Albert Einstein famously said: “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” 

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      And that's why we ALL need feedback, coaching, instruction and guidance in navigating our life's challenges.

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     Training. It's how we've all learned most of what we know and use today... everything from reading this sentence to throwing a ball, to driving a car, to what you do in your job. You were taught how to. You didn't get good at those things by complaining and analyzing why you couldn't read or throw the ball or drive...you learned from someone who could coach you, educate you or give you lessons, and then you practiced what you learned until you got good at it. It's time we looked at fixing relationships using the same successful structure we use everywhere else when we want to master something.

 

     Not many people were taught how to be a good partner or spouse. Not everyone saw their parents use good relationship skills in their family of origin. You can only bring into a relationship whatever you saw or learned along the way... which might not be useful in your situation today. So that means you either keep doing what you already do (and get the same results...) or you learn more than what you know now so you have more options and ways to be successful.

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     You may select Relationship Training for several reasons, but certainly the most important one should be because you can get the answers and results you want.  Traditional old-fashioned therapy focuses on the "process"of remembering all your negative feelings and reviewing the past...in great detail... and the hard truth is, the process is never as important as the solutions or outcome, your goals are always more important than your feelings, and the only place where you can change anything is in the future, not the past, where you can change nothing.  So to spend a lot of time going over the past again is kind of pointless, and often makes things worse. RESOLVING the past issues should be the entire point.

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     The end point of Relationship Training is that you objectively, measurably and sustainably fix or change your relationship for the better, according to the goals you picked and the actions you wanted.  We don't use some arbitrary and haphazard standard of success like "how does this make you feel?". You will measure your success specifically based on how much and how well you achieved your goals.   You will be taught how to use future-oriented Genius Thinking (imagining only what could be) to boldly create how you want your relationship to be - without regard to how it used to be and with no restrictions on what it might become!  

 

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now – and make a brand new ending." —Carl Bard

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IF YOU'RE HAVING TROUBLE IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP, HERE ARE YOUR 3 CHOICES

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    1.  STAY STUCK

      It may seem obvious, but doing the same thing over and over is going to produce the same results. Most couples wait somewhere between 2-6 years in the same bad habits or patterns before getting outside help or feedback. Probably not the best plan. If what you've been doing isn't working, then only doing something different will give you a different outcome.

 

    2.  GET A DIVORCE 

     Divorce, while a very necessary option for some, is not necessary in the majority of circumstances. Divorce Courts are full of people who love each other, and missed a fabulous opportunity to grow, learn and improve their lives.  They often had very fixable problems in their marriages.  Having a happy, loving, fulfilling relationship doesn't happen by accident, and it frequently doesn't happen when we only bring into the marriage whatever we know or learned so far about being couple. It happens when you learn and use the insights, skills, and perspectives that make it that way. The big tragedy of divorce is that if the actual problem is not knowing what to expect as your relationship evolves and you mature and develop, or not having good relationship tools or skills, getting a divorce won't help you understand those changes or learn those tools.

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    Here's the thing: you're going to need to learn what to do to be happy and successful in any relationship you're in, otherwise you'll probably have the same issues and problems happen to you in the next relationship. (That's why second marriages fail at a higher rate than first ones.) So you might as well fix the one you're in... especially if you have children. 

 

Getting rid of your partner is an option a lot of people take, but divorce never comes without a big price.  

          - According to a 2020 study, the average divorce in Florida costs $13,500, including $11,600 in attorneys' fees 

         - Custodial mothers experience an average loss of 25–50% of their pre-divorce income and

         - Children of divorce are more likely to experience poverty, educational failure, early and risky sexual activity,                  non-marital childbirth, and earlier use of drugs and alcohol. 

     

     Starting over with a new relationship isn't going to change your unuseful patterns, fix your poor problem solving skills or teach you better communication. If you don't fix those things IN your marriage, you'll take them all OUT of your marriage when you go.  And by the way, ALL of the things you need to learn or change in order to be a "great co-parent" are the SAME things you need learn or change to be a great spouse. There isn't a different list.  

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    3. FIX IT 

     The prevailing theme in Relationship Training is to provide lots of suggestions and feedback toward your GOALS, hopes and intentions... whatever they might be... and that you become proactive wherever you want your life to be improved or better. The topics could be about anything... communication, parenting, trust, doubt & jealousy, careers, past relationships, in-laws, financial issues, arguing, pre-marital help, leadership, intimacy differences, moving, family of origin, pets, blended families, opposite-sex friendships, divided loyalty, 2nd or 3rd marriage challenges, forgiving and letting go, retirement changes, health issues, anger & resentment, and even plain old anxiety.  You will learn new and advanced techniques, ideas, perspectives and specific suggestions to accomplish mastery in your relationship skills and better control over your emotions.   

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    Relationship Training is based on first resolving wherever you're "stuck"... what keeps you bogged down or frustrated that made you come in for help. This isn't as hard as it may seem because completely resolving disagreements and finding mutually agreeable common ground has a very predictable set of specific steps.   Showing you how to approach and handle things from a better perspective, and then providing those actual steps, strategies or guidelines toward your goals is what happens in every session.  It's like having a relationship roadmap.

 

     The next way that Relationship Training is very different than anything else is that it is, by design, an advanced education. It is also short term in duration because it's all organized around the goals you have and the changes you want to see, not wasting time and money on all the negative feelings you used to have, or the past that created them. To be clear, this is NOT therapy or traditional counseling.

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    I don’t believe there is any real ‘counseling’ or ‘therapy’. There is only training and education.

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      The old-fashioned traditional “therapy” model insidiously begins by labeling the client with a mental illness, and that's the first big inappropriate and unacceptable problem in my opinion.  Yes, even though you are coming for help with communication, parenting, or to be a better spouse, you will be given a mental illness diagnosis!  And if you use insurance to pay for your session, that mental illness diagnosis stays a permanent part of your medical record! And therapists keep that a secret - they won't tell you about that, but they all do it! 

 

     Then analyzing the past and focusing on all the negative emotions starts. In my experience, this tends to keep people stuck in repetitive patterns of defeat and hopelessness.  That approach has largely been a catastrophic failure for clients if your goal is to change something for the better; and I believe has even contributed to the enormous divorce rate in this country. Dissecting the past and an endless review of all the negative emotional damage is NOT how human happiness and relationship excellence is created.

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     To specifically highlight the difference, in outdated traditional counseling, the goal is to "focus on normative developmental and mental health issues", "uncover the source of suffering", "provide a safe environment to vent", "process your feelings" and the ever-popular "improve self-esteem". Old-style therapy tries to do that by focusing most of the many months they like you to spend doing this on the past. In my opinion, this approach has nothing to do with truly, completely, resolving, forgiving, letting go of, or neutralizing negative feelings. There is a big difference between expressing feelings and taking actions to RESOLVE the ones that aren't useful in a healthy, productive way. Just "talking about it" doesn't help if there's no action to repair what's wrong.

 

     I've found that most people seem to understand quite well what difficult, painful or hurtful things happened to them in the past.  And typically they've "vented" about them for a very long time to a lot of other people. Often they even still feel like a victim of those situations or feelings.  And all that emotional vomit about the past hasn't changed anything in their present.  What they need to know is how to move past it, forgive it, let go of it, or change it so it doesn't have a negative impact in their current life.  So simply put, therapy's end point is you and your negative past are still very much stuck together.  That's a lot of analyzing and talking about feelings, not a lot of fixing or resolving the actual problem. And that's why traditional marriage counseling has such a poor success rate if you talk to many who've tried it. The answer isn’t to analyze or label what happened to you before. The answer is to clear away any past limitations and head directly toward a fantastic relationship. 

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     Another important thing to notice is that because this Training process is advanced and results-oriented, it typically takes substantially less time than traditional therapy, which can last 3-6 months.  Most couples in Training come for 3-6 sessions and they have what they need.

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     It's not that Relationship Training ignores the past... it's that we resolve it... we don't dwell on why we don't like it, we focus on the solutions, options, alternatives or compromises that would change it. The past has one purpose: to learn from it. After that, you're supposed to take the positive learnings with you into your future where they will be useful. You are not supposed to bring all the negative emotion along because it will ruin the learning. No football team ever won the Super Bowl by thinking about the mistakes in the last game when the opening kickoff for THIS game is in the air.

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     All success has an action immediately preceding it.  If you want success in your relationship, start by taking action toward what you want to learn next. Training comes in many forms. Besides one-at-a-time sessions, you also have a choice of more intensive Coaching Programs. You can be very successful in any of them, depending on your goals and objectives for learning.

 

     I look forward to hearing from you.

 

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