444. Coaching with Jody: It’s Not Fair

Welcome to episode 444, Coaching With Jody: It’s Not Fair.

Today is a very special episode as I have a real client coaching session to share with you. Have you ever felt like life wasn’t fair? Of course you have, we all have. And at some point we were all taught that this is true and mostly we land on the privileged side of unfair. So while we all know life isn’t fair and that arguing with that is a waste of time, we all still do it from time to time.

So what if you know that thinking about the unfairness of it all is a waste of time and you want to stop, but you just don’t know how? That’s where coaching comes in. If you clicked play today, then it’s no coincidence, this one’s for you.

Welcome to Better Than Happy. I’m Jody Moore and I’ll be your coach today.

Oh, man, I’m so excited for you to hear this episode. I’m going to start putting coaching on the podcast from time to time, let me know if you find it helpful. Today is going to be one of those episodes. So I want to set it up by explaining to you. My client is divorced and remarried. And there are child support payments that she and her new husband make to his ex-wife and their child support payments that she receives from her ex-husband. And the child support payments in the end are not fair at all.

And my client is a wonderful, heart centered, good person. She wants to do what’s right by everybody. She knows that taking care of this child is priority. And she’s trying really hard not to get caught up in the drama of it all but it’s tough to do when things are just so unfair. So whether you can relate to this exact situation or you’ve ever been in this situation in your life before, that felt unfair, take a listen to this coaching conversation.

Now, I want to explain that coaching is not like a typical conversation. When I am in a coaching session with a client, I am not talking to them the same way I would if I was at lunch with one of my girlfriends. I am not there to validate and empathize. I am there to help them end as much of their suffering as we possibly can. And I always do that by using the model in some form. And so see if you can identify how I’m using the model as you listen to this session and notice that we’re really focusing in on the client’s thoughts and notice the power of that. Alright, let’s do some coaching.

                                                                                                                   

Jody: Alright.

Speaker: I’m so excited to talk to you. This is awesome. So my situation, where am I? There’s so many always. So mine has to do with financial. We have a blended family and so we pay a certain amount of child support for my stepdaughter. And then we receive a certain amount of child support for my daughter. And they’re different amounts by $300. And the situations are just so different that you can’t compare but yet, I just sit here and compare and say that it’s not fair. Or that for instance, we pay my stepdaughter’s mom $750 a month for her.

But then she’ll come and ask for more financial help for certain things. And it just sends me into a spiral and I’m just like, “Ah, this is so aggravating.” We don’t get as much child support as you receive, and yet you’re asking for more. And then I just get so frustrated as I’m the picked on one and she’s the one which is getting more help. And so I’m like, “Why do you do this?”

Jody: Okay. So how does that feel to you to know when you have that thing happening in your head, it’s not fair, she’s getting more help than me, I’m picked on, how does that feel?

Speaker: It just feels frustrating, mostly, frustrating and then of course I always get emotional about it. And that day, I will end up crying that day. So even talking about it, I just get so frustrated and emotional. And my divorce, I was never about financial gain. It was never about the finances. I always wanted what’s best for my daughter. And I wanted her to be close to her dad and stuff like that.

Jody: But why is that relevant? Are you saying this other woman is making it financial?

Speaker: I feel like my situation from the financial child support I’m like, “Why are you acting like a victim?” And then I turn into the victim.

Jody: Good awareness. That’s what we do. We’re like, “I can’t believe, this was never about money for me.” My divorce is not about money. It’s about taking care of my daughter. And now you’re making it all about money.

Speaker: Yeah. And then I get frustrated with myself because that was never the intention. I want my stepdaughter to be comfortable in her life, and I want her to get the things that she desires to feel comfortable going through her teen years.

Jody: Yeah. So you don’t need to be frustrated with yourself. It’s perfectly understandable what you’re doing. You have a human brain. This is what human brains do. But we just need to take charge of your brain a little bit more. Because what your brain thinks is useful here or what its pattern is, is to compare the situation that you have and the finances that you have in this situation, the child support you might say. And the way you are or were when you went through your divorce with this other made up scenario in your mind about how things should be.

So every time you compare how much money, it’s interesting that you would word it that way. You said, we pay child support, we pay some child support on the one hand and we get some child support. And you’ve done the math and noticed that it’s a $300 difference in your deficit, I assume.

Speaker: But I don’t know if I can wrap my brain around that, because my ex-husband. This is his only child and he seems pretty financially well off.

Jody: Okay, so he’s paying you a certain amount. Why is he paying you the amount that he’s paying you? You’re saying he should be paying more because he has more money, yeah?

Speaker: Yes, well, and because it was from, the divorce was almost ten years ago, nine years ago. And so I would like to get it reevaluated. I have asked him, with inflation and things, and he was just like, “No.”

Jody: Okay, now listen, the reason he’s paying you the amount he’s paying you now is because that’s what legally he’s been told he’s obligated to pay you, right?

Speaker: Yes.

Jody: Okay, so let’s take some of the drama out for your sake because I don’t want to see you have to break down in tears and be frustrated about this. But if we just, for just a minute set the drama aside. And we just know, okay, this is what he’s legally…

Speaker: [Crosstalk].

Jody: Yeah. And it’s okay, I’m just going to help you for your sake. So he’s legally obligated to pay me the amount that he’s paying me, period. Now, we can judge him and say it’s not fair and that he has more money and that he should be more generous and it’s not fair that we have to pay this amount and these children aren’t equal and we can do all of that. But I don’t see any upside to you. I see what it does is frustrate you and punish you and make you emotional and shut you down.

So the non-dramatic version of it is, this is what, we pay what we have been told we need to pay, what the judge or whoever decided and he pays what he’s been told to pay. Now, if I want to hire an attorney or take it back to court or whatever I want to do and go through a legal process to have it reevaluated. Okay, I’m all for you doing anything like that that might get you a different result if you want. But what we do when we’re frustrated and mad and sort of this comparing and complaining thing we do, isn’t that. We just spiral in negative emotion.

So you have a couple of choices here. The way I see it is either, I want to open this back up for discussion with legal experts. Or you might decide, I don’t want to do that. It’s not worth the time or the hassle or whatever, probably might even cost money to do that. I don’t want to do that. I’m going to make peace with the way it is. I’m going to stop arguing with reality, like Byron Katie says. When we argue with reality, we lose but only every time. So it is what it is.

And you could just tell yourself, we pay certain bills. We pay the electricity, we pay the cable bill or the internet bill or whatever. These are the bills we pay and one of the bills I pay every month is $300 worth of child support. Because by the time you cross what you get with what you owe, you pay $300 child support every month. And just be done with it. Every time you pay your electric bill do you look at other people’s electric bills and then freak out and go, “Wait a second, he makes more money. He should be paying more to electric than me.” Or do you just pay it and move on?

Speaker: Right, exactly.

Jody: It’s a bill that you pay. But again, if you want to take action to see if you can get it reevaluated, okay. But this frustration, anger, crying, listen, this other woman, your current husband’s ex. She doesn’t view the world the way you do. She’s not you.

Speaker: Right. No, not at all.

Jody: There’s a reason he’s not married to her anymore. He’s married to you. If she were just like you, you wouldn’t be married to this guy, he’d stay with her.

Speaker: Yeah.

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Today’s episode is brought to you by the Better Than Happy Masterclass. If you like what you’re learning here, you must come try a masterclass with me. Thanks to technology, we can hang out in real time online, even if you’re on the other side of the world from me. And I’m going to give you some exercises to participate in with me, and then bring on volunteers to share and we’ll do the work together.

So if you want to take this work to the next level, to truly transform your inner world and your outer world, head to jodymoore.com/masterclass and choose from one of three different dates and times happening soon. So get going before you miss it. As a bonus, you’ll get a chance to get my exclusive planner for free and learn what it’s like to hire me, Jody Moore, to be your life coach. Once again, head to jodymoore.com/masterclass and grab your spot today.

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Speaker: I feel with my ex, too, he’s taken advantage of me because he didn’t come out homosexually until we were married and had a child together. So then there’s the taken advantage part too. That doesn’t serve me to feel like I’m being taken advantage of, taken advantage of giving you a child, when you weren’t honest with me.

Jody: Okay. Well, listen, you can call that being taken advantage of or you can call that an experience, that for whatever reason.

Speaker And then I would never take back.

Jody: Here’s the truth and I know you know this, but I’m just reminding this other part of your brain that’s trying to put you in the victim seat over and over again. The truth is people do all kinds of things. People lie. People out of hurt, well, oftentimes and sometimes out of malice, sometimes it’s a preconceived malicious thing, sometimes it’s I’m in pain, I’m going to see if I can make myself straight by getting married. I don’t know. Who knows why people do the things that they do?

People make money more of a priority than their kids at times. All these things that your brain is telling you that these people are doing. People do, do things like that and it may be that these people in your life are doing some things like that. That might be true. In the end none of it makes you a victim here. Your brain thinks you’re the victim in this story. And I just want to tell you something, that you’re not, you’re the hero in this story.

Speaker: Yeah. And I’ve lived by that a lot, but then there are times when I do fail at that.

Jody: Right. And that’s normal. I’m not trying to turn anybody into a robot here, but I don’t want to see you on the roller-coaster that you’re on right now where you get so frustrated you’re breaking down in tears. And you’re giving these situations and these people, the most painful parts of these people, you’re giving it a lot more power than I think is necessary. And it’s because of the story you’re telling yourself. I’m picked on. She’s etc. He has enough money, he should be paying more.

You’re playing out these stories in your head about how these people should be. And instead of deciding how they should be, I want you to just decide who you want to be and sometimes that might mean saying no when she asks for more money. I’m so sorry, I love you and we’re not able to give you more money. Or again, like I said, hiring an attorney and seeing if you can renegotiate the child support. I’m all for you doing anything like that that you want to do, but we don’t make our best decisions from poor me, I am picked on.

Speaker: Yes. And I always tell myself too, I don’t want to make decisions out of spite or when I’m in that head space. That’s not the time to make decisions on what to do next.

Jody: That’s right. So tell me this, how do you want to feel about the child support situation? Right now you feel frustrated, you said because you think I’m picked on. It’s not fair. I should be getting more money.

Speaker: I would like to think that a neutral thing would be that it’s manageable. For right now, this is our reality and it’s manageable. I’m not going to drown in it. You know what I mean?

Jody: Is it manageable?

Speaker: Yes, I mean, there’s another side to financial, of course, with my husband. But I mean, it’s manageable. There’s always room to make more money. I work from home and I love my job that I do at home and there’s always time and places to make more money, so yeah.

Jody: And you know what is much more fun is to focus on how you want to make more money and things that you can do or that you’re interested in doing or that you might explore doing to make more money. Rather than all of this nonsense about what’s going on with the exes and things that just a lot of it’s not in your control. Much more fun use of your brain and still a challenge, still a problem to figure out. But by doing that, you’re going to put more good and more love out into the world instead of more frustration and more judgment.

So it really can be as simple as that. Every time your brain wants to go to, well, it’s not fair and all of the other nonsense. You redirect it to, it’s manageable. We’re just going to pay this $300 every month. And it’s just one other bill. Sitting down and paying all the bills isn’t my most favorite thing to do to pay all the bills but I want electricity and I want all the things that the bills provide. So I pay the bill and I move on with it. It’s manageable and I’ll continue to figure out how to make sure we can pay the bills. This is just another bill we pay. Don’t let it have that much power in your life. Do you see what I’m saying?

Speaker: Right.

Jody: And then I do think there’s some interesting work you might want to circle back to at some point or we could touch on a little bit here about your situation with your ex. Because I think that you’re coming already from that victim place of what happened after getting married and learning that your ex was homosexual. And then now you’re carrying that into other things. Listen, do you think that he purposely tricked you and lied to you?

Speaker: No, I don’t. I think we were just young.

Jody: Do you think that he knew that he was gay? Do you think he had accepted it himself and fully embraced it himself?

Speaker: No, he definitely did not embrace it at all. And I think he was trying to do all of the steps that he thought necessary to make that go away.

Jody: So that’s interesting. When your brain’s like, “He took advantage of me.” I don’t see that. I see that there’s a lot of pain there and you might need to allow yourself still to process some grief. That’s totally understandable. That’s clean pain. But the dirty pain, the story he took advantage of me, doesn’t even sound believable based on what you’ve told me.

Speaker: And I’d never had people tell me that. The way that I’ve dealt with the divorce is, in their eyes, they just applaud me for the way that I dealt with it. [Crosstalk] just dealt with all of the clean pain, so maybe there’s still more because after eight years, this should be gone. I shouldn’t be dealing with this anymore.

Jody: Well, be careful with that. Pain is interesting. Clean pain can come up, and I would allow it. I would give yourself space and time. And here’s what we have to be careful of. When we say to each other, “Gosh, you’ve just dealt with this so well.” We’re very well meaning and oftentimes that is a useful thing for us to hear.

But sometimes the way we internalize that is, okay, so I’m supposed to be all good now. That’s what everybody sees. That’s what they expect. And then we expect that of ourselves. And then we start again, pushing down negative emotions that we might need to allow space to process. So just be careful with telling yourself, it’s been eight years, I should be fine. Why not? I mean that’s a painful thing you’ve gone through.

And if you allow some clean pain, this is what I find a lot when I’m coaching all of you all is when we avoid the clean pain, we just spin in dirty pain. What you’re describing of, it’s not fair, and she’s making it about money and he’s making more money and all of that is dirty pain, meaning it doesn’t help you progress and heal, just you spin and stay stuck in it.

It might be that you need to drop into just in some moments, go on a walk and cry. Go on a drive and listen to sad music and let yourself sort of grieve that experience. My guess is, you do that a little bit, you’ll feel better, it might come up again later though.

Speaker: Yeah, especially when you have to co-parent with a child for the rest of your life.

Jody: That’s right. That person’s going to be in your life for a long time. And so yeah, there might be some pain there that still needs to be processed. Clean pain is a beautiful thing. It will refine you. It will make you more loving, more compassionate, more patient.

Speaker: Yeah. I guess I just expected it to be gone. You should be over it by now.

Jody: Right. That’s what we do. Shouldn’t I be over this? I don’t know. You’re a human being. We’re pretty complicated. Alright my friend.

Speaker: Well, thank you so much.

Jody: Thank you so much today.

Speaker: I appreciate you.

Jody: You too, take care.

Speaker: Have a good day.

Jody: You too.

                                                                                                                   

If you find the podcast to be helpful you’re going to love The Lab. In Better Than Happy: The Lab we experiment with applying all of it in your real life. Whether you’re in the middle of a challenge and ready for some relief or you’re ready to commit to pursuing your dream goals and making them a reality, come join me in the lab at jodymoore.com/thelab. That’s jodymoore.com/thelab.