Ep 254 – Workshop with Zach and Laura

Zach is stretching it out. Laura is feeling REALLY good about her husband. They discuss their upcoming workshop and what it takes for couples to make progress (hint: the tools alone are not enough).

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Zach – 00:03
Everybody, welcome and thank you for listening to this episode of Marriage Therapy video. My name is Zach Brittle. I’m here with Laura Hack. Did you hear the rumor that we are hosting a seven Principles workshop here in about a month, First weekend in March. We would love for you to have us. If you’re wondering, like, what is that thing we’re going to tell you all about it in this episode.

Zach – 00:21
If you already know that you’re interested, go to a marriage therapy Radio.com Registration pages There. We would love to have you. It’s going to be a great time if you don’t know about it, but you might be interested. I have good news for you. This is a very cool conversation. Stick around.

Laura – 00:35
I’m just excited to tell you about all the purging that I’ve enjoyed.

Zach – 00:38
Pretty cool, because this is officially our first episode in February, and we all know.

Laura – 00:43
February is managing in January, which is ironic because I’m wearing orange and orange is the new black gray. I’m pretty sure we’ve said this to each.

Zach – 00:52
Other and years old.

Laura – 00:53
Five years ago.

Zach – 00:55
Yeah, Orange is the New. Black is like ten years old.

Laura – 00:57
I love the way you say orange. Orange. Yeah. Okay, so let me tell you about my prediction.

Zach – 01:03
Let me. Okay. Yes, but you’re purging. Okay. Very quickly to say I am stretching. I got this very cool email from this lady. This is spoke Cas. Her name starts with K. I don’t know if her name is Karen, but.

Laura – 01:16
She’s very.

Zach – 01:17
Sweet and submissive. It is Lisa and Kim. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I’m going to say I’m going to add this very nice email from a lady named Kim who sent me some stretching videos, and I’m going to do it. I am doing it. I’ve started doing it. And but I actually upgraded I got like a subscription to a little stretching service.

Zach – 01:34
So, yeah, we’ll see how that goes. I don’t think it’s my goal for it’s like my official official goal, but it’s somewhere in the neighborhood off of that. So thank you, Kim or Lisa or whatever. Yes. And also tell me what you’re purging.

Laura – 01:46
Okay. Before you just started talking about you just started out talking about stretching, which reminded me of this email that my husband sent me. And I don’t know, like, how can I put it? I love my husband to pieces. I find many ways in which I appreciate him, but he did something that gave me a full on lady boner and I was so excited.

Laura – 02:10
Maybe that I should have said like, Hey, I’m going to say Lady Boner and maybe cover your ears if you just.

Zach – 02:17
Did three like pretty explicit interviews.

Laura – 02:19
People say, no, yeah, do not listen to this in the car.

Zach – 02:23
You want to be Candace Hornbeck’s best friend?

Laura – 02:26
We are already our best friends, actually. Oh, good. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve been hanging out. She was. She was brilliant. Emily is brilliant. I actually started listening to her new podcast, which is really fun. Sure. Yes. So, okay, I have to tell you. So Husband sent me an email. This is what it was like. Yes. My husband. And it was titled like 2023 Fitness and Life goals or something like that.

Laura – 02:50
So all our romantically.

Zach – 02:52
You’re like, Oh.

Laura – 02:52
I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, it’s getting hot and heavy. And here he’s seeking my love language. So he outlined. He was like, This is how I want to eat, this is how I want to sleep, this is how I want to recover. This is all these things. And literally I yeah, it was like slipping off my chair.

Laura – 03:09
He was really speaking like the good stuff to me. Yeah. Okay.

Zach – 03:13
So then you were like, and you have still a few days because.

Laura – 03:17
It’s not quite February. Yeah, he’s just making some big life changes. He said, Oh, this is the part where you said, I hate hearing you were upset with me, that you were hearing about major life changes.

Zach – 03:27
I do not get upset with you.

Laura – 03:30
You do too.

Zach – 03:32
I don’t think obsess the right word how it is. You sent a text to me and Jason.

Laura – 03:37
Yes.

Zach – 03:37
And it had a major piece of life news. And I was like, I do not like hearing about life news of yours in this way.

Laura – 03:44
Yeah, well, we’ve kind of talked about this before on the podcast. Yeah.

Zach – 03:47
Yeah.

Laura – 03:48
Where has been a little bit where we’ve talked about switching roles and the roles that we would need to switch is that I would become the breadwinner and really have to focus too.

Zach – 03:58
I thought you were talking about you and me. I was like, No, we haven’t talked about this ever.

Laura – 04:02
Oh no.

Zach – 04:03
You’re like, We’ve talked about this, you know, are we just switching roles? And I’m like, Wait, what do we talk about? Okay. You and Ryan. Yes. Have have indeed gone back and forth sometimes about who is going to carry the the lion’s share. Yes. Yes. I remember this.

Laura – 04:15
And I have I mean, this last week, all of these conversations that we’ve been having, all the hot tub conversations, all the long car ride conversations, I feel so aligned with him and I just feel really connected is super interesting. But yeah, we are preparing as a household to swap roles and the goal is to be able to give him the freedom to grow, grow something really special but not have income for potentially a while, which means that I need to work more.

Laura – 04:47
So that’s, that’s what I’m like.

Zach – 04:49
Wait a second. Did I hear you say your hot tub is working again?

Laura – 04:54
Yeah, it’s working. Do you want to come hang out?

Zach – 04:56
Well, yeah. I mean.

Laura – 04:57
Yeah.

Zach – 04:57
But I was so excited about it the last time, and you’re like, it’s.

Laura – 05:00
It’s broken.

Zach – 05:01
It’s not.

Laura – 05:01
Friendly. I probably just told you is broken, so I didn’t have to see you in your swim shorts.

Zach – 05:07
And I got my bellybutton fixed. So now we can. Yeah, now it’s not is that is unseemly.

Laura – 05:15
Oh, okay, we got it.

Zach – 05:18
It’s new people, so. Yeah, well, that’s exciting for you guys. I’m excited. And, yes, I’m going to come visit. I’m going to come visit. What is it looks like in a month because we’re going to do this workshop.

Laura – 05:33
I’m so excited. I have just, you know, COVID threw everything a wrench in everything. But we did live workshops in Seattle, which was a lot of fun because we got to meet our listeners one on one. We had clients that came, which was really fun, like Sabbath. You’re just going to say your first name, right? Well.

Zach – 05:55
Reality is definitely going to send me like a thumbs up or something. You’re going to take us both and be like, Oh, she’s going to feel famous.

Laura – 06:01
Said my name and Kim is over there. Like, my name is not Kim or Karen. Okay, So, yes, the workshop is coming up. I’m super excited. And that’s actually I think what we should talk about today is I’ve had several people kind of reach out, go, What is this thing? Or why would I be interested?

Zach – 06:21
It’d be good for me to because I don’t know if I remember.

Laura – 06:23
You’re a little unclear.

Zach – 06:26
You’re talking to I’m doing this thing and a couple of weeks and. Sorry, guys out there. Listen, this is a big difference between me and Laura. I’m doing this thing in a couple of weeks, and I found out that I was the second person that they wanted to do it, because they asked Laura first and I was like, No, I’m not going to do it.

Zach – 06:42
And I was like, You do it. Why didn’t you do it? She’s like, Because it’s so much work. And I was like, an hour’s worth of work and you’re like, Not for me. It’s like, But I was the kid who did like his third period homework and second period.

Laura – 06:54
And.

Zach – 06:54
Second period homework and first period, you probably were way ahead of the way.

Laura – 06:58
Ahead of the game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We talked about that because I was like, I like to have everything like my PowerPoint and then I run through a PowerPoint. You just wing it. So anyhow, anyway, so I visited my brother last week and we both got a good giggle at how the two of us have been aging in the last several years.

Laura – 07:18
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Laura – 07:39
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Laura – 08:02
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Laura – 08:31
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Zach – 08:51
You’re getting people who are asking you and.

Laura – 08:54
They want to know a little bit more about the workshop. So yes, I mean, sure, here’s the cool thing is we really do we, we want to do this for our listeners because it’s been so long, because we have done this in the past, but we haven’t offered it for years. So we’re going to do the Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work workshop.

Laura – 09:13
A little background about that is that I actually co-developed this program. So when I was working at the Gottman Institute. So backing up a little bit more, John Gottman wrote this book. It’s called The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. It is the the culmination of his 40 years of research in one book, and it’s super popular. It’s been out there for 20 years.

Laura – 09:36
It’s been translated into many, many names.

Zach – 09:38
It’s like, Oh, is it this perpetually top ten? Yeah, top five.

Laura – 09:42
Like it’s up there with marriage books. Yeah, the five love languages and yeah, the Seven Principles comes up. So I was at the institute back in, I want to say like 2011, sitting around a conference table and we just sort of all kind of decided, you know, the really neat is if we took this book that people are reading and we made it into a workshop because sometimes books don’t get read or the idea of this book is actually to do something.

Laura – 10:09
You’re not just supposed to read it by yourself in isolation. You’re actually supposed to do something with the information and and I think it’s special. It’s like.

Zach – 10:18
Isn’t that like a novel? It’s like a like a brand new, like, mind blowing idea. People always ask me about how therapy works or whatever, and I’m like, it doesn’t.

Laura – 10:26
People work. I know. I know the response. Yeah.

Zach – 10:29
So if you listen to a podcast and go to therapy, you can buy a book, but they’re useless if you’re not like putting them into practice. So yeah. So you guys are sitting around here talking about this paperweight that you have in front of you.

Laura – 10:41
Right? Or like you remember when P90X came out and everyone was like, I’m going to buy P90X, I’m going to have like the DVD, the most ripped abs ever. And it just it just except for Ryan, for his.

Zach – 10:53
23 goals.

Laura – 10:54
He’s doing really well. He’s going to Orangetheory every single morning. 5 a.m.. I hear him marching around at 430 in the morning. It’s great. I’m really loving it. Yeah. Okay, so in this paperweight, this book, it’s great. It’s good. And also when you have a partner, one person will read the book and they’ll be so pumped. And now they’re the expert.

Laura – 11:19
I know all the ways to make the relationship better. And so it creates this weird dynamic between people. When you have one person that’s willing to read the book and you just keep pushing the book in front of your partner going, Oh, please, just read this, just read this. So now we’re just going to take all of that away from you and say all you have to do is show up.

Laura – 11:37
Just come to this workshop or you know, your.

Zach – 11:40
Book and it’s on their nightstand and you’re silently seething the whole like every night you go in there and you say, the book hasn’t moved, but.

Laura – 11:48
It’s not like it’s very if you know nothing about like the spine hasn’t been broken. Yeah. My favorite part is when couples were saying, like, we would buy one copy of the book, and then I would start writing in the margins and underlining things and highlighting it. And it was like a really passive aggressive way to be like, you know what?

Laura – 12:05
It says something about your husband not showing up or like not paying attention to you or not, you know, like our star. I think. Yeah. So anyway, I mean, the content is really phenomenal, but it’s the execution that we are more interested in and it’s the execution and doing it a way that I think Zach and I have nailed, which is I think we’re infotainment, we can give you great information, but then we can also make it interesting.

Laura – 12:34
And so what we will do is we’ll spend an evening with you on Friday, depending on where you are in the world. This is a virtual workshop. So, you know, hopefully we’re yeah, it’ll be our evening. And so you just show up and you’re going to be on film. So we’re on camera film. That’s not a word we use very often anymore, but we’ll be able to see you and Tara.

Zach – 12:59
Did you ever did you ever have a camera that had film in it, drive it up to the parking lot of like a K-Mart where there was like a little kiosk and drop it off and then wait like four days to go back and get it. And then. Did you ever do that?

Laura – 13:15
Yeah, that was not beyond me, but not like a Kmart. What were the actual physical store like?

Zach – 13:21
Coffee hut in the middle of like, No, I’m talking about like a little coffee hut that was in the middle of, like the mall parking lot. It was a drive thru. You drew up and you dropped off your film. No, no, that’s. Yeah, that’s the thing. There are, of course, like you go to Walmart, you drop off your one hour photo film canister thing.

Zach – 13:36
But I’m talking about old school like.

Laura – 13:39
Last night.

Zach – 13:40
To get your pictures back and you had like a 24 roll or 36 roll and then.

Laura – 13:43
Yeah.

Zach – 13:44
Yeah. My daughter takes 36 pictures of her face, like in like 5 minutes.

Laura – 13:51
You’re like, do you know that that would have been 1299 back in the day? Yes. To develop. And then you probably would have gotten doubles because there’s that good. You want to share a Fritos?

Zach – 14:00
Free doubles.

Laura – 14:01
Yeah, extra glossy.

Zach – 14:03
I think. You know, I think you’re I think you’re on to something in this way like content is in and of itself useless and that is really important. I think the other thing about that that book, the Seven Principles book is it’s it’s full of amazing contents, but it’s relatively dry read. It’s not it’s not a it’s not an explosive or even all that entertaining read.

Zach – 14:26
It’s got a ton of great information. So it needs this is this is my flip right? It’s it needs a context and is another context. And so I think what you guys created was this opportunity for people to come and take this this book, this text, this content, and turn it into something that looked like, how do I use it, Why does it work?

Zach – 14:44
How does one thing link to another? Why did these patterns, why are these patterns important? You know, the thing that I always talk about in the front part of any of this is there are two kinds of couples in the world. There are couples that stay married and there are couples that don’t.

Laura – 15:01
Okay.

Zach – 15:02
There’s only two categories now. You don’t have to be happily married. But like but John was kind of he got famous for being able to predict divorce. And I put that in air quotes because it’s not exactly exactly what he did. It was more like he was able to correlate divorce behaviors with people who ended up getting divorced.

Zach – 15:20
And and the seven principles are really about what you do in order to preserve and protect yourself from those predictive those predictive things. Right. And so I think, you know, if you read a book, one of the things that you’re saying is it’s really easy to highlight only the things that matter to you, Oh, this is what he’s doing or this is what I need to work on it.

Zach – 15:42
This Yeah, the workshop really does help you kind of link all that together and put some things into practice in a very safe and sort of tertiary way. Meaning like, it’s not for you to come and do all the intense work. It’s for you to come. And it’s like, it’s almost like going to Home Depot and getting like this.

Zach – 16:00
The starter, the basic starter set of seven essential tools that you need to have in your in your shed.

Laura – 16:07
Sure.

Zach – 16:08
And then and then of course, the work is to learn how to use them and learn how to build with them and learn it. I remember I did that when when I first moved to Seattle. I went to Home Depot once a month on a Saturday. We called it Home Depot School. Oh, my gosh, I haven’t thought about this forever.

Zach – 16:22
I sat there and they taught me like how to do drywall, how to do electric, how to just I was literally like for idiots like me to figure out like and I thought I was like, master, like handyman because I could now change an outlet.

Laura – 16:35
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Zach – 16:36
Look out and put it on. I thought I was the coolest.

Laura – 16:39
See, I thought I was awesome because I put out a new thermostat in and there was, like, less advanced. Right. Thank you. I did it all by myself. I was really pumped on that. Anyway.

Zach – 16:50
Now I have a guy whose name is Bernie and his business is called just called Bernie. So if something goes wrong in our house, we just go discover Bernie. Just call. Bernie comes over. We have a list for him, and he just does. I give him a list.

Laura – 17:01
Got to get back. Back on track. Some of us are ADHD and some of us are not today. That’s me pointing at you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m just like, I don’t know.

Zach – 17:12
I guess I’m just, like, excited.

Laura – 17:14
I think you are. Okay, hold on. Can I. Can I comment on this? That. Yeah. So you have this. The reason why I get really excited about the workshop is that I have a lot of couples that between our sessions are therapy sessions. They’ve already signed up and committed and said we’re going to work on a relationship. This is a priority.

Laura – 17:34
We’re going to pay Laura and we’re going to see her every other week. Great. Then I say, What happened between the session? Nothing. We always have the best of intention or it’s on our mind, right? Like, I really want to make the relationship a priority. And then I say, Well, what did you do? What did you do between nothing?

Laura – 17:53
And that’s why I really love having a workshop is it’s your time to say, I get that we’re busy. I understand that this is a priority, but unless I commit with time and money, it’s not going to happen. It’s hard to get both my partner and I on the same page focused on the same thing, and that’s literally all that we are doing.

Laura – 18:12
Because you can go and you can read this book on your own, but is it going to happen? Probably not. Or one of you is going to read it, and then it’s going to create a weird dynamic between the two of you because one of you is the expert and leaning into the relationship and the other and the other person is has good intentions but hasn’t read the book.

Laura – 18:29
And now you guys are frustrated. But when you both show up and you commit your time and your energy to the same weekend, that’s when magic happens. And it’s I mean, I joke that it’s infotainment, but the magic is not Zach and I. The magic is not the content in the book. The magic is the experience that you have with your partner.

Laura – 18:50
When you guys start turning toward each other and you have these like revelations or you have these honest conversations, or we bring you through tough conversations that you’re having in a different way and you’re experiencing each other in a different way, or you’re experiencing yourself as being more compassionate or gentle. So anyway, I just listen to it. Yeah, I.

Zach – 19:11
Have a question I like just straight up. Yes, your stuff is fantastic. It’s it’s it’s got a lot of a lot of great content. And I think we deliver it in a way that’s really helpful. I think you’ll have fun. Now, I want to ask you this question. When a couple comes in and you say, Hey, how was your week or how did it go?

Zach – 19:30
And tell me and and they would say this phrase, but like, tell me about your homework, because I hardly ever remember what homework I provide or whatever. Yeah, but when they say we didn’t do it or we didn’t do anything, what do you do next? What’s the next thing you say?

Laura – 19:42
Oh, great. I think I search for. It’s really hard because I. I think I’ve made a lot of mistakes early on where I was probably shaming or disappointed. I mean, not intentionally, but it was like, what? Why? How can I help you find the time to do this? But now.

Zach – 20:04
It comes from like your.

Laura – 20:06
My upbringing.

Zach – 20:07
Like the way you’re wired.

Laura – 20:08
Yeah.

Zach – 20:09
That’s a you sort of not grappling with your own sort of unprocessed style of doing homework or whatever.

Laura – 20:15
Like, I am not gentle on myself for not doing, not getting my to do list done. And so it’s very difficult for me to be gentle on other people. I have expectations for myself.

Zach – 20:25
Are you gentler now on yourself.

Laura – 20:27
100% learning to be way more gentle? Yeah. Yeah.

Zach – 20:31
That’s interesting, because I can imagine that. Not that you would ever say, Well, that sucks. Why didn’t you do your homework like me? But like I can see how if you’re wired as a person who’s high performing and gets their stuff done, and then somebody comes in like, I can see how that would creep into, particularly if you haven’t made peace with that part of it.

Zach – 20:48
So.

Laura – 20:48
Mm hmm.

Zach – 20:49
Okay. That’s a side note. That’s about you in particular. But as a therapist. Yeah. So couples come in and they say, we didn’t do any of what we were supposed to do last week. And then what do you do?

Laura – 21:00
And then I say, that seems to be more of the same. So I like that. That’s kind of a teary real phrase, right? Like doing more of the same. So not doing your homework is more of the same. And I tend to just try and find something that they can feel proud of because momentum, progress, change doesn’t always happen in the doing.

Laura – 21:22
It can oftentimes happen internally. So the question that I like to start with isn’t about homework. It’s tell me something that you’re really pumped about and proud about. My clients that listen to this will go yep, or assess this and I’m always ready like to your horn. What are you excited about how you showed up as the version of you that you want to be like?

Laura – 21:43
What’s the version of you that showed up in the last week that you’re really excited about? And oftentimes it’s a thought process. Oftentimes it’s choosing rose colored glasses rather than looking at your relationship and finding the negatives. It might be pausing and, you know, like maybe allowing defensiveness to wash over you and choosing not to respond defensively, but instead choosing something different.

Laura – 22:06
That’s that’s something that’s exciting. If you didn’t sit down and do your homework of reading this, listening to this, blah, blah, blah, whatever it might be, then that that’s just more of the same. But what is different? That’s what I want to know. Okay. Okay. What are you doing? I’m kind of wondering why you’re asking me this question.

Zach – 22:24
Well, because. Because it happens, right? And I’m interested in it. Okay, Well, and I think you’re doing something different than you used to do. I’m probably doing something different than I used to do. I am I’m on a I’m on a pretty significant philosophical shift in my practice right now. I think, where I sort of take it as a given that I have all the tools like I am Home Depot.

Zach – 22:46
I just like if people come to me and they want help, they that my good, good news. You want tools? Great. I got tools. I’m Home Depot. I literally have every tool take if you say, here’s my problem, I go, That’s on L7, Let’s go over to L7 and I’ll give you the tool and we’ll do it Like I can do that just because of experience and the expertise in the methodology and kind of having a sink.

Zach – 23:08
But then a couple comes back to us, Oh, we didn’t do it. And so now the shift for me is why? Why didn’t you do it? Like, what do you what can we learn about that? Because that actually is, I think, where there’s like real meat.

Laura – 23:23
Okay.

Zach – 23:23
So some people don’t do it because I’m too busy. And I go, okay, let’s talk about busy. Is that a thing we can say? Can we solve for busy? Well, maybe not everybody’s busy right now. I mean, I mean, everybody’s busy. You got kids, you got jobs, you got to sleep, you got to exercise, you know, But there’s something else in the way.

Zach – 23:40
And it and I’m interested in knowing what that is, because until unless and until people grapple with sort of why they don’t do their homework, then I, I don’t know that they ever will, you know.

Laura – 23:52
Okay, So.

Zach – 23:52
Let’s let’s say you’re thinking about doing this workshop, right? And you go, Hey, I’m going to do this workshop. It’s the right thing to do. I’m excited about it. Zach and Laura have made it sound really fun. And then you say, I’m not going to do it. We’re not going to do it. Well, exam And why not, right?

Zach – 24:07
It could be us. That’s fine. It could be that you feel like the the resource is valuable. That’s important. That’s also could be one of the answers. Why don’t we do it? We we thought about it and we decided it. It just wasn’t wasn’t a tool we needed. It wasn’t helpful. Okay, great. Don’t waste your time, you know, but I’m busy or I’m afraid or I’m, you know, we tried before and I don’t trust him not to do it again.

Zach – 24:31
You know, like, all of those things is where the real kind of where the real rubber meets the road.

Laura – 24:37
So here’s what I think about homework or why people don’t do something. And this is coming from an Emily Nagorski quote, which is her first. She said there is one phrase that basically is the groundwork, the bedrock. How about that? The bedrock of my work, its pleasure is the measure. And my assumption as to why people don’t do homework is that they did not assume it was going to be pleasurable, meaning like we lean into things that we enjoy and we lean away and out of things and we don’t do things that are not pleasurable?

Laura – 25:14
Yeah. And so if the homework is, Hey, I’m going to introduce a new way for you to have a conflict conversation in session in a workshop, and then I want for you guys to do it on your own. If they haven’t experienced something different or like I said, you know what was really neat about that conversation is that I showed up differently or my partner, like, paid attention to me or didn’t react the same way that they used to, Then you’re building kind of this new pattern of maybe this could be pleasurable or I felt more connected in that process.

Laura – 25:45
That’s my assumption as to why people don’t do homework is that there is there is an anticipation of pleasure coming from it.

Zach – 25:51
Yeah, that’s that’s fascinating. It certainly can be on a list, I think where I push back a little bit as I’m I’m not making assumptions anymore. I’m I’m going well what let’s learn about that you know and I had one couple just recently her name is Kim or Lisa but she came in and she was we were talking and they were like, we’re not doing the homework.

Zach – 26:10
And I’m like, I’m like, why not? They’re like, It’s too hard.

Laura – 26:14
Okay, We.

Zach – 26:14
Try. We fail. It’s not. Yeah, it’s not. It’s not working. And I was like, Let’s dial it down.

Laura – 26:19
Yeah, I.

Zach – 26:19
Started I moved our way down to things like, please and thank you and good morning and good night. And I contact and, you know, and but they now they’re like, we love it. We love please. And thank you. Good morning and good night. It’s so fun to feel successful. It’s so good, right to feel like like you said, there’s something different.

Zach – 26:40
And I think sometimes we just like we have to go, oh, I’m not ready for our seven yet. You’re you’re still in the checkout lane where the candy is like.

Laura – 26:48
Say this Home Depot is really it was like carrying it all.

Zach – 26:55
To you by.

Laura – 26:56
Holding that. We haven’t done that in a while.

Zach – 26:59
Yeah, well, we had had to because we have kids now.

Laura – 27:01
We have? Yeah. Now we have real sponsors. Yeah.

Zach – 27:05
So I use the Home Depot metaphor actually quite a bit, because the other piece I’ll say is people, people who go into Home Depot and say, I need tools, I need some tools. The very first thing they what are you building, right. What is your project, What are you working on? And when couples don’t know, they come in with kind of these blank slates and this is what the couple and I’m like, Dude, if you’re just coming in here because you think like the gunman method is great, I watch it on YouTube, like, get it for free, Like, read the book.

Zach – 27:38
Don’t, don’t, you know, but if you come but if you but if you because the content is ubiquitous like content is we need a context now that’s going to motivate you to actually pursue the change that you’re looking for. And that might be therapy and it might be a book, it might be a workshop, but that’s the part where I think like couples that don’t know or don’t have help, they need they need more than a sales tool salesman.

Zach – 27:59
They need like an actual, like project manager.

Laura – 28:01
Mm hmm. Okay. I like that. And it also makes me think about the workshop is that we get to that. What are you building piece at the end, which is kind of like the question is, or I guess what we’re leaning into is you’re here because you don’t want to do what you’ve been doing like this anymore. You like you identify with that.

Laura – 28:23
Whatever we have going on, there’s an anticipation because of my whole family, you know, got divorced or this is my fourth marriage or whatever. There’s an anticipation that maybe something might go wrong. So we’re kind of trying to preemptively establish some good habits, whatever that might be. But either way, everybody’s here because they want something to be different.

Laura – 28:44
And then we get to the place where we give you all the tools. Now that you have all the tools now let’s talk about what you’re building that comes at the end of the workshop. That’s the piece where it’s like, Where are you going as a couple? Like, what are your common goals and what are your values that link you together and how are you creating something that’s really meaningful?

Laura – 29:02
We talk about that. It’s just at the end. Yeah. All right. All right.

Zach – 29:07
So that’s exciting. It’s like a it’s like a trailer, like a teaser.

Laura – 29:11
It is a bit of a rather. Yeah. When this episode comes out, do we still have the Earlybird rate or is that past that point?

Zach – 29:18
It’ll be passe at that point, but what one.

Laura – 29:22
Yeah, but that’s okay. It’s still a the.

Zach – 29:24
Information is that marriage therapy Radio.com you can go up there and.

Laura – 29:28
It’s March 2nd and third now third and fourth March 3rd and fourth.

Zach – 29:32
Sorry, it’s Friday and Saturday.

Laura – 29:34
Yeah, Friday and Saturday. So it’s Friday evening Pacific time. It’s like three hour chunk of time and then most of the day on Saturday. So lock your calendar off, register early so that you make sure you get a seat and we can get materials to you early enough. That’s how it.

Zach – 29:52
Is right about now, is it? I think like this episode, maybe a week or so is when you want to register in order to get your materials on time. I don’t know how fast they ship, but yeah, you get your own stuff. You get like the whole box of stuff.

Laura – 30:06
Although it’s virtual, it’s a virtual.

Zach – 30:08
Oh, no. So they just email it to you. So I said, Don’t worry about it. Take your time, register into the night before meeting. Oh, you’re procrastinators like me. You’re like, Yeah, you’re doing your third grade homework and second period.

Laura – 30:22
Bar as well.

Zach – 30:23
I got an email yesterday from a guy who wanted me to explain what happened in the last session because part of his homework was that he was supposed to, like, review this stuff.

Laura – 30:32
Okay?

Zach – 30:32
And their last session was ten days ago, and I’m meeting with them again tomorrow. So, like, he waited like eight days to get the clarity that he needed. This is not ten days.

Laura – 30:43
So whatever BRASLOW don’t shame him like Laura or I would shame him now.

Zach – 30:48
I will not shame him like Laura.

Laura – 30:50
Good. Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much. You could say.

Zach – 30:53
Making me a better therapist.

Laura – 30:54
You’re. I wish I could say the same about. Yeah, I’m just kidding. Know you definitely do. All right, well, let’s lay on this plane and. And marriage therapy. Radio.com will have all the information you need for the seven Principles for Making Marriage Work workshop on March 3rd and fourth. That’s it. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Marriage Therapy Radio.

Laura – 31:16
The workshop is on March 3rd and fourth. We also have an August workshop and an October workshop. So if you happen to register for the March workshop and for whatever reason something comes up, we can always roll your registration on over to the August one. I think my biggest maybe push to you is to get you and your partner in the same place at the same time fully attuned and just dedicating a chunk of time to your relationship.

Laura – 31:44
This is not magic. Making information. What’s going to be magic Is the two of you focusing on each other for that period of time? And sometimes it just takes a commitment to a workshop to make that happen. You can register on marriage therapy. Radio.com You have any questions? Send me an email info at marriage therapy. Radio.com Thanks for all of your time and attention.

Laura – 32:05
Making your relationship better today than it was yesterday.

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