You Haven't Failed at Relationships. You Were Never Taught the Skills. | RR370

Joe, hello, hello, and welcome to this

week's episode of Relationships Rule. My guest today has spent

over 30 years helping people understand that relationships do

not just happen, they're built intentionally with courage,

clarity, and a willingness to show up fully. Joelle Leyden is

a certified relationship coach and author of Unbreakable Us:

Removing the Barriers to Love, and she is also the creator of

the seven step relational growth pathway. Her work blends

neuroscience, expressive arts, and real world communication

skills to help people break old patterns and build something

that actually lasts. Today we're going to be talking about what

all of this means for the relationships that drive your

business with your clients, your colleagues, your partners, and

yourself. And I, it's probably hard to do it without talking

about personal relationships as well, so I'm sure that will come

into the mix as well, so welcome to the show, Joelle.

Well, thank you for having me, Janice. Really

glad to be here.

It's my pleasure. And I was just as I do in some

of my research, I can't remember where I saw this, whether it was

on your.. oh, I think it was at the end of your news, the end of

your email signature, actually, and I just want to read it and

just have you comment on it, because I thought it was

beautiful. My mission is to reimagine relationship from an

unconscious pattern we repeat to a conscious partnership we

create, where ease, trust, and peace are not goals to strive

for, but natural outcomes of how we show up for one another. I

invite you into the relationship that's waiting for you. I

thought that was really beautiful. And would you speak

to that for me?

Years ago, I heard this quote by Carl Jung. Oh

gosh, I love it when I go on the spot and go blank. Do you have..

does that happen to you? So, here we go. We have one of those

moments, but it'll come, so it might be a little bit rocky at

first, but I'll figure out the quote when we make the

unconscious conscious. No. Oh gosh, it dictates your life. So,

it's. it's this whole idea that whatever remains unconscious in

our, in our mind can they continues to create problems for

us in our lives, right? So, until we make the conscious, the

unconscious conscious, okay, it will dictate your life, that

makes sense, and so that's kind of been the frame that I've

approached my relationship work with, and recognizing that the

work is in creating consciousness around the way we

think about being in relationship with one another,

in particular the story lines that do not, that have us

behaving in ways that actually don't match our values, but and

do not meet the present need, so it's really based on a conscious

creation of something that's going to actually meet our

present need in a sort of adult, adulting kind of way, so that

quote, that sort of mission is derived from our ability and our

trust, my trust in the creative nature of humans,

so in essence, though, if the, and this isn't

where I was planning to start, but I just saw this in your

email this morning, and I thought it would be kind of fun

to talk about, so it, in essence, so when it says from to

reimagine a relationship from an unconscious pattern we repeat to

a conscious partnership we create, so that made me think

just now when you were saying that of you can't teach an old

dog new tricks, like the older we get, the more set in our ways

we become in the set patterns that continue, and does it get,

is that correct?

The adage is no longer holds, okay, on

neuroscience. neuroscience, yeah. Based on brain research,

we - our brain is malleable, adaptable, elastic until the day

we die.

Fantastic. So, with

that in mind, right? Like, no problem, but

with that recognition that wow, I'm actually, if I've been

experiencing these difficulties in my relationship, be it

personal, be it professional, and I might be at cause for the

way these things have panned out, if I now trust in the

science. Sense of this adaptability, elasticity,

malleability. Then that means that I can now be a cause for a

different outcome, and that's really what I'm speaking to.

That's pretty cool, though, because I mean, I

hear a lot of people my age saying things like that, I've

always done it this way. I can't, I can't change now. And

because they don't stay abreast of way things are, and they

really believe that still, but it's not necessarily true,

right? If they're pushed, or if they're interested in finding

out more about how that doesn't have to be, they don't have to

be stuck in their ways. It's very, very interesting,

actually. I like that.

Yeah, well, the kind of work that I do really

brings to light some of those beliefs. Yes, right. Because

talking about very firm, oh yeah, this is my agreement on

how I operate in life. Yes,

and what I do is like we stick a spotlight on those agreements,

yeah, and stories, and we just say, like, but really, is it

true? Yeah, is it actually serving you? Is it really

providing for you the outcomes and the results that you're

looking for? Because if the answer is no, then right, well,

great that you have awareness about this now. Yeah, and so the

answer is no. Then what are the practices? What are the things

that we need to put into place, the core consistent core

practices that we need to put into place to change that

framework, that mindset into something that actually serves

that person now.

Okay, so your work is rooted in personal

relationships, and you've said that the relationship skills are

transferable. So, when you are in the business world, when you

look at the business world, what do you see people getting

consistently wrong in how they relate to each other,

assumptions? Assumptions,

okay, making assumptions, making

assumptions, right. So there, well, there are

a number of things I would say that there's a, there is going

back to the story, the story and the beliefs piece is that we

project, there's a projection of one's own belief system on

somebody else, and so with that come the assumptions that there

are going to be certain results based on that, as opposed to

creating curiosity and have positioning oneself in a state

of mind and thought that makes the assumption of positive

intent, that's completely different, so that instead of

assuming that things are going to pan out a certain way, just

because historically it always has going in there with more of

a right this person's coming to this conversation with positive

intent, I'm coming to this conversation, this interaction

with positive intent, that is the orientation I'm going to

assume, and when I assume that orientation things actually go

way better.

Sure, makes sense. Yeah, that's good. So,

your framework starts with grow down, building emotional

steadiness and self-trust. That's not language most

business people use. So, what does that actually look like in

a professional context, and why does it matter?

So, growing, I use more of a natural, like I use

nature in some of the imagery in my book. Growing down is

deepening our roots. It's about emotional readiness. It's about

deepening self-awareness. It's about emotional grounding. So, I

don't know what the language is that is used in different

environments, that is the, that is the language that I use, and

that's actually the first step that I take with all of my

clients, because no relationship can grow unless there is a

nervous system and energy management in place to be able

to handle those moments when we are activated, so that we can

then approach those situations and interactions honoring our

value system as opposed to kicking into a reaction that

actually is contrary to our values, and then we have to do

the repair work, backtracking, repair work. And then go through

that whole litany of shame, guilt. Oh my gosh, I don't

believe I did. So the growing down piece in the three sort of

stages of relationship growth that I do, that first stage of

growing down is essential to growing solid and systemic roots

for your nervous system, your emotional mindset, and

regulation, so that when activated, it is you stand a

higher chance of being able to lead in that situation, because

you are the most regulated in the situation.

Yeah, so your roots are strong, right?

When your roots are strong, you can do that. So,

like I, as I say to my, to my clients, and like the most

resourced one leads, the

most

resourced

resource one leads

leads. If

the even if they're not the leader in this

situation, so to speak, yeah,

yes, yes, yes. If you're dealing with someone

who's dysregulated, angry, frustrated, have all their like

whatever, you see my hands, that energy, right?

Yes,

and you're like calm,

yes,

you can see their foolishness and nonsense, and

you can see beyond the foolishness and nonsense to see

the clear path forward. So, whether you're the leader in

like title or not, if you are regulated, you lead,

yes, that's beautiful.

Another person does not have the capacity to

lead in that particular moment,

so that kind of person that you just described,

the dysregulated one, the one who's who reacts at the drop of

a hat, and when things don't go their way, or when they feel

like they're out of control with the group that they're trying to

lead, are they the people that do they generally speaking? I'm

thinking that they don't see it in themselves, that it takes

something major to make them realize that they're messing up,

and it's not helping them, or they get sick, right? Or they,

you know, they, they get a heart attack, or they, the stress is

too much for them. Are those the people that come to you, or are

they more the ones who know they need help, but they're not as

out of control, as that person I just described.

So, the person who's like fully dysregulated is

most likely so swamped in their dysregulation they cannot see

straight. So, dysregulation has us get really laser focused, but

not in a, you basically miss a lot of information.

Yeah,

because you click into a survival state.

Yes. Okay.

Physiologically, those people, until they find a

breath, recognize that there you might be at cause for creating

the dysregulation, so from the work that I do, there is this

very key teaching around personal and energetic

responsibility. Part of the growing down process is taking

responsibility for your physical, your emotional, your

spiritual, your mental state, and so typically the people who

will locate me have been breathing for a little bit, but

recognize have done some introspection, are recognizing

that they're stuck, they don't know how to change the pattern,

they don't know how to like click out of it, they keep

looping into it, right, but they're at a like, okay, my

head's out of the water for just a moment, can you show me a path

forward, right? Yeah, so that's typically who will tend to the

stage at which they will tend to reach out to me,

that you know the basic ABCs of that to me seems

to be that we have to work on ourselves first before we can do

anything anywhere.

Correct, that is exactly what growing down

is, right? Okay,

if you can't, I mean, you can't really, you have

to create the practices, yeah, to create the practices

necessary to stay regulated more often than not, and when you get

dysregulated, be able to recoup faster, because that's what

happens when you have a consistent core practice. It's

not that you never get dysregulated, the. That is like

the myth of arrival. It's just never going to happen. We're in

a human body with a nervous system, it's going to happen.

But what will happen is, if you're in a, in the process, if

you have a core, consistent core practice of nervous system and

mindset regulation, when you do get dysregulated, the recovery

is faster. So, whereas maybe you got taken out for like a month,

three months a year, right now it gets brought down to an hour,

two minutes 30 seconds, right. So that's the view, that's a big

distinction.

Let's talk about boundaries, because I noticed it

comes up a lot in your content, in your business, in business

boundaries can feel uncomfortable, like you're being

difficult, or you're closing doors. So, what would you say to

someone who struggles to hold them without guilt?

Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I just posted something

there today. Oh,

perfect.

So, this is Boundaries Month, people. I've

been talking all about boundaries, you can find all of

that on social media. So that is the work. Boundaries are not

about other people. Ultimatums are about other people. The

boundaries are about yourself.

Okay,

boundaries are a level of clarity of what you are

willing and not willing to do, regardless of somebody else's

reaction to that level of clarity. The difficulty, which

is what you're speaking to, Janice, is like stating the

clarity of the boundary, and then doing what I like to call

the real work of holding

it right

versus backtracking, going back to so

that the dynamic that was there before, because people who don't

honor boundaries are usually benefiting from the situation,

so rather than backtracking or needing to actually pad the

boundary with all the excuses and the reasons why the

boundaries like is being asked for, for example, like instead

of like no, that's not possible for me to do, because xyz, but

needing to go into explanation and justification, and all of

that, right? Those are ways that people deal with the discomfort

of actually holding the boundary, but the real work is

the emotional growth and the discomfort resilience that

occurs when you just stand by it without explanation, without

justification, without backtracking, and that's that

requires again. I've used this term a number of times, that

consistent core practices that allow you to stay with it, even

through the discomfort.

I know that's.. I'm.. I've been talking about

that with a counselor lately, another friend of mine, and I

think that's.. that's a struggle a lot of us have, that,

including myself, that sometimes I don't hold my boundaries

because I don't feel strong enough with a certain person to

not push them away. I think I'm pushing them away when actually

I'm probably making it worse in the in that situation. I can't

think of an example at the moment, but yeah, I

disrupts the status quo,

yeah, it does when somebody sounds up to you,

yeah,

right, so it disrupts the status quo, and

that creates discomfort on both sides, right, because there's

been a dance that's been agreed to unconsciously, consciously,

but that's been danced, and then all of a sudden you're like

tango, not so much, cha cha cha, maybe right, and you're like,

but this one, this one wants to tango, and you're like, no, cha

cha cha, baby,

yeah,

and then you're like, but I don't want to cha

cha cha, I want to tango, and they're like, okay, whatever,

we'll just tango again,

yeah,

right. So that's what happens very often, because

holding the desire to cha cha cha takes courage,

yeah, it does, because you're going to get a

different result,

but it also takes follow through, because the

tangoer will say, like, yeah, you don't really want to dance

cha cha cha,

yeah, that's right,

there'll be some testing of the boundary,

yeah, and

you're like, no, cha cha cha, is it, baby,

yeah, interesting. So you work a lot

with nonverbal communication, I think, and what you call

embodied wisdom in a world of zoom calls and text messages.

How much are we losing by not being physically present with

the people we do business with? In your opinion,

there is nothing like seeing, touching, smelling

another human being. We're animals. We need that. I mean,

we don't want to think of ourselves as animals, but we are

animals.

I mean, it is different when you're in a room

full of people. There's no question.

Absolutely, there's such a huge difference.

I mean, those conversations that are had at the water cooler,

just like those, those impromptu.. so there's a loss of

a number of things, the use of eye contact, I Friction, I'm

going to call it friction. As humans in relationship with each

other, we're meant to experience friction. Friction is not a bad

thing, it allows us to deter, like, to assess where we are in

space with each other. Some of that is lost here, because it's

like, there's like, here's the agenda, this is what we're doing

first, this is what we're doing second, this, so there's a level

of certainty of predictability that happens virtually, where

uncertainty and our ability to deal with uncertainty gets lost,

and therefore our practice with it gets atrophied, and so when

we are in relationship with other people on our day to day,

and things go, let's say they go tits up, right, and as they

will, because that's what happens. We're human, we have

less capacity to know how to address it, because we are

unskilled in our ability to deal with uncertainty.

Well, that, that's actually interesting too

to me, because depending on our age and our history of all of

this, and what went on for, you know, two three years, I think

that affects how we deal with these things too, because for

some of us, my sister, actually, we just talked this morning, she

still has issues going into places she's not comfortable,

like a parking lot that freaked her out today, because she

couldn't find her way out, and she hadn't gone there before,

and it, the anxiety was just too much. She wasn't like that

before, before Covid. She, having been three years in her

house, she doesn't want it's taken her a while to get out.

Some people didn't get affected the same way. My granddaughter

was born in the COVID era in 2019 actually. For first three

years of her life, she didn't see other people except our

family, and I think that's affecting her, you know. And so

some of us bounce back more easily, some of us don't want

to. I think it changed the way I look at things, as for sure,

because I was the biggest networker out there in person

all the time. Now I'm not so much. I'll still do it on

occasion if I really want to go to the event, but it doesn't

feel the same. I'm not as I'm not as I don't know if the

word's comfortable, but as it's not as necessary for me, I feel

anymore, although it probably is based on what you're saying. So,

well, I would say that there's like, there, I

mean, when you're talking about business, there's age and

discernment, right?

Yeah, yeah,

limited amount of time and energy, so like, where

is my energy and my time best spent, right? So there's that

particular conversation, which I think is coming into this, what

you're sharing here, Janice, but I think you're also speaking to

this, this place, this this transitional historical moment

that has changed our ability to to tolerate difference, tolerate

discomfort, tolerate the unknown. When we as a species

are wired for all kinds of unknown circumstances, right?

Like way back in the early times of humanity, we had to deal with

a lot of it, right. We didn't know when we turned the corner

if we were going to get eaten alive. We wouldn't know whether

today was the only day that was the gift that was given to us,

right. Like, basically, we assumed today was the day, the

only day that we are, we can be guaranteed, because we don't

know what's going to. Happen tomorrow, right. And so living

with that as a way of operating in the world made it possible

for us to be really resilient. So that skill of resilience,

which means leaning into discomfort, is what builds

resilience. Is this? skill that has been lost, and this gets

lost in communications with people. In it gets lost in the

virtual world, it gets lost with the dating apps, it gets lost

with AI. It gets there's a lot of information that is getting

lost, body language, eye contact. There's like, there's

there, there are these like you go to a cocktail party, you may

never talk to a person, but you'll, you'll sense, oh,

they're in a, they're in a bad place, or they're like, wow,

they're so happy, but you can't necessarily like track exactly

why, maybe you're seeing them like very, you know, very alive

with their hands, or maybe they're hunched over, but we

miss a lot of that through these kinds of, and so therefore our

ability to connect and be intimate with one another is

greatly reduced, and yet we crave

it. I was just going

to intimacy.

Yeah, I agree. So it's funny because the next, my

next question, you just mentioned the topic of AI, and

we spoke a little bit about it when we first spoke about people

forming emotional connections with AI, and from your

perspective as a relationship coach, what does that trend tell

us about what people are actually hungry for? And you, I

think you just touched on it just now. We're craving really

connection, we're craving.

well, there's connection and certainty. Okay,

I provide certainty

because it doesn't answer us back, or what?

Because

exactly right, it's a.. it's create.. it's

basically it.. it creates responses we want to hear. Yeah,

exactly. So

it's a, it's a loop, yeah, that has us hearing

ourselves back, so we feel seen, heard, understood,

yes, when

that is not actually true, right? Right, so,

so, yes, people are craving intimacy, but the vehicle of AI

is just that, a vehicle, the intimacy cannot be had, it can

feel like it's intimacy,

yeah,

but the intimacy is truly created with just

another person,

you know. It's interesting, because I just

listened to Oprah interviewing the brother and sister that are

the main owners of Anthropic, the company that that has

Claude, and one of the things they were talking about was

really interesting interview, and one of the things they were

talking about is how, unlike I think most of, if not all of the

other AI tools, they do not allow people under the age of 18

to have accounts on their program, and I don't know how

they prove it, or she, they did talk about it, but I can't

remember right now, but just like, you know, how there's

there's research to prove, you know, cell phones and all this

being on your iPad too much when you're a kid, and all of those

things has some detriment, I think. This piece of attachment

around with AI is very dangerous, and can be, and

especially when you're lonely or sad, or you know, too young to

understand the difference. So, I've really found that

interesting when I was listening to it. It

makes sense,

yeah.

You want to be able to hear your own voice,

yeah, your

internal voice, wise, loving, caring to the

degree that it can be given your upbringing, right?

Yeah,

but that builds self trust. If the moment you're

at a very formative stage in your life, you begin to rely on

something else to guide, to direct, to place your attention

upon self trust. I use this word before atrophies and people then

don't trust themselves, don't trust each other, and we become

really polarized, so it makes complete sense from my viewpoint

that. That those tools be held at bay until a young person has

developed enough, even though they're not fully developed,

like their frontal lobe is not fully developed until they're

20, and you know they're way into their 20s, but they have,

they stand a fighting chance to even begin to trust themselves,

like to know, well, you know, oh, I got this hit, like maybe I

shouldn't go in that room and not do it right, instead of

like, oh, maybe I shouldn't go in that room, AI should I go in

that room,

yeah,

right, instead of just trusting the, oh, I

shouldn't go into that room,

yeah. Get your first intuition in your gut, and

telling you, listen to it. So, in your book, Unbreakable Us,

you talk about old patterns that protect us in one season of life

but limit us in the next, which we were talking about a little

bit. Can you give me an example of how that plays out in

business relationships with a client, with a partner, with a

colleague, with a friend,

yeah, we develop protective mechanisms as

children to keep us safe, and in particular for those of us who

grow up in chaotic and unsafe homes, and those skills, so

really you had utility and usefulness as to protect us as

children, actually backfire as adults. I refer to this in the

book as your internal operating system, the stories, the beliefs

that you hold, the agreements you hold to be the way one

operates in life. What happens is that when we are adults

operating from an antiquated internal operating system is

that it can have us react in situations that don't in a way

that actually do not match our value system,

because we've outgrown them, maybe,

or well, or because reactive reactive,

okay, they're

reactive, and they're, they, they, they're

actually not useful in a situation. This is where we're

completely dysregulated, or like slightly dysregulated. We may

say something that is inappropriate, we may react in a

way that is, does not really is not generative for the situation

as a leader, it could be, it could be like it's a reaction

that is actually not in the greatest service and the

greatest good of the team as a whole, as the organization as a

whole, because it's placing, placing the leader is like this

is my agenda, not the mission, not the vision,

right? Right.

So, and then, as I said earlier, then then there's

a need to backtrack and do the repair work of if the person is

aware enough that they actually, that there was some trespasses

there, so the work that I do is in supporting people and

upgrading their internal operating system, so their

response to a situation meets the present need with the

intention to have a generative outcome that isn't the highest

good of

all,

so that's I think that's the distinction. I don't

know, do I answer your question? I think I went a little bit over

the map, hopefully it answered it some,

yeah, something that you do, I know you're an

artist as well, and I know that behind you there are some

beautiful pieces of art as well, and that one of the things that

you do with your couple's work is having a couple paint

together as a way of renegotiating how they relate,

and I kind of was fascinated by that, and I have two questions

around it. One, what does that exercise reveal about how two

people actually function together? And two, have you done

that exercise with leaders in a business as well, or does that

just, is that separate and not something you would do in a

business situation, because I think it would be fascinating.

You're the second person that said that to me,

really. Leadership situation, and the answer, I'll answer the

second question first. No, I haven't, although if you

consider the couples, the couples are leaders,

yes, of course.

Right, so, so taking the, you know, title that

we think of, of leader in to expand that definition, but in a

professional context, no, and yes, it would be fascinating.

I mean, I remember going to, I went to

some business thing, and I don't even remember what, what the

context of it was now, but when the first thing we did was we

were put at different tables, and we had some kind of a Lego

type thing that we had to put together with no instructions,

but we had a group of people that had to do it and figure out

how to make it work, and I could see the same thing, similar

thing with the, you know, the assignment to paint whatever, or

to decide in the group, or three people, whatever, two, three,

maybe it's just couples, pairs, like you would do with your

couples, I think that would be fascinating. So, yeah,

well, I'm thinking like to hark back to an earlier

conversation, that Lego situation places all of you in a

place of uncertainty, and then you have to negotiate,

right? Then you listen to my idea, or do I have

to listen to you? There's a

negotiation, there's a.. there is a.. you

know, who's got this idea? There's a power.

there's

a lot of, a lot of, a lot that can be created in

a situation like that. I did that kind of, yes, so that's

exactly what's required.

Yeah,

that in real life all the time. So, the way that I

work with couples is, yes, so they'll come for, they'll come

because they're experiencing, let's say, some some struggles

with, well, just I'll give you a specific example. I had a couple

that came to me recently, they'd been married 30 years and

children are out of the nest, and one's going to be retiring,

and they're just like, Who are you?

Yeah,

they're in that place, right. And how do we, how

do we maintain intimacy at this stage of the game? We're older,

so things are different physically, yeah, things are

different motivationally. How do we, how do we redefine intimacy

here? So we did, we worked, you know, using a coaching

framework, but then took all of that into the canvas, and how it

works with a canvas when they're working with me, because I'm

always looking at the physical and I'm always listening to the

intention, so for example, they may say, like, we want to play

with intimacy on the canvas. I'm like, great, have at it. You

choose the colors, you choose the paintbrush, go at it. And so

they might start, like, playing with each other with their

paintbrush and being very playful, but at some moment

she'll be down here in the canvas, and he'll be up there,

and there's like parallel work happening.

Oh, interesting.

And they're not interacting with each other. The

moment I notice that, I'm like, okay, time out. Let's double

click on what just happened. You went in with the intention to be

intimate and playful. At what moment did you reach a surge

capacity for playfulness and enjoyment that you needed to do

the separation, because as you do one thing, you do everything,

right?

Yeah,

right. So this is I'm using in real time how

they're interacting with each other with the with this vehicle

canvas and paint to double click on behaviors, ways of

interacting dynamics patterns that they're looking to change,

which in a blah blah blah conversation don't always come

to the surface,

interesting, so I'm just going to tie this in

your third framework, step grow together is in what you were

just describing to me, was they're coexisting or they're

separating, to you know, to perhaps just be more independent

than they may have been, or and wanting to do that, or they've

been doing that all along and haven't come together, and

there's a perfect example to show them that what was working

or not working in that situation,

right. What we're always working towards is

interdependence, right, so being able to have both the separation

and the otherness, right? Yeah, and so that is the balance of

that, and the growing, so in the middle between the growing down,

which is in, you know, essential work, and growing together,

which is that third framework that you share. Word, which is

about really developing long-term stability, right,

creating a relationship that can hold both individuals and the

partnership. There's in between that session is like the growing

up part. We think of growing up like, you know, I'm going to put

on my, my big person panties on now, and right, but growing up

is an essential step and and stage where the growing down

work that you've done to regulate your nervous system and

your emotional mindset, aka your act of personal and energetic

responsibility, gets to be tested in real time, and you can

still stay true to yourself under pressure, holding yourself

with integrity, holding your values with integrity when it

matters most. When you would, maybe your old self might have

just basically burned down somebody else's village in the

past, or like run away to the next village, right? Whatever

the response might have been, and that work is about how do

you stay true to yourself, true to your values, true to the

integrity of the relationship when it matters most, upholding,

and I speak to this in the book, the integrity of what I would

like to refer to as the sacred third, so when I look at

relationships, I don't look at them as a two person thing.

Okay,

not just me and not just you, because what that

does is that it actually, when we're in a fight, it's me

against you, and that creates that really difficult dynamic,

for sure. So I introduce this new orientation that I like to

call the Sacred Third, which is the relationship itself. The

canvas, when I'm working with couples, holds the energy of the

sacred third, meaning I sometimes look at it like a bank

account, so joint bank account that you either put deposits

into or take withdrawals from, and so the intention is when

you're with each other the question always becomes what is

in the best interest of us of the relationship, not what is in

the best intention, the best interest of me, or what is in

the best interest of you, because it may or may not

consider either of those, because what's in the best

interest of the relationship is what is going to help you grow

together,

so Um, I think a lot of people at certain levels

of business invest heavily in their professional skills and

very little in their relational ones. So, if someone's listening

right now and recognizing that gap, where do they start, and

how can they find you if they need, if they, if you resonated

with them, and they want help with that gap?

Understood. Yeah, so like business coaching is

amazing and wonderful, and so useful, right? Because it's

about taking the outside actions, if they're recognizing

that relationships are because business is relationship.

Yes, of course.

Just aka relationship. Absolutely, like

everything is relational. And what I have found is that

oftentimes those that are really skilled in business try to use

those very same skills that brought them to a place of

success in their business in their relationships, and it

backfires, because in fact it is the opposite set of skills that

you need to develop a relationship, and that requires

both inner and inner work and outer work, so to, yeah, so

that's something that you're looking to develop. Absolutely,

I'm my you can reach me, is that what you're looking for? Yes,

I'll

put it in the show notes, but yeah, go ahead,

Joelle leyden.com Okay, your

book is on there as well.

My book, you can find my book, a link to get to

my book there as well. Lots of blog posts that can be really

serve and support, I put one out a month, so as I said, this

month has been boundary, so if you're looking to get

information on boundaries, go to the blog post, and then go to

LinkedIn for all the little ancillary bits and pieces.

Awesome, so, and of course, if you're looking to have a one on

one complimentary conversation with me, you can just go to the

Discovery session.com session.com and that'll send you

to a link, and you can fill in a questionnaire, and if it really

looks like what you have, what I can, I can help with, then I'll

reach out to you, and we can arrange a call.

Call perfect

complimentary 60 minute call,

that's awesome. So, last question. I know that I

was fascinated when I first talked to you. You've lived all

over the world, three continents, you speak multiple

languages. You taught me about the.. I don't know the name of

it in your language now, the two dots on

top, the trema, the reminder. e, yeah.

What did you call it in French? Was it French?

Spell it, t r e m

e m a,

right? The tree, ma. I can't say it as

beautifully as you. And you came to this work through your own

very personal journey. So, how is all that shaped the way you

see connection and the way you coach it, because for me, you

know I'm all about connection and building relationships, and

so that must have.. did you, did you know you wanted to work in

this field? No. Okay. All right. So, how did

it.. was a complete surprise. Um, so.. so I

think, like, the long and the short of it is healing

generational trauma. Okay, for me.

Okay,

and so the vehicle for me is the relationships that

will trigger us the most, which is our beloveds, beloveds, yes,

whether that is our romantic partner, whether that is our

family, our children, our neighbor, but ultimately my why

under all of this is healing generational trauma

makes sense, and so you, you are on a mission or

a search for your own peace of mind and stability. Yeah,

absolutely, absolutely, yes,

wonderful. That's beautiful. And would you say

that? I mean, I imagine it's always a work in progress, but

are you satisfied with where you are now?

Yes. So, my relationship with my family of

origin was very strained. I was sent over to this country, you

know, when I was 16. They lived in France, so it was very

convenient to have an ocean between us, and so that made,

made it that for many, for many years. I went through like

different amounts of years where we wouldn't communicate, but at

the end of their life, I picked up the phone and started calling

every Sunday, and then when their health declined quickly, I

started going to friends, having built that relationship with

them again on my terms through those phone calls, and then at

the end of their life, supporting them moving into a

medicalized facility. Then my father died, and my mother

followed suit 10 months later. But before both of them left, I

made my peace with both of them.

That's important, and so for

me that so the answer is absolutely yes, and

it's crucial that we do that, especially now, because the way

that we react and respond to others really hinges on the way

that we are doing the healing work, our own personal healing

work around our family of origin.

Thanks for sharing that. That's that was

really special. So, for anyone who wants to go further with

Joelle's work, her book, Unbreakable Us, is available

now, and you can find her at Joelle leyden.com It'll all be

in the show notes. Thank you for being here today. This is

exactly the kind of conversation that reminds me why

relationships are the real foundation of everything that we

build, and they're so important. So, thank you. And to my

audience, please, if you, if you like what you heard, do let us

know, and remember to stay connected and be remembered.

Thank you.