Reinvented After 40 with Kym Showers | Stay Out of Other People’s Relationships

Have you found yourself with less energy lately? It could be that you’re spending way too much time focused on other people’s business, which is why this episode is all about staying out of other people’s relationships. It’s a big step towards creating a simpler, happier, more streamlined life for yourself!

The reality is that relationships occur one-on-one, and it’s just not your place to get involved in the connections between two other people—even if you love those individuals. By avoiding giving advice or playing referee, you can direct all that valuable energy toward your own goals and intentions. And the first step is awareness.

Tune in this week to learn how you may unknowingly be involved in other people’s relationships, as well as how to stop gossiping and, instead, foster meaningful conversations en route to a more emotionally mature, vibrant, and happy you.


Don’t miss my one hour free webinar, “How to Become the Woman of Your Dreams,” on February 15th, 2024, from 9–10 PST. Learn more here.

If you love this podcast, I invite you to come work with me. Click here to sign up for my next group. The next group starts on February 20th, 2024 and you do not want to miss all the bonuses that come with it!


WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER IN THIS EPISODE:

  • How to recognize when you are getting involved in other people’s business.
  • Ways to avoid gossiping and the subsequent shame you may feel afterward.
  • Why you need to be more curious when having conversations.
  • What questions you can ask friends and loved ones to have more meaningful discussions.
  • How to address codependency and people-pleasing behaviors.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:

FEATURED ON THE SHOW:

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

I am Kym Showers and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 126, Stay Out of Other People’s Relationships.

Welcome to the Reinvented After 40 podcast. I am your host, Kym Showers, and I’m a certified life coach for women in the second half of life. Each week I’ll bring you direct advice and inspiring, practical wisdom to help you live your very best life and create a future you’re absolutely obsessed with. It’s going to be fun, let’s get started.

Hey, my friends, happy podcast Thursday, best day of the week, 100% I am convinced of it. I love it so much. Thanks for showing up today. I am getting ready to go to Austin, Texas super early on Friday morning for the weekend. I am going to a Zibby retreat. I told you that I had gone to a Zibby retreat a few months ago and it’s a blast. She is a very famous podcaster. Her name is Zibby Owens and she has a podcast called Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books. It’s so good.

She puts out an episode every single day, you guys, every day of the week, every single day. She interviews authors and all the latest books that are debuting. She is a publisher as well, a book publisher. She has her own publishing company. This is a woman, I think she’s around 45. She is a super woman and she has four children, four children. She has a bookstore called Zibby’s Books, it’s in Santa Monica, California. She also lives in New York on the other coast. She is a podcaster. She is a book publisher and she is also a book writer.

She is an author and she is debuting. I think it’s her first novel, but her second book, as far as I know. I read her memoir called Bookends. I know I’ve told you guys about it, but it’s so fabulous. She’s very fascinating. And she’s putting out this new book. I think it’s called Blank. I don’t think it comes out for a couple of months. But I get to see her this weekend and we are taking over the Ella Hotel in Austin, Texas. I think all the rooms, it’s a boutique hotel. It’s kind of famous there. I’m really excited about staying there because it has a really cool story, a really fun story and it’s just a darling hotel.

All of Zibby’s retreats are at really special hotels. I got to go to one that was right down the road from me in Solvang, California. And got to meet a bunch of publishers and a bunch of authors, a bunch of books lovers. It was so much fun and you know my goal for 2024 is to actually write my very own book. And so I just decided I am going to streamline, well, which I do anyways. I streamline my life on purpose. I just get rid of all the excess in my life. My life is very clean, very streamlined, very simple.

All my energy gets poured into one direction and that is the direction of the goals that I have set for my year. So I’m going to this retreat because I’m going to meet publishers. I’m going to have conversations with women who have actually published their own books through publishers and are kind of famous. I’m going to get some questions answered. I’m going to be inspired. I’m going to be motivated and encouraged just by the energy in this room where all these book lovers are. This is their world and I’m entering it as a podcaster and as someone who loves reading and writing.

I just love words so much. I love stories. I love memoir. I love growing. You know me. And it’ll just be so fun to be in that energy. And it will just propel me in the direction of my very first book. So I’m doing that. I’m looking really forward to that. After recording this podcast, I’m going to go downstairs and finish packing, getting that all set. I’m finished working for the week, which is exciting. Just got my last session finished, actually all my sessions this week.

I’ve coached a lot on how involved we all are in other people’s relationships. What an energy sucker that is. I want you to first of all, become aware of how involved you are in other people’s relationships, how often you think about them and how often you talk about them and give your opinion and listen to other people’s opinions about other people and their relationships. How often your people come to you to tell you about another person that you love, and then the trouble they’re having in that relationship with the other person you know and love.

You stay involved in that, so that kind of becomes a threesome in a relationship that you have no business being in. So for instance, I was coaching a client on, and this is all extremely relatable because I’ve coached probably every client I’ve ever had on very similar issues. And I’ve had my own issues with this. So she was worried and upset about her husband’s relationship with her son and she was trying to soften it all and make it all okay. And I just said, “You’ve got to get out of that relationship and let them decide what kind of relationship they want to have.

You have a relationship with your husband, you focus on that. You have a relationship with your son, you focus on that. As far as your husband and your son’s relationship goes, that’s 100% on them.” Her son’s an adult. She’s done raising him. Her husband’s an adult. And their son is 17 years old. But we’re done raising our kids, you guys, at 17, just FYI, you’ve raised them all that you have the power to raise them, trust me. You’ve got to get back in your own business and stop trying to manipulate and control them, to fix their problems because they’ve got to figure that out on their own.

You just get busy working on your own life, figuring out your own problems and doing the things that you know are going to get you to your goals and being the best version of you you can be. And have healthy relationships one-on-one with all the people you love the most and stay out of their relationships. When one child comes to you complaining about another child, you say, “Listen, you’re talking to the wrong person. I want you to go talk to your brother or your sister. You go work that out with them.”

And I’m not talking about toddlers or young kids, of course you’re going to intervene on that. But I’m talking about grown kids. I’m talking about women in the second half of life who we all have grown kids and we have no business hearing their complaints about one another. We’ve got to completely remove ourselves from those relationships. And I’m telling you, you will have so much more energy, you will worry so much less, you will have a lot less anxiety if you completely stay out of other people’s relationships.

And this can come about as a form of gossip. Have you heard the latest about so and so. I don’t want to hear the latest about anybody. If I’m going to have a conversation with you, I want to hear the latest about you. I don’t want you to bring me information about someone else. If I want to hear about someone else, I will go and talk to that someone else.

And I’m telling you guys, this has kept my life so simple, so streamlined. I’m out of everyone else’s business, out of everyone else’s lane and I’m staying in my own lane. I’m no longer trying to referee, trying to give advice. I do not give advice. I’m a coach. I’m happy to coach you to your best place, but I am just no longer interested in drama between other people and their relationships. Everybody can work out their own relationships on their own. So I want you to be focused on your own individual relationships with the people you love the most. And then all that extra energy that you’ve been spending on all the drama of jumping into other people’s relationships and being all super involved in their relationships.

I want you to take all that energy that you’re going to have now and I want you to pour it into your dreams, your goals, your intentions, the things that you want to get good at. Building your healthy body, that takes intention, that takes energy. Building a happy, thriving business where you can help a lot of people and at the same time make a lot of money. That takes a lot of energy, that takes a lot of intention. So if you’re just dripping energy into all these other places that just create so much extra baggage for you to think about and carry around with you every day.

I cannot emphasize and be more adamant and bossy right now. I want you to pay attention every single day, how often you pick up a phone call from someone that you’re used to picking up a phone call from and she says, “Hey, have you heard the latest?” And you’re like, “Oh, tell me everything.” No, I want you to stop all of that. Or when your husband says, “Tell me about the kids.” I want you to say, “No, you go have your own conversation with the kids. I’m not telling you about the kids. If you want to know about your kids, go have your own conversations with the kids.”

This is so much healthier and so much better for everybody. You don’t want to be a gossip. You don’t want to feel icky when you leave conversations, when you’ve over-shared about one of your kids or over-shared about someone else that you love. No, if someone asks you about your kids, talk to my kids. They’re doing awesome. I want to talk to you about you. And I can fill any questions you have about me. I’ll tell you all about me. So do you see the difference?

Do you see how freeing that could be and how empowering that could be to, first of all, just be aware of how often you do it? And second of all, stop doing it. And I know it’s going to change relationships as it’s supposed to. You’ve got to get more creative with the conversations that you have with your people. If you’re only connected with people talking about other people, that is a very unhealthy way to be connected to people. I want you to be connected in an inspiring way, in an honest way, in a true way. It doesn’t involve other people.

It involves you and the person you want to be connected to. And there’s so many ways to do that. Just get curious and interested in them. So we don’t have to bring up other people. And other people’s news, if the other person isn’t in the room, in the conversation then this is what I call gossip. This is gossip, good or bad. I want to just promote healthy connection with the people you love the most.

And when you get creative, there are so many other things you can talk about. It just forces you to dig deep and talk about things that really have to do with you and the things you’re looking forward to and the things that you’re planning and the things you’re working on. And the ways that you’re changing your life and the new thoughts you’re thinking. There’s always interesting things that you can share about you. And there’s always great questions that you can ask your friend or your mom or your husband or your kids or whoever you’re talking to.

What are you up to? What’s lighting you up these days? What did you do this morning? What’s your diet been like lately? Have you been exercising? And what fun things have you been discovering about that? Are you planning anything this summer? I mean, there’s just so many curious questions that you can ask people when you’re with them, that you can totally be connected to them without having to bring up anybody else.

So the next time someone hits you up and just notice you probably have a lot of people in your life that you talk about unfortunately. But maybe that you’ve been absolutely unaware of and you just have been doing it for so long that you didn’t even consider it gossip. And you didn’t even consider that you were overly involved in other people’s relationships and that it wasn’t serving you or them. Because you trying to fix someone else’s relationship isn’t serving them. I just want you to know that. You’re not being helpful.

So they can work it out themselves. They can get themselves a coach and they can clean up their side of the street and take responsibility for how they’re behaving in that relationship. So that’s the only way that we can get healthy relationships is when we take ownership of how we’re behaving in the relationship, not what the other person is doing. That’s why we never even have to bring them up. That’s the beauty of having a coach is, we get to just go to our coach and say, “Yeah, I’m having trouble on this relationship.” You don’t even have to say who the person is.

You just say, “I don’t like how I am showing up. It gives me a really icky feeling. I don’t like how I am responding. I need to think more helpful, useful thoughts so I can respond as my highest self and not be so critical and not be so judgmental.” So it helps so much as far as your own growth to do this one thing and eliminate gossiping. Eliminate being in the know of what’s going on between other people. You’ve just got to stay out of it, my friend, if you want to go next level, and I know if you’re here on this podcast, you absolutely do.

So to become our dream woman, because you are her. You’re the woman you’ve been waiting for. You’re the woman you’re dreaming of. You’re the friend you’ve been waiting for. You want a friend who’s loyal and true and inspiring and motivating and optimistic and is willing to get to work and do what she says she’s going to do. So you want to become that next best version of yourself where you’re in control of your life. You’re in control of your thoughts and your feelings and the actions that you take every day.

You make yourself take the actions to get the job done. Once we start making ourself and pushing ourself to take the action, the initial action, then that’s when the motivation and the flow kicks in. So I just want you to know that. So you just become her. And I am going to teach you how to become her, my friend.

For the very first time, I am offering a one hour webinar on February 15th, the day after Valentine’s Day, at nine o’clock in the morning from 9:00am to 10:00 am California time on February 15th. I am going to be teaching a class called How to Become the Woman of your Dreams. It’s going to be magical and so practical. And I’m going to teach you things that you’ve never even thought about before. And you’re going to love it so much. It’s my very first free webinar. And I’m inviting all of you out in podcast land, and you can invite your friends out in podcast land. So put that on your calendar.

I’m not sure if it’s available to sign up. I would think by the time you’re hearing this. You know what? I’m going to just tell you to check the show notes, because it’s going to be in the show notes. But my guess right now would be that you would go to my website kymshowerslifecoach.com/webinar. And I think if you do that, you’re going to be able to register for the webinar. And then we’re going to send you the Zoom link so you can come on screen and spend one hour with me and learn how to become the woman of your dreams on February 15th at 9:00 am California time.

And if you can’t make it live, which I want you to be there live, I’ll have a question and answer and maybe even bring someone on to coach. You will get a replay. There will be a replay and it will be fabulous. So look forward to that. Put that on your calendar. It’s going to be magical and so much fun. And I’m hoping to do more of these webinars. I think it’s just going to be something that I’m going to look forward to adding onto my schedule.

So I want you to, this week, really intentionally notice how involved you are, overly involved you are in other people’s relationships. And I want you to get out of them. And you’re going to get out of codependency, out of people pleasing. You’re going to create so much more good energy in your own life. And it’s going to help those people so much more if you do that. It’s just next level. I just call it emotional maturity and that’s what we all want. We just want emotional intelligence. We want to be able to be the woman of our dreams, and that helps the world, not only helps us, it helps the entire world.

So okay, my friend, I love you so much. Also, I’m going to invite you to join my next group, which starts February 20th. It’s going to be on, oh, gosh, you guys, I think it’s going to be on Tuesdays at noon starting February 20th. So come get in that group. It’s filling up very quickly. And it’s going to be just an amazing group. And then you can make your reservations at the Avila Lighthouse Suites for my next retreat, which will be in Avila Beach, California on May 2nd, 3rd and 4th. That’s going to be coming up so quick too. And that retreat will be the highlight of your year, I 100% guarantee it.

Alright, I love you. Have the best week and I’ll talk to you next Thursday.

If you love this podcast, I invite you to come work with me. Go to kymshowerslifecoach.com, sign up for my next group and retreat, and let’s create your dream life together.

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