What does it mean to cultivate beginner’s mind with our partner? How do we balance being true to ourselves with flexibility and being open to our partner’s influence? What are some secret keys we can bring to our conversations?
Find out in this week’s episode of The Learn to Love Podcast, where your host Zach Beach interviews counselor, couples therapist and author Alicia Muñoz on Secret Keys to Good Communication .
Below is the transcript for the episode, to go to the episode page, click here. This is mostly an automated process so there may be typos and other grammatical mistakes.
Alicia Full Episode for Upload
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the learn to love podcast, your guides to everything. Love sex, intimacy and relationships each week. Your host Zach beach interviews, new experts on love, including couples, therapists, relationship coaches, sex educators, and best-selling authors. Learn the best tips and cutting edge wisdom to better love yourself, others and the world. Thanks so much. Joining us. We hope you enjoy the show.
[00:00:35] Zach Beach: Welcome. To the learn to love podcast, everyone. I am your host Zach beach, and I’m here with the incredible counselor couples, therapist and author Alicia Munoz. Hello, Alicia, and welcome to the show.
[00:00:48] Alicia Muñoz: Hello, great to be here
[00:00:50] Zach Beach: today. We are going to be talking about secret keys to good communication. And for those that don’t know, Alicia Munoz is a licensed professional counselor and certified couples therapist. With training in Imago therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and dynamic psychotherapy. She has worked in a wide array of clinical settings over the past 14 years, including private clinics, New York, city’s Bellevue hospital, and her own private practice.
[00:01:21] She is the author of no more fighting a year of us and her most recent work is the couple’s quiz book 350 fun questions to energize your relationship. How are you today? Alicia?
[00:01:36] Alicia Muñoz: I’m doing very well. Thank you Zach.
[00:01:38] Zach Beach: Well, thanks so much for coming on. I’m excited to hear about our secret keys, and I want to begin by just learning a little bit more about you and you write in your books that you are passionate about long term committed love relationships.
[00:01:53] So I’m curious about what brought you to focus so much on our own intimate lives.
[00:01:59] Alicia Muñoz: Honestly, Zach, it was my own misery that brought me to focus on our intimate lives in my teens and twenties. Uh, I was one of these people who really lived for romantic relationships and I was caught in a painful cycle of falling in love and falling out of love and looking for a new love and falling in love again and out of love and really.
[00:02:25] Just this sort of dizzying rollercoaster that got old quick. So I, I realized that I actually had no idea how to have a sustainably, healthy relationship. And I had this classic come to Jesus moment when I married and divorced in my late twenties. And I was like, Wow. There’s a common denominator in all of my stuff, failed relationships me.
[00:02:50] So I recognized that I really had to learn to, to be a better partner and be relational. And at that point I went to therapy, all kinds of therapy, individual group. Relationship seminars. I read every book. I could get my hands on and met my husband in the process. And when we started dating, we actually had our second date in a couples therapy office.
[00:03:15] Yeah, it was sort of not your typical romantic second date, but you know, in a way, for us, it was very, very sexy just because we had suffered a lot in relationships. And like the Dalai Lama says pain is inevitable. But suffering is optional and we really wanted to put an end to our optional suffering. So we did that.
[00:03:36] We started, uh, just regular couples counseling and, uh, as I saw my own skills developing and my own relationship beginning to improve, I went back to graduate school and became a couples therapist.
[00:03:50] Zach Beach: Wow. So incredible story. And it does mirror. Why a lot of people get into psychology in the first place is because they have had their own challenges. I knew a lot of psych majors in college and they’re like, yeah, you know, my mother struggled with schizophrenia or I had this challenges in my family and I really just want to get to the bottom of it. And it sounds like you got to the bottom of it. So I’m curious about that path. I’m wondering if there were just some things you noticed that you were doing wrong and on your path of healing and growing, what were the practices that helped you on a much better path to find a husband that worked for you and to being the happy marriage that you are in right now?
[00:04:32] Alicia Muñoz: Some of what I was doing wrong was focusing on the outside, focusing on something out there to bring me joy, to bring me peace. Sense of safety. And sort of flipping the script on that was a big part of, of my own healing and also of my own learning that, you know, essentially we carry with them, us traumas and wounds and patterns and schema is that we learn early on in our family of origin.
[00:05:04] And sometimes it’s just in our culture, you know, there’s layers of, of toxicity in our culture that we might ingest and bring to our relationships. So. Uh, really, there was a lot of unlearning that went on that helped me to focus on becoming more relational. And when you started on this path of becoming the couples, counselor, and reading every book that you had found, what were some truths that really resonated with you?
[00:05:31] Well, this idea of self-love really resonated with me. I think fundamentally at first it was sort of a bizarre concept. You know, how do you experience self love when you know, you’ve grown up in a family where the focus is more on external factors or accomplishment or success or avoiding conflict or resolving things through conflicts.
[00:05:58] And learning to honor the spectrum of, of your own emotions and your own experiences was a big part of growth for me personally.
[00:06:11] Zach Beach: So it’s really awesome to hear your own path and the growth that you yourself went to in order to become happy partner in a happy relationship that you are in today. And I wanted to ask you kind of, if everyone.
[00:06:25] Needs a certain level of growth because I do love the work that you’re doing in the world. And I love how simultaneously simple and profound that it is. You have your no more fighting, which offers just 20 minutes a week for couples to get a stronger relationship. And a year of us offers just a question a day.
[00:06:45] And before we get into our communication tips and our keys to better communication. I’m curious about the people who think that there’s no work and there’s no growth that they need to do. And I imagine this happens quite a few times in couples therapy or one partner almost has to drag. The other one into couples therapy or one reads your book.
[00:07:09] And it’s about questions that, you know, for both partners. And I’m like, well, what if I really want to go through these questions and my partner doesn’t. So how do we work with somebody who doesn’t think they need to grow? Doesn’t think they need to do any of the exercises in your book and doesn’t need to go to the couples therapist office.
[00:07:28] Alicia Muñoz: Well, that’s a really common. In a monotherapy, there’s a name for the dragger, the person who does the dragging and the draggee, the person who, who is dragged and there’s challenges to being both of these, these people to being in either of these roles. Now, as the. As the dragger or the challenge is to, again, focus on yourself, recognize that you can’t coerce or control or force another person to grow or meet your needs on your agenda.
[00:08:04] And to really, you know, as the AA saying goes to really recognize what you can control and focus on what you can control. And if you’re the dry, if you’re the draggy, if you’re the one who’s perfect. And I have been that person myself many times where I’m convinced that I have no flaws, it’s important to realize that that’s.
[00:08:26] Probably a defense against your own feelings of inadequacy, you know, when you think, well, if my partner loved me, they’d accept me as I am. It’s usually the opposite. That’s true. Usually our self-respecting partners want us to change because they love us and because they want to stay connected to us.
[00:08:46] Zach Beach: It’s true. One of the biggest challenges we have to go go through on our path of growth is a recognizing where we are deficient and recognizing the opportunities that we have from growth require a certain amount of vulnerability. And recognizing, as you mentioned earlier, like we all have traumas and moons and patterns that aren’t serving us, and that can be really hard to face those things.
[00:09:13] Alicia Muñoz: Absolutely. Absolutely. And partnership really offers a mirror where you’re partners, criticisms and complaints can be guides to your own blinds spots. So they can really be helpful feedback in terms of where it is that you need to grow, where it is that you’re still kind of struggling with this. One person system, which is you, you and you, you’re in your ego, you’re in your ideas, your assumptions and opinions and biases, and actually you and this other person.
[00:09:52] And once you can start to get into that two person system, or if you’re polyamorous, you know, three person system, four person system, you know, it it’s once you can start to get out of your one person system and to. Into this loop of this is who I am. This is who you are. How do we creatively negotiate our differences?
[00:10:15] How do we make this a win-win versus a win lose? That’s that’s the opportunity that relationship presents us with.
[00:10:24] Zach Beach: Absolutely. I’m a little biased and I love that. I love love. Yeah. Committed relationships though, because they are a really wonderful container for healing and growth because of the reason that you mentioned the person loves you and they want the best for you, and they want to help you become the best person that you can be because they see the best in you.
[00:10:47] And it’s really amazing to be in that container of loving and supportive growth. And with that, the other side of the equation is that. These two worlds, as you mentioned are colliding. So we have two people, they have their own egos and ideas and assumptions, beliefs about partnership, beliefs about connection, communication style, and it can be really challenging to negotiate those differences, to cultivate connection while maintaining our own sense of independence.
[00:11:25] And I’m curious about how we best navigate that balance between being our own person and between being connected to our partner. Because when you mentioned, we have like the dragger and the draggy here, we have two very different belief systems. And I think the person being dragged is kind of like from about themselves and who they are and their desire not to change.
[00:11:51] So how can we best balance being true to ourselves, even accepting ourselves just as we are not needing to change so much about ourselves, because we might tie that into self-criticism self-judgment self-hatred for example, and how do we balance that with flexibility and being open to our partners influence.
[00:12:14] Alicia Muñoz: Great question. I think that being curious about your partner is a starting point because being curious, presupposes that you’re not so proud or so attached to who you are that you’re blocking or excluding input from outside or input from your partner. So really being willing to be curious, which is really being willing to be vulnerable, which is really being willing to learn, to be teachable.
[00:12:50] This is an important thing to cultivate in a partnership. I think it’s Terrence reel who talks about enlightened self-interest or I like to call it smart, selfish, where. This isn’t you giving something up or losing something or sacrificing who you are or surrendering to your partner and being crushed by their reality.
[00:13:15] This is really in your own best interest. And in the sense of what is your goal in relationship is your goal to connect, to feel loved, to be at peace, to experience joy. So these are your goals. It’s critical to look at how your own defenses block, your own goals and, and the, the rigidity that we can all experience the sense of threat with a partner when they want to go on a mountain vacation.
[00:13:50] And we want to go on a beach vacation. Or they want to put the dishes in the dishwasher straight up and down, and we want to put them in haphazardly, you know, or they like the house, a certain temperature and we like it really hot and they want it cool. Like all these things are, are potential ruptures you can have, or there are these opportunities to.
[00:14:13] Kind of soften breathe. Let yourself be curious and have a conversation from a place of you’re kind of open-heartedness rather than through this filter of fear and terror, like, Oh my God, you’re going to take me over. You’re going to control me, you know?
[00:14:31] Zach Beach: I love that insight, that our own defenses block our own goals.
[00:14:37] And I really appreciate what you are saying about openheartedness and about curiosity. And it reminds me of a quote by the poet Mark NIPPO and it’s a really beautiful quote. And it basically says that true listening requires a willingness to be changed by what we hear. And how important that is in relationships, because we do get very attached to our own ideas attached to our own way of things attached to our belief systems.
[00:15:05] And if we are to be in partnership, requires a willingness for those things to change for our willingness to hear a totally different perspective, totally different point of view, and get in touch with a totally different and real and valid subjective reality.
[00:15:22] Alicia Muñoz: Oh, that’s a beautiful quote and so true.
[00:15:25] And that brings to mind for me, this idea of beginner’s mind, of how, like, how do you have compassion for yourself when your defenses feel so solid and so absolute, and it feels so scary to soften or to pause or to listen, or to ask a question. Beginner’s mind is something that you can actually cultivate.
[00:15:51] And when we’re babies, it’s, it’s natural to us. We, most of us just have this experience of awe and wonder and connection, and we take the world in and then as we get older and as we develop and are socialized, we become naturally more protected and guarded and. In relationship, there is this opportunity because of that safe container that you talked about, there’s this opportunity to be safe and contained and to begin to let go of our guard, let go of our defensiveness and.
[00:16:27] Be more open and vulnerable with another person.
[00:16:30] Zach Beach: Yeah. I’m wondering what your perspective is on being more open to that change because I’ve read a few interesting studies about like the sweet spot to get married, being somewhere along the ages of like. Twenty-five to 30 about, and you don’t want to be too young because you want to have some financial security and also some experience in relationships, but you don’t want to be too old because they find that like people become more set in their ways as they grow older, they get a little bit more habitual about their way of things.
[00:17:01] A little bit less flexible. But obviously at any point we can all enter into happier and fulfilling relationships. So how do we become more flexible with some of those deeply rooted patterns?
[00:17:16] Alicia Muñoz: I’m almost hearing the answer in your question, Zach, because. This idea that it doesn’t make sense to wait till you’re perfect to get married or to partner up or to have consensual non-monogamy.
[00:17:29] But however you define it, it doesn’t make sense to wait until everything is just right. Because it’s actually being in relationships that, that grows us up, that shapes us that creates that flexibility and that adaptability. So I think there has to be a willingness to take risks and to think about. Love more as a vision quest than like an all expenses paid vacation.
[00:17:58] Right. It’s more something that you’re like, okay, like I’m going into the darkness and the light. I’m going to go over some waterfalls and get some foreigns in my, in my legs and arms as I move through the jungle and I’m going to encounter some challenges and some strange creatures. And. It’s going to be scary.
[00:18:21] It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be exciting and I’m in it with a partner and we’re, we’re in it together. We’re in it to, to evolve and explore and grow. That’s. Something that’s like a framework or a paradigm that I think will help people feel less perfectionistic or pressured to get it right. Fed up.
[00:18:43] You have to think about love as a vision quest rather than an all expenses paid vacation.
[00:18:53] Yeah. Well, I mean, I, again, speaking from experience, that’s sort of how the shift that I made from that cycle of seeking in the outside world, the person that would make me happy and fulfill me to sort of pulling myself up by my bootstraps and being more well, how do I have the courage to do something difficult?
[00:19:14] And I see that in the couples that I work with all the time. There’s just so much courage, so much courage that people who enter into relationships. Have
[00:19:24]Zach Beach: I love that word courage too, because you probably not comes from the same. Root core or like Corazon means heart in Spanish. And that’s what it, that’s the attitude we all have to enter into in relationships is coming from our heart, having the courage to face those vulnerabilities.
[00:19:41] Alicia Muñoz: Yeah.
[00:19:42] Zach Beach: Wonderful. So I’d love to move on to our topic for today. Secret keys to good communication. So first off, like how many keys are on our key chain for today? We have four keys today. What are they? Let’s go through them all. And then one by one.
[00:20:04] Alicia Muñoz: Sure. Sure. So first key be kinder to yourself. Second key. Identify your positive goals. I’ll get into that later, the fourth key express, your wants and let go of the outcome. And then the fourth key is redefine relational success.
[00:20:28] Zach Beach: So we’re talking about communication and number one is be kinder to yourself. So how does kindness to myself change my communication?
[00:20:39] Alicia Muñoz: Radically radically. It changes it because we all carry an inner critic inside of us. That tends to be composed of all the voices of people in our past, who have. Told us, we should do X or Y or told us we’re not good enough or pressured us to do better. And so being kinder to yourself means developing a relationship with this inner critic where you understand where it came from.
[00:21:09] You challenge it. You don’t believe it’s it’s statements and assumptions and opinions off the bat because what you, what you hate or judge in yourself. Is ultimately going to be what you hate or judge others and other people, or your partner will really only ultimately feel as accepted by you as you feel accepted by you.
[00:21:34] So there’s this direct correlation. I mean, for me, I think it’s very direct. I think it can seem subtle or can seem unconscious again and again, and in the therapy and the work I do with couples, there’s a very straight line with an arrow on it. What I repress judge hate dismiss, minimize devalue in myself.
[00:21:58] That’s what I’m going to hate. Judge dismiss, devaluing. You that’s going to come through in my communication to you.
[00:22:05] Zach Beach: I have to ask your perspective on this cliche that we’re often told, because this is the second time you’ve talked about how important self-love is in our relationships. So what do you think of that cliche?
[00:22:17] We often hear that you cannot love somebody else until you love yourself.
[00:22:24] Alicia Muñoz: I think that is. The first half of a Zen koan. Right? You cannot love anybody until you love yourself. The second half is you cannot love yourself until you love somebody else. So it’s more like I see it as one of those puzzles.
[00:22:43] That’s. Gorgeously fascinatingly unsolvable that you have to live. You are kinder to yourself. You are going to find yourself being more loving to others. You are more loving to others. You are going to find yourself being kinder to yourself. So it’s. Whichever way you come at it, it’s going to change you feeds back into itself.
[00:23:06] Zach Beach: So I almost feel like you’re describing what you caused, like the shadow elements of ourselves, the rejected parts of ourselves that we then project on to others. Yes. Is that a Mo model that you like to use when you think about how being kinder to ourselves means we judge parts of ourselves less, which means in partnership, we’ll judge less about that person as well.
[00:23:31] Alicia Muñoz: You’re reminding me of that model. It’s been a long time since I’ve opened a book by young and I’m having an aha moment of like, right. Course. Yes.
[00:23:45] Zach Beach: Key number two, identify your positive goals. So tell our listeners about that.
[00:23:51] Alicia Muñoz: This is really a, a secret key. Typically I would say. 90% of couples I work with when I asked them, what is your goal for communicating with your partner?
[00:24:03] What is your goal for therapy will tell me, I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to feel angry. I don’t want to be stressed. I don’t want these ruptures. I don’t want this depression, this anxiety, this hopelessness. So identify once you identify your positive goals, you are. Ahead of the curve. You are in a space of knowing what you want, knowing I want, what do you want?
[00:24:32] Joy? What do you want? Connection? What do you want? Peace? What do you want to work through our challenges in a way that feels safe, right? So you already know where you’re going. It’s sort of like, I like to think of it as traveling. If, if I want to get to New York. You know, from California, I don’t type, not California into my GPS.
[00:24:58] That’s not going to get me to New York. I mean, eventually thousands of years later, maybe I’ll end up in New York. Right. It has to, it really has to, your goal is, is something that emerges from connecting with your positive. Goal or good communication emerges from connecting with your positive goal.
[00:25:19] Zach Beach: I love that good communication begins with identifying your positive goals.
[00:25:23] So we already talked about when two worlds collide in relationships. So I’m wondering about, is this both partners identify their own individual goals. Are they together? Come up with mutual goals?
[00:25:36] Alicia Muñoz: I think both of those work and are important when you’re identifying your individual goal, it is likely a need or a want that you have individually.
[00:25:48] And then the PA the, the positive relationship goal. Maybe similar or it may be different. So it’s sort of like juggling, you know, you can juggle one ball and you have your positive goal and your partners over there juggling their positive goal. When you start to think about the relational goals, you’re juggling together.
[00:26:08] And you’re juggling multiple objects. So I have my positive, I’m juggling my positive goals. I’m ready to move on communication. Key number three, express your wants and let go of the outcome. So why are we combining these two things? Because if you make expressing your wants and needs contingent on getting them, you’re sabotaging yourself.
[00:26:36] So this is like, In Buddhism where you have self-compassion and you have mindfulness, you need both, you need to have a degree of mindfulness and also non being non-judgemental. So with this key, it’s important to be able to state what you want, state, what you need with the understanding that. Your partner’s response or reaction is not really your business, it’s their business.
[00:27:05] You just have to show up authentically with your warranty, your need, and it’s hard, but allow, allow life to unfold. However it does because it’s going to anyway. So. Sort of letting go of that attachment to, well, it has to be my way, you know, we have to go to the beach, not the mountains for vacation.
[00:27:27] Zach Beach: I have to interject because I’m just hearing a lot of very Sage and wise wisdom from you over here.
[00:27:33] So you’re talking about. Compassion and talking about mindfulness, talking about the Zen koan of relationships and self love and how love should be a vision quest. And I don’t remember reading in your, in your history about your spiritual experience. Tell us about where this comes from.
[00:27:50] Alicia Muñoz: Well, you’d make a good detective Zack.
[00:27:55] I omitted. In the bio that I gave you that I spent quite a few years going on, mindfulness retreats, meditation retreats, nine day silent retreats and Buddhism and the past. And the meditation definitely helped me become more conscious of my own mind and developing that muscle of mindfulness was a big part of learning to detach from.
[00:28:26] My own ego or, you know, my own self-created suffering. So that’s probably what you’re hearing in some of my responses to you, but I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m like wise and enlightened or anything like that. I have made probably three times. It’s about what you have given me that
[00:28:45] yeah. Probably four days ago, I was sort of sitting in the kitchen with my arms crossed pouting because my husband was on his phone, not paying attention to me. And I could probably have followed my own advice a little better than I’m getting in this podcast.
[00:29:03] Zach Beach: Yeah. We’re all walking the walk, don’t worry.
[00:29:05] Even the couples therapist and the quote unquote expert relationship coaches. We still, we have our own. So, so fourth key redefine our relationship success. So what does that mean?
[00:29:21] Alicia Muñoz: So we’ll redefining success and redefining relational success means. Hold the complexity, right? Hold the imperfection. Let go of this idea that you need to find a solution.
[00:29:36] You need to find it. Now this has to be fixed. You have to get it right. You have to be better. Your partner has to be better and it has to happen right now. So redefining relational success is more about building tolerance for ambiguity. Building tolerance for your partner meeting your needs, 56% or 65% versus a hundred percent.
[00:30:03] And, you know, redefining relational success is about celebrating the small shifts, celebrating the little things that. That we’re doing, that are working, that are helping, that are making it easier for our hearts to stay open. And it really varies what that looks like from couple to couple, you know, for some couples, a fight where they’re not raising their voices is a success.
[00:30:33] No. Yeah. They still thought, and they didn’t raise their voices, you know, or going and taking a time out and counting to 10. That’s a success or agreeing. Wow. We are just not listening to each other. Let’s talk about this tomorrow. That’s a success. So it’s, it’s really important to be able to let go of the, uh, just the, the weight and the burden of trying to get everything right.
[00:30:59] And trying to be perfect. So I have to let go of that. Perfectionism comes to mind also hearing your redefinition is the fairytale idea that many of us have. When you think that arguments will never happen in conflict when never happened in relationship and everything should just be perfect all the time, because we’re in love.
[00:31:18] Zach Beach: So I love the, like the small things often when I’m hearing from you is looking at our relationship on a day to day basis. And I’m wondering if you have like a clinical version of success for like the couples that enter into your office when you feel. Like you have done a good job and the couple is good to go on with their lives.
[00:31:41] Like at what point should a couple feel like accomplished that they’ve overcome certain challenges and previous patterning and are heading more towards blue skies.
[00:31:52] Alicia Muñoz: And when I see couples, the first session, we talk about what what’s the. The three minute video clip of success for them. We talk about what they see in their mind’s eye.
[00:32:09] When they’ve overcome the obstacles they’re facing the disconnection, the parallel living, the, the lack of affection, the slog, that relationship can be when there’s not enough fun and not enough play happening. And that video clip vision, and both partners will often have their own version of it. That overlaps that is our goal.
[00:32:37] That’s what we’re shooting for. And I’ll often note that and remember that and sometimes bring it up throughout the course of the work we do. And just check in. Are we there? Are we there? Are we meeting that? That vision that you had of laughing more often of being able to relax on the couch together without walking on eggshells of feeling like your partner hears you and takes you into account.
[00:33:04] So there’s a concrete way to do it, which I think that’s about right. As concrete as I get with my couples, are you set a clinical version? A lot of it is something that’s more intuitive or energetic where it’s the lumpy rug, cliche, where they kind of, as you pull out everything you’ve been putting under the rug for months or years, and you start to sort through all of that avoided.
[00:33:30] Material avoided pain avoided hurt. Then it just gets easier to walk across the rug. And at some point you’re recognizing, wow, we don’t, we don’t really need to, to continue working on this for now. And that’s when you know that that your, your treatment is either, you know, completely over or there’s a, there’s a time for a pause.
[00:33:54] Zach Beach: I love that three minute video clip of success. Because I do think there’s a lot of pressure for couples to be perfect all the time. And you scroll through like Instagram. It’s like you should be living your dreams and following your purpose. And it’d be having hot passion with sex and 10 orgasms a day.
[00:34:11] Uh, there is a lot of pressure to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak, but just the simple, simple joy is being content with your partner. That’s really a wonderful goal to have.
[00:34:24] Alicia Muñoz: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Keeping up with the Joneses and with social media and the internet and Facebook and Twitter and all these different platforms and the ways that we now distract ourselves by just.
[00:34:39] Kind of going online and scrolling and it it’s really insidious the empty calories that we consume from the internet. The, that just the stuff that can lead you to feel self doubt or feel like you’re not good enough or feel like there’s something wrong with you. And. I often recommend people just kind of do go cold Turkey for a little while and just, you know, avoid their devices and, and try to, to be present and be with, with themselves and be with each other.
[00:35:14] It’s not that easy, no tents. Hence my, hence my reference to my recent fight with my husband for. Scrolling through the news on his phone.
[00:35:25] Zach Beach: And is that because you’ve rejected your own part of you that scrolls through the news?
[00:35:30]Alicia Muñoz Yes. Yes. A hundred percent. I am always, you know, that’s definitely something I reject.
[00:35:39] I, I definitely I’m, uh, you know, I love looking online. I love scrolling. I love going to different platforms, but, uh, I do it secretly. I don’t do it in front of anybody because I’m a therapist I’m supposed to be present all the time.
[00:35:54] Zach Beach: I like your lumpy rug cliche too. It just, what you brought up the living room.
[00:35:58] I was like, Oh, there’s a lumpy rug there because earlier you were talking about self-love and. The necessary work we have to go through. And I was thinking about how on an individual level, our attempts to repress emotions only make them stronger and only make them show up in different ways in our life.
[00:36:16] And then you started talking about the lumpy rug and I’m like, it’s kind of the same thing in relationships. If we avoid talking about our problems. For you sweep it under the rug. Eventually the rug bunches, we trip over it later. So I’ll continue with this metaphor. How can we best avoid the lumpy rug?
[00:36:36] Alicia Muñoz: So one very basic, relatively easy way to minimize the lumps in the rug. And as it relates to communication, Is to be aware that 90% of what we communicate is in our non-verbals in our tone of voice, in our eye contact, in our gestures and our facial expressions. In other words, 90%, I mean, research shows this of, of what we communicate.
[00:37:03] Isn’t the words that are coming out of our mouth or the meanings that are coming out of our mouth. It’s the stuff that’s a lot of it is either unconscious or semi unconscious. So. The more that you can take time to understand your own inner world and make peace with it, approve of it, acknowledge it, allow it the more you’re going to be in alignment with what’s coming out of your mouth.
[00:37:36] You know, because I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of either saying, I love you to someone or having someone say, I love you to you. But the non-verbals were like, I want to run screaming naked into the night. I am so scared, you know? So it’s like the more you can tap into your inner truth, your inner reality and share it without that self judgment or anxiety or share it anyway.
[00:38:02] Even if you feel self judgment and anxiety, the more your partner is going to be getting a kind of like clear. Version or one message versus many mixed messages. And that, that for me directly correlates to keeping the rug more walkable.
[00:38:25] Zach Beach: Yeah. It reminds me of a concept. I originally learned from the meditation teacher, Tara Brach, and she talks about taking the sacred pause.
[00:38:34] And we can apply it in so many ways. Like before we set, before we did jump into a meal, we can just pause and feel the gratitude that we’re going to nourish our bodies. And what I’m hearing from you is how important it is in conversation with our partnership. If we’re attempted to blame or judge or criticize or say something impulsively, we can pause and check in with ourselves and come to an understanding about what it is we’re feeling.
[00:39:02] And then communicate more from the heart.
[00:39:04] Alicia Muñoz: Yes. I love that. Yeah. It’s uh, the more I write about love and relationships and the more work I do and my talk about it with people, the more I come back to this idea that the basics are so powerful. And the pause that you’re talking about and Tara Brachis such a wonderful teacher is basic.
[00:39:28] It’s basic. It’s, it’s simply remembering to take a breath and be present and notice. And yet, I don’t know about you, Zach, but I haven’t done that today. Maybe I didn’t even do it yesterday. Maybe it’s been a week since I’ve paused. It’s not something that we typically remember to do.
[00:39:48] Zach Beach: Thank you so much because I’m going to take a sacred pause for 20 seconds.
[00:39:53] And then I’m going to ask you the final question that I love to ask all my guests, and then you can answer it from that place. What do you think? Okay. Give me a second sacred pause. Let’s just breathe.
[00:40:29] so Alicia, what do you wish everyone knew about love?
[00:40:34] Alicia Muñoz: I wish people knew love. Can be a really good feeling that you feel sometimes and loving or learning to be loving is a powerful skill that you can develop and cultivate. To help you feel love more and more often. Absolutely. That’s what kept coming up in the more and more I listened to you.
[00:41:00] It’s just how all of these things you’re talking about. Curiosity, openness in touch with our inner world are all skills that we can learn and develop and cultivate. And the better we get at love, the more love we feel and the more love the people around us feel. Yes, it’s in a way becoming a more loving partner is actually the ultimate act of good citizenship because you’re contributing to a more loving world.
[00:41:28] Zach Beach: Well, thank you so much, Alicia Munoz for coming on to the show for our listeners who want to learn more about you, how can they find you?
[00:41:37] Alicia Muñoz: They can find me on Instagram. My handle is at Alicia Munoz couples, or they can find me in my books no more fighting a year of us. And the couples quiz book. Wonderful.
[00:41:51] Zach Beach: I really encourage all of our listeners to check out those books. They’re really wonderful conversation, starters and questions of inquiry to deepen connection with your partnering. So thanks so much, Alicia, for coming on to the show and thank you listeners for listening to the show. We hope you remember the four keys to better communication.
[00:42:14] The first of which is to be kind to yourself, accept yourself, and love yourself. Second one is to identify your positive goals, thirdly, express your wants and let go of the outcome. And finally, to redefine your relationship success for all those small, joyful and happy moments that you have with your partner.
[00:42:35] If you want to learn more about me, you can head to Zach beach.com and learn more about the show@theheartcenter.com. Thanks again, Alicia.
[00:42:45] Alicia Muñoz: My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
