Prologue —
Hello, hello. Hope you are doing great and enjoying some down time.
I enjoyed recording this Shift a lot :) But fair warning, the audio is a bit choppy at moments because I was driving. So you may want to read along if you’re listening.
Enjoy…
Shift Into Your Wife’s Next Step.
That title is just too good.
It was a typo originally.
When I saw it, I thought — this email is going to be opened more than any other.
Because, well, most guy's are going to wonder, “What is this?“
And most women are going to think, “This looks ok. I can get on board with this.”
And everyone else must be curious how this topic can possibly help shift us ALL toward the new year.
The title was intended to be — Shift into your life’s next step
But it typo’d into — Shift into your wife's next step
So here we are.
The demand is overwhelming.
We're going to do a shift into your wife's next step.
As always, I will be frank with you.
Number 1, I've never been married.
Number 2, I didn't do much preparation to record this Shift, unless you consider a lifetime of working in this area as preparation.
And also, in this particular case, laughing pretty hard about this topic with Casey, who I work with here.
Really, Casey thought even more than I did that this topic was far more interesting than shifting into your life’s next step.
So, thank Casey…
Why don't we take a long deep breath and intend ourselves into this moment?
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It strikes me how cathartic humor can be — especially in tense times.
It’s a reminder that there is nothing inherent about presence, or about wellness, or about trying to get yourself through something, or about performance, that is in conflict with, or in any way diminished by humor at the right moment.
It seems to me that laughter is the exhaust of joy.
When we're joyful, we are smiling.
When we're smiling, we are one moment away from laughter.
Just about anytime that we can bring any of that into our lives, it's a positive.
I've spoken many times about my general philosophy in psychology practice — providing therapy.
It’s something you won't see overtly in psychology textbooks.
And you won’t learn it in graduate school.
In practice though, I found that if we could spend time together in a good or great place in the therapy office — and that typically means a lot of laughter, and a lot of connecting around what may be painful, but is inevitably also often funny about life, and our life experiences — then whomever I'm working with absorbs a model (either a completely new, or a newly refined model) of our ability to feel good, to feel connected, to feel joyful in spite of difficulty, that they can take with them outside of our therapy sessions.
So, I came to see joy as a core piece of therapy.
For the reason that I just noted and for another reason too…
Laughing together, being joyful together, having fun together, connecting — which could be through humor, or it could be through connection in any emotional way that has resonance, and empathy, and depth — if we can do that together, we're going to create a relationship in which we can both thrive.
We can both be honest, share our challenges, and walk our unique journey through those challenges with the support of someone who we know cares, and who we know gets us — and who we know we can trust.
So humor became a touchpoint of therapy for me.
It makes it a lot of fun.
And it became universally true — we have a good time.
That doesn’t mean it was always a good time.
We roll our sleeves up to be intentional about not avoiding whatever the person had come into the therapy for — or whatever might be present in the room that day.
But yeah, that's it…
Is that where we went from shift into your wife’s next step?
Sorry wives.
I didn't do a very good job for you there — in terms of getting your partners on board with your next step.
I guess I'm going to leave that part to you.
I’m thinking the main message here — whether you’re a wife, husband or anyone else with a partner — is to be intentional about connecting to your partner with joy, or in any other emotional way that has resonance, and empathy, and or, depth, as regularly as possible.
And maybe, if you can get them laughing you’ll have easier time getting them to take out the trash — or whatever that next step that they need to shift into is.
Alright, please don't send me email on that. I’m aware that everyone takes out the trash!
Okay, since we're here together why don’t we do what we do, which is…
Take a deep dive into the present moment and rejuvenate ourselves.
Hopefully, as we do that today we’re doing it with a smile on our faces and joy in our hearts.
You know, just being able to talk to you like this reminds me again how grateful I am to have found this community and this way to share what we have to share.
So, thanks for listening, and or, reading.
Let's listen to life together for a minute or so before we get on with our days or nights.
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There’s some background noise here, so I’m going to pull over so we can sit together for a minute in silence.
When I do, (if you’re listening) we’re both going to notice what a nice difference it is when we drop into full background silence — without any movement at all.
Ready?
Here we go.
You're in the middle of the mountains with me now.
Pure silence.
Listen.
—
Place 100% of your attention on listening to life.
Drop into now, through the portal of joy.
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Perfect.
Let’s keep up our intentional shifting together as we head toward 2022.
Have an incredible day.
Sean
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