We've been married for two and a half years now.
OK.
Two and a half years.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
That's fantastic.
OK, so you've one of the things that I'm
going to ask the hardest question first, I think.
This is what I would consider the hardest question
if I was in your shoes.
And I think most visionaries will too.
So your topic, the untapped potential
of great relationships.
My worry and fear of if I were to be a therapist
and I were to talk about healthy relationships is crap.
What happens if my relationship falls apart?
And how do I stay centered and authentic with my audience
when I've never seen a marriage that
doesn't have the good, bad, and the uglies going on?
It's a hard thing.
So how do you deal with that as the founder of the successfully
in love method?
And what gives you your reassurances and the
self-assuredness that you got this method figured out?
Yeah.
Is that a good question?
Yeah, it's a good question.
And I think I used to worry about that.
I think right at the very beginning,
I started the business.
And I was like, oh my goodness, people
are going to think that I'm a fraud because I pulled off
my first engagement.
And clearly, I failed at that.
And I'm a terrible relationship coach.
And then every time my husband at the very beginning,
when we would have our arguments,
we were in the power struggle stage, and it was difficult.
And sometimes I'd be crying.
And then I'd come onto a client coaching call the next day.
And I'd be thinking, am I a hypocrite?
What is this?
And then ultimately, I realized the healthiest
and the best relationships will have had a moment in time
where they had a lot of conflict.
That is literally the hallmark of being in a relationship.
And a lot of couples, I think it was Terry Real.
Terry Real shared his own arguments and disagreements
with his wife.
He's one of my favorite relationship therapists
out there.
Thank you for that.
And I was like, yeah, and I remember
hearing the level of volatility in his conflicts.
And I was like, my goodness, we are like angels, my husband
and I. We never swear at each other.
We never call each other names.
The worst thing that happens is he
raises his voice ever so teeny weeny slightly,
and I might cry.
That's about as bad as it gets.
And so as I began to dig into it,
some of my favorite teachers, John Wineland,
I trained under him.
He's been divorced, and he's been single for a lot
of his time.
I looked at just how many teachers have
struggled in relationship.
And I think what I kind of concluded
was, if you haven't struggled, if you haven't been
to the depths of despair, if you haven't gone through a divorce
or called off an engagement or gone
through really difficult times, how can you possibly
help other people?
There's not going to be that level of empathy, right?
So yeah, I don't have that fear at all.
And I think, if God forbid, anything ever
was to happen to me and my husband,
this is part of a normal journey.
I mean, not all relationships are meant to stay together.
And the hallmark of success in a relationship
shouldn't be longevity, because again, it
depends on what the purpose is.
If you're planning to have a family and to have kids,
absolutely, you probably want to have some longevity
in there for the stability of the kids.
But even then, half the time when
I'm working with people who are in a relationship
and they're clearly misaligned for each other,
longevity is not the hallmark of success.
To me, it's like, how quickly can you split?
How quickly can you get out of this mess
and actually free yourselves?
So I just don't think that relationship's
kind of cookie cutter thing where everyone's
Disney princess happy and lives happily ever after.
I think the reality is that humans are living longer
than they've ever lived these days.
And monogamous relationships really
aren't actually built to last all that long.
And it's pretty normal.
It's pretty normal to have breakups.
It's pretty normal to have challenges.
Well, it's super normal.
It's very rare to have the longevity aspect.
So I loved everything that you said up
until that part where obviously it passes my comfort zone.
I shouldn't say obviously, but for me,
how quickly can you split?
And I'm not challenging that actually as much as like, oh,
that's an interesting thing to explore.
But you called it the hallmark.
My second question for you in relation
to that trying to see the perspective is, well,
wait a second.
Is there like a secondary or a sub or a harmonious hallmark
that goes along with that?
Where what if you don't want to split?
What if you do want that longevity to last?
I love that you don't put the emphasis on it.
That's neat.
It's like, OK, if I'm living for the future,
then I'm usually missing the reality of the present
and what's here.
So I like the balance on that.
But for those who are hoping to have an enduring relationship,
do you see that as something that's
negative and impractical?
Or do you see what would be the signs that a relationship is
headed towards that enduring nature?
Good question.
A lot of my clients come from very traditional and often
quite religious backgrounds.
And so they will have married quite young.
And they will be coming to me about 10,
15 years into their marriage or into their relationship.
And I have a couple right now.
They're coming to me 27 years into their relationship.
And they're very candid that the past eight, 10 years
have been really, really, really hard, maybe even 15 years.
I had a client who came to me in 15 years.
It's been really challenging.
And when I ask, what's keeping you together,
it becomes very clear that there's very little friendship
at this point.
There's very little in common from a perspective of values.
Really, the only thing keeping them together
is kids or principle, right?
The principle of, we made this commitment.
We now have to stick together because in the eyes of God,
it's going to look terrible if we break up.
To me, that's a terrible waste of life.
If it is very clear.
I'm not saying that you walk away from the beginning.
Of course not.
I'm with you.
Well, there's a justification of, oh, I'm
supposed to endure or be fully diligent with this.
But in reality, you're using obstinance or arrogance
as a means to keep it together.
And you're calling it a virtue.
So I'm within that.
And there's a, yeah, to your point,
it's kind of this hubristic element of,
I'm going to go against what the signs from universal
or whatever it might be are clearly showing me.
I am a big believer that you want to get professional help.
You want to throw your all into it and do your best
and give it a boundary, right?
Six months to roll your sleeves up
and do your best to work on the relationship
with a professional is more than enough time
to see if you're going to have any traction
and if things are actually getting better
if you're moving the needle.
If it becomes very clear, as I've seen
with a couple of couples, that actually you're
two very different people and you both feel
very trapped by each other.
And really, at the age that you're at,
with how deep and how bad the resentment has got to,
with all of the differences between you,
to try to kind of connect at this point and rebuild,
it's almost like in a square peg round hole.
Not saying it can't be done, but is it not fair to say
that there could be someone even better out there for you
where you could have an even more rich
and abundant and happy life
and your kids would see you happier, right?
And there's something just a little bit,
like I absolutely believe I could have stayed
with my ex-fiance and probably made it work.
Were we the best match for each other?
No, value-wise we weren't.
Am I a much better match with my husband? Yes.
And actually I met him months after leaving my ex-fiance.
It happened very, very quickly.
That alignment kicked in and I married my husband so quickly
because the connection was so clear, right?
The friendship was so deep.
So yeah, I just think you wanna try,
you wanna do your best, but there has to be
a healthy amount of like, I'm not gonna try
and bludgeon this into submission.
Who wants to do that?
I love the way that the centered and balanced nature
of how you talk about it.
And you talk about it from a perspective of this,
that's not necessarily the recipe
that can happen for everybody.
And I'm gonna double down on that side,
not to juxtaposition in a negative way.
In fact, to honor what you said first,
one of my favorite books is Boundaries of Marriage.
I needed to learn those boundaries big time.
We didn't have a full understanding of that
in my first marriage.
And I very quickly accidentally found my second wife.
I was just in a language learning app,
learning with people worldwide and we happened to meet.
And then as conversations took off,
we ended up coming together.
That led to a marriage that I loved and tried to honor.
The mother of my child, I strive really hard
to honor our relationship as well,
but I can't silence the reality that I went through
so many black eyes and bloody lips
in the process of trying to protect the sanctity
of my relationship with my youngest child.
And trying to make sure that this new Cinderella experience
we were in too, with somebody who was a stepmother
to my other three children,
it can be that the fairy tale does not always happen
that way where it's like, oh yeah, it's cool.
We had the friendship side,
but there were complications related to our circumstances,
our cultures that made it very difficult
for us to have a healthy integration.
And so those of you who are parents out there,
I don't think Katarina's point or mine is to belittle,
in fact, I would never belittle the sanctity of marriage
and the sacred nature of the process of building
and what I would call an eternal family.
That's super important to me.
It's just really sad to me how many people are in those,
that type of powerful commitment,
the commitment is strong,
but the rest of the virtues are like missing.
It's like, how are you going to do that?
If you're not, if you're drinking, smoking,
doing other things in your life, cheating,
like if you're not, if you're so distracted
by everything else in life,
but you're committed to this eternal bond,
there's an incredible imbalance there.
And it can certainly lead to a worse environment
for the children, but I will caution.
But my friends that are married, divorce,
when you have kids, you have no idea how complicated it is.
You have literally zero, if you haven't been through that,
you have no idea the hell that you will go through
and the silver lining of walking through the fires of hell
is you also become refined.
You'll learn a lot about life.
And to your point, Katarina,
you become more useful to others in the world too,
because now you have new experiences
that help you empathize with others.
So I am not a relationship expert
by any way, shape or form,
but it fascinates me to be able to meet with people like you
because we all need a ton of help with our relationships
and maximizing the strength of the relationships.
So we're gonna come back, we're gonna do two things.
We're gonna talk about the three resources
you recommend for visionary leaders,
because you're a fast study.
You've gotten to where you are at a pretty young age.
How old are you?
35.
35, yeah, we're both young, I'm 37.
Now I feel like I'm in the infancy of life
where I realize, wow, I really didn't know anything
for the last 30 years.
So right now I'm starting to discover things.
So I'm excited about those.
We'll take a break and then we'll come back
and talk about that untapped potential
of the great relationships.
Outside of marriage too,
this will help with all relationships.
I mean, we'll do as much as we can
in the little time that we have.
But Katarina, first, what are the three resources
that you recommend for other people
building missions out there?
Three resources as in that I can help with
or three bits of advice?
No, that have gotten you to where you are.
So if it is your book, that's fine too,
or your movie or whatever it is.
But the three that will help them build
to where they're going?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think number one is understanding
your internal wiring, right?
So for me, when I really began to drill down
into attachment theory and understanding
what are the stories in my head?
How do I process information?
What projections am I delivering onto my partner
or onto my relationships?
How am I wired, right?
How do I attach to people?
All of these questions really help me understand myself
and help me understand where am I getting in my own way
and how am I negatively contributing
to the problems in my life
when it comes to my relationships?
That was number one.
That's awesome.
Yeah, because that's what you can control.
Number two was learning how to work
with the subconscious mind.
So learning how to work with the subconscious mind
has really been the biggest game changer
in my own journey to becoming securely attached
and into my own journey to having a healthy, happy marriage.
The more I can understand, again, my wiring
and then work with that to change that, to optimize it,
the faster my relationships improve.
I can tell you now that the difference
between where I was at my ex-fiance,
where I was pretty anxiously attached and pretty anxious.
You agree.
Yeah, and really over-thinking and projecting
and feeling abandoned a lot of the time
and kind of testing him and being quite critical
and having these very explosive arguments.
And really, when I look back at that version of myself,
I'm like, my goodness, he was.
And not to say that the relationship was perfect,
the relationship had tons of problems in it,
but I think now if I was to experience that again,
it would be so different, right?
Because when I called that engagement off,
that's when I decided to really roll my seats up
and take ownership because I was like, this sucks.
I'm in my early 30s and I really wanted to have a family.
I wanted to have kids.
And I was like, what do I do now?
Like, let's call this off.
And how am I ever gonna find love?
You know, and I did the math on the timeline of,
well, if I'm 31 now, like, there's no way in hell
that I'm gonna meet a partner
and have the time to build a family.
And I didn't know that I'd meet my husband
literally months later, right?
Like, I met him very, very quickly after,
but the time between my ex-fiance and my husband,
I was knee-deep in doing this work.
I was taking so much ownership and accountability.
I was examining myself.
I was studying myself.
I was studying behavioral science.
And I was really, really, really understanding
how to recondition my brain to be more secure.
And so that was like a big part of the practice.
And that's been seminal in helping me
actually deepen my relationship with my husband.
So that's like the second thing.
That's amazing. And then the third thing is learning,
this is so cliche, but learning-
I like cliche, that's usually foundational.
Go ahead. Yeah.
It is learning to communicate, but it's not just about,
you know, like, don't use you statements,
use I statements, but learning to learn-
And not but.
Yeah, it's like, that's really valid.
I think it's more about getting into the practice
of learning to be kind and radically honest, right?
Because I found that the more, yeah-
Radical anger, right? Great book.
Yeah, but in a kind way, right?
And in a way that-
That's the point of that book is,
is you do it because you love, right?
Exactly. If you're giving feedback,
or talking conflict, it has,
and it's from a position of love.
So continue- Exactly, exactly.
The faster that you can nip things in the bud, right?
And because, you know, my husband and I,
we look back in the past couple of years and we're like,
we've had the wildest ride.
We've moved countries three times in like two years.
We've, you know, he's been unable to work for like two years
because of bloody visa issues,
which is why we're back in Canada now.
Like, you know, we've had financial pressures,
we've had fertility issues, we've had like family stresses,
the Ukraine war, my family's in Ukraine.
So we've had like so much grief and heartache and stress.
And I think we've been very candid that old us
would never have survived this relationship, never.
But, you know, we're just getting better.
Like literally, it was my birthday last week
and I was thinking, I was like, my goodness,
like our relationship only gets better and better and better
no matter how hard things are.
And even this year started off rocky
and he dislocated his bloody shoulder a week ago.
But my point is that it's the fact that we're able
to have that radical candor and nip things in the bud.
And we have these regular relational practices
that we practice communicating and being honest
and being vulnerable with each other,
that it's kind of like we keep cleaning things,
we keep kind of polishing our relationship, right?
So it doesn't get grubby, it doesn't get dirty,
it doesn't build up with residue of resentment.
Not to say that there hasn't been resentment,
but it's like we're on it, we're on it
and we're both taking accountability
and we're both kind of cleaning it, keeping it shiny.
I love that, that is amazing.
Oh, hello.
There's my amateur mistake for the day.
So with that said, I wanna go back to some of those
and I'm gonna do my best on this.
So one, healthy healing for your husband,
tough stuff for the shoulder.
Two, happy belated birthday.
Thank you.
And three, in the opposite side of the spectrum,
blessings and best wishes to your family in Ukraine.
That's a lot to, a lot of emotion to be going through
at one time.
And the three principles that you just shared with us,
they're out of this world important, they are fundamentals.
I don't see them as cliche at all.
I see them as important growth opportunities
that instead of trying to feed us a fish,
you're giving us the opportunity to go and explore this
in depth for ourselves.
The one that really struck me, I mean, all three of them,
I'm gonna be studying a lot about now this week
and integrating it with the rest of my responsibility
but learning how to work with my subconscious mind.
There's so much opportunity to use chat GPT even my friends,
those of you listening to start exploring
how you can go about that and get a game plan.
But then you've got people like Katarina
who she could have recommended thousands of books,
she could have recommended tons of courses and people
and she recommended that learning concept for us.
Why?
Because she's so dedicated to doing that herself.
Those are the types of people I like to then turn to
and be like, oh, I gotta grab on to Katarina
and stay close because as I continue to learn
how to explore my own subconscious mind,
it's friends, mentors, people who are on that path
that can open our eyes up to how we can get even further
and to understand that.
And once you, for me, if I can't have a great relationship
with myself because I don't know myself well enough,
then that's gonna limit my capacity
to have great relationships with others.
So you've already shared a treasure trove of extreme value
for all of us.
I'll try to make the break really short.
We'll come back and we'll dive in for all of you to know
what else can you do to untap
and the potential of your great relationships
even though we just had an absolute master class on it.
And we'll see you guys all on the other side.
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Callum, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
So, let's get started.
What's up, everybody?
It is Pajama Jackson and I am back.
I'll bring Katerina back on stage in just a minute.
Welcome to Vision Pros Live.
You guys know that we really appreciate authenticity here.
If you didn't know that, you now know it.
I just got back from Podfest.
I have to give a huge shout out to that.
That was the best expo I've ever been to.
Right up there with Kajabi and Icon.
Those are also amazing expos.
But what made it so special this time
is we have a pretty large team now
that was able to create a compound effect around our efforts.
So, we got to meet so many amazing people.
I'm gonna get emotional about it.
So, I'm not gonna go into it.
Podfest, expo, if you're in the podcasting world
or interested in getting into it,
I cannot recommend it enough.
We were talking about boundaries and marriage just now.
Katerina and I, she just laid down
so many amazing principles for how we can exercise
in our own life, how to improve our relationships.
And some of the relationships that are most important to me
are the ones I wanna tell you guys about.
These sponsorships, by the way,
they're not paid for sponsorships.
These are just entities that I really love
because they've done so much for me
and that's why I share them with you guys.
The day that people do pay for that,
I will still only let people do that,
whom I love and who will be important
and helpful for this audience.
So, first off, we've got
Obradales de Trabajo para Latinos or opportunities,
sorry, I'm gonna do that in English,
opportunities for Latinos.
We have this program where we help Latinos,
what we're doing is we're bridging the economic gap
to North America, South America, and the rest of the world.
And we do that not through VA relationships.
We call that virtual abuse.
We do not believe in virtual abuse.
We wanna make sure that our team members are fantastic.
We wanna make sure that we're taking great care of them.
And we teach them how to become
what we call digital ambassadors.
Most of these individuals have never heard of LinkedIn.
They never heard of podcasting.
They never heard of Canva Upwork Fiverr.
They never read Rich Dad Poor Dad.
And we show them how they can create a career for themselves
or perhaps come in and work with us.
And we've got an amazing podcast.
That's cool, this page is brand new.
I haven't seen that before.
And so the team's doing so many great things
to build out our brands
in addition to the brands that we work with.
And we try to get them placed with companies
that are going to take care of them long-term.
They've interviewed people like Keke Anglase,
who has 925,000 subscribers on YouTube.
They're absolutely crushing my show as we speak.
Luis Sancentia did an amazing job of hosting it.
If you know a Latino leader or somebody who speaks Spanish
that can go in there and inspire other Latinos
to make the most out of life,
that's what that program's all about.
We would love to have you over there.
Then there's Learn and Grow Rich with Zach Olman.
Zach Olman has become a very good friend of mine.
He runs his own program.
It's so similar to ours, it's almost creepy.
And he does things at a different angle than we do.
We've brought Zach in as our chief financial officer.
And the reason why he's our chief financial officer
and yet has his own brand is because we needed
to have a financial department that could help us scale
with the hundreds of brands
that we plan on supporting over time.
His program's phenomenal.
You're welcome to work with him and not with us,
but we want you to be aware of the resources
that are helping us shape the future
of where first-class business is going.
Lastly, there's the Water Project.
I do not have any affiliation with the Water Project.
We are a monthly contributor to this particular program.
And I know that us talking about this
is the most important thing that we can do
to continue to move it forward.
There are millions of people in this world
that do not even have access to clean drinking water,
something that I've taken for granted my whole life.
And as I saw how transparent they are with their story
and saw how you get to pick the communities
that you get involved with.
And even if you just give $5,
they will send you the social proof
of that community's borehole well or sand dam
or whatever they're creating for sustainable water
for those individuals.
And then you and I get to have this massive
multi-generational impact for these families.
As you see on the screen right now,
these kids celebrate water
even more than my kids celebrate Christmas Day.
That is a very humbling thought and reality
to think about these kids,
how they have to travel for miles sometimes
to just find a source of water,
or the parents and how they have to leave work
just to be able to provide the basic essentials
for their families.
You and I have the opportunity to make impact on that.
So my hope is if you're in a position where financially
you just can't help right now,
please think of somebody who you can share this message with
and maybe talk about it over lunch or dinner.
Maybe send a post out about it,
specifically about the water project
because if we can solve that problem,
we can help millions of people
who do not have that solved for themselves right now.
And thank you for taking time to hear that.
Let's get back to helping you guys with your visions
and untapped potential for greater relationships
with Katarina Polonska.
Thank you so much for being here, Katarina.
Let's dive right into vision.
How are you today?
I'm good, I'm good.
Thank you.
Yeah, I can't believe it's like the 20th of January.
Oh my goodness, this year is flying.
It is absolutely huge.
So I'm glad she's good because we, again,
we got started on like, you know what?
I'm gonna ask the absolute hardest question I can first.
And I never ever do that to guests,
but there was something about you.
There was just a centeredness and a balance
that I was like, you know what?
She's not just talk about these relationships.
I think she's got the wherewithal, the strength
to be able to dive into the harder topics
and expand that vision.
And then we can get back to the basics and the principles.
So returning to the basics and the principles,
who is it that you typically are helping
and what is your vision for the people that you serve?
Yeah, such a great question.
I help two camps of people.
So maybe I'll kind of shed light on both of them.
I help singles and I help people in relationship.
I'll start with the people who are in relationship though,
because that's kind of my bread and butter,
even though in one of my group programs, it's mainly singles.
I help people, those who are in relationship,
I help them individually as opposed to couples work,
but generally individually.
And I help them do that critical inner work
to take ownership of their side of the street
so that they can have a clean conscience
and know with full certainty, I have done everything
in my power to improve this relationship
before I make any decisions.
And so often people will come to me and they've been married
or in a long-term relationship.
And this question of, do I stay or do I go?
I'm feeling lonely, I'm feeling unsupported,
I'm feeling misunderstood, I may be feeling a bit trapped,
but I don't wanna make a rash decision.
I don't want to throw the baby out of the bath,
but I don't wanna make any mistakes.
And I'm overwhelmed, I'm a little bit scared.
I don't know where to turn to.
I don't wanna do couples counseling
because I don't wanna kind of put gas on the fire
and I don't wanna make things worse.
I don't wanna drag my partner anywhere.
Let me talk about that a little bit
because I've done a ton of couples therapy
in two different marriages.
And one, it takes two to tango,
but you both have to be willing to do it.
And as good as therapists are and psychologists,
just like doctors can perform malpractice,
malpractice is far more common in the therapy world.
And it's not some evil conniving doctor,
it usually comes from a position of ignorance.
I had one of our counselors literally break down in tears
during our conversation where my wife was expressing
the challenges of being in a relationship with me.
And after this 10-minute episode,
no, I'm sorry, after this five minutes of conversation,
the therapist started to project back on us and say,
my husband's like that too.
I mean, he does this and this.
She went off for 15 minutes.
Oh my goodness.
About her own self.
Yeah, that is beyond unprofessional and uncertified.
And that's the extreme version that we saw.
Oh my God, yeah.
That's quite arrowing.
Oh, it was oftentimes therapists who were kind of guessing
or they were distracted by the next appointment
and wanting to wrap up and you could tell they're exhausted
and their business models are so broken
that they're so worried about their own selves
that they don't quite show up with the same problem.
So there are levels to, my point is there are levels.
And if you're going to do couples therapy
and you just go over the first person
or you pay something really cheap,
then my challenge to those of you seeking therapy
is to realize you get out of it, what you put into it.
And if you don't put any research
into the due diligence upfront,
you might end up with a guide that's fairly lackluster.
So nothing against couples therapy,
but maybe look at Landmark,
maybe look at the Gottman Institute
just to give you a couple of resources.
Yeah, I'm Gottman.
Oh, very good.
And so now I'd love for you to continue,
but I just wanted to be a full supporter.
I'm like, yes, be wise.
If you want great relationships,
be wise about who you get counsel from.
Yeah, no, and to your point, right?
Like I, my first exposure to this
was seeing my parents go through a divorce
and they were going to kill each other
in the process financially, right?
And the counseling was like kind of patronizing.
It didn't land.
I had my own couples counseling with my ex fiance.
And I don't know.
I don't know what progress we really made
other than I think we dragged out a relationship
that frankly again, shouldn't have been together
from the beginning.
And I think had we just been pulled aside
and done our individual work to take ownership
of our side of the street,
we would have arrived at the conclusion
that we're two fundamentally very different people
and very different value sets.
And actually one of us is growing at this level.
The other one is growing at this level,
which is not meant to be, and that's okay.
Let's not flog a dead horse.
You know, like there's, it's like, let's accept it.
Plenty of couples marry very young
before they know who they really are,
what they really need,
what it takes to have a long-term relationship, right?
They marry out of people, pleasing pressure,
fulfilling parental obligations and duties
that are in conditioning.
And so often we can get into relationships where actually,
yeah, but again, we're not fully compatible and that's okay.
But to your point about the couples counseling,
I had my own frustrations with that
because often it felt like, I understand
in a lot of couples counseling,
the job of the counselor is that the relationship
is the client, not the two individuals, right?
And so the goal of the counselor
is to keep the relationship together at any cost.
And so they will work really hard
to keep that relationship going,
which again, from where I'm standing,
often doesn't lead to necessarily the healthiest of outcomes.
And so in the work that I do,
and what was so important to me
was working with the individuals as sovereign individuals,
getting real clarity from them of who are you,
what do you need to be happy,
where do you wanna go in your life?
And then let's clear out all of your self-sabotage,
all of your subconscious blockers.
Let's make sure that you are feeling clear,
you're feeling grounded, you're feeling secure.
We've worked through your triggers,
you've learned communication skills,
you've learned how to navigate conflict,
you've learned how to expand
your emotional window of tolerance.
And so then when we do, if we do,
bring you into a room with your partner,
it's gonna be a very different type of conversation
of here is who I am and here is who I am.
And now let's have a civil conversation
and start to work together.
I love that.
I cannot tell you how much I love that.
I love it so much.
It does because otherwise you got two people
who have different listening capacities, right?
Different emotional reactions
and different needs that they wanna express
that aren't prepared.
And it's like we for some reason train ourselves
to only go to counseling when we're on fire, right?
Versus you're kind of creating this separate,
again, strength.
And then if I'm, I wish more couples
would could see the opportunity
of going to counseling in the good times, right?
And get ideas and exercises
for how to improve the relationship.
Sounds kinda like you go that route,
but go ahead and tell me more about it.
Yeah, absolutely.
And again, I think what I always found in my work
and what I experienced is that you're very rarely
gonna get two people in a relationship
who are both like, yes, we want couples counseling.
Normally somebody, one person wants the other person
say what's wrong with you?
I don't want this, right?
And so then you already have this imbalance
where one person's dragging the other
and the effectiveness is really diminished.
And again, to your point, everyone's gonna be triggered,
already very dysregulated in their nervous system
and it's just gonna be chaos.
And from where I was standing,
it felt like we were paying, you know,
not a crazy amount of money.
It's like 250 bucks or something, but we were still paying
a lot and in the session, it was so frustrating
because in the session, everyone's saying the right things.
Everyone's on their best behavior
and you have all like the best intentions,
but then you leave and you get back home
and it's the same status quo.
And from a behavioral science point of view,
well, of course it is.
None of the learning has been retained
because we know that 75% of the learning
is actually lost already in like a few hours
and like 90% is gone within the day, right?
So learning retention is completely obsolete.
From a subconscious mind perspective,
when you're in the couples counselor room,
you're only using 3% of your brain,
three to 5% of your brain, your conscious mind,
you're not tapping into your subconscious.
You're not doing any subconscious mind work.
So you can say all the right things, you can nod,
you can please the counselor,
you can play the little perfect role,
but again, when you go home,
you're gonna default back to the status quo,
into your habits.
So again, what I found was with that one person,
that one person who would typically reach out to me,
like, hey, I'm not happy.
I think I wanna leave my husband, but I'm not sure.
We've got kids.
I don't wanna make a mess out of this.
I do love him.
I just don't feel in love with him.
I don't know what to do, help me.
And I'll be like, okay, cool.
Let's see when I work together for three to six months,
depending on how quickly we can do this.
And let's look at how are you contributing
to your own sense of disconnect in the relationship?
What is your attachment style?
How are you blocking yourself?
How are you blocking your ability to receive his love?
How are you actually self-sabotaging here?
And let's make sure that we clean up your side of the street
so that you can be like, okay, you know what?
I'm feeling secure.
I'm feeling confident.
I'm feeling calm.
And I see the relationship clearly from that place.
Let's get clarity on who are you really?
And what is it that you need to be happy long-term
in this relationship?
Step two.
And then let's learn communication techniques
and learn how to set boundaries
and learn how to articulate your needs
and learn how to actually develop intimacy
with your partner and see how things are at that point.
And normally what I will find in that work
is that at some point, pretty early on,
normally like six weeks in,
the person I'm working with will start to show up
in the relationship differently.
They will be much more aware of their triggers.
They'll be more aware of their communication style.
They'll be more aware of their own blocks.
And so they become kinder to their partner.
They become more compassionate.
They start to take more responsibility.
They start to regulate themselves more.
They start to just be a different, more secure person,
which typically the partner will recognize and feel.
Often there'll be a little freak out of like,
what the heck has happened to you?
Who are you?
You're different.
At that point, there might be a conversation of,
you know what, I've been really unhappy in our relationship,
but I'm working with this relationship coach
because I wanna fix things.
And that's when the other partner might freak out.
Maybe they get their own coach.
Maybe they reach out to me, whatever it is.
But at that point,
you've kind of got two people doing independent work.
I'm not saying that person even has to do independent work,
right, or it might look very different.
But at that point,
you've kind of started this bigger conversation.
And that's where the magic happens.
And I will tell you that I started this work
kind of expecting the majority of couples
to actually end up breaking up because my hypothesis
was that people are coming to me with this lens
of should I stay or should I go?
They're already kind of out the door.
That's not what's happened.
Nine out of 10 couples that work with me within six months,
it's like they're in the honeymoon again.
They're in love again.
Well, one woman who literally,
I was helping her find a divorce lawyer
and she's trying for a baby with her husband now.
So all of that to say, we get in our own way so much.
And again, the people I work with
are typically high achieving professionals, right?
Who are like business owners or corporate professionals
and pretty go-getting.
You can bet that there's gonna be
some subconscious wounding there
because very often our ambition
is coming from a wounded place.
Absolutely. Right?
And so let's just take care of that.
I'm not saying you're gonna stop being ambitious
or anything, but let's just make sure
that you are the best version of you
before you make any big life changing decisions
about your relationship.
Yeah. It's a win-win, right?
It's a win-win. You're either gonna leave
being happier than ever before
and find someone really quickly like I did,
or you're gonna stay and have a whole new relationship
to enjoy.
And maybe it's not the quickly find somebody new,
but perhaps it's the quickly fell centered
and balanced in yourself.
Yeah. Right?
There's that side too.
I wanna say, I honestly believe that you,
have we been working with you?
You may have saved my first marriage.
And I share that with full respect too,
for Jonathan Decker of formerly of yourfamilyexpert.com.
I might have worn him out.
I don't know.
I have no idea why he no longer has
the yourfamilyexpert.com anymore,
but it was such a phenomenal resource.
And he took an approach very similar to what you're doing,
but we were trying so hard
in that counseling together aspect
that there were still components missing.
And I am grateful for the fact that our marriage dissolved.
I actually am very grateful for that nowadays.
And my kids will hopefully also be able to feel the honor
and sacred nature of what I mean by that,
and be able to learn from our experience
how to have their healthiest, happiest selves,
how to be able to move towards having
a great long-term relationship for their lives,
and get the counseling, the leadership,
the experiences and knowledge necessary
to build their best lives.
So again, I want to respect the sacred nature
of my first marriage,
and again, what Jonathan Decker was able to give to us,
but you've already been able to take things to a level
that I have not found.
And I have read a lot of books,
been to a lot of therapists,
worked with a lot of providers in this space,
and most of which make noise, regurgitate principles,
but they don't know how to tie it together
and talk about the vision of what's possible
the way that you were able to eloquently talk about.
I'm gonna double down on that.
We will be very interested in learning more about this
for the sake of the relationships
within our brand and company.
Everybody that I work with becomes somebody
who can either add energy to what we're up to,
or will be somebody who will drain energy out of me,
as a leader.
And so I'm extremely aware of the need
to tap into that potential great relationships,
the opportunity that exists to raise
the level of relationships that we have.
So I am so grateful that you came across our path
at this exact moment,
like where we're at as a brand and what's possible,
because we need the successfully in love method.
That's something that now I'm dying to hear about
and understand.
So what is the successfully in love method
and how does that work?
Yeah, great question.
Successfully in love method is,
well, it took me a while to think about the name.
So I was like, I wanna talk about
all these successful professionals
who are so successful in every arena of their lives,
apart from their relationships.
They wanna be in love with their lives, right?
You wanna be in love with your life,
you wanna be in love with your work,
you wanna be successful in love.
And the methodology is a three-step methodology.
So kind of broken it down into three big chunks.
Chunk number one is the liberation phase.
So I call it liberate.
And that's where we work together to liberate.
Did you say celebrate?
Liberate.
Liberate, liberation, freedom phase.
Exactly.
We liberate you from all of your internal blocks,
your self-sabotage, all of the different ways
that you might be getting in your own way
without realizing it when it comes to your relationship.
So we look at your attachment style,
we look at your communication,
we look at your belief systems,
we look at how are you, through no fault of your own,
unfortunately negatively contributing to the problem.
And we're all doing that.
We're all doing that.
Absolutely.
Step one is liberate.
And that's where I start teaching
the subconscious mind techniques
and I'm helping you go into insight
and clear all of that, right?
Here's a crazy insight.
And God makes no mistakes.
Maybe all of you have heard this before,
but my buddy, Matt, who I mentor with both directions,
he used to work for me,
he told me about his avoidant personality type.
And out of all of the psychology books I've read,
out of everything that I've watched,
and I study like six to 10 hours of this per week, guys,
I had never heard of the avoidant attachment
and the anxious attachment until about two months ago.
It's just crazy to me that I've never heard of this concept
and it is so wide and far,
it's so talked about in the psychology realm,
I mean, I had never found it.
So continue, please.
That's so important to understand.
I learned so much by diving into one week
in like six hours on a Saturday.
And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so helpful.
So please continue.
But I think exactly that, right?
I found attachment theory a game changer
just because of the way that it helped me
compartmentalize and understand aspects of myself
that felt like a lot of it didn't make sense, right?
So yeah, absolutely.
A lot of this stuff.
I'm an integrated attachment theory specialist
and having trained under the personal development school
as well with Tais Gibson,
so really like knee deep in that world.
And so yeah, so liberate is all about
liberating you from that.
And my goal from the very beginning
is to get you on the process of reconditioning your mind
so that you are securely attached
and you feel confident and clear in yourself.
And that will allow us to then help you
reconnect with yourself in a way
that you've never connected before.
Because when we are insecurely attached,
when we're full of blocks,
it's really hard to know who am I really?
We're kind of living an illusion, right?
Like we're living in this well of insecurity.
So once you feel worthy, once you feel good enough,
once you feel loved and you feel accepted
and you feel calm and peaceful and connected,
then we can start to get really curious around
what is it that you actually need?
Who are you?
Where is it you wanna go in life?
And once we understand the needs,
then we go into the create phase, phase three.
And that's all about how do we actually create
healthy, productive strategies to get your needs met,
both in the relationship and outside of it.
So this work really does kind of
go beyond relationships as well, right?
Because a lot of this stuff will actually bleed
into your career, bleed into your finances,
bleed into your health.
But the point is it all boils down to you clearing
those blocks and reconnecting with yourself.
And in that create phase is when we might get clarity on,
okay, I need more trust in my relationship with my husband
because actually there was this betrayal
that happened a long time ago that we never addressed
and all this resentment spilled out.
I will help you work through that resentment.
I will help you clear all of that
and liberate yourself from it.
But then I'm gonna get clarity with you
on what is it that you need in order to repair
that relationship with him fully.
And then we're gonna create strategies
to actually get that done, right?
So it's very practical.
I think a lot of the work that I do to your point
is for better or for worse,
I'm quite a logical and a list of all things.
Right, I see that.
And I know that relationships are messy.
Well, I'm gonna answer it myself one more time
onto that because as I mentioned earlier,
I honestly feel like you very well
could have saved my marriage.
I do think it would have been the missing link.
And I don't think that would have been right for us.
But what I'm noticing about you is you're more pragmatic
about you're not looking at that as the victory, right?
You're not trying to force the issue that,
oh, well, you guys now have to stay together.
And that healthy mindset can scare people
who have attachment disorder issues
or who feel like, again, that the dogma
is what should dictate their decisions.
But you're not attacking the dogma.
You're just making space for the wellbeing
of the individual.
And so I don't think you actually would have saved
the marriage.
I think you would have helped us see
how we had options, right?
And that's so neat because if somebody's got
a predetermined outcome for what's best for the individuals,
then they can't possibly guide based on the wellbeing
of the individuals.
So it's just like, I'm blown away by this.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think that's to your point, right?
I think that's the issue with couples counseling is that
the client is the relationship.
And again, when I think about to my own fiance,
my ex-fiance, I think that there were definitely
some troubling behaviors that were unethical
and really transgressed a lot of my value system
and a lot of my kind of boundaries.
And I think that they weren't for him, right?
Because they had different value systems.
And I think had I been working with myself back then,
I probably would have said what actually
one of my relationship coach said to me back then,
which she kind of painted the picture
and she kind of mapped it all out for me,
what my future would look like with this person.
And she was just like, is it fair to say,
based on this vision of your future
that I have mapped out for you,
that actually this is pretty incongruent with who you are,
what I know of you to be.
So where do you fit into this?
And that's when I was like, oh my goodness,
I'm self abandoning because I'm actually attached.
And then it all kind of clicked.
And that's when I was like,
so I can work on this relationship
with the cows come home.
I'm sure we can make it work.
I'm sure we can actually have a lovely marriage,
lovely kids, have a lovely kind of day-to-day,
but is that actually the highest, most kind of,
the highest place of integrity for me and who I am
and my own unique contribution to the world?
Probably not, because rapidly, literally within months,
I met my husband now and that led me into being
so much more aligned with my vision, who I am,
my career, my health, my finances,
my kind of trajectory where I'm going in life,
where we're going in life.
It is like, this is my soul's purpose.
And I think that's what I'm getting at, right?
That we kind of, often we get into relationships
for the wrong reasons, out of fear, scarcity, desperation,
people pleasing, time is too short.
Right, call them in out pleasure, right?
Yeah, absolutely, you know, and that isn't always
going to be the best relationship out there.
And I do believe that we all have multiple people
we can have a great relationship with,
but it's like, you want to be connected on that deeper level.
But yes, all of us say that I think I,
I appreciate relationships are messy.
I appreciate that they don't all fit
into these nice little boxes.
And yet I still find it helpful to think things through
in little boxes because the people I work with
are so logical and so analytical and KPI driven
that often when we think about the world of relationships
and marriage counseling, it is frustrating
because you're kind of just floating in this murky mess
going round in circles, which is what we felt.
And it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
That's just going to erode my confidence.
I need a plan.
I need to take control and ownership.
And I need to be able to understand this intellectually
to understand myself, right?
And I think that's important.
There are other phases of the successfully in love method
that we're not going to have time to get to today.
Oh, God, sorry.
And that's important.
No, no, no, oh my gosh.
Don't applaud.
This was probably, this is easily one of the best episodes
we've ever had.
Oh, easily one of the best.
One of the most important that the visionaries they work with
because if you've got a vision
and you're meant to do major impact,
you're going to need relationships by your side
in order to do that.
And so the more we can learn
about building phenomenal relationships, the better.
And as I teach my Latino team, when it comes to learning
English, we got to find the best teachers in the world
because you can't be the best student in the world
if you don't have the best teachers in the world.
And I'm going to put you right up there on that pedestal
with the best of the best teachers.
This was phenomenal.
So those of you who are listening in, make sure to,
one, I skipped my absolute favorite question
because we didn't have time
and I'm hoping that you'll come back.
I know you've been on our show three times.
You were with Javanka twice on the show
or at least y'all did one episode.
We're going to be using this material for a very long time
to help people with their growth and repurposing it
because again, the relationship dynamic
is one of the most crippling dynamics
for any visionary out there.
And the more help they get on that,
the better leaders they become and the happier we become
and working with them on what they're up to.
Two, I didn't get to ask you about the most powerful lesson
you could share with the audience.
So we will do that if we get to come back
and we'll dive into those phases.
Those of you listening in, down below,
you'll see the action steps.
What actions can you take with Katarina
in order to work in her program?
We'll drop some information
about the Successfully in Love method.
We'll also, of course, put the resources on there
that we talked about earlier,
the coaches that she's working with, the institutes,
learning how to work on your subconscious mind, et cetera.
All that's going to be there.
And then the top right corner,
those of you listening in
that want to share your vision with us,
you don't have to be a world-class leader
like Katarina to do that.
You can be at the beginning stages
of putting your vision out there and talk to us.
Just as be our guest, click the button to be our guest
and come have a meeting with our team
and let's get you on the show.
Any final words you'd like to share?
I'll let you wrap up, Katarina.
Yeah, no, thank you for that.
And I'd love to come back.
Would absolutely love that.
I think final words are that you and everyone out there
deserves to have a really healthy, fulfilling,
meaningful relationship where they feel safe,
where they feel loved,
where they feel chosen every single day.
You can have that.
You absolutely can have that, right?
It might not be where you're at right now.
It might not feel like it's possible, but it is.
And all you need is the motivation
to go out there and make it happen.
Then just take a little micro steps and learning what to do.
But it's a process and you can learn a process.
You really can. I love that.
I love the Vision Pros.
You heard it from Katarina.
We will see you on the next episode of Vision Pros Live.
Thanks for tuning in
and we look forward to hearing your feedback.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision.