Welcome to the Back To Basics Series! Day four is all about boosting your confidence for those husband talks. Here are links to the previous days, just in case you haven’t seen Day One, Day Two, or Day Three yet.
This is a 4-day series aimed at giving you, the work-from-home mom who is trying to grow her dreams and serve her home and family well, the tools she needs to juggle it all! We are dialing it back, breaking it down, and getting back to basics in motherhood, business, home, and marriage over 4 days, and 4 episodes.
This has been such a really fun series to put together for me. I’ve done a couple in the past and this one has been one of my favorites because I’m really diving deep into each pillar of my life and of most work-from-home moms’ lives. And this is so much of what we talk about inside of The Systemize Your Life Academy.
I’m also so thrilled to be bringing you this content so that you can really pour it into your lives and dive deeper inside the Systemize Your Life Facebook group to get the support that you need. No Matter when you go through this episode, you are still so welcome to come over inside the Facebook group and pop in your homework. I’m here to support you no matter when you’re going through this.
If you want to do your very best work in every area of your life then grab your pen and paper ladies because I am about to dive into the Back To Basics series!! I am pulling this information straight out of the Academy.
Listen below for the entire episode on The Systemize Your Life Podcast
What Are You Trying To Accomplish?
So here we are, day four, and this series has brought a lot of really good and hard conversations about just exactly what are we trying to accomplish. How to boost your confidence for those husband talks? What is it that you’re really looking for? Why do you show up here? Why do you show up to do your work? Who do you want to be in your motherhood? What kind of house do you want to keep? What kind of relationship do you want to have with your husband? And what kind of business do you want to run?
I’ve heard some of you say that you’re not entirely certain what you want to do in business. Then there are those that feel like they know exactly what you want to do but are struggling with getting your husbands on board or how to talk to them about it. And others have supportive husbands but can’t figure out how to maintain with kids in the picture.
Having Hard Conversations
Today we’re going to really dive into how to be on the same page as your husband. Know exactly what it is that you need and how to talk to him about it. Sometimes that means you’re going to have to have hard conversations and that’s exactly why the title of today’s episode is all about boosting your confidence for those husband talks.
I have found through years of trying to figure out how to make my needs known, that there really is a pretty good systematic approach so that you can have confidence. So you don’t have to have anxiety, it doesn’t have to end up in an argument, both people are happy, and you get what you need.
Why Systemize Your Marriage?
Before we dive into the actual steps of this, I just want to be really open and honest about why this is even a part of first and foremost, the Academy. Why is there an entire tier dedicated to systemizing your marriage? Why would I even think to put that in there and why do I want to make sure that I’m talking about it here? Most of everything that I talk about is time and task management systems in motherhood and in business, how to succeed in home and business.
I think I would really be missing the mark when I say how to succeed in home and business. I didn’t talk to you about the elephant in the room and it’s that your home is not just you. Well, there was a time in my life when my home was just me. I was working, trying to grow a business. I was a single mom. And even in those times, I was still trying to figure out what my needs were. I think its really important to boost your confidence for those husband talks.
Make Your Needs Known
Throughout high school and college and all the way up until where I’m at right now with Blaine, I’ve always been trying to figure out how I make my needs known. How do I even know what my needs are?
I think a lot of times that really is the issue, it’s us knowing what our needs are and being able to articulate them. And because we don’t know how to do that, we often say that our husband isn’t on the same page as us, or he doesn’t support us or he doesn’t understand us. Or you try to communicate your needs and it seems like he doesn’t care about them. And then we just get frustrated.
Communication
I have always just had this real affinity for communication. Since I’m an interpreter, my minor was in communication. And ever since then, I’ve really just fallen in love with the art of communicating with the art of articulation and expression through language. I think that is one of the most beautiful things that we have. It’s not to be taken lightly.
I think about it a lot with my kids, which is why I love the love and logic approach because there’s so much emphasis on the language that we use as parents. And I think that absolutely applies to us in our marriages as well.
One of my favorite things to do, something that comes extremely naturally to me is providing language cues to my girlfriends on how to navigate what seems like a really hard topic and conversation about their needs in a way that helps them as a couple gets to the other side of it. Now doing that in my own marriage is very not second nature because our emotions get involved.
So what I’ve learned from collecting data instead of making emotional decisions is that there’s been a pattern. There’s been a pattern between all of my girlfriends and myself and now the members inside of the academy that know that I have a knack for this.
Better Together
There’s an entire tier dedicated to systems and marriage with a huge communication component. Actually, a lot of it is communication and how to connect yourselves with your spouse, how to be on the same team, to make sure that you guys are getting your best work done in your marriage.
Because at the end of the day and the beginning and the middle and every part of the day, what you can do when you are united is a thousand times better than what you can do if you’re trying to accomplish it on your own. Every single moment of the day is way better when you’re in sync with your husband. And that means because you’re a team, everything you do with the kids, everything you do with your money, and all the decisions that you make, everything that you do is about both of you.
“Because at the end of the day and the beginning and the middle and every part of the day, what you can do when you are united is a thousand times better than what you can do if you’re trying to accomplish it on your own. Every single moment of the day is way better when you’re in sync with your husband.”
Functioning In Motherhood
So if you don’t feel like you can communicate your needs to him, you don’t feel like your needs are being met by him. It’s just a train wreck for you. You stuff all those feelings inside and that becomes you not taking care of yourself. You are not feeling secure, not taking care of your body, your mental, your emotional health, and your sanity.
Or it comes out in how you are as a mother. A lot of times that’s what ends up happening to me. If there is even the slightest bit of me and Blaine not on the same wavelength, I can’t function in motherhood. That is how I know you have a need that you need to figure out so that you can communicate it.
The Hard Data
I have been gathering a lot of data. I’ve been looking at it objectively over and over again and have figured out a system that helps me to be able to sit down and talk to Blaine whenever I have a need that feels like it’s not being met. Or there’s a new need that I’ve never communicated that I just want to talk to him about and see what he thinks. To figure out how we can move on from there with something that I need.
And, I also really want to address why it is that we’re afraid to talk about our needs in marriage because although I can’t speak for everyone. I do know that wives have been taught by other women for probably centuries, that it’s their job to make a house a home and to keep their husbands happy. And that was never communicated to the man in the same way. They had different things that they were told to focus on and there was a major separation between those roles. There was a huge gender role separation, a silo.
And if you guys haven’t watched my free workshop head to Chelsijo.co/getorganized, you’ll learn all about that inside there. I am so adamant that one of the number one mistakes that you’re making is you’re operating in a silo.
Your Needs Are Equally Important
The thing is that this has been ingrained in us for so long that the way to marry a man and a woman is for them to operate in very distinct roles. And it just doesn’t work like that. The very best woman that you could be is one that is not operating in a silo from her husband.
So what that means is that your husband too is responsible for keeping your needs met just as much as you are responsible for keeping his needs met. And so that looks like one thing and one thing only, your needs are just as important as his.
I grew up most of my life watching my mom. And my mom and my dad were very respectful to each other. I literally never saw them argue. They loved each other, they were kind to each other. But there was this underlying tone, whether or not it came from my dad or my mom or just that they lived in extremely distinctive male and female roles, it was that my mom’s needs weren’t as important. And this is true for so many families. I’m not the only one. My parents weren’t like this odd random experience for me. This is very normal.
Hard Conversations Have To Happen
And no, we don’t need to get all into the psychology of everything. I’m just saying this because I think it’s important for you to recognize that this stuff is going to take time to break down, not just time in our own lives, but the time between generations. And that’s why I’m so adamant about boosting your confidence for husband conversations because they have to happen.
You have to choose to have these hard conversations so that your kids grow up and see what a true partnership looks like. They have to see that if you want them to succeed.
So I think that we have a little bit of work to do when it comes to how we communicate our needs. We just do, and this is how we’re going to break this down. This is how we’re going to get back to the basics in this.
Good Communication Is Not Venting
Communicating your needs I want you to know is not venting. I want you to raise your hand right now. Without a shadow of a doubt that most of the time when you have a need, you keep it quiet for a very long time and then you lose your cool, you vent about it. And that is how your husband finds out what you need. Because that was my default for many years.
It just does not get the job done. It may feel good to get it all out, but it’s only because you’ve been suppressing it for a very long time. It’s not going to produce the results that you want, ever.
Own Up
The truth is, I would venture to say, that nine times out of 10, it’s not your husband’s fault. And I believe this in most things. I truly believe in owning and taking responsibility for pretty much everything that happens to us. I don’t play the victim card and I don’t like it when other people play the victim card. So I think it’s very important that you take your outcomes into your own hands and realize that if you’re not getting something that you need, either with your children or in your home or in your business or in your marriage, that there’s something that you can do about it.
I aimed to have you walk away from this knowing what to do to get the results that you’re looking for. You may be really good at letting your husband know what you need in a roundabout way or an aggressive way or kind of a condescending way. Or maybe you just beat around the bush. But if it’s not getting the results that you want, if your needs still aren’t being met, that’s when it’s time to sit down and get back to the basics.
And what does that look like? Well, I’m going to give it to you in three steps.
Know Your Needs
I want you to know your needs. And I have this in my notes in all caps. So when I say I want you to know your needs, that means if you’re getting to this point where you’re frustrated, upset, feeling distant, feeling unsupported, and unsure. Not that you just don’t feel like you’re on the same page as your husband, you don’t feel like he understands you, and you just don’t think that you’re getting the help that you need. You’re starting to have these conversations with yourself about him. I want you to ask yourself, what do I need? Because it’s not about the feelings that you have.
The truth is, when I have something that I need, I know that the only way that I’m going to get it is if I remove my emotion from it. I’m not saying that you can’t have emotions, but when you ask yourself what is your need, you have to sit down and look at it objectively.
What is this thing that you’re wanting? Do you want your husband to insert a specific thing? Do you just have needs in general that you just want to talk to him about and listen to? What is it that you need? You have to know that first and foremost every single time.
S. M. A. R. T. Goals
The second step is once you know what your need is, then you have to give a tangible request that has a specific time associated with it or a quantity associated with it, like a start and stop time.
The SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. That’s what your needs have to have when you’re getting ready to go and approach your husband. You need to know what your need is and then you create a request out of that.
Venting Is Allowed At The Right Time
Going to your husband and just venting is okay. It’s okay. I know I said communicating our needs is not venting. That’s because it’s not. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to vent to your husband. Don’t hear me wrong here. You are allowed to have a constructive space in your marriage where you are allowed to complain respectfully and vent respectfully, absolutely 100% of the time. But that is not how you communicate your needs.
If you have never practiced communicating your needs outside of venting and complaining, then this is going to be hard. But I believe that you can do it because if I can do it, you can do it. Trust me, this has been five years in the making for me, probably even longer than that. It’s probably actually been the last 20 years of my life. But I have been hardcore practicing this with Blaine since the day we got married because he’s somebody that I want to practice with. I deserve a husband that meets my needs and he deserves a wife that doesn’t just complain and vents to him all the time, but actually gives him the opportunity to meet my needs through clear communication, communication that he understands.
Package With Care
Just remember, we are just as responsible for the way that a person receives the message as we are for the way that we send that message. I have to care about how I package up, what I’m saying, and how it’s going to arrive on their doorstep. As well as how easy it’s going to be for them to open and get to the goods inside.
When I approach Blaine, I literally have packaged up my needs in 15 layers of bubble wrap, and two pounds of duct tape all inside of a box that I wrapped with paper, and then put twine all around. Do you know how long it’s going to take him to figure that out? Do you know that he doesn’t have the patience to unwrap that box, to figure out what my need is in the middle?
If I just figure out a better way to package my need, then he’d just be able to open the box and pull it out and be like, oh, okay, I can meet your need. That’s what I’m talking about here. I want you to be able to communicate your needs, be boosting your confidence for those husband talks.
Have Patience
Here’s the third thing. I want you to be patient and assume the best in your husband. I see this time and time, I don’t know what to say to him. We had this conversation and now he’s not doing it. And it always comes down to this moment of not believing in their husband, believing the worst in them, and thinking that they don’t care about them or they don’t want to be there for them.
Your Husband Does Love You
What I always say is, your husband loves you. Why don’t you just talk to them about it? Why don’t you give them the opportunity? Why don’t you believe the best? Why don’t you think the best in him right now before you go assuming the worst?
Because here’s what happens. When you know what your needs are, you’re very matter-of-fact about it. You have created a specific request, right?
Example
You say, hey, I need you to do this for me every single Wednesday for the next six weeks. So your husband says, I can do that.
Now, maybe he forgets week one. Maybe he does it in week one and forgets week two. Maybe he does it a couple of Wednesdays, and then he forgets and does it on a Thursday. Our gut reaction is to say, oh, he doesn’t care about me. Then we either give up on him or, go to talk to him about it. What does our demeanor or our heart say, what does the seed of our words carry? It carries bitterness, frustration, anger, and that immediate reaction to discredit him.
So I think it is absolutely vital that you be patient. When things don’t go according to plan, you talk to him with an expectation for him to succeed. With an expectation for him to have a really good loving reason for it not being done. And sometimes that language is really hard to come up with on your own when you’re just in it.
It’s hard because you’ve had bitterness for so long, or you’re so frustrated because this specific scenario keeps happening over and over again. But I promise if you can just force yourself to dive deep and think about what you appreciate in him? Because sometimes I can get wrapped up in my emotions and I can get super emotional and frustrated. And I know that if I go to him and I talk to him when I’m feeling that way, it’s not going to provide the outcome that I really want.
Cut The Sabotage
Instead of sabotaging myself, my husband, and our marriage. I sit down and I think about some of the things that I really appreciate that he’s done. And I then talk to him. You sit down and you have this hard conversation with your husband.
Hey, remember that thing that we talked about last week? It kind of seems like you’ve forgotten about it, which I know you really care about me, and I know you really care about my needs. So is there something that I can do to help you? Do you want to talk about it again? Did you change your mind about the way you wanted to support me? Or did you just forget? You can approach it with just some humility and some grace, and not feeling like he owes it to you.
Help With Cleaning
So, I had a friend come to me and she was trying to get her husband on board with helping out around the house. They had decided not to have a cleaner because of Covid. And she runs an extremely successful business from home. She’s got little kiddo’s and she’s involved in things around her local community.
So she wanted her husband’s help cleaning and wanted to figure out how to have this hard conversation with her husband. So we went through some language cues that I teach inside the Academy. We talked about how to approach your husband with this need. She told her husband that she had heard about this really cool system on Chelsi’s podcast and I really would love it if you would listen and maybe try to do something like this together. What do you think? So she sent him to the podcast and he listened to it.
They decide that they’re going to come up with their own cleaning zones together. They get it on their calendar and they picked one specific day of the week to do their cleaning. But after that, it just so ended up that every week she was still stuck cleaning on her own. She messaged me and she was talking to me about it, super respectful, and loves her husband to death, but frustrated as anybody would be.
Talk It Over
My suggestion was to assume that he really does want to help you clean every single Wednesday. And just tell him, Hey, I know that we sat down and we looked over this cleaning schedule together and we put it for Wednesdays, but it looks like you’re having to work and I’m still stuck doing it on my own. Is there another day of the week that would work better for you? Or what do you think we should do about this? Because I know that you seemed really on board to help me help, and I love that. I just think that maybe we need to look over it again.
Come to find out, she was able to talk to him and he felt the exact same way. He was like, yeah, I know I really wanted to help you with this. It’s just that I’ve been working and it didn’t work out. So they very quickly and easily changed it. She’s got her help, she’s got her support. She feels like her needs are met. He didn’t get attacked, he didn’t get abused, he didn’t get obliterated. He felt good. She felt good. It was a win-win for both people.
Help with laundry
I feel like a lot of these hard conversations with your husband come down to cleaning because that seems to be one of the biggest topics that come up.
I have another really good example of this. I had another friend that came to me that was like, I’m drowning in laundry. So I asked, what is your husband doing? How often does he do laundry? Does he do his own laundry? Are your kids doing their laundry? Let’s talk about this.
Are you doing my system? Do you have one bin that is super tiny for every single person in the house? Let’s start there. Yes, you are and you’re still drowning? Okay, why are you still drowning? Are you trying to do laundry for everyone or are you outsourcing? Well, she wasn’t outsourcing at all.
So now you can just go up to your husband and say, hey, I am trying to work, I’m making a solid income for our family and I know you are too. But I’m home and I’m trying to take care of the house, and I’m trying to take care of the kids, and I’m trying to do all these things on top of working. I’m literally drowning in laundry and it makes me want to cry. It is my kryptonite and I need some help.
Find A Solution
What is the solution, right? This is what Blaine always says to me, if there’s a problem, I want to give you a solution and I want to move on. That is how he thinks. That’s how a lot of men think. They don’t want to just sit and talk about feelings for hours and hours on end.
The need and the solution is, you offer a solution and then you could follow up with what do you think about that? Or do you have a different idea? What do you think about that? If you don’t like it, do you have a different idea? Write that language cues down. They’re so insanely helpful.
Okay, so she says to her husband, I heard the system on a podcast where everybody has one laundry bin. And I was thinking, could you just make sure that you get your clothes inside this laundry bin? And then can you help me fold and put it away every Friday? Or would you be cool with doing your own laundry from now on? And if that doesn’t sound good to you, what would you suggest?
Work Together
Have a very specific solution in mind, and tell him about it. Talk to them, give them time, work together, and Figure that out. This is how you easily you can start boosting your confidence for those husband talks.
Guess what? That went over awesome for the two of the examples I gave you. You need to find something specific that you think works for your family. But that’s what you need to tell them. Hey, I found this system that I think would help me, but I need you to support me too.
That’s all you have to do. That’s how basic this is and it might be mind-blowing to you. It might also be really hard, but it is so possible.
Homework
Your only homework is to try it. Write down these three steps and start boosting your confidence for those husband talks.
The first is to know what your need is. The second is to have a very tangible request, something very specific that has a quantity attached to it. And number three is to be patient and assume the best in him. Don’t forget to come over inside the Facebook group and pop in your homework whenever you want.
All right, that is all four days. The back-to-basics four-day series is going to be here forever. It’s also going to be on the podcast and you can come back and listen to it any time. Head over and listen to the Back To Basics Series on the podcast here: Day One Episode 100, Day Two Episode 101, Day Three Episode 102, and Day Four Episode 103.
Come hang out with us inside of the private Facebook group, inside of the curriculum, inside of the group calls. I cannot wait to see you over there. And until next time, ladies, I look forwards to jamming on your homework inside of the Facebook group. And as always, it has been so fun hanging out with you from behind my mic.
Systemize Your Life Academy
If you need more and are ready you can head over and jump inside The Systemize Your Life Academy where we go really deep on everything we cover these last four days.
I promise you will never lose any sleep over the investment because you are going to be getting results. You are going to be in that place that you dream to be every single night. No more feeling like you’re falling far behind in every single area.
Jump inside the Academy and truly walk away knowing that your kids are loved and that your house doesn’t have to constantly be a mess. Know exactly how you’re going to get consistent time to work towards these big goals that you have for yourself and your business, even with small kids at home. And the major icing on the cake with the cherry on top is learning how to be an incredible teammate and super intentional in your marriage. So that you both can have this partnership that elevates your life into the place that you both talk about, that you dream about, that you want.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you offer any Freebies I can download to get a sample of what you offer?
Head over to Chelsijo.co and at the top, there is a section labeled FREE, Click that and you can watch our FREE workshop and download a couple of our FREE workbooks!
