Manifesting Won't Fix Your Marriage Problems (Here's Why)

You've probably heard people talk about "manifesting" their ideal relationship or saving their marriage just by thinking positive thoughts. But when your marriage is in crisis, hope alone isn’t a strategy. In this episode, Kimberly Beam Holmes—CEO of Marriage Helper and trained performance psychologist—breaks down why traditional manifestation falls short and what actually works when your relationship feels like it’s falling apart.

You'll discover 3 research-backed mental techniques that high-performing individuals use to overcome adversity—adapted specifically to help you save your marriage:
✔ Visualization (the right way)
✔ Resilience-building breathing exercises
✔ The power of intentional practice

If your marriage is on the brink, but you're too scared to take the next step, this video will give you the tools to begin. It's not about perfection—it's about progress.

If you're struggling in your marriage, don’t wait. Get our FREE resource: The 7 Steps to Rescue Your Marriage 👉 https://marriagehelper.com/free

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Chapters

• 0:00 Manifestation vs. Performance Psychology
• 4:16 Visualization Techniques for Difficult Conversations
• 8:23 Box Breathing: Reset Your Amygdala
• 11:19 Practice Makes Progress, Not Perfection
• 14:28 Taking Action Beyond Fear

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:47

There's a lot of people out there who talk about manifesting your ideal future, manifesting saving your marriage, manifesting your perfect mate. What is that really about? Let's be clear I don't believe in manifestation. I don't believe that we can, like, hijack the spirit world, and maybe some people would just say that it's just fighting over the different definition of words that I'm getting at here, but here's what I'm trying to say Manifestation, in the way that most people talk about it, I don't really think is a thing. However, there are absolutely some things that you can do mentally, that we're going to hijack from high performance athletes, that can help you save your marriage and turn your relationship around. I know that that might sound crazy, but here's the thing I don't want you to check out. Stay with me, because we can learn some of our biggest breakthroughs when we combine methodologies from two seemingly unrelated things, from two seemingly unrelated categories, such as performance psychology and marriage.

Speaker 1: 1:52

As someone who's been trained as a performance psychologist in fact, very soon I will have my PhD in psychology, with an emphasis of performance psychology I have done a lot of studying. In fact, the past five years, I've really been diving deep into how do certain people and why do certain people perform better? Really, you can boil that down to why is it that some people can look and head into certain circumstances and situations head on, be more resilient and come out stronger on the other side than other people, and that's really all. Performance is Performance. When we talk about performance psychology, when we think about elite athletes, when we think about top level producers, we're thinking CEOs, we're thinking Navy SEALs. What do all of those people have in common? They can face difficult circumstances, have higher rates of resilience and can see themselves coming through on the other side. Guess what? You are in a situation like that too. If you have a marriage or relationship issue that you feel like is overwhelming, that it is a huge storm that you are charging into and that you need to find some more resilience and some hope of being able to get through this stronger on the other side, then that's exactly what I'm going to be sharing with you right now. So let's dive into three things that we can steal from performance athletes and to top performers that can actually also help you have a stronger marriage, save your marriage and even have a better marriage than ever before.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Here is the first thing visualization. Now, this is where the nomenclature of manifestation and visualization. You may say it's the same thing. It's not. I don't think so.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Visualization is very specifically a tool and a tactic used by performance athletes. Think about a weightlifter who's about to go and do some really heavy deadlifts or even more complex movements such as snatches or thrusters. If you're familiar with any of those Olympic powerlifting moves and those compound movements, when you're going to do something like that, most top athletes, they will stop, they will pause before doing it, even the night before. Even when they are just sitting in an airport waiting to get on a plane or sitting in the waiting room at a doctor's office, they take those opportunities to visualize. To visualize them doing that movement perfectly In deadlifting. For those of you who are interested, stay with me, even if you're not, just imagine that barbell being on the ground in front of you. You go to it. You picture yourself grasping your hands around it, doing the right move with your hands, making sure that they're placed in the right way. You picture the feel of the bar underneath your hands. You picture where your body is going to be. You visualize you doing it.

Speaker 1: 4:55

My husband is a pilot. He's in training to be a commercial pilot and one of the things that he does and that he's encouraged to do, is something called chair flying. So even when he's not able to get to the airport and take the plane out on a given day, his instructors tell him sit in the chair in your room and just visualize. Visualize yourself in the cockpit where all of the things are and go through different maneuvers, go through different situations. You can see this many times. You see the blue angels who do the crazy moves through the air. You can see videos on YouTube of them all in a room together and going through the movements of their routines. They are quote unquote chair flying. They are visualizing. Now, why is this so important and why is this so important to you in order to save your marriage? How are we connecting the dots here?

Speaker 1: 5:51

You need to begin visualizing what it looks like for you to be calm during hard conversations. Maybe you are nervous about a difficult conversation that you need to have with your spouse. Here's what you need to do Stop close your eyes. Visualize. Visualize your spouse coming through the door. Visualize yourself taking some deep breaths and calming your nervous system. Visualize yourself beginning that conversation. Picture yourself looking them in the eye, maintaining a cool and collected posture.

Speaker 1: 6:28

This may sound crazy, but it's not. The more that you can visualize in your mind's eye you doing something a certain way. It's kind of like muscle memory. You can more easily do it when the time comes. So think of what it is you're scared of, visualize it happening and you doing it well, and just keep visualizing that. Maybe it's that you need to visualize what it's going to look like when you do the kids handoff, if you're swapping kids out for a weekend, and how you can do it without getting super riled up. Maybe it's that you need to actually tell your spouse something that you've done that you have not admitted yet. Take some time to visualize how the conversation is going to go, how you are going to maintain your cool and your calm in that situation, and let that be something that fuels. Honestly. It just creates the opportunity, the most likelihood, or a better likelihood, that that conversation is going to go well.

Speaker 1: 7:30

So, number one visualization. Number two breathing. I cannot even begin to explain to you, for top performing athletes, how much your breath and your breath regulation is going to make a game changing difference in how someone performs. Because here's the thing when we get really riled up, when we are nervous, when we're anxious, when we're scared, when we're angry, one of the first things that changes is the cadence of our breath. We begin to breathe more shallow. We're not getting as much oxygen into our muscles, into our veins. When that happens, we don't think as clearly.

Speaker 1: 8:11

There are so many things that have a domino effect when our breath changes and in fact, when we look at psychology and when we look at what can really begin to build and rebuild resilience, we can see that in the amygdala, which was kind of in the center part of our brain, which really regulates the fear response that we have, one of the ways that we can reset our amygdala. So, even if it's overwhelmed with fear in a given moment, the best way and this is a Navy SEALs training that we can borrow from one of the best ways to reset our amygdala is by doing what's called box breathing, and that's where you breathe in for a count of four seconds, you hold the breath in at a count of four seconds, you breathe out for four seconds and you hold the breath out for four seconds, and if you do that consistently for a period of even just three minutes, it kind of resets your amygdala and it absolutely increases your ability to handle stressful situations. It increases your resilience. So how does this apply to your marriage? Well, when you're facing those difficult situations, when you're getting caught in a downward mental spiral of all of these what ifs and how could I and how could he or how could she that's where it's time to become resilient, to actually practice this box breathing so that you can reset yourself and continue to charge through the center of the storm with the most likelihood of getting through the other side stronger. So we're going to practice it really quick together. Here's what it looks like you breathe in, hold it for four, breathe out, hold at the bottom. It takes about 16 seconds. So you want to do that for three minutes. So you're doing that about 12 times. It's a great way. At the end of it, you will feel clearer headed and better able to handle the situation in front of you, even if you just need a timeout in the middle of a fight or an argument or a stressful situation. Go to the bathroom, take three minutes to do some box breathing. Stressful situation go to the bathroom, take three minutes to do some box breathing, come out feeling more resilient. And then, finally, the third technique and tactic that we're going to take from performance psychology is practice, practice, practice. You see, it's absolutely true that.

Speaker 1: 10:36

Think about just a couple of years ago when Simone Biles, when she had the twisties that's what they called it she decided that she wasn't going to perform for her own mental health, which was a great call. But then, coming back that next year, she was kind of in her head about it. She was nervous that what if she did something and it didn't work? And especially if someone has been injured in a performance type setting, they have these quote unquote twisties. They have this mental block of being able to do the thing that they used to do so easily. Now it feels so hard. So how do you overcome that? By just doing it. You have to just begin doing it and you have to use these techniques the visualization, the breathing, those things to help you calm yourself, to get you back in the swing of doing it.

Speaker 1: 11:24

But if you let fear continue to stop you, then you're never going to move forward. You're just going to keep being stuck where you are. So many people in situations where their marriage is in crisis they say but I'm scared, I'm scared to talk to my spouse and ask them to go to a workshop with me. I'm scared to ask what they think about the future of our marriage. I'm scared to do anything. Because what if I do the final thing for my last resort and it doesn't work? Then I'm completely out of hope. Have you ever felt that way? You probably feel that way right now, where you are in a paralysis by analysis.

Speaker 1: 12:06

So you're not doing anything because you're wanting to do the perfect thing. But here is the true thing you just have to get started, begin doing something. Begin by working on yourself, begin by having conversations with your spouse and guess what? It's not going to be perfect every time. That's why we have our smart contact that we teach you about, which will be linked in the YouTube video show notes below. That's why we have these other things at Marriage Helper that we point you to Working on your pies. You'll see that linked as the next video you can watch below.

Speaker 1: 12:37

But you have to get started, because you can't do it right without doing it to begin with, and you're never going to do it right all the time. Even the top performing athletes are never going to 100% correctly execute any given movement. But if you get stuck with the twisties, where you're scared to do anything. So, therefore, you just don't do anything. You do nothing. If you're too scared to do anything and therefore you do nothing, your situation will not change. Simone Biles didn't go back to the Olympics and win more medals by staying stuck with having the twisties. She faced her fears, but she did it with wisdom and she saw results, and the same is true for you. Don't let your fear block you. Don't do stupid things, but don't let your fear stop you from moving forward.

Speaker 1: 13:31

Your marriage didn't fall apart overnight. It's not going to be saved overnight, but it's definitely not going to be saved if you don't begin doing something different and doing the best things to save it. So use some more of our resources below to see more about that. With smart contact, with working on your pies, those are things that you can begin doing right now. I hope that this has been helpful. Here's what you can do Visualize good outcomes, practice resiliency by doing box breathing and just begin doing Practice, practice, practice, practice. Doesn't necessarily make perfect, but practice makes progress, and that's what you need when your marriage is in crisis. Until next time, stay strong.