Ep #106: Failure or Faith: You Decide

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women^TM Podcast, episode 106.

Welcome to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women^TM Podcast, the only show that combines a fun personality, medical knowledge, sexual counseling and life coaching together. To create unique sex coaching that helps busy women awaken their libidos, address intimacy issues and learn how to express their sexuality for the rest of their days. Here is your host, certified life coach and sexual counselor, Dr. Sonia Wright.

Hello, hello, hello, hello Diamonds, how are you doing? It’s Dr. Sonia, it’s early in the morning. I’m in a hotel room, I’m in Louisville this week. I have been traveling all over the place for the last year. So right now I’m in Louisville for a conference. And of course, I can’t miss talking to my Diamonds, I’m up at 5:00am before the conference so I can talk to you. I am celebrating so much. And right now, I’m celebrating the women that were in my last OYSN group.

So, my last Own Your Sexuality Group, the intimate edition, it was the last one that I’m going to be doing for 2022. I made the decision that I’m going to take a break. And so that was my last group for 2022. I won’t be doing another Own Your Sexuality Now group until 2023. So, what I’m going to do is make sure that I have a link available for you to get on my email list so you will know exactly when I open up Own Your Sexuality Now for 2023.

And you get to get on my email list so you can find out everything that’s going on with me because there’s a lot of things coming up in the next couple of months that I’m going to be busy working on that will be popping up in 2023. And so yeah, make sure to get on my email list. I’d love to keep in touch with you, give you all the updates. But I need to get back to talking about the OYSN group that we just finished with.

The women were so amazing. I cannot even tell you, they blew my mind. The work that they did is just phenomenal. So, this last intimate group included some re-bloom members and the re-bloom members are people that have taken my Own Your Sexuality Now course in the past but wanted a refresher. And so, at a reduced rate I have them in the group as well. And it’s a fabulous combination of having some new members and having some people that have gone before. They kind of connect with each other and support each other through the process.

And the bonding that was there, people formed friendships in this group that they’re going to continue to have after the group finishes. So, I just love that aspect of things. Yeah, the transformations were incredible. There is a new focus on pleasure, on healing relationships, the courage to leave relationships that were not serving them. And an overall commitment to themselves, to put themselves first as a priority. And that’s part of what I teach in the course, it’s not just about sex.

A lot of it is about who are you as a woman, how do you want to show up and do you want to have your own back and what that looks like. Yeah, so it’s definitely a commitment to themselves. And then understanding the right to pleasure in all forms. And also understanding that it’s a process. And sometimes it takes courage to continue when it looks like nothing’s ever going to change. And I noticed that each one of these women changed their lives because they decided they were going to do the work. They were going to persist.

Each one was so close to what might have been labeled failure, their relationships were a failure, their thoughts about themselves, whatever it was. They were close to what they would have thought, some were in sexless marriages, some were very close to sexless marriages, yeah. Some went from a completely sexless marriage to having intimacy in their life. Some of them were ready to give up, even while they were working with me they were ready to give up.

But each one made the decision to persist and continue to do the work. And ultimately they had these amazing transformations which they didn’t even know were possible. When I think of the consultation I had with each one of these women, you cannot foresee their futures. I always believe, I always believe in the women that their future can be better but I don’t know exactly what it’s going to be. We do come up with a goal, an idea and to head towards that goal but we don’t know exactly how it’s going to turn out.

And yeah, some people reach their goals. Some people change their goals. It was just amazing. So, I like to look and study failure versus success. I look to look at the difference between failure and success. And again, and again, and again I see the same thing, right before a person’s greatest success is a moment that could be labeled as their worst failure.

And so, if they were to stop at that moment and just settle in that place, I think of my Diamonds that were in my group. And if they had just settled, you don’t even know how amazing their smiles were and how proud they were of themselves. But if they had in that moment decided to just settle and give up, and stay in that place they would not have seen the amazing success that they experienced.

And what I see with the difference between failure and ultimately success is really your ability to tolerate discomfort. And I know that I’ve said this before but I keep saying this again and again and it’s not just to tell you about this. It’s to tell myself too because I’ve got my own challenges in life, everybody does. And I need to remind myself that your ability to tolerate discomfort will ensure that you head in the direction and eventually meet your goals or far succeed and go past what you initially thought was possible for you.

And I noticed that if people are choosing failure, if they’re choosing to settle, that their ability to tolerate discomfort is very low. But if they’re coming from a perspective of persistence and ultimately abundance, then success, when they have a downturn, when they get to that low part where other people would stop. They realize that they’re going to have to activate their faith muscle. Yeah, that it’s an opportunity to tap into your faith.

So, part of your ability to tolerate discomfort is going to require you to develop a belief system and a foundation on which your faith is a big part of this. And when I’m talking about faith I’m not necessarily talking about religion and it may be that you have a faith in a higher power. It maybe that you have a faith in the thought that everything will generally work out. Maybe you have a faith in your ability to persevere.

You get to decide what that faith is but what I’ve seen is that there’s a belief, there’s a faith that there is something more and that it’s worth doing the work and being uncomfortable in order to get to that place. So, you decide if your faith is going to involve a higher being or it’s going to involve concepts around your persistence and your ability to feel that discomfort.

And I notice when I’m coaching my clients and specifically when I’m coaching, doing relationship coaching that I often give them homework. I know, I’m one of those people that give them homework. And I would say that homework is optional. I’m not there to force them to do something. But while we’re discussing we might come up with an idea about how they might work on a certain topic.

And then I tell them it’s not good or bad that they do the homework, come back next week and we’ll see. And if they come back next week and they haven’t done the homework then okay, that’s some information. That is equally important information. That means that’s an area to focus on where we explore why they were not necessarily able to do their homework. And we can get an idea of what thoughts and feelings kind of got in the way and not allowing them to do the work that they need to do.

So, it’s not necessarily good or bad if you don’t do the homework, it just is. And then we go from there but very often my Diamonds will label it as a failure. They are the ones that will be like, “Oh my goodness, I didn’t do the homework and so this is an ultimate failure. It’s the end of the world.” I’m like, “No.” And maybe it’s because of our educational system and we punish people for not doing homework as opposed for saying, “Okay, this is something we need to discuss and look into more.”

But I notice that people have a low tolerance for perceived failure, not for the discomfort, the thoughts around the failure and the emotions that come up. A lot of the emotion that comes up is shame. So, we have a really low tolerance for shame, for feeling shame and acknowledging that shame. But if we’re able to acknowledge the emotions and kind of step back a little bit from the situation, then I notice that we’re able to tap into the faith side of things, that things are going to improve and we’re able to make choices from there.

But a lot of times people are in this place of shame and they want to get out of it really, really quickly because it feels very uncomfortable. So, when you get to that place where you’re thinking something’s a failure and you’re feeling a lot of shame around it, recognize that this is your opportunity for faith. And recognize that you have a choice at that point.

There is kind of a fork in the road and there’s two signs, you can visualize this. And the question is, what will you choose? The proceed easy path is also the path to ‘failure’ because you give up on yourself. You give up on your goals, you give up on what you’re able or what you are trying to accomplish but you also don’t have to feel that shame. You don’t have to feel that discomfort, the emotional discomfort there.

And so, it is the easy path because it stops that feeling of shame right away. But that feeling of shame is going to be there based on what your thoughts are and what’s going on in your life. And so, it gets to be the quick and easy route where you choose not to pursue, and to give up, and to settle. Or you can be at that fork in the road and you can choose faith. You can choose to go down the other path. And the other path, it’s kind of like you’re at the fork in the road.

And if you choose to stop and to settle, that’s a beautiful smooth road. There’s pastures and flowers nearby and it looks good. It looks easy. And then you look down the other path which is doing the work and feeling the discomfort and living in a place of faith. And that road, that looks like it hasn’t been tended in years. There’s potholes everywhere, there’s ripples in the cement, there’s weeds growing everywhere. It looks kind of like a jungle. And you’re thinking to yourself, that doesn’t look like it’s an easy path at all, I’m not sure if that’s where I want to go.

But everything that you ever wanted is outside of your area of comfort. And so that choice is there and when you’re at that choice you get the choice, do you want to go down the easy path and settle and be in a place you might one day regret? Or do you want to go and do the work? Now, you can go down the easy path and then at some point be like, “This is not what I want.” And turn around and go in the opposite direction.

So, if you get to a place where you’re labeling something a failure always know that you even then have the opportunity to make another choice and to step out in that level of faith. And decide to go down the other side and do the work, yeah. So, the faith journey looks hard. It looks like there might be bumps in the road. And it looks like there’s hard work and little gratification in the short run.

And the other side, the settling has a lot of gratification in the short run but not necessarily in the long run. So, my friends, choose wisely. A little bit of work and discomfort is not necessarily a problem and you get to decide what it is anyway. So, getting back to my clients with their homework, as I said, I see it as a neutral thing. And I use it as just something to be curious about and to kind of reveal what our thoughts are behind whether or not we wanted to do the work.

And it ultimately leads to a learning process and we know what needs to be focused on. But my clients label it as failure or they might possibly label it as failure unless we have a discussion about it. And it’s like they don’t want to touch that hot stove, they don’t want to touch the hot stove of shame. If I had a visualization because you know I’m pretty visual, I am a radiologist. Then there’d be this stove with a big hot pot on the front of the stove and have a big label of shame. And there would be fire coming out from underneath it and steam from the top and the whole area.

You just don’t want to go near it. You’re like, “This is an accident waiting to happen.” But it doesn’t need to be because all we actually need to realize is we can look at the stove and there’s an on/off knob and we could turn it off, yeah. We could take little mittens, oven mitts and we could put that big pot on the back and keep ourselves safe and do the work that needs to be done.

So, what would you need in order to tolerate the discomfort? As I said, I believe you need some faith in the future, some faith in yourself, some faith in your higher power, whatever that faith looks like, it needs to be there. And I think that faith is the foundation on which you build your belief system. The belief that things can get better, the belief that you are a sexual person, that you deserve pleasure, that you deserve to be in a loving kind relationships. You keep those belief systems and you head forward.

And this belief system will lead to your vision of the future. You don’t necessarily have to know at the moment but it’s kind of like this combination of the faith that things will get better and you build your beliefs and your thoughts on it. You switch around your thoughts, you do the thought work. And you decide what thoughts are not serving you and you choose new thoughts. And then you also get to choose a vision based on those thoughts.

So, if you’re in this path and you’re looking at a situation where you’re not certain how things are going to sort out, you’re not certain if you’re going to be able to live the life that you want to live. It’s going to be important that you have your own back and that you function from a place of faith and understand that it’s going to be uncomfortable and that that is okay. That’s kind of part of it and nothing has gone wrong. And also, a belief and a faith in yourself that you can handle all the discomfort. That’s going to be pretty important as we do this work.

Okay, Diamonds, short and sweet. So, understand if you’re in that fork in the road, and you’re looking and you’re at this place where you feel like it’s a failure, nothing’s ever going to change. And you’re choosing to settle, you’re choosing to stay in that place, understand you always have a choice and you can choose to stay in that place as long as you like but at some point you can decide that you deserve more. And you can pick yourself up and you can head down that path, the other path, the other choice.

And so, when I look at it, I think of it, it’s a choice, you have the choice of failure and you have the choice of faith, you get to make that choice. And just because there’s going to be discomfort, doesn’t mean that you don’t make the choice because you recognize there might be discomfort in the short term but in the long term it’s ultimately going to bring you to a place that you want to be.

Okay, Diamonds, that’s all I have for you today. It’s your choice, do you want failure or do you want to activate faith and go towards what it is that you really want in life? I’ve seen it every single time, the Diamonds that are able to stand up and say what they want and have their own back and make that choice to go down the path based on faith, and belief, and vision. Those are the ones that get to a place of success. So, if you’re in a place where you’re feeling like it’s a failure, understand that you can always make another choice.

You can choose to do the work. You can choose to be in a place of discomfort and know it’s not going to kill you, it’s going to get you closer to what you want or what you don’t even know that you’re able to do and able to have, but what it does take is a choice. Okay Diamonds, that’s all for this week. Love you a lot. Dr. Sonia out.

Hey Diamonds, do you want to reignite the passion that’s gone missing from your life? Do you want to want to want it again? You know I’m on a mission to end the emotional pain and isolation that women experience associated with sexual difficulties. And many of you also know that I was once in that place where I was experiencing little to no sexual intimacy in my life. And I kept thinking that there was something that was wrong with me, that I wasn’t enough, I wasn’t attractive enough, I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t smart enough to fix this problem.

And I was worried all the time that my relationship was too far gone because of this lack of intimacy. Well, you know what? I was right about one thing, the relationship didn’t last. But even though the relationship didn’t last I committed to doing the work that I needed to do to own my sexuality. And now I have this amazing sex life and it’s everything that I wanted it to be. And I’m also committed to helping my Diamonds by teaching them the same strategies that I figured out in order to revitalize the intimacy in their life.

So, if you want to stop feeling broken, if you want to stop feeling shame and guilt about sexuality, if you want to feel more comfortable with your sexuality and tap into that pleasure then I’m here for you, Diamonds. First of all, know that there’s nothing that’s gone wrong with you. You’re not broken. And you know what? You can solve your intimacy issues. You can let go of that shame and guilt, and you can tap into that passionate person that’s just waiting to come out. Let’s get on a strategy call together and let’s discuss how we can work together and how I can help you.

And know that a strategy call, it’s 100% a safe place, there is no judgment. We’ll talk about your intimacy situation, which is what’s going on right now. We’re also going to talk about your intimacy goals, what you would like your intimacy to look like in the future. And then we’ll talk about how we could possibly work together to come up with a personalized strategy plan for you so you can get the results that you need. So, Diamonds, I’m here for you, don’t wait another minute. Book that consultation call with me today and I can’t wait to talk to you.

You can get that consultation call by going to soniawrightmd.as.me. And the link is also in the show notes. Okay, have a great day. I can’t wait to talk to you. Take care.