Do you ever find yourself feeling frustrated in your relationships? Maybe you have an ongoing conflict with your spouse or a stressful pattern of interaction with your child. Or perhaps your boss continually asks you to stay late, when you really want to go home and be with your family.

What if there were things you could do that would shift these unhealthy patterns or behaviors? What if you had some tools that would allow you to recognize why these interactions are happening and support you to respond in a different way?

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In this episode, Holly and I chatted with our friend Charlotte Easley, and we talked all about relationships.  If you missed episode 203 with Heather Thompson Day, we talked about the value and importance of relationships and why we really need to prioritize them in our life. So in this conversation, we took that idea a step further by diving into how our thought patterns impact our relationships and might even be sabotaging our relationships without us knowing it.

Don’t forget to grab Charlotte’s free resource: The 10 Thought Habits that May be Sabotaging Your Relationships

Key Points Discussed:

  • All about Charlotte’s personal and professional life
  • What Charlotte’s life and leadership look like today
  • Charlotte’s leadership journey and how she came to realize she was a leader
  • Charlotte’s journey of going back to school as an empty nester and where it took her
  • Why Charlotte is passionate about helping women experience healthier relationships in their lives
  • How our thoughts impact our relationships on a day-to-day basis
  • The practice of ‘taking a pause’ before answering in conversations
  • The importance of authenticity in our relationships
  • The detriment of using confronting and challenging language in our relationships
  • How to identify incorrect thought patterns and practical work to change them
  • The necessity of asking the Holy Spirit for guidance in changing the way we show up to our relationships
  • Tips for learning to set boundaries and learning to respond differently when we are in a situation where someone else is over us
  • Charlotte’s Leaders are Learners Recommendations:

Key Quotes from the Episode:

“When our relationships are challenging, or maybe even unhealthy, it is really hard for us as leaders to be healthy and to have a positive outlook.” – Esther Littlefield

“I think that we are created for relationship. God’s made us so fearfully and wonderfully that we are designed to thrive and to really give Him the glory that we were created for when we’re in community.” – Charlotte Easley

“If there’s any advice that I can give women it would be to constantly learn to pause. Learn to stop and recognize what you’re saying to yourself.” – Charlotte Easley

“We can sit in our discomfort if we’re asking [the Holy Spirit] and if we submit to the Holy Spirit to allow us to change the way we show up in our relationships.” – Charlotte Easley

“As Christian women, we’re called to come alongside people, but we’re also called to exhort them to move toward the Lord.” – Charlotte Easley

“You’re not called to make everybody happy. You’re called for My [God’s] Glory. And you’re called for a specific purpose. You’re not called to do everything for everybody else.” – Charlotte Easley

“​​I’m going to make a commitment to myself that I’m going to do what I can without sacrificing everything that’s important to me. And I’m going to pray for God to intercede for me.”- Charlotte Easley

“It is like learning a new language to change the way you think and interact with people and respond to them in a world that needs responders instead of reactors.” – Charlotte Easley

Connect with Charlotte Easley:

Charlotte Easley LCSW is a relationship coach who began her work as a trauma therapist at the age of 56 and has been in private practice since 2015.  Her passion is supporting Christian women as they disrupt stories of people-pleasing and perfectionism. Her mission is to give women permission to live their days owning the gift and the responsibility of their identity as a daughter of the Kings of Kings.

Her special roles are wife, momma, and is blessed to have 3 beautiful grand girls who call her MahnaMahna. She lives in Versailles, KY writing and speaking to women to equip, encourage, and challenge them to understand their worth and align their focus.

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Episode Sponsor:

Today’s episode sponsor is my course, Confident Conversations.

Being able to navigate tough conversations is a big part of having healthy relationships. If you struggle with what to say in these types of conversations or whether they’re even necessary, head to confidentconversations.co to grab this mini-course with scripts, training, coaching, and more today!

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