Episode 91: Bonus: How Is Your Program Different Than Listening to The Loving Truth Podcast?

Welcome to the Loving Truth podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence, and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now, your host, relationship expert and certified master life coach, Sharon Pope. Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope, and this is the loving truth. Today I want to provide an answer to a question that I get asked occasionally, which is some version of Sharon. How is your program, the decision, different than your podcasts?

I mean, I love listening to your podcast, and I feel like I'm getting so much. So why do I need the program? Okay, I would love to just answer that question, and I would put it to you like this. You're really just scratching the surface with the podcast. The information I share here is part of the equation, and it's helpful for sure, but it's not the full answer.

And that's not because I'm holding back, but because the full answers can't be obtained through listening to a podcast or reading a book or by watching a video. At least not for most people. So let me explain. I mean, I love that you're here listening to my podcast, and probably many of you are one of the more than 300,000 people who purchased my book stay or go. I love that.

How could I not? I think it's amazing, and it's a lot better than burying your head in the sand and pretending that nothing's wrong in your marriage or lying to yourself. But let's be honest. You're listening to podcasts and reading books, and that feels like you're being productive, like you're doing something towards the ultimate goal that you want. But that's not necessarily true, because most of you aren't taking scary new steps forward in your life or in your marriage in any new direction because it feels terrifying.

You know, leaning back in to your marriage when you've lost hope feels risky and vulnerable and scary. But so does ending it all. So you're not taking that scary action yet, because you don't have anyone there taking your hand and guiding you through it. You feel like you have to do it all alone, and you don't feel equipped to navigate what may be one of the biggest decisions of your life.

And I'm here to tell you today that you are not alone. I'm here, and I've been doing this for more than eleven years and guiding thousands of women through my decision process so that they can come to clarity for their marriage and find peace in their heart with their decision. And I'm here to tell you if they can do it with help and guidance from an expert, you can too.

It is possible. And you don't have to do it alone. And when you stop at only listening to a podcast, of course you're a little bit more knowledgeable about what to do. But you're still having to navigate these tools of what you're learning alone. See podcasts, books, videos, webinars, all the things, they're all helpful, and that's why I do them. But for most people, it will only carry them so far.

Most of us need a guide to help us really apply what it is we're learning to our specific challenges inside our marriage. I mean, think about it. Today, there are more than 400,000 relationship books on Amazon. If a book alone solved this challenge for people, why do we still have a 50% to 73% divorce rate? The point of these tools that I teach you, they're meant to help you in every relationship you have for the rest of your life.

That's my goal. I want you to embody these tools so that you're able to carry them with you far beyond this moment in time, this moment of struggle inside your marriage. But you can't do that if you never really learn, embody and apply these tools. It's all about the application. And really, that's where things break down for most people. Let's put it like this. No one hires a personal trainer because they don't know how to pick up a weight in the gym or how to press the big green button that says go on the treadmill.

They hire a personal trainer for four reasons. The first is that a personal trainer is going to help them apply and then refine the exercises so that they get the full benefit for their bodies and their level of fitness. Because everybody is different. They wanna make sure that you're not doing the exercises incorrectly so that you hurt yourself. They wanna keep you safe and they want you getting the maximum benefit from the work that you're putting in.

A personal trainer will also give you that accountability. You know, that you can't blow it off because you don't feel like getting out of bed at 05:00 a.m. to go to the gym or, you know, after work when you're really tired, you're not going to blow it off because you know that trainer is there waiting for you. That accountability is huge. It just showing up is more than half the battle, right?

And when you get there, then things start to happen. The trainer is usually going to push you beyond how you would push yourself. I mean, I know that when it comes to working out, I don't push myself very hard. And when things get too heavy, I'll be the first to say, that's enough reps, I'm good, I'll just stop. But with a trainer there, they don't really let you stop, do they?

And lastly, they provide you with the support and encouragement that you need so that you can keep going when things get hard, so that you don't quit on yourself, and so that you're ultimately able to reach whatever fitness goal you're reaching for. So I think it's the exact same thing with a coach. When I think about the work that I do with my clients, it's so easy to see the similarities between a coach and a trainer.

I help my clients take the tools that I teach and apply them to their specific challenges inside their marriage. So we make it very personal for them. It's not just theoretical, it's not just hypothetical. It's not using someone else's example. It's using your examples and making it really applicable for you. I hold my clients accountable to the result that they tell me they want. Right. So if they want to see if their marriage can feel good again, if it can evolve to a new place that could feel like it's meeting their needs today, great.

If you want to unwind the marriage as peacefully as possible so that your kids and your family and you don't struggle, great. I'll hold you to that and show you when you're veering off course from that larger goal so that you can stay the course and you can keep making progress towards that greater goal. I push my clients more than they push themselves. Now, I know that may not sound like a lot of fun, being pushed, but you do get further, faster.

You will make more progress, and I will hold space for a much greater vision for your life than you can even imagine. Because when you're in the thick of it, when you're in all the emotion and the upheaval and the struggle, sometimes you can't see what's possible. You're just trying to make it through the next day, the next week, the next month. Right? But I can see a vision beyond of what life could look like a year from now, two years from now, three years from now for you.

And it's okay that you can't see it yet because I can hold space for that grander vision for you. And yes, when things get difficult, because of course they will. This journey, either to reconnect in a disconnected marriage or to lovingly release it, that's not easy. So things will get difficult. And when they do, I will surround you with the support and encouragement that you need so that you don't quit on yourself and your greater goal of what you ultimately want to see and feel and experience in your life.

Now, let's be honest. Most people don't hire personal trainers, do they? Right. They might go to the gym or they might have a gym membership that they never go to at all. But most people don't hire personal trainers. They say they don't want to spend the money or whatever. They have some reason they don't want to be pushed. But most people also don't have the body or health that they want.

Do they have? But people who work with personal trainers consistently, very often do reach their fitness goals because they have a guide. And it's the same thing with a relationship coach. See, most people on the planet will never hire a coach, but they also will never have the marriage that they want. And they will continue to struggle in all their relationships because they're going to keep trying to do it on their own and then they keep giving up or they keep getting frustrated not knowing what to do next.

So they just get paralyzed and then they just stay stuck and they're not making progress forward. Sometimes I think that we all think as human beings that we're supposed to just know how to navigate all the ups and downs of relationships intuitively. But really, I mean, are we like we're just born with that skill set? Clearly that's not the case. But all the relationship tools are learnable. You can learn how they work and then you can begin to apply them in your life.

Sometimes I think we avoid getting help because we feel like we're somehow inadequate or not enough because we don't have all the answers and we don't instinctively know all these tools and how to apply them. But here's what I would offer to you. When my transmission fails in my car, I don't know how to fix it. That's not a skill set I have. I was not born with that knowledge.

So I go to someone that does know how to fix it and I pay them for their knowledge, their expertise and their services. And guess what? I don't make it mean anything about me personally, right? I don't beat myself up for not knowing how to fix my transmission. So why are we shaming ourselves for not having all the answers for something that we were never taught how to do and how to do well and how to do it consistently?

So, my friends, that is a long winded answer to the question, why can't I just listen to your podcast and get the same result? How is working with you any different? Well, now you know. It's the difference between setting yourself up for success for a much larger goal and winging it. So if you're ready to take the next step forward and explore if my program, the decision can be helpful to to you reaching your ultimate goal about the struggles inside your marriage, go to clarityformymarriage.com.

you have nothing to lose and only clarity to gain.