This was first published on KSL.com

Question:

My spouse said I am not self-aware, and I’m not even sure what that really means. It’s only one of her complaints, among many, but it came up because she says I can’t see when I’m wrong. Is there a chance that I can’t see things, and can’t see that I can’t see them? What do you do to change that? How do I become more self-aware?

Answer:

This is a great question, because most of us would benefit from improving in this area. Check yourself by going through these signs that you might not be self-aware:

1. People in your life say you don’t listen, even though you think you do.
2. You are often critical of others.
3. You can be pushy about wanting things your way.
4. You get defensive fast and upset over perceived wrongs.
5. You can’t handle negative feedback.
6. You harbor grudges.
7. You are surprised by what people say about you, because you don’t see yourself the way they do.
8. You tell yourself and others that you are bigger, better, or farther along than you really are.
9. You don’t take personal responsibility for your behavior and blame others when things go wrong.
10. You aren’t teachable or your pride and ego push people away.

There is a new one-page quiz on my website that lets you rank some of these and see on paper how much fear is blocking your self-awareness. Also check out the JoHari Self-Awareness chart which shows you your blind spots. (We also have a Clarity Assessment, which shows you some of your subconscious programs on paper.) Assessments and quizzes like these are great ways to become more self-aware.

Self-awareness is defined as being awake, conscious and aware of your thoughts and behaviors, instead of letting your subconscious programming drive your life on autopilot. It means you can see yourself, other people and life accurately and understand you drive your behavior.

So, the question is, how do you get more self-aware? Here are some things you can do to improve your self-awareness:

1. Work on changing the way you value people. Choose to embrace the idea that every human being has the same intrinsic value and that value cannot change. You cannot earn more and be better than anyone else. You also can’t lose value and be any less than anyone else. Mistakes are just lessons that help you grow, and they don’t affect your value (at least you can see it this way if you want to). The more you practice consciously choosing yourself and others as infinitely valuable, the less fear and insecurity will drive your life. You will be less needy of validation and less defensive or threatened by criticism or mistreatment.
2. Stay out of judgment towards others. As you practice No. 1, especially focus on letting everyone around you have the same infinite value as you. Make a rule to not gossip, judge or see others as less than you. Watch for these thoughts and replace them with truth and love. The very act of paying attention to your thoughts and replacing negative ones is self-awareness.
3. Choose to trust that the universe is for you, not against you. There is no way to know (as an absolute fact) whether the universe is against you or always conspiring to serve you and your education. Since we can’t know for sure, we get to choose a perspective. If you choose to see the universe as against you, everyone and every situation is a threat and you function in fear all the time. If you choose to see life as always serving you, you don’t feel offended, insulted, upset or taken from nearly as much. In this place, you can be more aware of others and the way you show up around them.
4. Pay attention to any feedback you receive. Feedback is not necessarily criticism and it’s not a reflection of your value. It is just a lesson experience. Some of it will be accurate and this is a gift to help you become your best. Some is not accurate and is an amazing opportunity to practice owning your infinite value and not taking things personally. When you get negative feedback, sit with it, and look for some truth in it, listen to it and embrace it as a gift and a learning experience. How could it make you better?
5. Learn how to calm your nervous system or meditate. The truth is most people are functioning in a high-stress state most of the time. This fight-or-flight state shuts down your frontal lobe (so you can’t think straight) and makes you generally selfish and focused on yourself. There is a great worksheet on relaxing your way out of stress reaction on our website. This is powerful because the more in control of yourself you become, the more self-aware you will become.
6. Accept personal responsibility for everything happening in your life. If you have people problems with those around you — you have created those on some level. Watch yourself and don’t complain, blame or use the excuse that you are powerless to change the situation. You can either change the situation or you can change how you are experiencing the situation and, either way, you will feel better than you do now. If you can’t see how you are responsible for a mess you are in, ask an objective third-party for their honest perspective. They can often see things you can’t. Ask them to tell you how you might have created or put up with a negative situation or might be making it worse.
7. Let go of your need to control everything. If you need control to feel safe, you may not see how this tendency is negatively affecting your relationships. Let go of needing things your way as much as possible. Practice going with the flow and letting someone else drive. Sit back and notice that you are still okay. You can survive not being in control and being okay. The more you can sit back and watch your ego freak over something being done wrong and not say anything — the more self-aware and mature you will become.
8. Spend more time listening than talking. Make a conscious effort in every conversation to not talk. Instead, watch your ego fight with this as you listen and listen to others. Watch your ego want so bad to tell your story or make your comment while you engage your inner power to over-ride it and stay focused on another person anyway.
9. Work with a coach or counselor. Find a professional, who can and will give you honest feedback and help you see your subconscious negative behavior and where it comes from. We call this process gaining clarity because it is the chance to see yourself and others accurately, instead of through the fog of fear in which most people live. We have a Get Clarity event in March that will quickly clear away that fog and show you the way out.

One of my favorite books is "A Return to Love" by Marianne Williamson. In it she says, “It takes courage...to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.”

It is easier to stay unaware and keep blaming others for the results you are creating, but it’s not happier. If you want to be happier, more fulfilled and deeply content in your own skin, you must brave that look in the mirror and accept some feedback and some help.

Remember though, it’s not a sign of weakness or inadequacy to ask for help or look in the mirror and change yourself, it’s a sign of wisdom and strength.

You can do this. 

Kimberly Giles is the president of claritypointcoaching.com. She is the author of the book "Choosing Clarity: The Path to Fearlessness" and a popular life coach, speaker and people skills expert.

This was first published on KSL.com

Question:

I have noticed when I do something unkind or selfish, I have a tendency to explain the behavior away as someone else’s fault, which gets me off the hook. I don’t decide to do this, I just notice I’m doing it in the middle of doing it. So, it’s almost subconscious but not all the way. I can also get caught up in anger at a friend and start thinking about what’s wrong with our friendship, and the more I think about it the worse I feel. She says I am not seeing it accurately and it’s not that bad. I feel like a drama queen at times. How can I stop doing this?

Answer:

Have you heard the warning, “Just because you read it online, doesn’t mean it’s true.” The same goes for the content of your thoughts. Just because you think it — and you feel horrible about it, depressed because of it, or upset about it — doesn’t mean it’s true either.

Your amazing imagination is constantly creating stories around everything you see, hear or experience. You are such a creative being it is almost impossible for you to see any experience as it really is, as just facts, without your imagination adding to it.

Your thinking patterns today are literally the sum of all your past experiences, and these experiences have created a lens that filters everything you see, hear and perceive. Some of you have a very negative lens, clouded by fear. You may see everything and everyone as a threat (even though it isn’t accurate). Your lens might make you create stories that constantly prove you aren’t good enough. You might see the world through a lens of criticism and blame, which means creating stories where nothing is ever your fault, or your lens might be prone to self-pity, anger or conflict.

A fear-clouded lens distorts the truth and leads your imagination to create stories that fit your biased ideas about the world. You will then confabulate reality to match your story, so you can be right about your negative perspective. Your confabulation helps you to believe your story and think it’s accurate.

In psychology, to confabulate means to produce a fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted view of reality, and we all do this, to some degree, every day. It’s therefore very important you don’t believe everything you think because a large portion of your thinking isn’t true and is creating self-inflicted misery in your life.

It’s hard to wake yourself up and out of these stories because your emotions (very quickly) get involved and they make you feel strong emotions about your story. You then believe the story must be accurate or you wouldn’t feel this way, right?

Your brain creates very real emotions around the perspective you end up with, and these emotions make you buy into the story hook, line and sinker, but that still doesn’t make the story accurate. Your emotions aren’t proof.

Feelings cannot be trusted any more than thoughts can.

You are right about how you feel though. You do actually feel the way you feel and no one can argue with that. But you may be completely inaccurate in the perspective or story you made up, which created those feelings, which means the emotions aren't warranted. (Read that again!)

It is time to grow up and become more personally responsible for your thoughts and emotions. It is time to learn to be mindful and consciously choose your perspective instead of letting your subconscious program choose it.

You deserve to learn this because a large amount of the suffering (you are currently experiencing) is unnecessary and self-inflicted.

So, stop it.

Step back from each situation and observe your mind at work confabulating, justifying and creating made up stories and emotions around it. You are literally creating your entire life in your head. Your life is not as it appears, it is as you are choosing to see it.

Everything is perspective and your perspective is in your control. It may not feel in your control at first because ideas do pop-up (from your subconscious) but once they show up, you have complete control over whether you embrace them and add emotion to them or replace them with something else.

You may resist believing this though, because it’s much easier to find some like-minded people who look at the situation in the same distorted way you do, who will validate you and tell you that you’re right. You will always be drawn to friends and co-workers who see the world with the same filter you have because you crave validation.

Have you noticed that like-minded people are drawn to each other? The complainers and blamers always end up friends. This means if you want to change your thinking and become more accurate and positive, you may have to change your friends.

Here is a procedure you can follow when you want to check your perspective, feelings and thoughts for accuracy:

1. Ask yourself this important question, "If I stopped feeding this story and thinking about it, and instead labeled it as inaccurate and dropped it, would the problem still exist?" Try it and see.

2. Own responsibility for how you are feeling, without any blame on anyone else. If you own it, you also have the power to change it. Wayne Allen, the simple Zen guy, says it’s an odd thing that people will be living in a pile of [crap] and still insist it appeared by magic, they had nothing to do with their being in it, someone else is to blame, and someone else should dig them out. If you live this way you will always be a miserable victim. Don’t do it. Own that you are creating your life and change your thinking.

3. Write down the facts of your situation without any emotion or story around it. You will be surprised how short, simple and benign the facts really are.

4. Write down as many perspective options as you can think of. Get creative and let your imagination go crazy with positive spins you could embrace. You are going to create a story around this situation anyway, so you might as well pick a better, less miserable story that makes you feel good, right? Pick a victor story that gives you a chance to rise to the occasion and be the person you want to be.

5. Feed positive mindsets by hanging out with people who see situations clearly and aren’t prone to drama or negativity. Feed your mind with good books and uplifting content that encourages you to create positive perspectives.

Most of us are unhappy because we don’t know another way to think about our experiences. We were never taught the skills nor given the tools to process life in a more positive way. They don’t teach this stuff in school or church (though they should), so where are you supposed to learn it?

If you have emotional reactions and often feel out of control or stuck in negative thinking, it's time to do something about it. Get some professional help. There are experts all around you who can help you learn these skills. I believe positive, clear, accurate thinking, free from fear, is easy to learn and teach. Our Get Clarity workshop might be a good place to start. My website is also filled with resources to help you get more clarity in your thinking and take control of your life.

You can do this. 

Kimberly Giles is the president of claritypointcoaching.com. She is the author of the book "Choosing Clarity: The Path to Fearlessness" and a life coach, speaker and people skills expert.

This was first published on KSL.com

Question:

Valentine’s Day is a little painful because my marriage is not going good. It isn’t that we fight a lot, but it isn’t really wonderful either. The only fight we have is around intimacy and the fact that we don’t have it very often. But I don’t think either of us feels really loved or wanted. I try to show my wife I love her, but she thinks it’s all about getting sex. I honestly just don’t think she likes me or ever has any interest in intimacy at all. Just wondered if you had advice on improving this?

Answer:

There are many different reasons your partner may have lost interest in intimacy. For many women, the heart of the problem is that while boys grow up hearing positive things about sex, most women grow up hearing shameful negatives. Any young woman who was excited about sexuality was seen as a slut, and sex was talked about like it was dirty and wrong. Then, add to that resentment, hurt feelings, disappointment and trust issues (because of criticism or fighting) or a husband who has been looking at pornography (which makes sex feel dirty) and many lose their interest in the whole thing. Others are just too tired and have nothing left to give at the end of the day.

This is a complex issue, and it can’t be fixed in an article, but repairing the intimacy in your relationship is vital. You cannot have a healthy thriving relationship without it. Here are some things each partner can do to start the process of repairing intimacy in their marriage:

See a doctor or mental health professional

If you don't have a healthy libido, go see a medical professional. There are hormone imbalances and medications that can negatively affect sex drive. You also want to make sure there are not experiences of abuse from the past that are creating negative feelings around sex and may also require professional help.

Be kind, appreciative and validating

For most people to enjoy intimacy they must first feel emotionally safe. Does your partner feel resentful, angry, hurt or walked on at any level? If you are prone to criticism, sarcasm, negative comments or if you just don’t give enough positive validation, this could be part of the problem. Your partner needs to feel admired, appreciated, respected and cherished if you want them to want you. (If you have been disappointed or complained about not enough sex, they may feel like a disappointment, which makes them even less interested. People need to be showered with praise and appreciation for who they are, as they are, before they have anything to give. Nothing makes a person more interested in intimacy than believing their partner admires and adores them. Don't let disappointment poison the relationship. Tell your spouse often how amazing they are.

Deserve their respect

If you are slacking in your responsibilities, you may need to step it up. This may mean exercising and getting in shape, spending less time in front of the TV or learning and growing as a person. You may even ask your partner what you could do that would make them admire you more. They may want to see you deal with some of your self-esteem, abandonment, anger or emotional issues. This could mean getting some professional help from an executive coach or counselor.

Be more generous and giving

This means setting aside your needs and giving to your partner. For the partner who is less interested in sex, this means initiating sex and doing it often. If you frequently make them feel wanted and spend quality time here, they will adore and cherish you. Sex should be an expression of love for each other, and a “quicky” that gets it over fast doesn’t make your spouse feel wanted. Set aside the time to make them a priority. We know there are nights you have nothing left to give, but as often as possible set aside time and energy to give to your spouse.

For the partner who wants more intimacy, giving may mean helping around the house more and with the children. It could also mean honoring her feelings when she needs a good night’s rest, and not being resentful or complaining when she is tired. Many couples find it works better if the less interested spouse initiates sex. We know you fear if you do this, it will never happen, but being patient and giving them a chance to want to give to you could reverse the cycle of feeling taken from and rejected.

Understand your partner’s vulnerability

Every person has a different comfort level around vulnerability. At our Marriage Repair Retreats we help couples identify their comfort level and their trust issues around intimacy. We work to remove the fear that blocks vulnerability and create a safer space where partners can talk about intimacy without fear or defensiveness. Most of the time when someone doesn’t feel comfortable being vulnerable it is because of their fears of inadequacy, body image or the fear of disappointing. It’s usually not about you. Don’t take their discomfort with intimacy as a rejection of you. Your spouse may need some professional help to repair his/her self-worth before real vulnerability can happen.

Avoid pornography

Pornography will harm your marriage in two ways. One, it will create unrealistic expectations your partner can’t fulfill and it will trigger body image issues and feelings of betrayal that are difficult to get past. If pornography has already created these issues in your relationship, you may both need some professional help to repair them. The good news is that you can repair them. They are not the end of the world, but you must get some help.

Be more forgiving

You both must let the past go and start over with a clean slate. You must understand you are no better than your spouse. Stop keeping score and trying to prove your partner is the bad one. You have the exact same, infinite, absolute value as your spouse. You may not have made the same mistakes they made, but you have made other ones, and your inability to forgive is every bit as bad as their faults and weaknesses. You must forgive your partner if you want good self-esteem yourself too.

Work on your self-esteem

This is the most important thing you can do to improve your relationship. If you have body image issues or suffer from fears that you aren’t good enough, your fear is making you incapable of giving love the way you need to. Most of us suffer greatly from feelings of inadequacy, and these feelings must be repaired if you want a healthy marriage. Most people need professional coaching or counseling to change this. A confident person can give much more in a relationship than a miserable one. Encourage your spouse to get some help with this, because you want them to be happier (not so you can get more sex). Our Get Clarity Event is a great, inexpensive way to get this help and improve self-worth.

Communicate

This is vital for a healthy relationship, but we find most couples can’t communicate until they first solve their fear and self-esteem issues, which are actually causing the defensiveness and unsafe feelings. Once they do the work on their individual self-esteems and fears of failure and loss, we then teach them how to have mutually validating conversations. This means listening before you speak and validating your partner's right to think and feel the way she or he does.

Pick your timing and hold the space for each other

Both men and women need better communication to help them navigate the right time for intimacy. Practice empathy and ask yourself, “What has my spouse been doing the last 12 hours? What has he/she been faced with? What do they need most right now? At the end of the day, we all crave support, connection and care from our spouse but sometimes showing love means doing the dishes, clearing the table, washing the sheets and refueling their car. Make sure you do something every day that makes your spouse feel appreciated and wanted and your spouse will be more excited about making time for intimacy.

It’s about the heart, the head and the chemistry

All three elements need to be connected and balanced for you and your spouse to enjoy intimacy. Both women and men need a clear mind to be able to really connect and make time for each other. Women often get stuck in their self-esteem issues or worry about the kids. Men often get stuck in work and financial responsibilities and find it hard to wind down and be present with their wives. The best way to connect the head, heart and chemistry is to take away all distractions — turn off the phones, have a shower to wash away the day and focus on each other. When you show up for one another and connect emotionally from the heart, it is much easier for the chemistry to follow.

It takes time and commitment to repair this part of your relationship, but the connection and love at the end makes it worth the effort. There are other articles on intimacy on our blog.

You can do this. 

Kimberly Giles is the president of claritypointcoaching.com. She is the author of the book "Choosing Clarity: The Path to Fearlessness" and a life coach, speaker and people skills expert.

This was first published on KSL.COM

SALT LAKE CITY — In this edition of LIFEadvice, coaches Kim Giles and Nicole Cunningham share tips and tricks for getting more help around the house.

Question:

I’m getting more and more resentful as the years go by with all the work I do to keep the house and family running. I feel unappreciated about it and I’m just getting tired of these tasks. My family is not much help either. Unless I nag and yell, no one lifts a finger to help out. Do you have any advice for my overwhelming and lack of motivation?

Answer:

Many parents experience resentment and are overwhelmed about the work it takes to keep the home clean and running smoothly. But choosing a martyr story and feeling anger or resentment about it will push other family members away and make them even less interested in helping.

In order to change things at your house, you must first take responsibility for your emotions and for creating a situation where no one helps you. You are at least partly to blame because you have either not asked for help or you are not handling it the right way.

You may have too many expectations or timelines (like wanting it done now or you’ll do it yourself) or you may communicate poorly what you need and how you want it done. If you are someone who complains about the quality of the job they do, you may have created a place where they can’t please you — so they’ve given up.
Ask yourself:

• What environment have you created in your family when it comes to household tasks and chores?
• Are you too attached to the tasks being done right or perfectly?
• Would you rather do it yourself as it’s quicker and easier than taking the time to teach the children?
• Do you get a benefit from your martyr story?

Here are some simple ways to drop the martyr story and include your children in the maintaining of the home:

1. Detach from perfectionismUnfortunately, many parents are attached to tasks done correctly and they have a hard time embracing the learning process and rewarding attempts made by their children to help. These parents experience fear of loss, that they are going to lose quality of life by forgoing the standards they desire.

A practical way to adjust your perfectionism is to show your family you appreciate their efforts even if they aren’t up to your standards. The most common mistake we see from parents is going in to straighten things up after their children’s attempt to help. This tells your child their efforts weren’t good enough and this results in them being less willing to do the job again (at least not with the same enthusiasm).

Instead, reward their efforts. Language such as, “Tim, I love how you straightened your bed cover like that.” Instead of, “Tim, you did a good job, but your forgot to tuck in the bottom sheet and you still have a pair of shoes that needs to go into the closet.” Your intentions are good in teaching them quality, but all your child hears is “I have failed, my best is never good enough and why do I even bother.”

The kids in our Tuesday night teen class say feeling like a failure is the primary reason they are not willing to help out around the house. You may think it’s because they’re lazy, but they say parents will be mad at them either way, so why try.

2. See every experience with your children as your perfect classroomParents often feel fear of loss when they come home to find the children have made a mess in their house. You may have exaggerated angry reactions because you feel robbed or taken from. You feel robbed of the time and energy it will take to put things right. Instead of being triggered by fear, this is a beautiful opportunity to look at your need to be in control and why you have to have things perfectly clean.
Many parents are too invested in the opinions of other people and what their clean house says about their value. You may need to remind yourself your value is not tied to your house, and a happy family is more important than a house that looks like a museum. Whatever happens today in your home is your classroom and a chance to practice being the loving, mature, strong, kind, wise adult you really want to be. Every mess is a chance to practice seeing your value as infinite and not tied to any situation.

3. Be realisticYou must have realistic expectations before asking your children to clean anything. You may want to clean it with them a few times first, so they are clear of your expectations. It also helps to be specific — “Tim, I would like you to clean your room, don't forget to make the bed and put all of your shoes in the closet.”
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Set them up for success by allowing a realistic time frame instead of placing high demands when there is little time or energy to achieve them. Setting your children up to succeed in their efforts maintains the enthusiasm and willingness to help you.

Children as young as 8 to 13 can learn most skills through watching you. Simple tasks such as taking the trash out, feeding the dog, collecting the mail and making their beds every day.
Children younger than this can participate by cleaning up their toys or drawing materials, and learning to dress themselves and buckle themselves in their car seats.
Teenagers and young adults can participate by maintaining the yard, washing cars, cooking meals and completing weekly laundry. Household tasks with weekly repetition provide great learning opportunities for your children.

Many parents at our weekly free parenting classes are uncomfortable with the idea of their children doing tasks wrong or not doing them. If your expectations are realistic though, you can allow children to make mistakes, to not follow through on their jobs, or not do the best job the first time and use these as positive learning opportunities.

Instead of just yelling and demanding, take the time to talk through why they made the choice they did and what do they think about the job they did. When you take the time for this kind of learning you will make your child feel respected and you will give your children the skills to be a functional adult someday, which is definitely worth the time and effort.

By taking the time to allocate household tasks that are age appropriate and showing your children how to do them, you give them a sense of achievement while also relieving your burden.

Sit down and discuss the chores with the whole family so each person realizes what the tasks are and that this is an equal work zone. Explain your expectations and that everyone must pull their weight so no one has more responsibility or tasks than the others.

As time goes on you can also invite flexibility and freedom and let the children rotate on specific tasks or swap with other family members. We heard about one son paying his sister to do his laundry, this is actually a great “real life” experience. You can do it yourself or pay someone to do it.
Another great idea is to tell kids they can either do their chores or they can hire the “Mom’s Cleaning Service” to do them. If the chores aren’t done by this specific date, then you will do them, but it will cost them. This cost comes out of their allowance. If they do their chores, they get the money, but if not you keep the money. You must be fine with it either way, so they get the freedom to choose. (This works really well with children who like control and choices.)

You can approach parenting without a martyr complex and become a calm, wise leader and get the whole family involved, if you just take the time to make this happen.

You can do this.
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