Ep9. Family is the final exam

In this episode, Katie talks with CEO of CRR Global, Marita Fridjhon, about how we can use the ORSC principles with our families and also about some of the challenges this can inevitably bring up for even the most seasoned practitioner- hence the title: family is the final exam!


Marita Fridjhon is a co-founder and CEO of CRR Global and mentor to an ever-growing community of practitioners in the field of Relationship Systems work. She designs curriculum and operates training programs in Relationship Systems Work for coaches, executives and teams. She came to this work from an extensive background in Clinical Social Work, Community Development, Process Work, Family Systems Therapy, Business Consulting and Alternative Dispute Resolution. She has an international mentor coaching practice of individuals, partnerships and teams. Her primary focus in coaching is on systemic change, leveraging diversity, creative communication, deep democracy in conflict management and the development of Learning Organizations.

For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time

We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.

Transcript

Key 

KC – Katie Churchman 

MF - Marita Fridjhon

[Intro 00:00 – 00:09] 

KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and in this episode I’m talking, once again, with Marita Fridjhon, CEO and co-founder of CRR Global, about how we can use the ORSC principles with our families, and also about some of the challenges that can emerge even for the most seasoned practitioner, hence the title: Family is the final exam. Alongside heading up CRR Global, Marita is mentor to an ever-growing community of practitioners in the field of Relationship Systems work. Her primary focus in coaching is on systemic change, leveraging diversity, creative communication, deep democracy in conflict management and the development of learning organizations. So, without further ado, I bring you, Marita Fridjhon. 

KC – Welcome back Marita, so, today we’re discussing how we can use some of the ORSC principles with our families and also some of the challenges this can inevitably bring up for even the most seasoned practitioner. 

MF – I’m sat here giggling, Katie, because I’m never nervous before a call with you, but just the name, the title of the call, Family is the Final Exam, like oh my goodness, this is, where do we go with that, and I think, that’s I think the piece that I want to normalize, is that its family is the final exam, it is the place where sometimes often it is more difficult to walk our talk, to be skillful, to be evolved, to fill in the blanks, than in our situations that we are not that closely related too. 

KC – Mmm. And thanks for normalizing that because I think sometimes we can undermine all of the work we do as ORSCers because we lose our temper with a family member. 

MF – Yes, yes. It’s so interesting, I was sitting with a group of colleagues a while back and I actually brought the question, ok, so all of you, you’ve got partners, whether you are married or whether you’ve been together for however long. Can we just do a funny and light thing about the places where you’ve failed most spectacularly as a coach and a human being, in an interaction with your partner? And everybody started laughing, and the stories that came out was just amazing, people would go looking back on it now I’m ashamed, but this is what happened. Again, I just want to normalize it and it really is how can we share those spectacular face falls and learn from one another about it? Well when something similar happened to me, this is what helped me. That kind of stuff. 

KC – And what I love about these moments and what I’ve always loved through my ORSC journey and working with other co-leads is when they’re shared. 

MF – Yes. 

KC – Because I think sometimes we can be put on a pedestal as ORSC coaches, and actually we’re human too and we make mistakes and we’re very much in a constant state of learning and growing and developing. 

MF – Yeah, and I think you’ve put your finger on something there Katie because I do think that so many of us as coaches are partnered with a spouse or a partner who have not had coach training and is not in that same industry. And to some extent, they might experience, or unconsciously, we do have rank when it comes to those kinds of things because we’re the coach. So I’ve seen so often in working with couples how that is one of the things that shows up. Where the husband, the wife would say you’re the coach so you know best, right? You could see how underneath that there’s an incredible vulnerability. 

KC – I also find it annoying when some of the things that I’ve shared, say with my husband, come back at me at the worst moment. Like say I’ll be angry about a colleague and then he’ll say ‘what’s the 2% truth in that Katie?’. And it’s those moments where it’s like oh, I wish I hadn’t shared this, but it’s so useful to have the mirror held up. 

MF – I’ve heard so many of our friends, colleagues and clients talk about how one of the worst things they did, coaching colleagues, friends, colleagues, the worst thing they did was enrolled their spouse for an ORSC training, because then they got everything thrown back at them. 

KC – That’s brilliant. 

MF – Yeah. And then here’s my person, you know, emotional share moment. It doesn’t get better, sometimes it gets worse, when your partner also is a coach. And in my, our, situation, a co-founder and designer of the material. Because then, who knows best? It’s just a huge debate that’s not always helpful! So it’s, again, I think we all fall into it, it’s how do we recover and what are the pieces that brings us there. And it’s also interesting, Katie, when, you and I talked about this before, when you look at some of the research pieces, when you look at the Gottman research and you listen to some of the Gottman tapes. A recorded session of experiences with their clients. So many of it is the arguments and the fights happen on a very, it’s basically the same challenge whatever it is, but it happens in a very different mental level, in some cases, from where we are or assume we are. We just become much more sophisticated in our evolution, in how to use a team talks. One of the best examples I see is just ignoring the phone call or ignoring a repair bit, ignoring the reach out when you’re not, the partner not ready yet. That’s in the Gottman way, that’s a reject prepare bit, and it doesn’t matter how sophisticated and how trained we are in this work, how we reject repair bits might just be much more sophisticated. So we don’t recognize that that’s actually what we’re doing. 

KC – That’s such a good point, and I guess even some contempt might show up in thinking we know best, because we’re the coach, and actually that’s not listened and leaning in with curiosity at all. 

MF – Yeah. And I also think that, you know, just when you take the real life situation where, just think about the chaos that we are in at the moment globally. Whether you think politically, economically, climate change, it doesn’t matter where the focus on, there is stress, tension and aggression everywhere. All of our tendencies are to be as skillful as possible out there, with that. In our professional role, as coaches, as leaders. You know, fully in the blanks. The place that we come home too, whether it’s away from having been on Zoom the whole day and just walking into the living room, where we then land is in a fatigued, often emotionally exhausted state, and who is in front of us? Our partner. And those, I think, are some of the critical places where, there’s one of the, you know the idiot series of books, relationship skills for idiots or something, I can’t remember what it’s called but it’s one of that series, there’s one activity that is hug till relaxed. That is one of the best practices or rituals I think that we can have when that happens. When you come off a call that was just so triggering or stressful, you don’t know what to do and you go to your spouse, it’s from a neuroscience perspective and our serotonin levels, it is safer to ask for a hug than to ventilate what just happened, so it’s those kinds of things where, I think that’s a different level of evolution for us in our partner/spouse relationships. 

KC – Yeah. It makes me quite sad sometimes, I know it’s quite a funny topic. It’s sad to think that the people we love the most, they get the worst part of us. And that makes me, sort of you look back over your life and it’s a shame really that they don’t get so much of the shine and the joy, they get some of the other stuff that isn’t so easy to be with. 

MF – Yeah. Yeah and again, that’s also part of what shows up in the longevity research, that your partner or your best friends are second and third as the things that help people live longer. It’s not the top one, is, but they call them, because they are our frenemies. Friends, it’s so easy for our friend and our partner to become the enemy but it was triggered by something which happened much earlier in the day which didn’t have enough time to process it or space to be with it because if I enter in a conversation it will become about my partner. 

KC – Mmm. It makes me realize as well, how complicated the word love is. Because love is all-encompassing in terms of it holds all, or it should at least, in my understanding, hold all the different emotions, so it inevitably will be messy, yet the cultural narratives which are dominant don’t tell us that it’s ok to have that in our relationship, particularly if we’re relationship systems workers, we feel like we should be in five to one positive to negative all the time. 

MF – Yeah, and I think that, you know, just when you talk about the cultural piece, if you just think about the number of biracial relationships, which is visibly diverse. But we then also look at cultural diversity in relationships. I was born in South Africa. Faith is American. I now live in the US which is the dominant culture that I live in, but cultural norms in the United States, from an I-centered, we-centered perspective is very different. So there’s a place where I can really easily make Faith the enemy for what I perceive as an American habit. And the other way round. So the culture, and we do, it just is. So there are, you’re right there are so much complexity. Because what you see in front of you is just the top layer of the complexity that lives in that third entity. 

KC – Mm. You said in another episode about how what happens in the system of me is probably happening in the system out there, that makes me think that we’ve gotta give ourselves some more compassion because there’s a lot going on out there and of course it’s going to show up in our family systems, of course it is. 

MF – Yeah, it’s that parallel process thing. The arguments that we have with one another is a parallel process, maybe on a softener scale, maybe in a more sophisticated way, but it is a parallel process to what happens out there. And recognizing something like that, like what is happening to me right now is not about Faith, it’s not about fill in the the blank of the partner. It is about something else. That’s when I will go to Faith and say I’m going to take the dog for a walk because I’m not fit for human consumption. Because if I show up next to her, in front of her, it will become about her, but it’s my trigger point about something else that, it will become projected there, it just will. So recognizing, so there’s a, ­­­Steven Ledean, we talked about as well, previously wrote his book and it was called Relationship’s a Spiritual Journey. So it really is a spiritual journey and we do fail and will fail. But how do we evolve from it? How do we own it? And I can share so many stories of, we have on our refrigerator, there’s a sticker up there that says ‘Find right’. Find right is what we talk about in alchemy that is find something right that is being said and reaffirm what the intention was, and then proceed forward. But find right. If you don’t find right you cannot do anything else. So find right is the thing that sits on the refrigerator, and I can’t tell you how many times I would walk to Fath with the find right sign and go like that, well, that’s not helping. And other times where she does the same thing, and that’s not helping. So you can see how even the things that we train, that we teach, those are the very things that we will fail at. And how do we recognize that and own that, it’s huge. 

KC – I have a terrible example of this. So what I love about leading as a front of the room leader is you get to really live and breathe the material. Oh my gosh, though, it does point out your flaws. And I was doing a virtual lead and I’d just done the team toxins grid and then I proceeded to take a break and I went and blamed my husband, very much went into blame, and it was just some wonderful moment of gosh, you never arrive with this work. I think, there’s a danger in thinking that we do. 

MF – Well, sometimes I think that when we think of trainings it is a little bit in the direction of matching and navigating the speed of change because trainings are fast. Even the long ones, it’s a deep dive fairly quickly into something that you need to be qualified for in order to go there. That is something like the speed of change. When we talk about the evolution, I think very specific in all levels, but I think that the final test is in the intimate relationship. There we are actually working the place of evolution. None of these things can be solved fast, and there is no there, there, the more quote/unquote “evolved” we become, the more sophisticated we’ll become at breaking all the rules, but then there is the how can I then sit with myself and re-do, and what is the apology that I own? And that’s one of the other things, I think there are certain cultures that struggle with apologizing, and sees it as something that is self-demeaning, but owning where I mis-stepped, for me, is part of right relationship. And out of this situation sometimes it can be abused, I think so. But I think that ownership of here’s the work that I need to do. And one of the other things that’s a more skillful moment that sometimes happens between Faith and me as well, one of us will come and say there’s something I want to talk about but I need to do some work on myself first. 

KC – Ooh, that’s great. 

MF – But it’s also freaky. If I go to Faith she does woah, woah, woah, what’s the topic? So you can see how, even when the topic comes up she goes ohhh, this arises. It’s just we are so finely tuned to one another, and we care so much, I think deep underneath it is the caring and wanting to fine right throughout, and the wanting to be able to find right and the fear of failure. And then it’s easier to become aggressive. 

KC – You said about apologies don’t always work, and is that when we don’t create an action or intention to change a behavior or is it when we’re using it in a sort of malicious way to get something we want? 

MF – Erm, an apology where it’s not authentic, I think, is useless. I do think there are cultural preferences. There are certain cultures that will, might culturally interpret an apology as a way of managing something, and that it’s fake or something about it’s not right. So there are certain situations in certain cultures that we need to be careful, in my experience. And the question really has me wanting to look a little bit more at cross cultural intelligence from that perspective. Because I know that in the culture that I grew up with there was something, I lost my parents when I was very young and there was something that I remember from them, that they had a vow with one another that they will not go to bed angry with one or the other. And I think some of that is, so how do we navigate that? I think in cultures where there often is a threat to survival there’s an awareness that we may go to sleep and not wake up together, the both of us. So I think there’s something built in there. I also, when I first moved here, there were, and some of my international colleagues as well, when I would own something and say you’re right, I missed that, I’m sorry. But I had one of my leaders say to me, Marita you’ve gotta stop apologizing. And I don’t think that I over apologize, but I realize I have become more scarce with those kinds of apologies because in some situations it gets misinterpreted. 

KC – Mm, interesting. I think what I’m realizing is how dynamic we are, and it’s very easy to forget isn’t it, with our families. It’s not just about the systems out there, but also the system of us is so complicated, like not just in terms of all the selves but hormonally speaking it’s complicated, it’s not necessarily like this steady this is who you are, there’s so many things at play!

MF – Yes, yes. And I think that there is a privilege that we as coaches and trainers have, because we have access to more tools, but if I could ask you, me and everybody that listens to this podcast who have done any our ORSC training, or any relationship training, how often do you do, do I, use our own tools on ourselves? How often do we sit down and do a third entity exercise between ourselves? How often do we just even say something like ok, I’m going to come and visit in your land, so tell me what’s happening there. I am so busy defending my own land that I’m doing exactly to my partner what we are paid to coach out there in corporate environment. So there’s just a place where I think that the next layer of evolution for us is about how do we actively and physically, in some ways, walk the talk of the very work that we’re training. And how do we bring that without bringing rank? And that means that if I’m with somebody who’s never done the training, my language may need to be different, I may need to say to somebody ok, ok, let me go and come and sit over there with you, and say what is it that’s going on for you? And you can feel how that’s very different to saying I do want to come to your land, because that’s code language already. So I think that’s the other piece is how do we, I don’t want to, I want the tools and the skills that we have to remain with integrity but there are places where we’re not busy training somebody, we might use different language. Create different access points. 

KC – And also, the spirit of systems, we can also lean into the system ourselves. So I’ve had coaches in the past, my husband and I currently have a couple’s coach and I think that there’s so much that we can’t see from our vantage point and however clever we become we’re still not going to get that other person coach view of our own relationship. 

MF – Yes, yes. Well, and it’s so interesting because it reminds me of, and I think we have different access to it now even in the coaching industry, it reminds me of when I was being trained as a family assistance therapist, how we were working behind one-way mirrors and those were the years where there was a television screen out there that we, you know, shot the interviews from, and at some stage one of the actions that we had, and this is where revealing comes from, was to pause the photography, turn the sound down and ask the family to look at what happened in the scene and tell us what they see. 

KC – Wow. Oh my gosh, that’s so powerful. Oh wow. So it’s like an actual mirror for them. 

MF – It’s an actual mirror for them and they, remember the whole thing we were talking about, language, content itself, is not what meaning making is about. Meaning making is the complexity of hearing the words but reading all the other signals of what actually is happening. That’s what people see when you turn the sound down so that you don’t hear the words, that I think were the right words but I can see my actions, my expression, my body movements, while I say those words, because it may be loving but the rest of the gesture is out there. You know, and again, that’s why it’s so, for us, when we can’t do that, how can I go and sit literally next to my partner because that brings the physical contact, that brings the serotonin piece, that’s already different as well, then we ask, ok, help me understand what’s going on for you. 

KC – And then we can start to close that gap between how we think we’re being and how we’re actually showing up, and I think there’ll always be a gap. 

MF – Yeah, and being side by side does one other thing, it prevents my partner or me to look at me while I’m telling them, because the moment I look at them, can you see again, it’s the non-spoken, it’s that, but if we’re side by side and talk our there, communication had a much better shot at being heard and perceived and understand. And you know, we were talking, the name of our podcast is Family is the Final Exam. All these antidotes that I’m talking about and you and I share here comes from places where I’ve failed miserably at doing that. 

KC – That’s going to be so heartwarming for so many people to hear, Marita. I know you and Faith talk a lot about how people have a crisis of confidence in certification and feel like oh gosh, they can’t be systems coaches because they’re going through a divorce or they can’t navigate their kids schooling issue right now, and actually that makes them the perfect systems workers! 

MF – Exactly. And to, you know, that whole thing about its ok to not be ok, to know what I don’t know and now have that diminish me. Own it and then how can I do it better, how can I do it differently? That’s where, that’s where the reflective work comes in I think. Because the moment I think about score performance it’s very difficult for me to own what I don’t know. That’s why I think we will see and do see more and more of what happens in supervision practices. That there is more room for reflection and the reflection is true supervision. The other pieces are mentoring, here’s what you could do, should do. And how do we become, one of the exercises that Faith and I do do, that we, that come from way back in the beginning of designing the work, is the five minutes of just, 15 minutes or five minutes, take turns, 15 minutes or five minutes, because 15 minutes is a long time to do this, to just listen to your partner talking about their experience. Where they are, what’s going on with them. It’s a great activity when people come home or sit down for the first time together. Now there’s one rule – two rules. The one rule is while I am having that conversation about myself, with you about myself and my experiences, you cannot interrupt me except asking a question. That also means I cannot say anything about you because that impacts your ability to listen. So I’m talking about my experiences, this is not about you, I’m talking about my day, my experiences. And then most people end up doing it for five minutes and that really has a lot of feedback because it’s a lot of time. You run out of things to say in about three minutes. The next rule is then that we don’t discuss it for 24 hours, so that both of us can go away, because what I’ve just ventilated, spoken to you, in my own ability to do that already will be different by tomorrow. So, take some time in between and don’t do these things back-to-back. Don’t let me go first and then you immediately go after me, because whatever it is that I say will impact what you say. And then it’s no longer just your experience. But can you feel how all of those things is why I’m talking about the base of evolution, because it slows us down. None of these things can be fixed with speed, it just can’t 

KC – No, and it makes me think, reflective practice is so many things but also, you said about the 24 hour pause, so sleep in a way is a process for us to reflect and integrate information. 

MF – Yes. Time is what we need to process and integrate, it could be sleep, could be meditation, could it be whatever, yes. But there is, there’s a time piece we just emotionally can’t move as fast as our brain wants to dictate to us. We need to let it evolve. That’s why one of the competencies that we talk about in systems inspired coaching is that competency of hearing, seeing and sensing. I need to hear myself, I need to be able to see based on feedback I get from others what it is that my impact is. And I definitely need to have a space where I can sense what’s really going on with me, that’s Arnie Mandell’s work, signals and channels and stuff like that. It’s one of the reasons why so many people have dogs! 

KC – Really? 

MF – Because dogs allow us to do all of that and they will continue to love us. 

KC – That’s brilliant. I’ve now got another reason of my long list of reasons about why we should get a dog, I’m going to add that. 

MF – Well yeah, it’s one of the reasons why! And it’s animals. It’s so interesting how now in active living communities and in different places are the constructs where there’s a, in neighborhoods there’s a neighborhood garden. Not everybody’s got backyards but they can go to the garden and can garden together and that’s, again, it’s a little bit more of a social construct even though you know the people. It’s one of the reasons, and it is that I reflect on stuff, I’m distracted from the everyday doing list. That sets me up differently for, in better human consumption if we’re getting back to my partner. So, that’s why I think all shelters where emptied during covid because everyone got a dog or a cat or an animal. It’s the tactile thing as well. 

KC – What advice would you have for someone right now who’s perhaps in the middle of something that might be quite challenging with their family? 

MF – It’s so interesting, there’s so many things. I think some of what we talked about already is there, is to, there’s a range of complexities to this. So, if it is a difficult situation that requires immediate action, that’s a different piece and there you need to be more mentor-like, I don’t know. But for the rest I really think it is that place am I capable to sit next to them and, you know, I’m a step-mom, I have been in all my marriages, and not an easy place but how can I sit down with my spouses child and get their side of the story? Rather than mine which is differently affected to them from how Faith is, for example, with Aaron. Am I sitting there with some taking sides with Faith, against Aaron? Or am I taking sides with Aaron against Faith? You know, you can see in those kinds of things the complexity. And how is it that I can sit down next to and simply sit in the experience of the other, know more about it, make an agreement, I just want to know what you experience and I’m not going to process or try and do anything about it, I just want to hear. And hold onto that one because I may have to get up and walk away with the dog for a walk because there may be things that’s difficult for me to hear or that I don’t agree with, but the other person, the family member having had the chance to speak might then be better able to listen on the next round after I come back, are you willing to come and sit with me and just hear what’s happening here, we’re not going to fix it, we’re not going to try and do… we’re going to do exactly the same as we’ve just done. It’s, again, can you see it takes time, so I think, that’s one thing. And I think that for families they often, it really, it’s difficult. One of the reasons, Katie, why coaches that I mentor I insist, it doesn’t matter whether they work in 400 companies or what they do corporately, I want for them to coach a couple. That’s more difficult and more challenging from the work that I do corporately, it just is. It just is. So, it’s again, it’s that thing about how can families, what is the version that we can bring to families that begins with a DTA? A design team alliance. Design family alliance that is not about the agreement about what the outcome of the crisis or the challenge will be, but how do we want to be together while we do that? Because if we go straight to the challenge, it aint gonna work. And that’s why I’m saying it depends on whether it’s a urgent decision that needs to be made because that brings in different practices. But if you have the ability to, the space and time to begin to do those basic things, find out what’s happening In everybody’s land. Make an agreement about how we want to be together when this shows up in your land, Katie. When you feel you’re gonna be dismissed because you’re not important enough or you don’t say it well enough, whatever, then how can we together as a family design how we want to be when that happens so that we don’t have Katie feel like that, it’s that kind of… we put it in simple terms but it’s deep work! 

KC – Mm, that’s what I’m coming away with, I think, space and time, which sound simple but aren’t easy, they are so important. Bringing this practice to family. 

MF – Yeah. And I think that, again, going back to research that Gottman five to one ratio of positivity to negativity, I think we just need to forget about the statistic and make sure that there is a hundred more positive things than negative things that we do. And we’re living at a time where it’s the other way round. I find fault more, I find wrong more, I criticize more, I’m disappointed more – that’s a set-up for failure. So how can we really make that a spiritual practice? It is as true in corporate environments; I see it every day. Where somebody is disappointed in the performance of the team. Somebody is disappointed, well, that’s bad for company morale but it’s even worse when it happens within families. It becomes, it’s those other things in the end that I think become terrible. 

KC – Yeah, and it sounds a little twee sometimes, positives and negatives, but what I’ve noticed is when there are big arguments which inevitably happen because life is constantly changing, and when you’ve got a bank account you’ve got that equity there, so you don’t end up in debt. You’ve got that positivity bank balance to fall back on. 

MF – That’s it. And again, you know, my moto has become what is yours to do and what is it that you are capable to do? Do that for positivity, start small but really, I mean it’s an easy rehearsal. Sit in the morning, sit down in front of your computer or drink coffee or whatever you do, what are five positive things I can do for my partner today? I can just go into the office and tap her on the shoulder and say have a great call. When I go buy groceries I see, brining Faith in here because family is the final test, when I buy groceries, Faith is, she is addicted to cherry pies. If I see a small cherry pie anywhere I will buy that. It’s those kinds of, the positivity things are actually easy if we put our attention to it. And if I can do five of those things a day, by the time we have an argument it will be a different type of argument. So I think those are the pieces. 

KC – That’s brilliant, almost sort of strategizing. Particularly if you’ve got hard days ahead, like maybe you've got a long car journey or something that’s challenging, strategizing like how am I going to find five small but positive moments to add in. 

 MF – Yeah. And how can we make an agreement that both of us will do that? The other practice that is really important is to, you know, the gratitude practices. What are some of the things, let’s sit down together and talk about it before we talk about the difficulties. What are some things, five things that we are grateful for? You start. Faith always asks that question and then I’ve got to start. So it’s those kinds of things, again, can you feel how it really is not rocket science, how to build a steady flow of positive. It doesn’t have to be buy a diamond ring, it really is that daily currency of feeding, because in that I’m feeding myself as well. 

KC – I’ve got a funny one for you. So I always ask my husband, Dan, what three things you’re grateful for, and he’ll sometimes now say when you stop talking. It’ll be just as he’s about to fall asleep as well and I hit him with the three things you’re grateful for! The downsides of living with a coach! 

MF – Yeah! Those are, so you may need to put another rule in there, what are three things that you are grateful for that doesn’t include a negative response to me. 

KC – Add that in the T&Cs, I think I might have to. 

MF – And on a good day we can laugh about it. But on a bad day that’s just the next nick, and I think that’s a, yeah, so the positivity ratio I think for family is probably might be easier than to instill in a corporate team, and sometimes it might be more difficult depending on the challenges. I mean, why should I be grateful when blah, blah, blah. So, again, there’s a book, I can’t remember the author, called Atomic Habits. 

KC – Yes, James Clear. 

MF – How do I build the atomic habit of brining positivity first to any interaction I have? And really, that’s a massive enquiry to walk the talk with. 

KC – It is. And also, how do I look over a day, a day that was really hard, and maybe I find something so small like the taste of coffee, the first sip of coffee in the morning, maybe that’s a positive moment. 

MF – That’s it, that’s it. I’m so glad you bring that example because we’re sitting here talking about family is the final test, and when we now talk about positivity it is in the direction of positivity that I have for what’s happening in my family, but I need to start feeding myself first and it is that first sip of coffee. It is waking up and being irritated because the birds were so loud out there. But then appreciating that I’m in a place that’s this quiet that the birds wake me up at 4’o’clock. So sometimes in our irritation we can also find the positive. But until and unless we can build positivity, even in the face of negativity, survival is just challenging for us and those around us. 

KC - I am so grateful as always Marita for this gorgeous conversation. I love your humility and your ability to share so much of who you are and that’s a real gift to the world because I think it’s very easy to see someone like you and think oh, Marita’s got it sorted. And to know that actually you have those struggles too, I think is helpful for a lot of us. 

MF – Well, and thank you Katie, I wanna do the same for you, it’s the conversations between us evolve in the podcast not from questions that we’ve rehearsed before, but it really is the flow of that human connection. And I’m aware of how much positivity flows from one another in these and also how much positivity there is in the experience within myself. Being able to be vulnerable and speak like this and I cross fingers that as people listen to it, something similar will help for them and happen for them and that it’s ok to not be ok in being perfect all the time. What is the atomic habit I can develop around the place where I wasn’t perfect, that is not blaming somebody else for my imperfection. 

KC – I love that. I think I need that on my wall somewhere, thank you so much Marita. 

MF – Yes, somewhere! Yeah. Thank you Katie, it was a wonderful conversation, more to come. 

[Music outro begins 38:00] 

KC – I adored the openness of this conversation with Marita around some of the challenges we can face when trying to walk our talk as coaches with our families. Here are some of my key takeaways. How can we share our so-called fail moments so that we can normalize these very human challenges and use them as an opportunity to connect and learn together? The very things that we share as coaches are the things that we will fail at with our families and friends, so how can we get better at recognizing that and owning that? As we grow we may feel like we’re at a different developmental level, yet so often we end up becoming more subtle at using toxic behavioral patterns. What are you bringing home to your loved ones. There might be a simply more sophisticated or subtle version of blame, defensiveness, stonewalling or contempt. What make you be saying with your gestures, body language and facial expressions that brings an unconscious energy and impacts your communication? How might this be bringing a different meaning to the words that you’re using? We’re living in a time where negative interactions are outweighing positive interactions. We find fault more and we find the other wrong more, so how can we rebalance the positive to negative ratio by making small moments of positivity like gratitude a daily practice? These small acts of positivity build up the positivity bank account so that when challenges do come along, you don’t end up in positivity debt. Thank you for listening to the Relationship Matters podcast. If you enjoyed this episode please share it with your colleagues and friends so that we can continue to spread these ideas across the globe, and if you haven’t already, do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. And for more information on the ORSC courses please visit CRRGlobal.com. For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. We believe Relationship Matters from humanity to nature to the larger whole. 

[Music outro 40:41 – end]