Q: “My wife keeps having health issues, because she just won’t slow down. Between issues with her heart, issues with her eyes, and who knows what else, she’s falling apart. I want to help her, and I try to be there for her, but I don’t know how to get her to put on the brakes. She’s insanely left-brained, so I can’t present an argument that she can’t logically argue her way out of, except the generic, ‘I love you, and I want you to be healthy.’ That one she does respect, and takes a step back for a second, but then she starts up again. I don’t want her to end up in the hospital. Help!”
A: Oh, my goodness. Okay, so first off, you are such an incredible badass, amazing husband to reach out to me because you care so much. You are an incredible heart-centered man to say to her, “I love you, and I want you to be healthy,” because that is touching this heart of hers. Now, heart issues, eye issues. I’m not Elise Hay, you know, I’m not Caroline Myss, but I’ve done enough work being a coach for 18 years and learning from them to take the clue from the body.
The heart, she’s having issues with the heart. Her heart is closed. Her heart is wounded. Her heart is hurting. She is not sourcing life force energy from the inside out, in her, as her, and through her. Her busyness, what you’re saying, she’s sourcing her worth, her sense of accomplishments, her sense of achievements. She’s probably waking up not enough. Doing, doing, doing, doing, thinking that finally, maybe she’ll be enough. But then she starts all over the next morning and has to keep doing, and so she’s trying to seek, grasp, take hold, control from the outside in versus ah, this open heart, so that she can be sourced, and life force energy can come in her, as her, and through her.
Second, the eyes. She’s not liking what she’s seeing. She is probably looking at an outside world, comparing herself to it, and making things up that she’s not enough or she needs to do more or she needs to be more or etc. So she’s not looking upon life with gratitude. She’s not looking upon life with thank you. She’s not being appreciative for all that she has, probably looking and seeing everything from the point of view of everything’s wrong or not enough, so she has to just keep on this, like, wheel.
Now, all of that said, what the hell do we do here? Because you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. She might end up in the hospital, and she might just die, and there’s pretty much nothing we can do about it but love her and influence her to make another choice. But we can’t fix her, we can’t control her, and we can’t change her. Oh, what a horrible feeling, right? Exactly the same feeling she’s having that’s keeping her running so fast. She’s trying to control her world.
So a very high-level practice for you is to be in allowance of what she’s doing, not judgment. And I know you love her and want to fix her and change her so she stays healthy and everything, but notice you’re attached to that, and I’m asking you to be unattached if your wife ends up like just going in the hospital and dying. I know I’m asking you some super-high conscious stuff here, okay? That energy. If this is you: “I need to fix you, I need to change you,” she’s going to be working faster, spinning faster, okay? But if you can come back into allowance, she’s like, “What? What? Where’s his energy? Where’d he go?” And she might start to slow down, start to open up, start to connect more, start to have a look at these things, okay? So that is one energetic way you can be a contribution.
Just that vibration that I’ve developed over the past 18 years is enough to start shifting things and telling the truth. I don’t know the dynamic between the two of you, but she might … I don’t know how she’s wired, but my sense is there’s some point of view, limiting belief, lie, illusion, fantasy going on in there, that if she actually slows down, she failed, she’s not enough, and maybe who will she be in your eyes? I don’t know. Or you’ll have won, because you told her to slow down, and she wants to win. I don’t really know what’s going on, but something along those lines.
So I think a sanctuary would be a wonderful way to not fix her, judge her, control her, but just be in the space with her and invite her.
Bottom line is there are actions we can take, but bottom, bottom line is that we can’t control her one little bit. So your spiritual practice is allowance. It’s that sweet spot between action, surrender. Okay, so those are the actions and the surrender I invite you to take. I love you with all my heart. Thank you.