This week I interview Gabriela Maldonado-Montano, the founder of True Change Consultants for episode 26 of the Relationship Series.
Listen to this Episode and Learn
– How to feel whole in spite of you circumstances
– How to connect in all relationships despite differences
– How to let go of your opinions and embrace reality
Discover
– How to use the power of acceptance to enhance your experience of romantic relationships
– That your feelings of judgement and opinion are really made up
-The secret to an intimate and unconditional love experience and where it comes from
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FULL TRANSCRIPTION: (Transcribed by Ben Evans)
>>ANKUSH: Welcome to the Relationship Series podcast my name is Ankush Jain and each episode I’ll be talking to speaking to a different state of mind expert on the subject of relationships. Enjoy
Welcome to episode 26 of the Relationship Series. This week I’m joined by Gabriela Maldonado-Montana. I’m very excited to have her on board. She’s the co-founder of TrueChange Consultants, which is a business-coaching firm, but she’s worked in a variety of different fields, worked with businesses, with children, with incarcerated youths, exec teams, you name it, she’s got a wide, wide range of experiences. And she’s been a state of mind expert since 1996, so you know, nearly a couple of decades of experience behind her. She’s bilingual, she was born in Mexico and resides in America. So welcome Gabriela, good to have you here.
>>GABRIELA: Thank you Ankush, nice to be here
>>ANKUSH: Gabriela and I met a week ago or two weeks ago virtually via Skype and I have spoken to a lot of state of mind experts but I think I had more fun on that call and was laughing more than I’ve done in a very long time so I think this is going to be a very fun interview and I’m looking forward to having hopefully more of that energy on this call too.
>>GABRIELA: Yes, because remember if it’s not fun Ankush I don’t do it, right! That’s the rule.
>>ANKUSH: We’ll do our best to make it a fun interview then! I know a bit about your background but just for our listeners would you just mind telling them a little bit of your story. How you came across the principles behind state of mind in 1996, what your journey’s been, and how is you seem to get involved in so many different areas, which on the surface look so different, from business to incarcerated youths. But how you’ve gone about that.
>>GABRIELA: Well, I was really lucky. I think it was my junior year in college, in university, and I was sent to a training and I just didn’t know what I was getting in to. There were a few people in our agency that got to go and the timing was perfect because actually I was going through a divorce and I was feeling pretty crappy. Actually I was feeling like I was breaking, really, and because I worked in a non-profit counselling agency everyone around me told me that this feeling of stress was going to last at least a couple of years and I just thought ‘Oh you gotta be kidding me, I don’t think I can do it.’
Anyway I got to this training, and I hear Dr Roger Mills, Amy Mills’ father, I hear him say, ‘it doesn’t matter what you have gone through. You are intact and you are whole and you’re complete.’ And as I heard that Ankush it was like a little bell inside my soul woke up and I remembered this to be true. I knew this in my soul because I’d gone as a child through many intense circumstances. So as I hear this little bell of wisdom waking me up inside of myself I just felt relieved, immediately I felt like, this is true.
So it was a powerful experience for me, and at the time I was working at a school doing prevention work for the non-profit I was working with and I just went back the next day and started talking to kids about it. In our prior conversation I told you it was remarkable in hindsight to see me the first day, physically, the way that I was dressed, the way that I felt, and then the second day, after I heard that, it was just a complete 180 degrees difference.
>>ANKUSH: So could you describe for the listeners, what was the change? How did you dress before, and how did you dress differently?
>>GABRIELA: Oh my goodness! The first day, I just remembered this, I was wearing tennis shoes, and sweats, you know like athletic pants, like you go running in, and I don’t even think I was wearing make up, which is not like me, because I like to dress up. And you know, a sweatshirt, kind of greyish, my outfit was grey. My energy was low, I felt tired.
And then the next day, I was wearing a suit, and I did my hair, but, you know, heels and the whole thing, but what’s important about your question really is not so much the difference in change of the way I was dressed, even though it was dramatic. It’s that the way I was dressed was really a reflection of how I was feeling at that moment, I was so… I was in so much pain, the first day I went to the training. And the second day I was just relieved, it’s almost as though I went back to myself, and that you could see visually, outside. So, you know… in speaking with you I just realized how instantaneous that change was for me and how relieved I was that I didn’t have to feel like that for two years. It wasn’t court mandated, it wasn’t a must, and that I really in the midst of going through a divorce could feel well and could feel relief, and that I could feel at peace. So, on a personal level I was very grateful.
The second part of your question is ‘how come I’ve worked with so many different kinds of people?’ And I was just again very blessed, very lucky, soon after the training I was hired by the department of alcohol and drugs services in Santa Clara county, here in California, which is located right smack in the middle of Silicon Valley. And the director at the time, Robert Gardiner, opened up a department just to teach this understanding that we’re going to be talking to people about and so my job was to go in to as many different environments and share this with people. So every year for 10 years at the beginning of the year, we came up with different projects and the projects included working at schools with kids and teachers and counselors and principals and in jails with adults and youths and executive teams, social workers.
And all along actually I had been doing consulting work so I’ve had the fortune of working with Jack Pransky and Amy and gone to Tikun and you know, just really gone to Argentina to work with some colleagues, Robert Charbit and Ken Manning and oh my goodness I’m forgetting her name, how can I forget her name, well it’ll come back to me. And I’d gone to Mexico too and worked with a company that was an agricultural company and worked with one of the executives there so I’ve just been really lucky, really blessed, I don’t know what you want to call it. And I’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of people.
The reason why I can work with a variety of people, even though it may seem like very different groups of people is because beyond their differences, really, each one of these people is just a human being, right. And so if you understand at the very fundamental level, at a very basic level how human beings function that it an understanding that is universal that transcends cultures and genders and country. And people get a sense of the truth, and so that’s how I’ve been able to work with just a variety of people.
>>ANKUSH: Yeah, you’re reminding that there’s a lot of stuff that’s written and talked about, and even in humor, we really focus on the differences between people. And that’s what I was reminded of, that the work you do, the work I do and many of the people we’ve had on, everyone I’ve had on this series really focuses on what’s the same between people, as opposed to what’s the difference. And from that sameness is what enables better communication, better relationships, deeper connections as opposed to trying to do that from a place of ‘people are different, people aren’t the same, people are bad/good, better or worse’, and on various sliding scales.
>>GABRIELA: Yeah, from Mars or Venus right… I don’t know if that was popular all around the world, but it was a book here in the States that was very popular, I think it’s ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’. And like you said it’s interesting because as you stand on that platform of difference it creates a distance, right, like there’s something different about you, which for me feels like we’re putting out opposite directions. And as you and I know, when you understand the very fundamental functioning of a human being, it just creates an understanding that at the most basic level we all function the same way. And a result of that is an immediate alignment and sense of connection to the person that you’re around.
>>ANKUSH: Yeah. So one of the things I personally really enjoy in doing these interviews is listening to the stories that our interviewees tell us, and we’ve had some really powerful stories in the past, and stories that have been shared. And I know that when I spoke to you last time you told me a fantastic story about how you met your husband, and because this is a relationship podcast I’d love to get that down. So tell as much as you’d like and self censor but hopefully not too much, but I just thought that was a really fantastic, live example of what we’re talking about and how that resulted in your now-husband.
>>GABRIELA: Yes, so you know, I was divorced then, like when I learned the principles, and then when I was working for the country, Santa Clara, one of the projects we did was a community project in a part of the city that needed a lot of support. And so I was there to do classes weekly for a few years and my lovely husband, Will, was working in that part of the city and he was employed by the Santa Fe police department. So just to put it in to context, I at that time used to work in jails and I used to work with kids that were in gangs and adults that were struggling, which were the people that Will was actually arresting. We didn’t know this at the time, but professionally we came from different ends and politically we come from different ends too, and some of our belief systems are really coming from different perspectives. But the very first day that I met him, he came with a few of his peeps, his officers, and I remember as soon as he walked in to the door thinking ‘Oh my god! Who’s this guy, he’s full of himself.’
>>ANKUSH: So it wasn’t a good first impression
>>GABRIELA: No, it was kind of like ‘Ew!’ (Laughing) I’ve told this story in front of him too. I just thought he was very cocky and very… he says ‘self-assured.’ But anyway he comes and sits next to me and the whole time I’m not really enjoying his company at all, and in conversation in that meeting he asked me to go and do a class at the college he was teaching at, I think it was a drug class or administrative justice or something. And this was part of what I did for my job and I said yes. So he said to me ‘You know, maybe it would be good if we had lunch before the class.’ So unbeknownst to me he was trying to date me, and I just thought he was asking me to, you know, something professional.
Anyway, we meet for lunch, he finds out that at the time actually I was ending up a relationship and honestly if I didn’t like him the first time, after the lunch I liked him less, and then after the class I liked him even less, right, so, you know he’s like ‘well maybe I’ll call you later’, and I was like, ‘yeah, ok.’ I didn’t think about him, it was not a good impression as you said, first impression, and then six months later I end up parking in a handicapped area and he actually sends one of his officers to give me a ticket, it was $280, in 2003, which is a lot of money.
>>ANKUSH: And just to be clear before we get a lot of abuse for you for parking in a handicapped space, you did actually have permission to park there, right, and you left enough room for people to go past.
>>GABRIELA: Yes, yes. Let me put this into context, good question. I wasn’t thoughtless about that. What happened was I was in the class, I was about to teach the class, I got there to the apartment complex, there was no parking, it was late, it was not the safest neighborhood, and I asked the manager of the apartment complex ‘where I should park?’ and he said, ‘well just park to the left of the ramp, make sure there’s plenty of space for the wheelchairs etc.’ So anyway there I was, I get this ticket and I go back to the police station and I asked them why they gave me this ticket and they said ‘well isn’t it obvious? You were parked in the handicapped.’
I end up talking to Will and he asks me how I’m doing and he told me never to park there again, I had a conversation and told him all my reasons and he took pity on me and said, ‘Ok, fine, we’ll take it away, but this will be the last time and never do it.’ And at the end of the conversation I told him I was no long with the person I was dating at the time that we first met, and he actually asked me out that same …
>>ANKUSH: sentence… the next sentence…
>>GABRIELA: the same first conversation. So I like literally, it was like ‘Oh I’m so sorry,’ right and then ‘what you are doing Sunday?’
>>ANKUSH: (laughing) without skipping a beat
>>GABRIELA: No, without skipping a beat. And without skipping a beat I said ‘yes, let’s go.’
>>ANKUSH: So, what I’m interested, what was it that made you say yes. You’ve met this guy, you’ve not got a good impression of him, that impression got worse and worse, he’s ended up giving you a ticket, and so, what was it that made you say yes?
>>GABRIELA: That is a great question. Well first off my state of mind had changed completely, right, first time I met him I was in a relationship, this time around I was just dating, so I had opened up a little bit, a lot, and when we were having the conversation and he was talking to me about the ticket… you know what happened, is in that moment, in the second conversation, I completely forgot about my opinion of him, my first opinion about him. Actually that’s what happened, because obviously if I would have held that first opinion I would have never said yes, right
>>ANKUSH: Yeah
>>GABRIELA: And throughout our relationship, one of the things that I’ve noticed that has helped us a lot is that we often give each other a new chance. It’s very common for us to, if we get into a little tiff, or an argument, it’s very common for us to offer the opportunity to start afresh, and I find that to be extremely helpful.
Not that we don’t have memories, that we don’t think about what we did last week, but overall there’s always an invitation to show up in a fresh new way. So that’s what happened, luckily for me, right, fortunately for me, because it’s turned out to be such a beautiful relationship, and fun. And you know the other thing that happened when you and I were talking is that I was sharing with you that at that time I was not trying to have a relationship, I just wanted to have fun and get to meet people. And I told him that, I said ‘I’m dating, I don’t want a serious relationship’, so I think because I wasn’t looking for something serious it opened up the field for enjoying whatever we did without having to make things happen in a certain way.
So I would highly recommend that to people, in relationship, if people are trying to start a relationship it’s so nice to feel that freedom of being with another human being with another human being without any pressure.
>>ANKUSH: So you’ve now got this guy that you’re dating and you’re very very different, different political backgrounds, different views on the world, different belief systems. It kind of throws the idea of compatibility out of the window because I think you said to me as well that if you’ve picked your ideal partner or even a partner and written them down on a piece of paper it wouldn’t have been like your husband.
>>GABRIELA: No, not by description. Actually I was dating another guy at the same time that fit my description (laughs) and it was a terrible experience, actually, it was a terrible experience. There were two things that made it terrible, one of them is that I was really attached to dating him, and the other thing is that I just noticed that even though on paper he fit the bill, he had all the resume, there was not really a sense of flowing, there was really not, it was just complicated. And with Will, even though, you know today, we’re very different, he’ll say things and I’m like ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe you just said that!’
I mean really, just yesterday, he said something… What I’ve learned to understand is that we can connect with people at different levels. I can connect with people’s opinions, people’s likes, people’s politics and that works really well if those opinions and views and politics are similar to yours. But when those opinions and views and politics etc. are different what tends to happen, if you’re connecting at that level, an immediate clash. And the truth is Ankush there is not another human being on the earth that would think exactly like me in every single issue, we all have different opinions. And I think that’s when people actually have relationship problems, when you’re trying to connect to a human being at your opinion level, or your belief system level.
Will and I have a connection that transcends that and transcends what I call the surface of a human being, all the likes and dislikes and preferences. And we actually have a connection that is a bit deeper level and really understanding that we’re both human beings trying to have a good life, a loving life, a nice marriage, and we’re doing the best we can, and that some of our opinions are very different from each other. And to just go back to the beginning of when we met our friends are very different, so my friends are different from his friends, they have very different opinions, and my friends were giving me a hard time because I was dating a cop, that was a republican, that did the job that he did. And I just heard them be very judgmental towards him. And then he would share comments that his friends were saying to him, like ‘how could you go it with her, she’s so liberal’, and I’m not even that liberal, but you know, ‘do you realize that she actually works with the people we arrest, and she’s trying to help them’.
So it’s almost as though both of our friends were very judgmental and couldn’t see that we were both trying to just have a very nice life. But fortunately Will and I saw that.
>>ANKUSH: So, it’s a great story and there are so many things going through my head and one of the things I wanted to ask you is, has that now changed you? Because you obviously had your views and opinions, and still do, and your belief system, which is different to your husband’s, but through being I guess open minded, less judgmental, giving him a chance and now ending up marrying this guy, has this made you more open minded, even more so? Or are you guys still very much firmly in your ‘Oh well this is what I believe, this is what he believes’, and that’s it, and you just don’t discuss that, or are you able to have those conversations and be respectful of each other’s different points and even open to changing your points of view.
>>GABRIELA: Well I tell you, everything, all that you’ve described has happened, and probably will continue to happen. One of the things that happened is that… I had a very judgmental opinion about police officers because like you said I was born and raised in Mexico and in Mexico police officers are part of the problem in many cases with crimes etc. So I didn’t know but I was very judgmental to police officers and in being with Will I realized ‘Wait, police officers are people, they’re people too’, right, I mean listening to him I realized he just really wants to protect people that are suffering, and in having conversations with him I just realized the beauty of his intention. And it’s the same as mine, it’s just that he goes at it in a different way.
So I’ve just actually come to be grateful for the work that he did, and the weekends that he didn’t spend at home. And the 24 hours a day shift that he worked. And the impact in his body. So what’s really happening there’s a deep deep appreciation for his commitment to humanity. And I would have gone about it differently and I do. But I just have an appreciation for him as a human being and that makes me feel closer and it allows me to listen deeply. If I had to guess I would tell you that that’s probably the same thing that’s happened to him. We’ve just had this beautiful opportunity to look into each other’s world and appreciate the effort we’re trying to make to help our fellow humans.
>>ANKUSH: That’s very touching, and reminds me of something I said to a client recently and it just came out of nowhere, which is, most of us end up hanging with people who are the same as us. And spending time with people who have similar belief systems to us, similar views to us, people who agree with us, for obvious reasons. And yet it’s often the people, and I know this is true for me, it’s often the people that we do disagree with that we are completely different ends of the political spectrum or have completely different belief systems, that give us the opportunity to learn the most about ourselves.
And I really heard that in your story, and what occurred to me was how incredible because if more of us took on board that kind of view and were more open to meeting people that were so different to us, whether in a romantic sense or in our friendships or anything else, then it would make the world a much better place, and have far less conflict… whether in our family, our neighborhood, in our state, in our country, or in international relations.
And we can see evidence of that every single day in the news about how people do concentrate on the differences. As opposed to seeing like you said that people are just people and they’re trying to do the best they can do, and that doesn’t mean we need to agree with them, but seeing that, that’s the one thing we’ve got in common and approaching any relationship from that point of view is going to lead to a better outcome at the end of the day for both parties.
>>GABRIELA: Yes, absolutely, it’s just that I think most of us get stuck at that opinion level, or at the political view level, or at the like and dislike level because it’s what’s visible, it’s what we can see, it’s what we can observe, it’s the comments that we can hear. And that’s why I think it’s been so helpful to really understand and see behind how human beings function, when you get to feel like behind a curtain when you understand that there is a core of our humanity that functions and it operates exactly the same way. When you understand that, when you understand that human beings do what they do because at the moment it seems like the thing to do even though a second later they may regret it. It just allows for the kinds of connections that you are talking about.
You know I have worked with people who have killed people. I have worked with people who have molested children. I have worked with people that are bullies, with people that have made decisions for a company that were not the best decisions and abusive. And when you first start confronting that, it’s easy to get lost in opinions. Now I’m not saying it’s okay to kill people and I’m not saying it’s okay to abuse children and I’m not saying it’s okay to hurt other human beings.
But when you understand how powerful the role of thought is and that people have this capacity to think that they don’t understand very well. And that sometimes they feel compelled to do what they’re thinking, and then later they regret it. When you understand all of that it allows you to see beyond it and actually have a conversation that can actually shift the person and ultimately allow them to have a healthier behavior.
I mean I have done things that I wish I would have not done. I have had moments when I’m like ‘Oh my god, I just can’t believe I said that’, ‘I can’t believe I did that’. And I don’t mean that in a good way, I mean in the worst possible way, possible. I have really reflected on that, I have done the worst that I’ve done when the quality of my thinking is at it’s lowest and where I just felt compelled to do it. And a second later, sometimes, I realize what happened, it’s like I jump to action prior to taking a moment.
And I think in relationships Ankush we do this, we do this because we’re fuelled by intense emotions. And we don’t understand the role of emotion either right? I mean I have said things that I just wish I could have grabbed them as they were leaving my mouth and put them back. And then it’s too late, it’s heard. And my husband has too. He has said things that I’m like, ‘I cant’ believe you just said that!’ And sometimes I get really hurt, and then a few… sometime after, it all comes in the context of: yes, as human beings we can say some really mean things and do really mean things when we feel compelled in the moment. So in relationship it just creates such a beautiful space for both partners.
And this is true also for my brother. My brother’s also a police officer. He also is trained to do all kind of things that, I wouldn’t want to be trained in, and his behavior as you can imagine is different than mine at times. And I just remember in the back of mind he really… he’s doing what seems logical for him to do at this moment. And what that does is that it really creates a connection with my brother that allows me to have conversations that bring us closer together, which is ultimately what I want in my life, right? I just want to have a sense of connection, and companionship with the people that I love.
>>ANKUSH: So how long have you and Will been married now?
>>GABRIELA: Well, this lucky man has been with me now since 2003, and we got married in 2006. And I hate to say this to you but honestly it just feels to me like we’re in a honeymoon. We’re playful with each other, we are kind with each other. He’s very supportive. We have fun, you know, we get in to arguments too (laughs).
>>ANKUSH: And that’s what I wanted to get to, because people might be listening to this and thinking ‘Oh well, Gabriela’s just one of the lucky people, she’s been lucky’. And one thing I’ve found throughout this series, they seem to be lucky, in relationships, and it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence, to me, looking at it from people that are teachers of this understanding, of these principles behind state of mind. They seem to have great relationships, they seem to have great marriages. So, do you share that view, or do you think you’re just lucky?
>>GABRIELA: Well absolutely, right. When you understand how something works, when you understand how the human system works, you’re just able to let the benefits come to the table. So I function exactly the same way as any other human being, but I understand certain things about people, and it’s very helpful to me. I mean I have a very strong opinions about certain things. But I understand that when I feel very intense about something, when I feel very attached to something, when I feel very reactive to something, it’s not the best… I’m just not at my best, I’m just not.
And I’ll tell you it was so funny because just this weekend we had a 4th of July party and Will said something and it just pissed me off so much, it pissed me off! So I ended up doing something else, you know like when you just want to throw something back, it’s like ‘Come on, put on your boxing gloves!’ I’m ready to go, I’m ready to go from the shoulder. And there was another opportunity for me to be a smart ass back with him, and I tell you I was … it was on the tip of my tongue, the comment. It was like in my tongue and out of my mouth right there… and I started saying something and he turned around and looked at me and said ‘Oh honey, what did you say?’ And in that moment there was another little space, because we were having a great time, and I’m like, wow, I can say it and I can also be quiet.
So I just notice these moments. I notice when I’m reactive, I notice when he’s reactive, and that’s just very helpful. Understanding how the human system works is helpful and one of the results is that it allows you to have gentler, kinder, better, funner relationships.
>>ANKUSH: And do you believe those are open to everyone, anyone who’s listening to this, could have an equally great relationship.
>>GABRIELA: I think anyone that understands how the human system works will benefit from the relationships and one of the things you said just a few minutes ago is that the people you’ve been interviewing they all have been sharing their marriages. Now I don’t know exactly what they’ve been sharing, but I’ll tell you I do not have the perfect marriage, I mean things come up all the time. We invested in an apartment and we lost a lot of money, my husband had open-heart surgery, my brother got deployed. I mean, you know, life is a contact sport, right, so it’s gonna come, it’s not a perfect life. But what happens is I just have a sense of ease. I know that anything that comes my way, I will be able to navigate through it.
>>ANKUSH: Yeah.
>>GABRIELA: So I just think that everyone would benefit from understanding how they function as a human being, at the most foundational level.
>>ANKUSH: I totally agree with you, and I’ll quickly share an embarrassing story. So last night I was on a client-coaching online course thing that I’m doing with a number of guys. And I get off the call and I’m like ‘oh, where’s my wallet, I can’t find my wallet…’ And I’d been a bit naughty earlier and I’d got some junk food from a place when I was driving back home. And I thought ‘oh no, I’ve left my wallet there, it’s fallen out my pocket’. The jeans I was wearing, the pockets aren’t … they’re a bit shallower, and my wallet does fall out of them. And I thought ‘oh, I’ve lost my wallet!’ And it’s that kind of place with heavy traffic… ‘I’m never going to get it back, and I’ve lost all my cards…’
So I’m looking round the house and I’m like ‘no, it’s there, I’ve lost it’. And I drive back there in a bit of a panic and part of me is going, you know what, it’s going to be ok. What’s the worst case? You’ve got to cancel some cards, you lose a bit of money, you know fine, even your driving license is there, you cancel it and get a new one, you can handle this. And on the surface level there was this panic. And I got there, and they said no one’s handed in the wallet.
And I’m like, ‘oh great, people are no good nowadays, no one helps each other out,’ and all this stuff. And something spoke to me, about, like slow down. Be aware of what I teach. Take your own medicine. And as I was driving back and I slowed down, and I kind of knew this before, but I wasn’t listening to this, and it was almost a little voice telling me ‘you haven’t lost your wallet’. And as I drove back I just knew more and more as I stopped panicking, I was like ‘you haven’t lost your wallet, it’s at home’. And I’m driving back and I’m cancelling the card and my mum rings me. The wallet had bounced off the floor and into my wardrobe, right at the back where I wouldn’t have seen it, and this like freak thing, and the weird thing is, this is almost freaky, I knew as I was driving back it was in my room. I didn’t know where, but I knew it was in my room, and I would have found it.
And it’s just another example of stuff happens in life, and we can either freak out and have a huge panic, and I would have cancelled all of my cards, I wouldn’t have looked in there, I would have found it two days later after I’ve created all of this drama and this mess. But slowing down a little bit for me, being aware that our feelings aren’t an indication of how well or bad life is going, it’s just an indication of our thinking, is really helpful to handle life with a bit more ease. And I lose sight of it.
>>GABRIELA: Do you know, I think what you’re describing is really, and I wanted to make this point. You and I work with people in a way that we explain to them how every human being functions. Right, it’s just the way it works. We don’t teach people, we don’t share with people how to do their own lives, we’re just saying ‘this is how it works’. So what we know is, as human beings we have the capacity to freak out, we have the capacity to stay calm, we have the capacity to stay neutral, we have the capacity to be dramatic. I mean we can react and act in all kinds of ways, right. But it seems to be for all of us humans that there is a deep source of wisdom inside of us that is there to help us out. And what happens often as you were saying is that when the mind is really loud and really panicky and really dramatic it’s very difficult to hear those bubbles of wisdom.
And I think if we reflect we have all had moments when we had a sense… and then we get caught up with the drama in our minds. So I just wanted to say Ankush that what you and I share with people is something that people are already doing. It would be like going to a class to understand the wind if you wanted to sail. If you wanted to sail and you took a sailing class the wind is not going to change for you, the wind is going to be what the wind is, but you will understand how to benefit, from how the wind works, so you can sail wherever it is you want to.
And in my relationships, in my marriage in particular, the benefit of understanding has been joy and has been ease, and has been moments of quiet when I want to spit something out, or really just vomit something over my husband… it’s like ‘oh wait, it’s not mandatory…’ So there’s a great sense of possibility. Actually there ‘s a great sense of possibility and also a great sense of release, and a great sense of… to experience a relationship in a completely different way that you have not even imagined you could.
>>ANKUSH: Yeah, I totally agree and I think that’s a great place we’ve gone massively over time but I think that’s a great place for us to leave it there and if people are listening to this and they’ve liked what they’ve heard and they want to get to know you better and they want to find out more about you, what’s the best way for them to do that?
>>GABRIELA: You can reach me at www.truechangeconsultants.com Or they can contact you and you can send me a little text. And at the end I just wanted to say that in November, I don’t if you said it or not, there’s going to be a Viva conference in the south of Spain. And it’s going to be a very relaxed conference. There’s going to be flamenco dancers and lots of food and just a very relaxed time and then we’re also going to talk about how we function as human beings. So if you want to take a vacation in the middle of November you’re welcome to come and join us. I think it’s November 14-17. But for more information they can reach out to you.
>>ANKUSH: Fantastic. And I’ll put all the links online with the interview information. And for people who want to contact me, they can do so via my website, which is ankushjain.co.uk , via Facebook which is facebook.com/ankushjainltd or on twitter which is @ankushkjain.
Thanks a lot Gabriela, it’s been an absolute pleasure, I really enjoyed it, and I’ll speak to the listeners next time.
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