Tanya Hale 00:00 

Hey there, this is Tanya Hale with Intentional Living and this is episode number 88, "Marriage Mending" with my special friend Jane Copier. Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams....we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

Tanya Hale 00:22 

Well, hello there, my friends. So glad to be with you. Happy day to you. Let's see, a couple of things. First of all, if you have not signed up for my "weekend win," go to my website tanyahale.com, scroll down to the bottom of the first page. There's a place for you to sign up for that. It's just an email that I send out every Friday morning. I want you to be able to read it in a minute or less and it will just give you something good to think about for the weekend. And if you want a free coaching session with me, I am still working on my 300 free coaching calls this year. So I'm kind of excited about that. So jump online. You can you can sign up there as well for a free coaching call. 

Tanya Hale 01:08 

And today I have something very special for you. My friend Jane Copier is here. So here we go. Let's get started. Here's our interview. Today I have a special guest. I have my good friend Jane is here. Say hi, Jane. 

Jane Copier 01:25 

Hey, everyone. 

Tanya Hale 01:27 

Alright. Jane is a life coach as well. And she and I were both trained through the Life Coach School. And so we have a lot of really similar philosophies about how things work and what we do. But where I kind of focus on middle-aged women, Jane focuses on marriages. Jane, tell them what you do. 

Jane Copier 01:49 

Yeah, well, marriage marriage mending is really my passion and really my target. We have similar demographic target in that I really like working with women who've been married for maybe 20 years or more who are deeply unhappy in their marriage and don't see a way out of it, but they don't want a divorce. They just feel stuck. So those are really my people. I was, like you said, certified through the Life Coach School and my life previous before that, I started as a school teacher. I originally got my degree in psychology and then realized I didn't want to continue on in that study just because the abnormal psych piece of it was a little bit difficult for me. I really love human interaction. I really love learning about human potential and all of that kind of human development piece I loved, but the abnormal psych end of it was a little, I don't know, just a little discouraging for me. I didn't feel like that was really the space that I would excel. 

Jane Copier 02:52 

So I became an English teacher, got an English degree as well, and became an English teacher, and taught in a school district for about seven years until I became a realtor, and became a realtor, and built a really successful practice for 22 years, and then came into life coaching. And that's a little bit of a different story. I'd wanted to do that since 2007, but didn't really have the opportunity at that point to do it. So once it became available to me, and I decided to dive in, that's really where I just found this passion and this love for mending marriages. It's part of my story as well. So I really relate to women who have struggled with that. I used to joke with my husband. Well, not with my husband, but probably with us. They'd say "happy anniversary," and I'd be like, "yeah, well, we're celebrating 10 years today, even though it's been 20," something like that. So I can really relate to my people, my women who have had a hard time in their marriage who are deeply unhappy, but really don't know how to help themselves. 

Tanya Hale 04:00 

You know what? And I think that that's so many people. I think a lot of us just get in these bad patterns of behavior and thinking, where we just are creating something without even consciously being aware that we're creating it. And in our marriages, I think that's just so hard. 

Jane Copier 04:22 

And I would say too, especially in our culture, where we are taught that marriage is forever, and that this is an eternal decision that you're making. So there's a tremendous amount of guilt. There's a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction, and also total discouragement when you're thinking of your future, and you're like, "well, I've made this commitment. I've made this covenant. I've made this promise to stay, and my future looks pretty bleak." And then so trying to reconcile with that. And a lot of time we end up staying for the children. We stay for the kids or we stay because of this promise that we've made, and we've just resigned ourselves to thinking that there's no other way. 

Tanya Hale 05:04 

Right, coming from my background, I can totally relate to that. I mean, I was in a marriage for 24 years and then ended up getting divorced and I remember so clearly just thinking, "there's no way out of this. There is no way." So I love the fact that you, that this is like what you focus on. You focus on helping people who feel like there's no way out, we're so stuck, but I don't feel like divorce is the right option or the direction that I want to go, but I also don't want to sit in this crap for the rest of my life either, right? Because it's hard when it's hard. 

Jane Copier 05:39 

Absolutely, and I do want to be sensitive to the fact that there are people who do divorce. And for you and your situation, your marriage was complete. That relationship was complete. You had made your effort, you had done your work, you had satisfied all of that piece of what you could do. And so for me, I just want to let people know that my message isn't that that no one should ever divorce. My message is if you don't want a divorce and you still think that there's hope in your marriage, as long as you still think that there's hope, then yeah, let's figure it out and see if we can make it beautiful. 

Jane Copier 06:16 

But I think telling ourselves that divorce isn't an option makes us feel like there's absolutely no way out. There's no hope there. But when we acknowledge that there is a choice and we do decide to stay, that choice is what we own. We then can own that choice. We can learn to love that choice. And then we have some power in that decision instead of feeling like we're just stuck and we're a victim. 

Tanya Hale 06:41 

Yeah. You know what? I love that because I think I had this thought in my head all those years, "divorce is not an option," even though things were always really tough. And then I would hear things like, "well, marriage is a hundred-hundred," right? And you should always, you know, "I didn't get married to get divorced." And I remember just all those phrases going through my head. And yet I felt so stuck and I just didn't have any clue. But I love the fact that there are things that we can do first, right, to get our own hearts and our own minds in a good place. So will you start off by telling us a little bit about your story and how this plays into why you decided to do marriage coaching, marriage mending? 

Jane Copier 07:23 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, my negative thinking really started at the very beginning of our marriage. And it's really interesting how our brains work because once we have a thought that's a painful thought, and then we combine it with an emotional experience, when we attach emotion to a thought, it becomes even more powerful. So say you have like, it can even be like this pile of thoughts that we think over and over again, like, so say there's a Valentine's Day or an anniversary or a birthday. And we have this thought about how we expect it to be. And then our spouse doesn't treat us the way that we think we want in that moment. We have a thought that looks something like, "wow, he's really not the one for me. If he were my soulmate, this, this, this." You know, like we have these thoughts that happen. 

Jane Copier 08:20 

And this happened very early in my marriage for me. I married at a really young age. I was 19 and so I was very young and I had just come off a breakup from having this boyfriend that I had for four years. 

Tanya Hale 08:36 

Wow. 

Jane Copier 08:36 

And I was really in love with him. I really was. And I, I loved him so much, but just so shortly after breaking up with him, I met my husband and he was such a breath of fresh air. I loved everything about him. I fell in love with him really quickly, but when we got married and things turned south a little bit, when it wasn't exactly how I thought it should be or should look like, or that he didn't act or treat me the way that I wanted to be treated, I had these thoughts. 

Tanya Hale 09:08 

Which it always will be, right? It's always gonna be that way. 

Jane Copier 09:14 

Oh gosh, yes, yeah and we're sold that, right? We are from the time we're tiny to want the fairytale, Prince Charming should behave this way and then he should make me feel like a princess. That is what we think. But as soon as I started having these problems come up or noticing that my Prince Charming wasn't making me feel like a princess, right? I had these thoughts like, "oh, I married too young." Or "I made a big mistake." Or "maybe I married on the rebound." Or "why didn't somebody tell me? Why didn't somebody warn me?" But what happens is when we have a thought like that and then we think it over and over and over again, our brains take that thought and it becomes a belief. 

Tanya Hale 10:01 

Right. 

Jane Copier 10:03 

Right? So that belief then becomes incredibly hard to change. We don't even know that it's a belief. We just think it's true. Our brains just present it as if it's just a circumstance. This is just the truth, right? So my story was, yeah, I started telling myself this really early on in our marriage. And so constantly, my brain was looking for more evidence that I'd made a mistake. So years and years go by, we add children. We take our focus off of each other. We start getting distracted by other things. We're not intentionally thinking loving thoughts about our spouse. And soon we're in a mess. We're so distracted by life and other things. And our relationship takes such a backseat that we just completely forget why it is we married this person. What in the world did I ever see in him? Right? Yeah. 

Tanya Hale 10:58 

It's so easy to do. 

Jane Copier 10:59 

It was really my story, and I remember thinking that, in fact, I even said aloud a few times, "if it weren't for the kids, I would be out of here," you know? And I know that there are so many of my clients that have had that very same thought, like they stay for the kids. 

Tanya Hale 11:17 

Oh, I did for a lot of years, for sure. So what was your big aha that finally kind of woke you up and helped you realize that your thoughts were creating a lot of the problems here? 

Jane Copier 11:30 

Yeah. I had wanted, I mean, I had to make the choice early on, am I really committed to the marriage or am I not? And I had decided that I didn't want a divorce, I didn't want that. So I made that choice. I hadn't made the choice to love my husband anyway. I just thought that it was a life sentence, that I was just going to be resigned to this unhappy situation, right? 

Tanya Hale 11:55 

You know what? I love the distinction you made there, like that, that you didn't love him, but you were resigned to stay, right? Because I think that that's where so many of us get. We resign ourselves to tolerate. And we resign ourselves to put up with, but we don't choose to love. We just choose to stick it out. Right? 

Jane Copier 12:15 

Just to stay and suffer. 

Tanya Hale 12:16 

And what a miserable place. Oh, so miserable. 

Jane Copier 12:20 

Yeah. So I remember one situation once my husband and I were having a big argument and I don't know, I can't remember exactly the details. It's been so long, but it was kind of one of those, one of the worst ones that we had ever happened. And I'm not one that likes to yell. I hate that kind of contention. I'm not like a verbal, my mode of operation is more like the ice queen. I just shut down. My husband, on the other hand, gets really animated and he would yell if I would engage. But this was a situation where we probably hadn't spoken much to each other for a couple of days and it was just...the tension was so horrible. And I remember it was to the point, I don't know where the kids were, but they weren't at home at the time. And I remember I was in the kitchen and my husband was in the family room sitting on the couch and just in the dark room with the light off and it was just quiet in there. And I remember thinking to myself, "if I don't do something, it's really possible that my marriage is over." 

Jane Copier 13:25 

And so I had to gather my courage and I had to put my pride on the shelf because, you know, when you're in that space, you always want to be right. We're still clinging to our side of the story. But I remember going into my husband in the family room and just kind of kneeling in front of him, and taking his hands in mine and just saying, you know, "I want to choose us." And in that moment I saw him go from being so angry and defensive and hating me, like he just embraced me and we kind of cried together. 

Tanya Hale 14:04 

Oh I love that. 

Jane Copier 14:06 

Yeah and in that situation, right then and there, I realized how much power one person has in a relationship. He didn't have to do one thing to change anything. I was the only one that took action. I was the only one that changed and it changed everything. And so when I tell my clients, and and this is not...I mean that's even before I became a coach, but that realization occurred to me. And then in 2007 when I was introduced to thought work and I was taught and I believed that my thoughts created my feelings? That's when I realized how much power there is for one person to change a relationship. Because I have people all the time who do not believe me that it just takes one person. But once they go through this process themselves, once they experience it for themselves, it's undeniable, it absolutely can be the truth. 

Tanya Hale 15:08 

I love that. So if you had somebody call you, which you do all the time, right, when you talk to people and they feel like they're in this completely unfixable situation, they feel like they're completely miserable, they're in this totally unhappy marriage, they just don't know how to get to a good place, what's the first step that you start your clients off with starting to move into the place where, as one person, they can make a difference? 

Jane Copier 15:39 

Yeah, you know, it is a process and it does take practice. And when they're in that spot, this is where the beauty of coaching is so helpful, because when you're in that place, I call it being like deep in the weeds, like you're in the weeds and you cannot see the path because you're just looking around and all you can see is what your brain is offering you. And what your brain is offering you is a lot of negative thinking. It's offering you lots of thoughts that have become beliefs over years of practicing them. The more we think a thought, the stronger it gets and our brains love ease. They really like safety and so they want to just continue to give us the same thoughts over and over. When we try to change our thinking, it's a little difficult because our brains don't like that. It creates this cognitive dissonance where we're trying to make a new thought but the other one is so hardwired. Having a coach is awesome because it's having the ability to pour out all that thinking, to put that all out on paper, have someone else help you take a look at your thinking and see what it's creating for you for yourself. 

Jane Copier 16:54 

So our first step really is just learning how to be the observer of our thinking. We have that lower brain that's on autopilot that operates on that motivational triad of conserve energy, avoid pain, and be safe. Just keep you safe, right? And so when we understand that that's how our brains work, we get to observe that thinking and start to notice, OK, what's a thought here? And what are the facts? That's the first step is what are the facts of the situation and what is my thought about it? 

Jane Copier 17:29 

And then once we can determine which is which, then we can look at the thoughts because our thoughts are optional. And then it's helping those people, helping everyone who's having that kind of thinking, just being able to point things out and say, "this is the thought that's causing you pain. Why do you think you're choosing to think this? Let's look at what it's creating for you." 

Tanya Hale 17:49 

You know what? It's so easy. I love the concept that you bring up that our thoughts create beliefs. Sometimes I think we get caught in this idea that our beliefs are just true. They're all true and everything I believe is true. And we don't realize that we have created that belief by what we've chosen to think over and over and over. So if we think, "well, my husband's lazy," we may think, "well, that's true. That's a belief," right? But that's not a fact, right? We may think it's a fact, but what would be a fact is he didn't take out the garbage or, you know, that would be a fact. But the actual thoughts that we have, "well, he didn't take out the garbage, therefore he's lazy," that becomes the thought, right? That's an opinion. And then when we start turning those thoughts into facts, into real beliefs, well, not facts, but when we turn them into real beliefs in our head, those beliefs take over. And then we just feel like, "oh, well, they're just true." 

Jane Copier 18:49 

Right and there's nothing to be done, right? Because if you can't change the truth, it just is, there's nothing to be done. This is the truth of my story. Like I told myself the story of how wrong my marriage was for so many years. I wasn't even able to see it. I had no awareness of it. To me, it just seemed true that I'd made a mistake, that I was stuck. I didn't even know that it was optional to think a different way because my brain just thought it was so true. 

Tanya Hale 19:22 

Well, and it made it into a belief, right? 

Jane Copier 19:25 

And once we have that thought, like, if you have the thought that your husband is lazy and yet that's an original thought that you have and maybe it happens over something that you're really upset about. So maybe you're having a party or something and you want him to take out the trash and he doesn't take out the trash and he should read your mind, right? Because if he loved you, he would know that you want him to take out the trash. 

Tanya Hale 19:46 

And that's why you got married. somebody read your mind and do everything you want, right? 

Jane Copier 19:52 

Yes, to complete me, be my other half, right? If you attach some big emotion to wanting him to take out the trash and then you attach the thought that he's lazy to that, then your brain loves to be right. So it starts scanning for all these other ways that he's lazy. "Oh, see, he didn't pick his socks up off the floor. Oh, he's so lazy. Oh, look, he's late to work today. Must be so lazy." You know, like we're always just building this huge file of evidence of all the reasons why it supports this belief of yours. And so then it just becomes hardwired and we don't even notice it. We don't even realize that it's an option. 

Tanya Hale 20:32 

Right. But the thing that's so amazing that I love about the work that you and I do through the Life Coach School and as life coaches is it works on the other side of that coin as well. If I think, "oh, he's so amazing," or "he's always really conscientious of whatever," my brain starts looking back and saying, "oh, I can find evidence for that. Oh, I see that. Yes, that's true because look at this time and this time and this time," and we can build a belief on the positive side just as easily as we can build a belief on the negative side. 

Jane Copier 21:05 

It's so true. And you bring out such a great point that we have the ability to direct our brains. We have the ability, we are the only creatures on this planet that have the ability, to observe our thinking and to direct our brains. And so when we can give our brain clear direction, "okay, we've thought this, but what else could we find now? Let's find some evidence that he's not lazy." Direct our brains and show them what to be looking for. That's when the magic happens. Like both stories are true. Is it true that someone's lazy if they leave their socks on the floor? Maybe a little bit, right? Or do they don't take out the garbage? Maybe a little bit. Is it also true that he's super driven and motivated because he goes to work every day? Is it super true that he is not lazy because of all the honey-do list he accomplishes on the weekend? I don't know what it is, you know what I mean? But there's always evidence contrary to the point that we think is true, but we have to be willing to look for it. 

Tanya Hale 22:07 

And I love that, Jane, because I think this whole idea that we just kind of believe that what our brains tell us is true is so false. Because our brains lie to us all the time over stuff like that. And really, we get to choose what to believe. And I love  this idea that you bring up that when we learn to observe our thoughts, learn to pay attention. You know, they talk about that we have 60,000 thoughts a day. And so many of those are running behind the scenes where they're not in our conscious awareness. And yet they are causing us to have thoughts. I mean, we're having thoughts behind the scenes that we're not aware of that say, "oh, well, he's lazy." And we're thinking that in the back, right? Yeah. And of those 60,000, most of them are negative, because that's how our brains are wired. 

Jane Copier 22:56 

And another fun fact too, like 90% of the thoughts you have today are the same thoughts you had yesterday. 

Tanya Hale 23:02 

Oh my gosh, that's a great number. 

Jane Copier 23:05 

We are completely creating our past as we're moving toward our future. So if we don't create new intentional thinking for the future, we will continue to recreate our past in our relationships, in our lives, period. 

Tanya Hale 23:18 

You know what? I love that. I think that's a fascinating number, right? Like we're just kind of reliving the same thoughts day after day with maybe some minor changes. But this is where the work that you're doing with marriages and the work that I do, both of us, where we're helping people to really choose thoughts on purpose, right? Intentional thinking, intentionally creating what we want by the thoughts that we choose to create that become our beliefs. 

Jane Copier 23:43 

Right. And choosing to think that your marriage is wrong or that you're stuck is totally an option. When I first became a life coach, I really thought that I'd be coaching women on how to lose weight and get healthy, because that was something that was I was really passionate about. I really enjoy that end of it. And I've helped lots of friends lose weight and get healthy. And so I really thought that that would happen. And I was able to solve that piece for me, I was able to solve my money issues with coaching. But when I really applied this to my marriage, and I saw the incredible evolution that occurred in my marriage. And also, when I got certified, I was just finishing up serving for four years as a Relief Society President in my ward. And I had several women who asked for help with their marriages. I found it so deeply rewarding to help them and to be able to see the changes that they were able to make. And so, for me, there just isn't anything that deserves your time or attention. I think so many of us spend so much time devoting all of our resources to other areas than our marriage. It deserves an investment of time, it deserves an investment of your attention, of your care. 

Jane Copier 25:12 

You know, I know that there's some strange, weird statistic that people spend more money on their grass, on their lawn care, than they do on their mental health, or even their relationship. What a tragedy, right? Like, it takes some concentrated effort, but the reward is so incredible. It has generational consequences. It has consequences in the way that we show up with our friends, the way we show up at work and our jobs, the way we view our lives, the way that we feel about ourselves. We want to be an example of what's possible for our children. We want to show them and model for them what a healthy relationship looks like. And when we don't do that, like we'd have this sense of failure, right? You know? And so I don't know, for me, you can tell I'm just super passionate about this because it just means the world to me to see people be able to create the life and the relationship that they've always dreamed up, that's always been there, it's always been possible, but it hasn't had the attention and the care that it's needed. 

Tanya Hale 26:15 

Right. I love that so much. I love everything about what you just said. I think that we just, we don't invest enough in ourselves, in our own mental and emotional health. And yet these are areas that none of us, well, I can't say none, but very few of us have received any training or any guidance or any direction in our lives. We've just kind of been left to figure it out all on our own. And we don't know what we're doing. and we get stuck in these thought patterns that then our brains say, "oh, well, this is a truth." And then we feel like we just don't know how to dig ourselves out. 

Jane Copier 26:52 

Yeah. And I think so many times we feel like taking that time to ourselves or investing in our own health is self-serving, especially in our culture. We've always been taught to give, give, give, sacrifice, right? Give it all to the family. Make sure everyone else has everything that they need. When the number one gift that you can give to your family is a happy mom, a  happy relationship, a happy life, that kind of modeling, that kind of health is way better than baking cupcakes for your kids' class. 

Tanya Hale 27:29 

Or even a trip to Disneyland. Thank you very much. Disneyland will come and go, but the consistent day-to-day of an emotionally healthy mother, an emotionally healthy marriage to look at, that will last a lifetime. 

Jane Copier 27:49 

Absolutely, absolutely. You're so right. I used to think, "oh, if we could just go on vacation," or "if I could just get away with my husband, things would get better." And that was me just trying to change our circumstances, never changing my thinking about him, right? If it was like trying to throw medicine at a broken bone instead of healing the bone. Yeah, and so you'd go on vacation. We would do this. We would go to Cancun or something. We'd feel really connected. We'd have a great time together. And then we'd come home and things would go right back to normal. And I'd be like, "oh, I guess I'll have to wait till we can afford a vacation again." 

Tanya Hale 28:26 

Well, because we think that changing the circumstance is going to change everything, right? And it just doesn't because the thoughts are still there. You could stay in Cancun and after about three weeks, you'd start having those same thoughts that you had had before, right? Because the thoughts are just there. We really have to attack it at its source, which is really figuring out our thoughts. 

Tanya Hale 28:51 

Oh, Jane, I've loved this. Thank you so much for everything you shared today. So for those who are interested in learning a little bit more about marriage mending, where do they go? Where do they find you? 

Jane Copier 29:04 

I have a website. It's Jane Copier. My last name is funny. It's a funky Dutch name. So it's Copier, C-O-P-I-E-R, and it's janecopier.com or janecopiercoaching.com. And I also have a Facebook page, Jane Copier Coaching. So yeah, hit me up. I would love to talk to you. I'd love to hear about your story. I would love to share some tools with you. I've got a free training on my website. It's called The Three Secrets to Stop Hating on Your Husband. So if you feel like this might apply to you, take a peek at that and download it and grab that today. I think whether you end up working with me or not, it's good information and hopefully provide some value and some good instruction to help you get moving forward. 

Tanya Hale 29:50 

I love that. And Jane, also you do a free consult as well, right? Like I do? 

Jane Copier 29:55 

Yes, yeah. You can sign up for a free consult on my website. I believe there's a link on my Facebook page as well. And sign up for my blog or my newsletter and then there's always a link on that as well. And you can do that from my website at janecopier.com. 

Tanya Hale 30:09 

That is awesome. Jane, I love what you're doing. I love what you're doing because I think so many of us are just, I know when I was married, I just felt so stuck for so long and it just seemed like hopeless, right? Like there was no way to ever get out of it. And so I love that that's what you do. You not only sell hope, but you make it manifest, right? You help people really figure out how to create a better situation rather than staying stuck. 

Jane Copier 30:39 

Yeah, the joy I see in my clients is just, it's priceless, really truly, it's just priceless. I would do this forever. I would do it for free if I had to. But honestly, I think the most loving thing people that I could ever have people do is pay me for coaching. That is truly how I feel because it's such a worthwhile investment. I know exactly the return people get for that investment. It's the most loving gift you can give to yourself. And working with you is the same way. I'm sure that if you have people who are thinking about, "gosh, what do I do? I'm in this midlife crisis and here I am and feeling a little stuck." I know that you help them find their way and achieve incredible results and incredible life that they never thought possible for themselves. 

Tanya Hale 31:30 

It's like one of the most exhilarating things I do. When I get off of a call, I'm always like, "bam, yes, I totally love this," right? It's so fun. It's so amazing to help people get to a better place and I love the approach that you're taking. So thank you so much, Jane, for being with me today. 

Jane Copier 31:49 

Thank you for having me. It's been such a pleasure. I truly appreciate the opportunity. 

Tanya Hale 31:53 

Oh, well I'm so glad you could make it. 

Tanya Hale 31:55 

So okay everybody, that is it for today. I will put her name in the title. We're going to call this one number 88, "Marriage Mending." So if you want to get in touch with her, her name will be in the title and you can just go to, you can just look up Jane Copier, which is spelled like copier, but you can just look Jane up online and find her there and that is going to do it for us today. See you later. 

Tanya Hale 32:24 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email, a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!