00:04 Hello and welcome to the Heal From Infidelity podcast where
courageous women learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal,
but to become the boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions
of themselves ever. If you know there’s more for you than the life
you’re currently living, but don’t quite know how to get there, you are
in the right place. Stick around to learn how to create a life that will
knock your own socks off. Is that possible? It is, and I’m here to show
you how.

I’m your host Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

00:42 Hello friends, I’m so excited to be here and to share some new
things with you today. But before I do, I want to just take a minute and
thank you sincerely so much for those of you who have gone and left a
review on iTunes for me. It helps other people to find the podcast when
you leave a review. It gives credibility to the podcast so that people
know that it’s something worth listening to.

So thank you so much. Before I move forward, I want to go ahead and read
a few of the reviews that you’ve left. Megan, she says, wonderful
podcast. Andrea is an amazing coach with some real life experience that
has given her the ability to fully understand her client’s point of
view. Her story is proof of how much having a life coach can change
every aspect of your life. Check out her podcast. I highly recommend it
as well as subscribing to her emails. They are awesome. Thank you,
Megan. Thank you. Thank you.

This is from Tisha. To Andrea and these first few podcasts, I already
don’t feel alone and a bit stronger to move forward. I feel like a
lifeline has been thrown out to the water to grab onto. Her words are
healing. Looking forward to more. Thank you so much, Tisha. This one is
from Niner Nat. Andrea has been my coach as I have been going through my
divorce. Her expertise and coaching style is exactly what I needed as I
transitioned into a new chapter of life. I have been able to stop
blaming myself and start recognizing my truth. I am very excited she has
a podcast so I am able to listen and refresh on what I have learned.
Thank you so much, Niner Nat.

I appreciate all of you so very much for leaving a review. And if you
haven’t yet, I would love it if you would. It truly helps so much for
other people to be able to find me. So now I’m going to go ahead and get
started on the actual podcast.

Okay, so what I have for you today is one of my favorite things to talk
about and the starting point for all of my coaching. I always start with
helping my clients get clear about the things that they want, their
highest desires, the things that light them up. What does that have to
do with infidelity? I will get to that, I promise. So as women, we often
cannot remember the things that we really want. We kind of have been
conditioned, some of us from the beginning of our life, to believe that
our whole purpose is to serve others. We’re there to make other people’s
life better. And if there is something that we want, we often think
about it in terms of how it will benefit other people rather than just
wanting it for the sake of wanting it.

03:01 I want to try a little exercise, okay? Wherever you are right now,
I want you to think of something you want. I don’t care what it is. I
don’t care if it’s a physical thing like a home or something to put in
your home or clothes from a certain store, or a feeling that you really
just want to feel more of the time, or a relationship, a kind of
relationship that you want. Literally nothing is off limits here, okay?
Can you think of something?

Okay, so now I want you to notice what resistance comes up to that. Can
you feel some resistance? What’s it saying? So do any of you remember
Debbie Downer from Saturday Night Live? She goes wah wah, well she
doesn’t say that but you hear the music soundtrack of wah wah when she’s
talking because there’s positive people around her and she always is
there to tell the thing that brings the people down. Okay. Do you have a
Debbie Downer in your brain? We all do, okay? What is Debbie saying to
you? Probably telling you all the reasons why you should feel guilt for
wanting whatever you thought of, to remind you that others will be there
to judge you, that you’re being selfish or other various forms of
judgment from your own brain, right? We are really quick to poo poo on
what we want.

But what if I were to tell you that listening to the things that you
want is the very thing that will help you to grow the most? Let me
explain, okay? We all were born with desires. We all have things that we
want. There might be things that you want that you remember from when
you’re really little and that you’ve kind of pushed away, forgotten
about, whatever. But we all have them. Sometimes they are very, very
buried and sometimes they’re so buried that we really don’t even know
what they are. But I want to invite you to lean into those things. I
want to invite you to remember what they are. What are the things that
you want? What if you could believe that they are given on purpose and
that by honoring those desires and making them a reality, it’s a way of
showing up as your highest self with your highest form of self
expression? It’s showing the world who you actually are. What if going
after the things that you really want are the actual markers along the
path showing you who you need to become to get there? I’ll explain more
about that in a minute.

05:27 To comfortably have the thing that we want, we often have to grow.
And by stepping into the things that we want, it allows us to show up in
the truth of who we are and it allows the other people around us to do
the same.

Now I’m going to give you a couple examples of this, okay? I have a
client who came to me with struggles about infidelity and trust and
things like that. And when we went through this exercise of asking what
she wanted, one of the things she said is a really nice car. She really
wants a nice car. And her brain immediately went to judgment of what
others would think of her for having this thing that’s so nice and
judging herself for not using the money to help other people, feeling
guilt for even wanting it when there’s other people who need money more
than her. Why should I even want that?

And so what I reminded her is that for her to be the kind of person that
sits behind the wheel of that car comfortably, she has to grow. How does
she have to grow? Let me explain. She has to grow the belief that she’s
worthy of having things that are nice. She has to grow the belief that
she can always take care of herself and create the things that she
wants. She has to learn to believe that what she wants matters. She has
to learn that it’s okay for other people to have judgments of her and
that it has no bearing on her, her worth or her ability to have the
things that she wants, okay?

Another client came to me and she desperately wanted to learn how to
stop people pleasing. She wants to learn how to stop saying yes when she
means no. So what people pleasing is, is it’s a form of trying to manage
what other people think of you. Like if I say yes, even if I don’t
really want to, then they’ll think X, Y, Z about me, okay? The problem
with people pleasing is that we are not actually honoring how we feel or
what we actually want. So for her, she really wants to learn how to say
yes when she means it and how to say no when she means it, okay?

07:52 If she becomes this person that stops people pleasing, it requires
practice of answering even to herself what she wants to say yes or no.
It requires her to look inside to get those answers and then say them
out loud and even allowing the people around her to think what they want
to judge her, and even for herself to hold space for her own negative
emotions. So even if she knows that she wants to say no to something,
for example, and she might feel uncomfortable, part of her growth is
making space for her to feel uncomfortable and staying in it and
honoring that she actually wants to say no. She’s not making it mean
that she feels uncomfortable, so that means she should have said yes.
She’s growing, making space for negative emotion. She’s learning to
trust that she can have an opinion. She’s learning to trust that she is
the expert of her own life. She’s stopping trying to manage others’
opinion of her, and she lets them think what they want. Again, she’s
letting herself sit in the discomfort of doing something different and
allowing that tension to be there as she practices doing this thing
that’s new to her.

10:18 I have my own example with this. So we moved into the house that
I’m in one year ago and my coaching practice was growing. I was
coaching. I was not coaching a ton of people at that point, but I was
coaching and consistently doing things for my business. And at first,
when we moved here, I was okay just having my office in my closet. It
had a really big, and I do have an exceptional closet. It’s a huge,
beautiful closet. And so I set up a desk in there and I was going to be
okay just having my office in my closet and making it look pretty and
making it look professional. And I was fine with that.

But what I really wanted was this room next to my bedroom that one of my
kids was using. I really wanted that room for my office. I wanted a
place where I could go in that was mine and mine alone to do this work,
to grow my business, to coach my people, not a shared space. I really
wanted that. And I had a lot of poo pooing on that in my mind of what
about the other kids, and shouldn’t I give them the room, and I can just
stay in the closet. It’s okay for me just to stay there. And isn’t that
selfish of me to want a whole room just for me and for my purposes?

Ultimately what I really wanted was to have this office, this office
where I could look outside and have a pretty view and have some privacy
and not be in a closet, right? And guess what? I honored that and I made
it happen. I had the conversations. I opened it up for problem solving
with my other children and said, okay, this is something I really want.
I want to make it happen. I want to have an office. How can we make this
happen?

12:38 The thing that’s so amazing about that is by me honoring what I
really wanted and saying it out loud, even if others were not
necessarily thrilled with that, it allowed them to be in on the
conversation of figuring out a solution and making things work for
everyone. So oftentimes we think about having what we want as having
somebody else not have what they want. And what if the opposite is true?
What if we are actually opening up space for other people to get out of
their own way and solve their own problems and make choices for
themselves that make them happy rather than waiting for other people to
do it for them?

So ultimately I did get my office. I’m talking to you here from my
office and it worked out for everybody. Is it a little bit crowded in
some of the bedrooms? Yes, it is. I have a lot of kids, but guess what?
They’re doing okay. And I’m showing them that it’s okay to have things
that you want. And hopefully when they are adults, they’ll speak up and
ask for the things that they want too.

So why do we have such a hard time asking for what we want? A lot of us
grow up thinking that, like I said before, everything we do is for the
benefit of other people. And so we have what is called a reflected sense
of self.

15:00 I want to just chime in and say that a lot of the things that I’m
talking about in this podcast, I learned from an amazing therapist named
Jennifer Finlison Fife. If you haven’t listened to her, go listen to
her. She’s amazing. I learned a lot from her. And she teaches this
concept of a reflected sense of self versus a solid sense of self.

If you’re holding up a mirror outside you and everybody, the people
going by, they’re the ones giving the reflection, showing you who you
are, and then you’re absorbing that and believing their stories about
you. That’s a reflected sense of self. Most of us go through our life
with this idea of what other people believe about us, and then we think
that that’s who we actually are. If other people believe we’re good,
then we believe we’re good. If other people think poorly of us, then we
think poorly of us. If we’re not getting the messages quick enough with
validation, then we start to doubt our worth. We start to wonder who we
are and we don’t have that solid sense of self to answer that question.

So a solid sense of self is where we have an idea of who we are. We
might not have a perfect idea, but we have somewhat of a foundation of
who we are. And we go around the world or live our life with this
foundation of generally liking who we are, knowing who we are, having a
pretty solid sense of who we are. And when we have that solid sense of
self, we also are more easily able to connect with the things that we
want and with the God given desires that he has given us.

17:21 We know what those desires even are. We trust that they’re there
for a reason and trust that by leaning into those things and really just
saying, okay, you gave me this desire for this car. You gave me this
desire to have my own space here. You gave me this desire to be able to
stop people pleasing. And then leaning into knowing that that is your
growth, that to become the person that feels comfortable there, you have
to step into growth.

When we feel judgment from either ourselves or from other people, we
aren’t quite shaken as much because we’re building that foundation of
who we are and trusting that this process is going to just end up
serving us and the people around us so much better.

One thing to be aware of is that sometimes we have a big resistance to
good things, whether it’s other people giving us good things or giving
ourselves good things. And sometimes it can be a control move. Sometimes
we falsely believe that we have the upper hand if we are not allowing
those around us to give to us. Sometimes we want to have this
superiority. And really what that boils down to is kind of wanting to
have that victim role of I do everything for everyone else and I don’t
let them give to me because there’s something about you that believes
that you have to be in that role to be valuable, to be seen. What if
you’re willing to walk away from that and try out a new way?

19:35 What we can do, what is available to us, is co creating a system
in our family and our relationships where we tell the truth about who we
are and we then allow the people around us to do the same.

When we are not telling the truth, we are not only dividing ourselves
from the people around us because we’re not really allowing them to see
us, but we’re also dividing us from us. And in the words of the wise
Abraham Lincoln, a house divided against itself cannot stand. We are
actually dividing ourselves from ourselves when we are not telling the
truth about what we want or hiding what we want or masking what we want
or making it somebody else’s problem to give us what we want and then
being disappointed when they don’t.

The truth is you cannot contradict your own values and your own desires
and not suffer. You’ll know that you’re living out of integrity even if
it seems like a virtuous thing.

Our very self development is actually driven by these desires. These
desires are what tap into the prefrontal cortex or the highest part of
our brain, the wise part of our brain that knows what’s good for us.
This is our wise older self that knows that leaning into the things that
we want is going to be the thing that will help us develop into what
we’re capable of being.

20:36 When we lean into our desires and trust that they’re put there on
purpose, we develop a tolerance for error and failure. We become more
emotionally mature as we’re willing to feel and experience different
things than we were before. We respect ourselves more. We know that
others might not agree with us, but at least we know that we are being
honest and true to our highest self. We become willing to have
conversations that might be tense and we’re willing to stand there and
allow the tension from a place of maturity and strength rather than
cowering because we’re afraid or think that we don’t deserve to be
heard. We are willing to allow that tension. That’s pretty powerful.

So what does this have to do with infidelity? It has everything to do
with infidelity. Our trust has been broken. The things that we thought
were, were not. We become disoriented and the most upsetting about it
all is that we stop trusting ourselves. We start asking questions like
how did I not know? We second guess everything. So stepping into what
you want and honoring it starts to build that foundation again. We are
honoring ourselves. We’re learning to keep our commitments to ourselves
and we’re teaching our brains that we matter.

As we build trust with ourselves, we show up differently in our
relationships. We become more direct. We say what we mean and we mean
what we say. We don’t try to control anyone, but we truly make the
decisions that best serve our highest desires and we welcome people into
that. Our tolerance for tension grows as we find new ways of being in
relationships, whether we stay in the marriage or not. We are changing
the relationship with ourselves.

So my friends, what you want matters. You matter. Whether it’s honoring
your desire to garden or to eat clean food or to have a higher paying
job or to have your own office or a clean organized space or a
relationship you both thrive in, a pet, piano lessons or anything else
you can dream up, I want you to remember this. That desire was put there
for a reason. You listening to that and honoring it and seeing it as a
marker on a path toward your greater good, toward what you are capable
of, will help you get there faster. Much faster than by denying it and
hiding it and pretending like it’s not there.

The honoring of that person is the very thing that will help you grow.
And as you become the person comfortable asking for it, you’ll grow in
your capacity to have even more. It’s like magic. We build momentum for
ourselves. And not only do you become the strongest version of yourself
by stepping into who you really are and what you really want, you’re
inviting other people to do the same. You’re giving them permission to
do the same. It has a ripple effect.

So what do you want? Take some time to deeply answer that question. Of
course the objections will come, but I want you to lean into the trust
that you are worthy of good things and that you will become the person
that you came here to be by making those things a reality. They are
yours for the taking. Go get them. Thank you so much for being here
again. I appreciate it and I will see you next week. Bye.

Thank you for listening to the Heal From Infidelity podcast. If you
would like to be kept in the know about upcoming free classes, new
podcast episodes, and other ways of working with me, go subscribe to my
weekly email. You can subscribe at andriagiles.com forward slash lies
dash about dash infidelity forward slash. Again, it’s andriagiles.com
forward slash lies dash about dash infidelity forward slash.

I will see you next time.