If you’re like most people, when you’re struggling in a relationship, you fall into either blaming another person for how they are making you feel, or you’re trying to get them to be different so you can feel better. Maybe you’re doing both!
What if you didn’t have to do either, and instead of focusing on the other person, you’re focusing on yourself and your own responsibility for the thoughts you’re having and the emotions you’re experiencing. This is a radical idea! But this is also where you get your freedom.
You are here to be an agent in your own life, not a victim of your circumstances. You have the ability to choose to be reactive by default, or to respond intentionally. Once you take radical responsibility for yourself, you’ll see your relationships begin to change without doing anything else.
Full Transcript
Tina Gosney 00:00
Tina, are your family relationships feeling disconnected, maybe even contentious? If you’re ready to begin repairing relationships and connect on a whole new level so that you can feel more peace and love in your family, then come with me. I’m Tina Gosney, a certified life and advanced relationship coach, and I’m glad you’re here now. Let’s get started.
Tina Gosney 00:25
This summer was pretty eventful in many different ways, in some heartbreaking ways too. I had a friend who suddenly passed away just almost a month ago, and this happened at a time when I was already facing some pretty difficult challenges, some extremely difficult challenges, and I was trying to make sense of these things in my life, and then my good friend passed away, and it just sent me into a different headspace, into a different line of thinking and a different just a different way of viewing the own things in my own life.
Tina Gosney 01:08
It got me really thinking about, why am I really here, and what am I supposed to be focusing on? What’s really important? And that’s nothing new. I know I’ve thought those thoughts so many times, but these were thoughts that and questions that were really moving deeper and deeper into my soul, and I was pulling out new levels of personal understanding reading, also, like I mentioned before, I’ve learned so much from reading. It’s really helped me to do to understand things that I’ve already understood and on a new level.
Tina Gosney 01:43
Because this summer, I’ve been doing reading of books that are out of the norm for me, and it’s been such a beautiful gift and so meaningful to me, a gift from God to my soul at a time when I really needed it to be focused on different types of books that I’ve been focused on in the past, and those are just a couple of ways this summer has been really impactful on me. And I’m going to be sharing some of the things that I’ve learned in the podcast in the coming weeks.
Tina Gosney 02:16
And this is one of the things this, this today, this podcast today about taking radical ownership of your own relationships. This is part of this learning for myself this summer. You know, I see how I have done this in the past, and I see I watch. I like to watch people and how they react to different things. I think I call myself a people watcher, or maybe a people observer. Just really want to observe like and question, what is going on for this person, or for me, that I’m reacting to this situation right now, or what is this might this person be thinking or feeling or that’s making them do this right now.
Tina Gosney 03:04
And I see how we let other people so often take over and dictate how we feel about ourselves and how we define ourselves and how we feel about our own life. We get in so this mode of being reactive in our relationships and reactivity in relationships is not usually a good thing. We’re not taking responsibility for our own health, our own mental and emotional well being, and our own responses to our environments. We generally are being very reactive in taking care of our bodies and not even knowing that we’re not taking care of our mental and emotional loving. We’re just reacting to the environment around us, and it’s not a positive thing.
Tina Gosney 04:01
I did some training with Amy Gianni a few months ago, and we talked about a book called Love 2.0 by Barbara Fredrickson. And we went over this section that is talking about creating happiness and health in moments of connection. We talked about how important relationships are to us, and we talked about how there’s so much research showing positive effects of love and connection and social interactions, and how that is positively affecting our physical health, not just our emotional mental health, but our physical health, and it alters our biochemistry.
Tina Gosney 04:46
And if it can positively affect our mental, emotional physical health, it can also, if we don’t have relationships, love and connection in our lives, it can be. Negatively affect our biochemistry. You know, a lack of love and connection in our life is more damaging to our health than smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol excessively or even of being obese. Love literally makes us happier and healthier people, and a lack of it makes us sick.
Tina Gosney 05:25
A lack of it compromises our immunity and our health. Feeling isolated and disconnected in relationships with others does more body damage than actual isolation. You can be in a room full of people and feel completely isolated and disconnected. Painful emotions drive these body systems that will steer you towards dire health outcomes, and we really need diverse and rewarding relationships, because when we have those, we are healthier and we live longer, we have more thriving and just positive emotional experiences in our lives. And bonus our health is better. Isn’t that amazing?
Tina Gosney 06:22
I think it’s amazing that none of the pieces of us live within a bubble. Our physical health affects our mental and emotional health, which affects our relational health. And all of these things feed off of each other. They help or hurt each other. So it’s important to pay attention to the whole person that you are.
Tina Gosney 06:48
But this is what happens. We are cutting ourselves off from really feeling connected in our relationships because we are reactive, and we’re reactive to situations and people around us and we’re feeling out of control in our own lives, we start taking a victim mindset, where we feel powerless to feel better, unless other people decide to change, or maybe until our circumstances change. Well. And when we take a victim stance, we also somebody has to be a villain, right?
Tina Gosney 07:21
There’s a victim, there has to be a villain, and so the other person becomes the villain. Sometimes we take on both roles on ourselves. I’m the victim, victim and I’m the villain. That’s an interesting dynamic. For another podcast, we are just living our lives on autopilot. We are not being creators and deciders in our own lives. We’re getting stuck in our routines and just doing the same thing day after day, not thinking about why we’re doing something, or if it’s something we should be doing, or if we’re doing it effectively, or if we’re doing it like we just don’t even think and we get stuck in thinking that our personality and our strengths and weaknesses dictate who we are, and we think, Well, I just that’s just the way I am. And we don’t even question whether is that the way I want to be? We don’t see that we have a choice. We think those things are fixed, that it’s just the way I came, it’s just the way I am, and so there’s nothing I can do about it.
Tina Gosney 08:23
So often I hear, Well, this is just the way I am, when it’s not a positive thing, and that implies there’s nothing I can do about it. We are just feeling trapped. We don’t see where we have choices. We’re focused on how things are right now, here today, and how much we don’t like it, we’re not focusing on the big picture. We don’t see how much power and responsibility we actually have in our own lives. And we have become this group of people who are not acting for themselves, we are being acted upon. We are not taking charge of the agency in our own lives.
Tina Gosney 09:12
Have I painted a really bleak picture for you? Sometimes it feels bleak, doesn’t it, but it doesn’t have to, because relationships are important. I think it’s really interesting in the scriptures that the first and second commandments have to do with relationships, and then everything else hangs on those two things, your relationship with yourself. How do you think, feel and act towards yourself, or maybe against yourself? That’s going to be evident in how you think, feel and act towards others or against others, because you can’t give someone else something that you don’t have, and in our relationships with others.
Tina Gosney 10:00
We are all inextricably connected. When we hurt another person, we hurt ourselves. When we build and inspire another person, we build and inspire ourselves. A lot of people have an easier time being nice to nicer to others than they they are to themselves. But you know, because we are all connected in a very, very real way, we can’t be unkind to ourselves without harming the collective humanness of the world, and we are part of that, and so is everybody else. So when we are unkind to ourselves. We’re actually unkind to others.
Tina Gosney 10:44
And when we work on our relationships with ourselves and others, we are honoring God, even if we’re doing a bad job, but we’re trying. We’re honoring God. We’re doing what he’s asked us to do. I don’t know that there’s anything that is more important than that, especially since the Scriptures tell us, everything else hangs on those two relationships.
Tina Gosney 11:11
So here we are, these flawed human beings who are being so reactive, and we’re on this earth trying to grow, trying to develop and trying to become like Jesus Christ. We do that through our relationships. We work those things out through our relationships with ourselves, with others, our relationships with difficult life circumstances, our relationship with our with our own thoughts, with our own emotions, we don’t often get a say in what circumstances show up in our life. I know in my life there are circumstances that show up that I had no say in them showing up, but I do have a say in what I do with those circumstances that is in my power.
Tina Gosney 12:02
And just, I just, I like to give examples, because I think it helps us really apply. So here I have an example for you. If I’m not getting along with another person, well, that’s my responsibility to deal with it. That struggle that I’m having with another person gives me information. It’s showing me where that person is in their life, and it’s showing me where I am in my life and where my work is to do.
Tina Gosney 12:31
The other person doesn’t have to do anything in order for me to deal with myself. Now I’m not saying that the other person doesn’t have responsibility, but I don’t get a say in what the other person does, in how they react to me, in what they think, what they feel or what they do. I don’t have a say in what they choose, but I do have the ability to respond. I have a response ability how I do that my responsibility is my choice and my agency, and this is where I find freedom, peace and power in my own life.
Tina Gosney 13:16
Now it might mean that I need to change my thoughts about this person, it might mean that I need to deal with some difficult emotions that this situation is bringing up for me, and those are mine to own and mine to deal with. It also might be just telling me that maybe I’m not honoring myself in this relationship, and I need to be more kind to myself, and in how I allow myself to be treated, notice that in nowhere in this example, did I become a victim of my circumstances.
Tina Gosney 13:54
Because I get to own my life experience, I respond to my life and what I do with it is my choice. So ultimately, I am responsible for me. No one else is responsible for me, and what I do matters. What I think matters, what I feel matters because what I think and feel and do affects me, and it affects the people around me, and when I take radical ownership of my own life that brings me peace, that brings me peace And in more authentic connection with myself, with other people and with God. Here are my takeaways for today.
Tina Gosney 14:49
Everything that you go through in this life is for your own growth and development for yours. Everything is happening for you and. And not to you. When you let this really sink in, and you let it become the way you see your life, everything starts to shift. Takeaway number two, when you leave this earth, you take yourself, who you have become, and you take your relationships, you get to decide right now what you want those to be, who you are and what your relationships are with others is in your control, no matter what anyone else does or doesn’t do.
Tina Gosney 15:38
Here’s your challenge for the week. You have a difficult situation, I know that you do, because everybody does. You have a difficult situation with the family member. Maybe it’s an immediate family member, or maybe it’s a not immediate family member, but you have one. I know you do. What is the one thing you can do today to take hold of your own agency in this situation. It doesn’t have to be something big. It could be a very small thing, but I want you to commit to do it before 8pm and if it’s 8:05pm right now when you’re listening to this, you have 23 hours and 55 minutes, because I promise you 8pm is coming again tomorrow.
Tina Gosney 16:25
Now it might be something as simple as noticing an unkind thought that you’re having about them and telling yourself that you don’t want to think that way about them today. Maybe it’s making a phone call. Maybe it’s getting out a piece of paper and writing one thing that’s positive about that person. Maybe the difficult situation is in yourself and not with somebody else. So if this is the case, how can you be kind to yourself before 8pm maybe you’re having an unkind thought about yourself, and you tell yourself, I’m not going to think that today. Maybe you drink an extra glass of water, or you go for a walk, or you call a friend and connect. Maybe you spend 10 to 15 minutes meditating.
Tina Gosney 17:15
You know, as humans, we underestimate the small, simple actions that can add up over time. We totally underestimate them, but really, all we ever have are the actions that we take right now, because tomorrow never really comes. It’s always today. So today is always the right time.
Tina Gosney 17:38
This summer has been a significant one for me for so many reasons, and the experiences that I’ve had have changed me, and they’ve changed the way I see the world. I see myself as so incredibly powerful in my own life, and I am humbled by it. It’s a gift from God. I see my clients as so powerful in their own lives. Coaching to me is having a front row seat in a very sacred space of the lives of my clients. I see the people that I love, people in my life who are struggling, but I see them as powerful in their own lives. Some of them, I know they don’t see it yet, and that’s okay, because I have enough belief that they are powerful that I can hold that for them until they’re ready to take that up for themselves.
Tina Gosney 18:35
And I know that you also are powerful in your own life. Each one of us has the power to take charge of our agency, and that agency is a powerful force. Agency is a powerful and sacred gift that too many of us are discounting, not valuing it and not holding it responsibly. And now I don’t want to discount the impact of my increased and always growing faith in Jesus Christ and the influence that he has had on me.
Tina Gosney 19:06
Please know that I might not always mention it in such a direct way, but my faith in Him holds up everything that I do and say on this podcast and in my coaching business. I consider Christ to be my business partner as I look to Him to guide me and direct the decisions that I make, down to the classes that I offer and the way that I coach my clients. The very fact that I’m in this coaching field right now is a direct response to a very sacred, spiritual experience that I had several years ago that I will probably never share publicly, but that’s why I’m here, and that is why I do what I do now.
Tina Gosney 19:49
I know that you are powerful beyond your belief, and you can be an agent in your own life by taking radical responsibility for your relationships and how. You show up in them. I am so grateful that you’re here with me today. I’m grateful to be back on this podcast for the next several weeks, and I hope that you begin to see the power that you have to take a radical responsibility for yourself in your own life. I’ll see you next time you
