself again as blame of like, this shouldn’t be the case. They were so wrong. You know, forms of blame or some other reason why you won’t draw upon the tools and strategies and awareness that you already know or some other thing that comes from your heart that will make all the difference in the world because you’re still waiting for the outside to change for you. But personal ownership all the way through is the key to the results you’re looking

Stacey: 05:58 for. So when we were on the call, just to offer another perspective on it where we are on the call, what I said to the student was, it’s so interesting cause she’s like Stacy, I told him like, look, you and I are wired differently. I’m not really wired the way you are. So I know this is my trigger and I need to work on being sensitive to this. But until I do like in the meantime, if you could just reframe that and I said to her, I’m like, so you’re owning the fact that you guys are wired differently. You know that you guys are wired differently. You’re actually the student getting the training, but you’re asking him to change, to fix it for you. You’re asking him to do something by the way, that you’re not even willing to do for yourself. Now, I really am talking to you right now, the one who’s listening to me.

Stacey: 06:40 You’re asking your partner and your kids and everybody else who do something for you that you’re not actually willing to do for them. And that same exact moment because she knows the masculine, she knows he’s gonna talk straight. She knows he’s stating of fact like the masculine just States a fact like, I’m going to call my daughter cause she’s better at computers. To him that’s a fact. He’s not judging, he’s not saying to his wife, you suck. You’re stupid. You’re not good at computers. He’s literally stating a fact and moved on. So if she knows that she could change the wrapper of the meaning that she’s giving something in the mall, men, she could reframe it and say, Oh, he doesn’t mean that I’m insignificant. He’s just stating a fact cause he’s in the masculine. And that’s ownership. Like I know that we’re different. And instead of me pointing the finger now and saying, Hey, I know we’re different.

Stacey: 07:30 So you change your wrapper. For me to take ownership is I know we’re different, so I am going to reframe how I heard that. I’m going to reframe how I say something next. I am going to do it because that’s ownership. Meaning if I’m going to cut off all possibility of you doing anything to fix this and I’m the only one who can, what would I do next? That is what happens when you truly own something. And of course this student just laughed. She’s like, Oh my God, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Thank you so much. Right? Because she didn’t even realize that she wasn’t doing what she was asking her partner to do. But once, once she sees it, once you see it, you totally can. So when someone says something to you that triggers you, you can own it by reframing to yourself what it actually means, what it could mean a million things that it could have meant other than what’s in your blueprint.

Stacey: 08:34 And when you speak towards someone else went away, that sometimes might trigger them. You could put your statements in a wrapper that are more conducive to how they’re wired. Right? To make it easier, more palatable, to make it clearer for them to put it in a way that’s going to be easier for them. It doesn’t matter incoming or outgoing. We can own our part, right? I know how Paul is wired as masculine, so it’s my responsibility to package how I speak to him in a way that’s received well by the masculine. That means what he thinks that means. Not what I think it means. Right? Cause we kinda sometimes mean two different things. We say the same words, but it means something different to the masculine than the feminine. For instance, saying my daughter’s better at computers means to, or him as a masculine.

Stacey: 09:24 I’m just stating a fact. As Paul said, he might’ve meant better than me. Right? He’s saying, my daughters better than I am at computers. I’m going to call her. Whereas she was perceiving it as, my daughter is better computers than you and I’m fed up with you and you are not smart enough to do this with me. And so I’m going to go call my daughter. There’s so much that people perceive through their blueprint was actually just teaching this char. Are your leadership team this morning that everybody sees the world through their own lens? Everybody sees the world through their own blueprint. And what I was teaching our students this morning was if you think of like sometimes you can put on those red lens glasses or you could put on glasses with yellow-tinted lenses or glasses with blue-tinted lenses. And when you do, the whole world changes according to the color of the lens that you’re wearing.

Speaker 3: 10:10 Well, everyone on the planet, it has their own lenses in front of their eyes. And those lenses are their blueprint. The meanings they give to things, the emotions that they go to, how they hear things. People hear what they want to hear. People see what they want to see. And what that means is they hear what they hear according to their blueprint. They see what they see according to their blueprint, and it’s not the same as yours. So we actually can take ownership, 100% ownership of solving any kerfuffle or any problem by either changing our outbound, outgoing, we’re changing the incoming right, reframing it for ourselves when it reaches us in a way that solves any kerfuffle. And the number one challenge that we see people struggle with in making any progress in their relationship, whether it’s your marriage with your kids at work, with your family, even yourself, is an unwillingness to stop trying to get the other person to change.

Stacey: 11:14 And that’s what was happening here. She’s like, Oh sure, why work on this trigger PS, which she was not doing at all while I work on this trigger. If you could just do this, that would make it easier for me. It’s been fundamentally conditioned into us to try to get other people to change in order to please us or make us happy. You know, it’s a fundamental piece at the core of demand relationship, which is what we teach. We’re doing relationship development, which is the opposite of that. But everything as we teach, everything comes from, we’ve been modeled demand relationship for centuries and at the core of demand relationship is wanting other people to change and the truth is that the majority of people who first come into our world come into our world thinking, Oh, so these relationship development tools, this is going to help me get that person to change.

Stacey: 12:07 Oh, so nothing else worked, but you’re going to tell me how to get my husband to listen, right? Nothing else worked, but you’re going to tell me how to get us to stop fighting. You’re going to tell me how to get my kids to stop fighting with each other. You’re going to tell me how to get my kids to listen. You’re going to tell me how to get them to, and the answer, of course, is no. You can’t use relationship development tools to execute on a demand relationship wish, which is to get other people to change. The wonderful thing is because first of all, when you’re really focused on getting other people to change, you have no power at all. It’s of total victim mode. You’re either trying to use manipulation or whatever you’re trying to do, you’re trying to use a tactic even with the best of intentions to get other people to change.

Stacey: 12:47 Like you’re not the puppeteer of the world. Like it just doesn’t work. And it’s a very powerless place to be. Relationship development is all about empowerment. And I know personal responsibility is kind of become a dirty word over the past however many years because most people think that personal responsibility is synonymous with blame. Like, Oh, okay, so it’s all my fault now everything’s my fault. And of course that’s not what we’re saying. That’s still demand relationship, making everything your fault. Relationship development is about empowerment. The way that we find our power of empowerment is by taking 100% ownership of everything, every decision, every results, every outbound, every inbound, how we’re hearing things, how we’re relating everything. And it might seem like, Oh my gosh, it’s a lot. What’s your other choice? Wallow in misery and have kerfuffle at every single turn. Like it’s a choice to actually empower yourself to finally be free, be free with the real results. And until you cut off all possibility of the other person changing, you will stay stuck in. I’ll do a little bit, but then I’m going to ask them to like just put, if you could just write, if you would just write. That’s where we are killing ourselves because we’re not getting results because in the end part of us is moving forward. Like if you would just write.

Paul: 14:14 Now a lot of people out there who are probably listening to hearing that one statement Stacy made as it sounds like a lot and I’m like, yeah, it is and I don’t want to, right? It feels like this heavyweight, but here’s something you really need to think about and truly ask yourself. Can anyone outside of you put those negative feelings you have about any situation into your body? They can’t. You have to own it. The reason why it doesn’t work as you haven’t been looking at the right target, unless you own the fact that it was your reaction, your responsibility to have some level of control over your own feelings about this moment. And then from there recognizing, well, what can I do? This was something that got triggered in me by me, by my meanings. How can I see this differently? Unless you’re asking the right questions, you’re never going to be successful. Amen. So again, it comes down to the theme of this whole question really is if you had total ownership of that, if you took that personal responsibility of that, you’ve already cut off half the battle because you’re actually focusing for the first time now on where the real efforts are going to pay off where you can really make a difference. Yes, that’s the whole power of yet.

Stacey: 15:24 So here’s the thing. When you refuse, and I know none of us, we’ve been so conditioned, I don’t want anything to be my fault. I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want anything to be my fault. And I’m constantly very, very aware of how everybody else is wrong. It’s everybody else’s fault. Everybody else is wrong all the time. I get it. I totally get it. Look, I was there. Paul was there. That’s how we’ve been conditioned to see the world. Like really all the way back to I’m two years old and I’m with my brother or sister and something breaks and mom turns around and says who did that? And we point our fingers at each other like I didn’t do it right. The teacher turns around in class and says, who threw that? Everybody points their fingers in other directions. It wasn’t me, right? Like so we’ve been conditioned for a really, really long time to find a way for nothing to be our fault. But the problem is we’re robbing ourselves of all of our power because if nothing’s our fault, then what power do we actually have? Sit with that for a second. Yeah, absolutely. If nothing’s our fault, what power do we actually have?

Stacey: 16:29 And even if you struggle with the word fault, again, responsibility. Ownership, just take ownership.

Stacey: 16:37 If nothing’s your fault, that means everybody else is making things happen and you’re making nothing happen. Like really just stay with that for a second. Who’s powerful in the, nothing’s my fault. Where’s your power? What are you creating? What are you making happen? If nothing’s your fault and yes, now go from demand relationship to relationship development. Stop saying the word fault. Start saying the word responsibility. Everything is my responsibility. Just like in that clip that we always share from will Smith my life, my happiness is my responsibility and my responsibility alone. And that is the truth. And that’s where all your power lies. And so when you take this point of owning it, everything changes. When you look at a kerfuffle that you’re having and you’re so sure, like, Oh my gosh, if they would just, if they would just, all right now stop. Let’s say it’s 1000% impossible.

Stacey: 17:39 I’m just going to like wave a magic wand, 1000% impossible. They can’t change at all. How are you going to solve it? Now we’re getting somewhere now finding your power. She can’t control other people, but you absolutely can shift. How you’re showing up in a way that changes how they react to you and get the result that you want, which is exactly what we help this student do. Of course shift how she showing up, change how she’s hearing from her partners blueprint and resolve the entire kerfuffle. No more pain, right? She is the only one shifting and he is shifting in response to her. But none of that would happen if we’re constantly focused on the other person and how we want them to change. We want them to change. We want them to change. Nobody changes cause you want them to change. You change, you shift, do what you’re asking. You’re not even willing to do what you’re asking them to do. Once you demonstrate that you’re willing to do what you’re asking them to do, you’re shifting not to please them, but to be more effective, then they will shift in response to you. And that is the difference. But until you literally cut off all of their possibilities and own it, it can’t change.

Paul: 18:53 Yeah. So we’re gonna need some action steps for today. So first action step of what you can start doing now. Number one, reflect what is a consistent kerfuffle that you have with your partner or in your home number to be honest. How would you like for them to just change so it can be fixed? Are you looking for that? Number three, take action. Get to the place where you can take absolute total ownership of fixing it without needing them to do anything and if you need our help, do something. Get into the boost, 14dayboost.com or one of our other programs. Number four, repeat, like rinse and repeat. Right? Do this for all your kerfuffles. Pick one. Start with that. Rinse and repeat, and do it again.

Stacey: 19:40 Alright, awesome. Yeah. If you want to get into our 14-Day Boost Program, go to 14dayboost.com to see when the next boost is, and get on into it, so that you can get these tools and strategies. If you love this podcast, please take a screenshot of your phone and share it. Until next time, remember, together we are changing the way relationship is done.

Outro: 20:06 Hey, would you like to get big results in your relationships in just 10 seconds a day? If so, then subscribe to our daily inspiration for relationship transformers or the D.I.R.T at www.MartinoPodcast.com/DIRT.