#64 Are You Resilient Enough?

Ever wondered how some people seem to bounce back from life's toughest challenges while others are swept away? Resilience coach Mariana Jimenez joins me, Tamara, for a heartfelt discussion that may just hold the key to that mystery. Mariana's own transformative journey from medicine to coaching unveils the intricate tapestry of habits, beliefs, and practices that build resilience, especially among women. Together, we delve into how this inner strength is not only about personal fortitude but also about healing from societal pressures, enhancing lifestyle habits, and nurturing one's inner child. Mariana's insights illuminate the often overlooked connection between resilience and success – and how fostering resilience can empower us to steer through life's storms with grace and tenacity.

Chapters

• 0:00 Resilience and Relationships in Life
• 8:42 Understanding Attachment Styles in Relationships
• 18:03 Navigating Relationships Through Self-Discovery

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Straight from the.

Speaker 1: 0:01

Source's Mouth podcast Frank talk about sex and dating. Hello everyone, tamara here, welcome back to the show. Today's guest is Mariana Jimenez. We'll be talking about a very important life skill. If you like this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well. Thanks for joining me, mariana. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, thank you, I think this will be a great episode. I know I say that every time, but, um, it's definitely yes, that what you teach about is a very good skill to have for, like you mentioned in the opening. Yeah, so what got you into? Um, like just wanting to coach people on resilience yeah, I mean, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 0:43

I think most people in the space that I'm in can say that we're kind of teaching people what we wish we had at one point in our lives. So I can talk about what got me into the coaching space and then kind of talk about why I picked resilience specifically. So in a Sparks Notes version, I had studied through high school and university with this intention of becoming a doctor. That would have been my dream profession for about 10, 12 years. And I finished university and I go forward to take the summer to write my medical school entrance exam and do applications and everything. Take the summer to write my medical school entrance exam and do applications and everything. And in that time period I started working in healthcare and going into healthcare for the first time full swinging. With this really top tier position for a new graduate, I realized that it is not my calling. Many of your listeners can probably relate to or are going to be like shaking their heads when I say that the healthcare system is not at all what we think it is internally and as far as kind of how accessible it is. The way that it really looks at health, in Western society at least, is not in a way that's aligned with who I am and really like the impact that I wanted to have going into that world. So I kind of went through like a full blown existential crisis and was like I need to take time away from this pursuit to really decide how I want to show up here and if this is still something that I want to do, knowing what I know now. So in that existential crisis, like I canceled my exam to form, all my applications kept working but was like I need to just dabble in everything, just let myself and my curiosity fly. So I enrolled in this life coaching certification course because I've interviewed lots of life coaches on my podcast I've talked to lots of life coaches. My own dad took a life coaching certification course years ago. So I said you know what? This seems like a fun little thing to do. So took it, loved it, and at that point I already had my podcast, the Commitment to Growth podcast, as a little passion project. So I decided, well, why not brand this whole thing out to be Commitment to Growth as a brand, as a business, because it's really at the core of who I am and the message that I think I really like to convey when I talk about if you're embarking on a journey of personal growth and discovery. It's a commitment. It's a commitment to seeing through the struggles but ultimately towards your growth, right.

Speaker 2: 3:17

So why I niched in resilience is because I led a very unbalanced life for a lot of my teenage years. I was a really anxious kid, really like poor self-esteem, lots of insecurities that shine through, like everything I did, everything I set myself up to do, and those insecurities like really led me to ultimately fail at a lot of big dreams that I had. And it was this question of is it me, is it just that fate is conspiring against me? What's going on? And so I go into life coaching school and this was this question that I had in my mind throughout university as well, because I studied sports science. So we learn a lot about physical health and how that leads to resilience and mental health, but for me it was well okay.

Speaker 2: 4:09

Aside from exercising and sleeping consistently, what else leads athletes and people in general to be resilient? So I start going into my own journey of self-improvement and learning those tools, and then into life coaching school, I learn about the neuroscience of resilience, which is already something I'd picked up from a neuroscience internship that I did in school and I start learning about how, culturally that we have such different definitions of resilience, but how it really is a I've noticed that it's a foundation of the consistent habits and beliefs and practices that we dedicate time to on a regular basis. It's not that resilience is one mindset, it's one skill. It's a set of foundations, of things that we devote time to on a regular basis that allow us to have the strength to walk through life and navigate challenge. So that's the the sparks notes versions of how I got here and I coach women because I think that we have so much healing to do as a collective, as women.

Speaker 2: 5:19

Our definitions of resilience from what we're taught from society and the patriarchy are so skewed that I really wanted to. That's where I'm really focusing my impact right now. So it's been beautiful. I've hosted women's circles because healing should be collective and we talk about everything from, like, inner child healing, which is a huge part of our conversation today, to lifestyle habits, mindsets, relationships, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a very wide encompassing career, I guess, because I get to really bridge resilience into everything I coach women through and give them those tools to lead resilient lives. So that's that in a nutshell.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Yeah, no, that's awesome, that's really cool, thank you. Yeah, to go through all that schooling and then realize it's not for you and have the courage and resilience to be like, yep, I'm not going to do that, let me do pivot. And I'm imagining, when you were doing your study, that the successful people generally are resilient, I would think, is that a trait?

Speaker 2: 6:20

you found, yeah, and. But I think that that was the question that I carried through so much of my career and then getting into business, right, it was okay. Well, why are some people succeeding so much, like making millions and billions of dollars, and then there's people like myself or other people I know in this space, who are working from such passion but aren't getting those results? So it's just been a question that I've consistently been looking to answer through my practice, you know.

Speaker 1: 6:48

All right. And then and I know you mentioned, it's like a skill in relation to like other skills and we talked about the childhood stuff. Do you want to talk about like? I know we talked earlier about attachment styles and then maybe go into the dating, like how that affects dating and relationships?

Speaker 2: 7:04

Yeah for sure.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Yeah, I think it's super, also very wide encompassing. I think a good place to start is perhaps how our relationship to self leads to resilience in our relationships. So one core facet of the work that I do and kind of how I educate women is we have this idea of what belonging looks like. Right, we think of belonging as being part of a group of friends or our family or in partnership really, and I think a lot of us have this idea that belonging starts with okay, we meet people and then we kind of integrate ourselves into that friend group and then one day it all just falls into place, right? But something that I learned throughout my practice and from the women that I've been coaching who reported, like doing my inner work led to better relationships, led to me then feeling like I belonged more, because I was not only seeking but attracting the relationships and the spaces where I could feel like I belong, because they were in alignment with who I am and who I'm becoming. So I started to recognize, wow, maybe belonging isn't an outside-in job, it's an inside-out job. We have this responsibility to get to know ourselves, our needs, our values, our desires, to then be able to express that to the people in our life and then from there, the adequate people who align with those things will give us that sense of belonging because they'll want to be with us, they'll want to spend time with us, they'll make time for us, et cetera, et cetera, us, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 8:42

So I think, for women, so much of our worth comes from male attention. Right, like in a patriarchal society, male attention is like the highest thing you could ever seek for a lot of women, right? And so it becomes this game of I have to mold myself to acquire the male gaze. I have to make my bodies look a certain way, I have to be the low maintenance girlfriend. That's something that I have really, really struggled with for a really long time. I have to be this cool, doesn't care a lot kind of person, and that'll attract the right people. But really, at that point you're living through a perception of a perception, right, because you think that if somebody thinks of you that way, then they'll love you more. If somebody thinks of you that way, then they'll love you more. If somebody thinks of you that way, then they'll be more attracted to you. And you're right. If you do that, you will attract the people who like low-maintenance girlfriends, who like people who don't really care. But is that who you are? Yeah, and is that who you would want to love you and be in relationship with? Right. So I think a lot of the work is an understanding. How do I want to stand in the home that I am? How do I want to build a home within myself to then be able to share that space with somebody else? Right? And to the point of attachment styles, I'm no expert. The only training that I have is what I learned in life coaching school and the work that I've done on my own healing Attachment styles in the world of psychology and relationship.

Speaker 2: 10:27

Psychology and nervous system regulation describe how our nervous system is wired in such a way within relationships. So how we formed our first connections, how we first learned to seek love and receive love and be responded to by our caregivers as babies and children specifically, is how we then seek love and seek connection in adulthood. So there's four main ones that the research has labeled and defined. The first one is avoidant attachment. So this is the kind of attachment where you might be in relationship with somebody who never gets too close. They always kind of keep you at a distance. They're the people that are more prone to ghosting. They're the people that find it a bit harder to open up in vulnerability. They're the kind of people that are way more likely to just cut and run one day because love becomes too overwhelming. And it's an attachment style that is very misunderstood, because these are the people that are labeled bad and ghosters and players and stuff. But it's an attachment style that is rooted in so much shame, because people with avoidant attachment are ultimately terrified of being rejected for who they are. So that's avoidant.

Speaker 2: 11:49

The next one is anxious attachment. This is the one that I personally resonate with the most in romantic relationships. This is the total opposite of avoidant. It's like somebody who latches on really quickly, who really really seeks attention, validation from this person that they're in relationship with. They rely a lot on that person's affirmation to feel okay and regulated. It might be like they need to be told that they're loved or that they're beautiful or that they are seen and valued consistently to feel like that person is still present with them right. So this attachment style is way more rooted in kind of like very anxious energy. But anxious energy that has arrived from your presence here dictates how I feel. If you're not here or if you suddenly pull away, then I'm automatically dysregulated, right? And this is an attachment style that comes from experiences where there was maybe a lot of breadcrumbing or where love was really conditional or inconsistent. You had to self-sacrifice to gain love from your caregivers or from your family or whoever it may be right, and it presents as very anxious energy like I will do anything for you, even if it means forgetting who I am and my needs, right, so that's anxious attachment.

Speaker 2: 13:11

The other one, and this one's the most rare, it's called anxious avoidant, or the other term is disorganized attachment. So you elicit both avoidant and anxious, where you might get really close and be displaying more of the anxious energy. But then as soon as somebody reciprocates that you pull away and you're gone all of a sudden, right, it's very associated with like kind of hot, cold feelings, like I don't understand, like this person and I we were doing so well, and then all of a sudden, like they're mad at me or they're really upset or they want nothing to do with me, all of a sudden. But again, it's that it comes from this place of never knowing quite where you stand, because you never knew quite where you stood as a child. And the last one this is the one that is really portrayed as the. This is where you want to get to.

Speaker 2: 14:01

Type of attachment is secure attachment. So this is where you're able to exist in relationship. Exist in dating even doesn't have to be in relationship. It can be like the pre-phase of dating right, calmly, in who you are, without being so heavily swayed by the person's shifts in mood. For example, like, all of a sudden, the person that you went on a couple of dates with stops responding to your messages on Tinder or your iMessages, right, and now you're thinking, oh my gosh, I did something wrong. What's going on? They're seeing somebody else. They're totally cheating on me. Somebody in secure attachment can say, oh well, maybe they are just at work or maybe they told me they were going on a vacation with their buddies. They're probably just away from their phone.

Speaker 2: 14:51

It is a type of attachment that allows you to be more rooted in reason. Really, you're able to approach these situations more calmly, without deriving so much of your worth, validation, self-love from what that person is responding to you. You're able to stand in your needs. You're able to communicate them, open up dialogue for conscious conversation. It's kind of like the gold standard that we really want to get to. But of course, attachment is a spectrum. There might be times where you're leaning towards secure and then something happens and you shift back into anxious or avoidant whatever one that you most resonate with, and that's okay. It's not that we have to be in one place all the time. But the question is, how are we returning there with conversation, with self-dialogue, with self-care, compassion, regulation, right? So that's kind of our resilience with ourselves in a nutshell, and how it plays into relationships.

Speaker 1: 15:43

Yeah, yeah, I think that was really well said, because I did an episode early on about attachment styles and it wasn't quite as concise and clear, so this will be really helpful. And I love to talk about books too, so Attached is one book that talks about this. It's like the Bible of it, yeah. And then there's one that's called Avoidant. There's all kinds of them. I'm also just listened to the Truth the guy that wrote the Game Right, he was like the pickup artist infamous guy.

Speaker 1: 16:10

He wrote the Truth so after he got all those women then he was trying to be faithful and monogamous. So he writes about all his explorations of all that and he covers a lot of this. It's very interesting.

Speaker 2: 16:24

I think it's it really well.

Speaker 2: 16:26

One thing I do want to say first is to anybody listening like please don't self-diagnose yourself from this very sparks notes version of attachment styles, right, something or multiple things might've resonated with you, but it doesn't mean that that's where you lean towards or like what your attachment style is Like.

Speaker 2: 16:40

I said I'm not a specialist, I'm just a. I know, as far as the deep work I've done and really I think attachment styles are kind of something that's popping off a lot in like Insta therapy and like TikTok right now. Right, because it's important in that, by understanding them and how we might align with certain attachment styles, how that shows up in our relationships and therefore how we can show up in a way that is more conscious, you know. That's why I think it's really important to understand it, understand them at least at like a surface level, so that we know like we learn about ourselves that way and therefore how we can show up in a way that is more aligned with how we want to feel, rather than being swayed by our nervous system, you know yeah, yeah, I was gonna say the same as me.

Speaker 1: 17:43

Basically, it's one more step to understand yourself. Like you just said, exactly exactly, yeah, I think we should move towards, like, specifically, dating and or relationships with resilience, like especially if to me it goes hand in hand with mindset as well where if you think it's gonna suck, it's it's going to suck, like if dating is terrible then dating is going to be terrible. The thing that I've noticed the most with the women that I coach, because I get a lot of women who are having like an existential crisis.

Speaker 2: 18:24

They're kind of in a midlife crisis. You know, moms who have been taking stay at home, moms who've been taking care of their kids all this time and all of a sudden the kids leave the house and they're like I don't know what to do with myself, I don't know who I am, I don't know what I want from my life. Women who are having those kind of self dialogues and they're having that kind of spiritual awakening that's really the cohort that I work with, and I would say that the number one theme that I it unites all these women is this constant of unaligned action, and what I mean by that is you cannot persevere or have direction in life when you don't know why you're doing the things that you're doing and how those things are rooted in who you are and what you value and what your purpose is and what you want to put out into the world. What I mean by that in dating is the number one reason why a lot of people don't get what they want or they don't manifest the dream partner that they desire is because they don't know who they are and therefore you don't know what you want mirrored back to you. So it comes back to this idea of belonging, in that you have a responsibility to understand who you are, what you desire, what you need to feel seen, heard, loved.

Speaker 2: 19:38

What's your love language? Out of the five, the five physical touch, acts of service, all that fun stuff, which one do you resonate with? What's your attachment style? Even things like what turns you on? Stuff like that where, um, what? Even things like what turns you on? You know stuff like that where, by understanding yourself at a deep level, not only are you radiating the energy that will attract somebody that aligns with it, but also when you're in a given situation with somebody where you're having a conversation about, hey, what you did at that group party the other day, where you got up and and left, or you made this comment to somebody that didn't jive with me. But how are we opening dialogue around that?

Speaker 2: 20:19

Versus say you don't know yourself, but then suddenly you see somebody do something that's really sets you off. You're not going to know how to have a conversation around that because you don't know what you value, you don't know why it set you off, so it's like, oh, I'll just push it to the side. But then what does that lead to? Is persistent self-abandonment, persistent devaluing of self. That was my big introduction into this world.

Speaker 2: 20:42

I went through a really pivotal life transition two years ago now and one of the things that came out of that big fat spiritual awakening was I left like my longest relationship because I was like I have been here just self-abandoning for so long, like molding myself into what I think will yield the most love from this person, but it's not yielding the most love from myself to myself because I hate myself, like at a deep level, right, and that was like that was so hard and so eyeopening to to realize that I am so dependent on how this person reacts in response to how I love them, how I show up, instead of being rooted in how I show up first and then gifting that to another person or opening the space to share that with another person. So I would say the first question for any woman to ask themselves or for anyone really this goes to women, men and everyone outside and in between is who are you and how is who you are? How do you want that to be mirrored back to you? What do you value that you want somebody that you're dating to value as well, like non-negotiables, right, things that you're interested in, that you hope that they will value as well. What makes you feel safe in the presence of somebody? Is it somebody who listens? Is it somebody who gives you the quality time to put their phone away and have that self-control right? What dreams and aspirations do you have with a partner? Do you want to start a family? Do you want to go traveling together? Do you want to start a business together?

Speaker 2: 22:18

I'm not saying that the goal is to manifest a person who checks off every box, but if you're grounded in who you are and what you desire, that's automatically the energy that you're going to put out there and that you're going to be able to stand in with confidence. When somebody's standing in front of you and telling you about who they are or who they're not, and you're like this drives with me, cool, or this does not drive with me. I can't compromise on this right. Somebody that you're dating doesn't want kids and you haven't asked yourself enough how important that is to you. You are, you might be more likely to like sacrifice that Right, but then years later, you're like that desire is coming back and you're like, oh my gosh, like I really neglected this for this person or for this relationship, and that's just one example, right, but I think that's kind of how that unalignment with ourselves shows up in our relationships.

Speaker 1: 23:16

Yeah, especially if you have choices in dating and you're like don't know who you are. You would say yes to more people than you should and then potentially not say yes to someone you should. You know that that would align if you knew yourself Totally. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely good stuff. Are there any books that you found helpful or that you recommend to people, or is that not really?

Speaker 2: 23:37

Oh, no, I've read, listened to so many. For anybody who is looking to just further their education in their attachment style or get really kind of centered in which one they might identify with and how it's showing up in the relationships, I definitely recommend Attached. It's just the word attached period it's like the camera of the author top of my head but it's a blank cover with a heart on it, I'm pretty sure, and that book is like a deep dive into all the attachment styles and practices to step into self-soothing and secure attachment. One that really helped me because, like I said, I identify with anxious attachment is called Anxious Attachment by Dr Jessica Baum, and Baum is B-A-U-H-M and she tells her own story of how anxious attachment was so deeply rooted in her and how she ended up in the hospital because of it, just so, so dysregulated, but how she's now dedicated her career to helping people heal it and understand the nervous system. It really gets into the nitty gritty science of it, which is really cool. But if attachment style isn't so interesting to you or you want something else to just further your learning, one book that I think is such a I want to say a dent in society but like such a like a moving needle in society is All About Love by Bell Hooks. That book I think if everybody read it the world would be a better place. Bell Hooks for those of you that don't know, read it, the world would be a better place.

Speaker 2: 25:14

Bell Hooks for those of you that don't know was a feminist activist but very much one of the first people in that realm of activism to speak for both men and women and really advocate for unison versus going at each other. And this book she really breaks down how love is kind of communicated to us. Like she says, when you ask somebody about love, they say, oh, it's this thing that you can't explain, it's this thing that you can't touch. But because we don't know how to define it or conceptualize it in our minds, we don't know how to practice it or how to really learn how to see it, learn how to feel it, learn how to express it, see it, learn how to feel it, learn how to express it. So she dives into dismantling lots of definitions of love, how to step into a relationship, expressing love freely and free of expectation, and really from that embracing community aspect. So that book is incredible. Once again, it's all about love by Bell Hooks. So those are my top three for this conversation.

Speaker 1: 26:11

We covered a lot and I usually try to go around 30 minutes, so I just want to give you time to share about how people can reach you if they do want to work.

Speaker 2: 26:21

Yeah, absolutely so. The best way to reach me is on Instagram. It's at Commitment to Growth. That's my coaching page, but also where I post everything about my podcast, the Commitment to Growth podcast, and just lots of fun life stuff. I like to have fun on there and really invite you into the fun with me. So feel free to message me on DMs. We can vibe, talk about personal growth, healing, all that fun stuff.

Speaker 2: 26:44

And if the listeners are looking for something to really help them on that journey towards stepping into their desires and healing their limiting beliefs whether it's about relationships or self insecurities or money, even my signature one-on-one program called evolution is the place to go for that. So it's a six weeks journey into kind of the garden that is your mind. We go through six modules together, kind of looking at the lay of your garden and then planting new seeds, weeding out the negative beliefs that we want to get rid of, to instill new patterns of growth and attraction, abundance in there, for you to become the magnet for the things that you desire. So it's my signature program. It's wonderful, it's my life's work packaged into like a little offering that I get to help women with now. So that is something they can check out there for sure, and my website is wwwcommitmenttogrowthcom and you can find everything from how to contact me to all the programs and the podcasts that I have on there. But if you're also looking for a really supportive and empowering group of women that meet for free twice a month, I have my growth hour sisterhood on meetup. So we do a monthly masterclass every month and then we also do like uh um, an extra activity based on what people are feeling.

Speaker 2: 27:59

So last one we did, we did a journal club and it was really successful. So we're carrying that over into this month with a meditation on how to heal people pleasing. So it's meditation plus journal prompts to go through that healing journey and with that too, the last thing I'll say is I have a Healing the Inner People Pleaser workbook on sale right now for $7.77. So it's a workbook based off of my latest podcast episode. It's called. It's Not that You're a People Pleaser, it's that you Fear Rejection, it's that you fear rejection. So if people like that episode and they like the questions there, that workbook is an extension of into 11 questions really, really powerful, deep dive into healing self-abandonment wounds that are huge in relationships, speaking of which we kind of talked about that and how to create consciousness in the relationships, from consciousness from self first All right, awesome.

Speaker 1: 28:49

Thank you very much. Yeah, this is great info, especially if you haven't heard this kind of stuff before. You're just understanding why you are the way you are. And then how the other person you're with is the way they are, so you can stop taking things so personally and just understand.

Speaker 2: 29:05

We're going to be okay. We're going to be okay. It starts from within.

Speaker 1: 29:08

It starts from within All right, well, well, thank you again for being on. If you like this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it and um share it with your friends. I already said that, but I'll say it one more time. All right, well, thank you very much. Thank you so much loved it. Bye everyone, frank talk, frank talk sex and dating educate.