How to Glow: The Jewish Woman's Marriage Boost

I was looking through some of the requests that I’ve received for topics to cover and I wanted to address the one that would give us the biggest room for growth, the most potential. And so this question “how do I get out of victim mentality?” really stuck out to me. Because as long as we see ourselves as a victim, we are BY DEFINITION powerless. Before we go further: November 10 is the first call of our Kallah Cohort, a specific LIVE First Year Married course for women in the Orthodox Jewish community! The first class is free and no-obligation, but you need to sign up to get a spot! See you there! An important note about this whole episode: this material, like all of my material, does NOT apply to unhealthy or abusive relationships. We all have ups and downs--as individuals and in our marriages--but I encourage anyone who is unsure if their relationship is abusive or dysfunctional to seek out a qualified couples therapist. Here is one great resource. We all fall into victim mentality sometimes, whether it’s a story about our relationship or our abilities at work or with our physical health or self-discipline… Here are seven steps to help you leave victim mode behind. Identify the feeling.  Knowing the feeling, viscerally, will help you “red flag” it for the future. How does it feel in your body? What are your habitual thoughts? What’s the story? Anything with a story is optional. Beware of boundaries set to control. If you are frustrated that you set a boundary and it wasn’t followed, you didn’t set a boundary you just told someone what to do and they didn’t do it. Listen to learn how to set boundaries that don't leave you in victim-mode. Articulate the thought. You guys getting used to me saying this? You can’t question a thought until you articulate it. So what’s the story? “I’m not the happily-ever-after type.” So write it down. Look at it. Feel it. Be with it. Don’t be in such a rush to get rid of it. What we tend to do is we half-articulate it then we try to jump to another thought so fast because this one is so painful. Don’t be in a rush. It’s not urgent, it’s just feelings. Notice the results of your thought. Here’s where we want to focus on the present instead of, as is a natural tendency, to go past-focused. It’s interesting to question where your story came from. You for sure have reasons for why it’s true. But right now just look at WHAT THE THOUGHT IS DOING. How does it make you feel? What kinds of things are you capable of with this thought? What aren’t you? Live with your thought. Now that you’ve gone scientific and cerebral, gather some field research on how it’s playing out for you. Watch it in action. Write it down or send a voice memo to your podcast buddy if you have one (if not, time to get one!) Now you can start to jiggle it loose. How is the opposite true? How do you always get happily-ever-after? (Going into the holidays feeling so low from everything that happened with my health this year… then realized the opposite is equally true.) Advanced skill: Go all-out play and pick a new amazing thought! This ONLY works if you’ve really spent time in your current thought, with awareness and mindfulness! Thanks so much for the question and I look forward to seeing you back here next week! In the meantime, have you checked out my FREE class at FirstYearMarried.com? Well, here it is!

WOW. You all sent in some awesome tips for running the home! More than that, I love how you all came out to support and help one another! At the end of the day, we're all in this together if we want to be... and the FYM community keeps proving that you are women who look out for one another. I love it. First, an announcement: I will be hosting a special Kallah Cohort of First Year Married targeted specifically to women in the Orthodox Jewish community. Lots of details at the end of the episode! I broke down your tips into three main categories: Vision and Appreciation, Food and Groceries, and General Household Management and Time Management Tips. Have more tips to share? Please send them to @firstyearmarried on Instagram and I will share them over there! All the best, Kayla

I love sharing tips with other women (and sometimes men) about what makes running the home easier for them. In a way, our personality comes out in our hacks. And so this week we're keeping it light and I'm offering you my favorite tips and tricks that help me run the home. I look forward to hearing yours and sharing them on next week's episode! 

We’re back to housework this week, believe it or not!  This week we’re discussing how leading with your values and vision can make even the most basic kinds of housework more meaningful. I’ll be showing you how to determine your values within your home (and sharing mine) and realize what things DON’T make the list (so you can stop stressing out about them)! I’ll also give you a clear formula for having a vision-led discussion with your husband to enlist the help you need without bringing negativity into your marriage.

This week we’re going to revisit a familiar topic and take the work further. What is happening when you are feeling hurt? Take the last time you were hurt (or disappointed, angry, frustrated…) with your husband and try to remember the specific details. Consider that the reason that you were upset was that he wasn’t doing what you wanted him to be doing. Try to identify what you DID want him to do. What was your plan or rule book for how he should behave? But here’s the model. You’re crying and he’s texting. If he loved me, he’d be hugging me and taking care of me. So you feel hurt, rejected, and maybe angry (much safer) Here’s the reality: Him texting when you are crying says nothing about his love for you. So why are you hurt? ONLY because of the thought you had about it. We’re going to figure out this week how to find an alternative, how to clarify our vision, and how to experience the relationship we want. Unconditional love is on YOU. Leave him out of it! You want a loving relationship? LOVE HIM. And not when he’s adorable and considerate. Love him when he’s a bear. Love him when he’s obnoxious. Here are some thoughts that have really helped me with this... --I love being in love --I love being surprised by him --He’s so different, so foreign to me, just when I think I know him he surprises me Get a buddy, share this episode, and help each other use this information. It can be hard to observe our own brains sometimes. To work with me on-on-one, you can email me at kayla@kaylalevin.com or fill out the form at firstyearmarried.com and I’ll send you my booking calendar. For more ideas about the "rule book" (or the "manual") check out Brooke Castillo's podcast, The Life Coach School Podcast.

A listener asked me to discuss critical parents and what to do about them.  In this week’s podcast we discuss the difference between explicit criticism and subtly undermining your relationship. The key to dealing with criticism is to maintain responsibility over your emotional reaction. When we allow these criticisms to upset us, we have to realize that it’s because we became attached to what they said--that they might be right or that they “shouldn’t” have said it. The easiest way to deal with critical parents is to remember that they “get to” feel and say whatever they want, and you’re FINE. From that place, we can move forward to create healthy, effective boundaries that aren’t an attempt to change them or their behavior. Resources: Brook Castillo on Boundaries: https://thelifecoachschool.com/podcast/12/ Brook's Boundaries 2.0: https://thelifecoachschool.com/podcast/163/

One place I especially like to work on is charged relationships. Partly because this is an area where I have had my own work to do, so I know how important it is, but also because we really discover our own thought processes here and they are funny and surprising. Several of you wrote in asking me to discuss sibling relationships. When I put out a request for specific scenarios, they were almost all about sisters-in-law, so we'll focus on that but these tools really can be applied to any relationship. I have a question about my sister-in-law. I desperately want to become friends with her but every time we do something she is constantly on her phone or gossiping about people from her home town that I have no clue who they are. How can I become friends with someone who doesn’t take the time to talk? There are two parts of to any relationship: how they feel about you and how you feel about them.  Which is in your control? We will never know how someone feels about us, and even if we could know, we can’t control it. So I like to have a few thoughts that help me: I get to feel however I want about you. I am going to learn something very important from you.  I’m good.  How do I deal with a jealous sister in law who wants to make every moment about her? She wanted to know when I was pregnant, when I gave birth, and gender of baby (I’m assuming she means during the pregnancy) and got jealous of my relationship with my MIL. I don’t have involved parents. Let’s break down what’s happening and how we’re interpreting it. Because our interpretations drive our emotional reaction, so we have to have really high standards about what we’ll allow as “fact.” What happened: she asked if you were pregnant (or asked you to tell her when you were) Thought: She needs every moment to be about her. Feeling: Resentment, annoyance, disgust, sadness… whatever Action: Don’t tell her, maybe try to convey with your tone or body language that you’re offended Result: Less closeness, no pairing of you two, so it remains all about her--there isn’t a relationship instead.  What if you tried on other thoughts here? How would you feel and behave differently? Have some fun with it. I had my son 9 months ago and my SIL got married 6 weeks before us. Lots of tension. I had a great pregnancy and she is now pregnant and I am extremely happy for them. But at the same time I all of a sudden feel a shift in my MIL since hearing the news. I understand it is her daughter and she is pregnant with her second grandchild, but she is seemingly colder towards me… it may be my own insecurities but what if somehow it could be my SIL stirring it up? She is very insecure with my husband and MIL’s relationship. How do you want to show up in the relationship? Create a clear vision for yourself before any family interaction with your in-laws. It is very normal to feel uncomfortable with your in-law relationship. What if you allowed that? What if you didn't try to make it more comfortable, but just went to a place of observing yourself and your reactions and allowing yourself to be uncomfortable? Want to take this work further? Watch the free video at www.firstyearmarried.com to learn how to coach yourself.

This week we're talking about negative emotions in your marriage. It is so common for newlyweds to feel extremely vulnerable and surprised at the number of negative emotions they may be experiencing in their marriages. The trouble with anger, resentment, frustration, and any negative feeling isn't the feeling itself--its the way we react to it. In this episode, we review our understanding of how emotions work, how to have an authentic emotional life (and how it's not all about "feeling all the feels"), and how to allow negative emotions. Many times, we resist negative emotions either by pushing it away with distractions or by switching to a more comfortable emotion like anger or disappointment. I'll take you through this process and give you an exercise to apply this work to your own marriage. (The thought work here is based on the Self-Coaching Model by Brooke Castillo.)

Hey newlyweds, What do you do if your husband is spending more time on his phone than communicating with you? What will this mean when kids come along (if they haven't already) and how he's going to be able to connect to him? What if he's getting defensive when you ask him to put away his phone? How much are phones supposed to be used in a healthy marriage? This week we're talking all about the "other wife"--your husband's phone 

I love hearing your questions and I recently got two questions that deserved a better answer than I could give in a quick online chat. Both women were asking about getting what they need from their husbands. Our first question deals with not feeling connected to a husband who travels a lot and doesn't help out when he's home. Our second question is about not getting validation when she needs it. Thank you so much for sending in your questions! If you'd like to send in a question, you can do so @firstyearmarried on Instagram.

 I am a big fan of Gary Chapman's 5 Love Languages. However, I've been seeing some women use this powerful information in a way that actually hurts their relationship, not help it. This week I'll give you a quick overview of the 5 Love Languages, tell you the trap you want to avoid, and how to use this material to benefit your marriage the most. The 5 Love Languages Book*: https://amzn.to/2Zwz4eX *affiliate link

This week I’m following up on our Bringing Baby Home episode by answering the questions you sent in.

 Baby on the way? Or maybe just thoughts of a baby on the way?  The transition to life with a new baby is a major one and these five pointers are what we learned from our four children and what kept us sane--and our marriage healthy--during this phase.  Check out more podcast episodes and sign up for my free online class at www.firstyearmarried.com You can also check out Ruchi Koval's podcast here:  Out of the Orthobox  Go to Audible to listen to Alison Armstrong's workshop, The Amazing Development of Men (affiliate link). 

This week I had my husband back on the podcast to talk about a man's perspective about what it means to give. This is a follow up to "Episode 30 - Just Ask!". It's so helpful to hear a guys perspective on this topic. As I share in the podcast, this is my #1 challenge and something that I know shifts they dynamic of the relationship in a very positive way.

What's the one thing you can do to transform the dynamic of your relationship? Start asking for what you want. Sound easy? It's not. For most of us, even identifying what we want is hard--it's not the things we're nagging him about, it's the deeper, more meaningful things that would truly light us up. It's the things we can't do on our own or get for ourselves--and it's so hard sometimes to admit that there's a limit to our independence. But when we lean into that vulnerability and offer him a real chance to win, the payoff in your relationship is unbelievable. By the way, this is an area I personally struggle with SO MUCH... so expect to hear more about it in the future!