Stronger Marriage Connection

Building The Five Habits Of Hope For Stronger Relationships | Julia Garcia | #159

• Utah Marriage Comission • Season 4 • Episode 159

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Dr. Dave Schramm and Dr. Liz Hale sit down with Dr. Julia Garcia to explore how hope becomes a daily habit that strengthens love, repairs conflict, and restores self-worth. We map the five habits of hope and show how one small word—maybe—can interrupt despair and create momentum.

• defining hope as practice not positivity
• Julia’s journey from hopelessness to healthy habits
• five habits of hope: reflection, risk, release, receive, repurpose
• the sound of hope and processing feelings
• curiosity and repair during conflict
• noticing where we withhold love
• letting go to make room for connection
• practical steps for singles to position for growth
• modeling hope for kids and students
• resources to find Julia’s book and podcast

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Dr. Dave Schramm:

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http://drdavespeaks.com

Dr. Liz Hale:

http://www.drlizhale.com/

SPEAKER_02:

Today Liz and I are joined by Dr. Julia Garcia for a meaningful conversation about the real everyday power of hope. Drawing from her book The Five Habits of Hope, Julia reminds us that hope isn't just optimism. It's a habit we intentionally build, starting with one small but powerful word maybe. Maybe things can improve. Maybe this moment can open a new door. She also shares practical, easy to apply strategies for parents, teachers, and leaders who want to model hope through simple, consistent actions. Dr. Julia Garcia is a psychologist, author, and speaker dedicated to helping people build lasting habits of healing and hope. Blending personal stories and behavioral science, she empowers audiences through her book, The Five Habits of Hope, TEDx Talks, and her live podcast, The Journey with Dr. J, proving that hope isn't just something you feel, it's something you practice. We hope you enjoy the show.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Stronger Marriage Connection. We're so glad to have you here. I'm psychologist Dr. Liz Hale, along with the renowned specialist and professor Dr. Dave Schram. We have dedicated our life's work to bringing you the best we have in valid marital research, along with a few tips and tools to help you create the marriage of your dreams. We're going to talk about hope today, Dave. It's like a revolving door. This one specialist says. Hope enters one moment and then escapes the next. When hope is gone, it negatively impacts our physical and our mental health. And the opposite is also true. They say, Dave, and you I'd like to know your thoughts on this, that hope is a single best predictor of well-being compared to any other measure of trauma recovery. You buy that? Makes sense?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, that is awesome. You have to have that hope, that belief that things will get better, that things will be better than they are now. Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I don't know if if um our guests would agree with this, but I I do believe that nothing is ever wasted, that no experience is ever wasted, that everything in our life teaches us, inspires us, help us to be helps us to become better, if we use it for such. But hope positively impacts our lives, our marriages, and our families. And while hope alone, of course, doesn't solve every issue, um, it can certainly support our journey of healing. Well, today we're going to determine how to break through our fears, doubts, hopelessness, and build lasting habits of healing and hope. And who's going to help us with this? Only the one and only Dr. Julia Garcia. She is a psychologist, author, and renowned speaker dedicated to empowering people through the science of mental health. Welcome to Stronger Marriage Connection, Dr. Julia Garcia.

SPEAKER_03:

I have all the feels with that intro. Thank you so much. I felt like so deeply connected to you sharing um even just some of the excerpts that I wrote. Thank you so much. That was beautiful.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, well.

SPEAKER_03:

We can end it right now. I'm already feeling hopeful.

SPEAKER_00:

You and me both, I think one of your truly captivating gifts is you're out in the world speaking to small and large audiences. That's those are really your clients, right? Um, and Dr. Julia, I think is your candor about your own beautiful life. As a young woman, you were on the edge of despair, I think you'd say, imagining that you may not even live to see your 20s. And I think you said high school maybe it was maybe the first time you really didn't care about living. The fear of never being enough followed you everywhere. I think so many can relate to that. Tell us more of your own story, please, and the how how it inspired you and your journey to where you are today.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, your mantra in the beginning really spoke to me because when you said nothing is a waste, for so long I felt like a waste. And it was going on a journey of what I like to say, spoken word poetry is a huge part of my journey because I didn't like talk therapy. I didn't like talking about feelings. And poetry was one of the first initial ways outside of like a physical release that really helped me on my journey. And there was something I wrote once and it and it reminded me of your mantra. And it was create worth where others, even yourself, see waste. And it, I feel like it, it's a huge part of uh your mantra reminds me of where my journey began. And it was feeling like I was a waste, which meant that I felt like I could be thrown away, that my life didn't have a purpose, that I didn't want to take emotional risks in any relationships. I would say it was, I don't have I have commitment issues, but really I didn't want to have depth in friendships, family member engagements, any kind of relationship because for it was twofold. One, I didn't feel like I could truly love them in the way that they I they deserved, and two, because I didn't feel worth being loved as well and receiving that. And so my journey really began with um that feeling worthless, and that started to breed feeling hopeless. And that hopeless place was um a place that I I could also I say in the book, if you ever know, um if you've been to that place, hopelessness can feel like a hole you call home. And it was what I was most familiar with. And then, you know, through my work, which we can talk more about, um, but I started to realize that I wasn't the only one who had been in that place. And I started to think, if there was a process to get to that dark place of hopelessness, then maybe there's a way out of it too. Maybe there's a process out of it. And, you know, through some forced reflection, I was in college and I got this scholarship. And what happened was is I achieved a part of a big dream of mine, which was 2,000 miles away from where I grew up, but I took all my feelings that I had never dealt with or processed with me. I took that hopelessness with me to college. And I ended up getting into a lot of trouble. I was turning to things like drugs and alcohol, blackouts all the time, unhealthy relationships. And I was forced to reckon with these things because I got in trouble in school. And that was really the mark for me where I decided that I'm gonna choose to discover what I'm capable of in can I be healthier? And and I started my journey in that way. But it really started from feeling the lows of the lows and and it following me all the way to college.

SPEAKER_00:

And that you did, you're such a gifted writer. I I love, and I'll share this so Dave and our listeners know, but I uh you replaced shots at the bar on Friday nights until you blacked out to shots of ginger beer on Saturday mornings to improve your gut health. Rather than running away from your problems, you ran along New York Hudson River on week on weeknights. You stopped using yourself as a punching bag and started training in a boxing gym, sparring with professionals instead. You took your pain and you channeled channeled it into the work you're doing today. What's the best part of your life today, Julia? Would you say?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, my faith in my family. Uh that is my faith is the foundation of everything I do, and my family is my home now.

SPEAKER_00:

Um beautiful. Do you have one child? I know you're married.

SPEAKER_03:

I I have too. I actually wrote this book while I was breastfeeding a newborn baby. So I mean, it was uh a um birthing two things of love and joy at the same time. It was a very challenging time. Mostly it wasn't the writing that was as hard. It was like the headspace and the time and and that. But it it was um a beautiful journey, but very, very challenging.

SPEAKER_00:

So that was your secret. Birthing two things at once. Wonderful. Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's right. Julia, your life story is really powerful. Congratulations on your latest book, The Five Habits of Hope. Your mission to prove that hope isn't something you feel, it's something you practice one habit at a time. I love that. What is the what's the practice of hope? I mean, what does hope look and sound like?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, I say hope has a sound, and I'm gonna just introduce that sound right away, if that's okay. So I am gonna rustle some paper because hope for me is when people are able to have a process to process their feelings, then we have a way back to hope. And what I do, I do a lot of exercises with audiences and people share their stories. So the book was inspired because I felt like so honored by the amount of vulnerability that people share with me about their own struggles, their own needs, their own hopes. And I'm gonna read a few if that's okay with you, because it inspired a lot of the book and it really epitomizes what I believe hope really is. It's uh someone who is a paraprofessional shared, I struggled because I had infidelity in my relationship. I felt worthless. I needed someone to talk to. I stayed silent because I didn't want someone to judge. I am hopeful for a better and stronger relationship. I'll read one more here. Um it says, I struggled to get out of an abusive marriage for 10 years because of past trauma and my role in the community. I felt alone, not good enough, like a failure, beaten up. I needed someone to talk to and help me make a plan, someone to believe in me. I stayed silent because my kids, my job, fear of what he would do to me. I am hopeful for healing, peace, and joy. And I have been um inundated with stories like this for over a decade. And at the end, I invite people, if they would like, to let go of these struggles that the prompt is that they stayed silent about. Um, and it's it's such a beautiful thing to hear that rustling of the paper and them passing them forward or people sharing things anonymously in different ways through different things that I do. I also ran a crisis hotline um during the height of the pandemic. And I was amazed at how many people were feeling alone in their marriage and in their relationship. And it just all of the feelings of hopelessness were just making me realize that, man, we really need to figure out how I know I needed to figure out how we can get back to a place of expectation and belief and a sense of worth that kind of makes it all possible, ties it all back together.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, that's that is beautiful. I as you say, you know, it's hope is more than optimism. It's it's it's a habit, as you talk about in your book. How does that idea apply to long-term relationships where optimism often fades over time?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's like our feelings. Our feelings are our emotional roller coaster. And if you're like me, I say you might go on what I call feeling detours, where you do just about anything other than feel. And in today's cultural context, we see that as doom scrolling and really being inundated in social spaces, but feeling very isolated and alone. There's like this social shift. So for me, those feelings, we can't really count on those and lean on those because with all of the dopamine rushes online and all of the social shifts happening, it's really creating this backdrop of we we're not having something that's sustainable. And so building a process to hope is helping us have more of a healthy relationship in the long run. It might look like messier up front, but the goal is that we have more long-term health and healing as opposed to these quick emotional fixes, because that's a lot of what we're used to in society right now, is those quick fixes. And so this is like building a process that's foundational to keep things sustainable.

SPEAKER_02:

Love that.

SPEAKER_03:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, so many couples, I think, feel that they've lost hope in marriage. And from your perspective, what does it take to rebuild it? And where does somebody even start?

SPEAKER_03:

One of the the places I start, even when I struggle in my marriage, my marriage is not perfect. It's never going to be. And if I get into that place, um, habit number, each of the habits, uh, their emotional habits, they come in the book with different feeling framework prompts. And one of the ones that I always go back to is why am I staying silent? What do I need? What does support look like and feel like, smell like even for me? Do I need to go be around some coffee beans right now? Like, what would support look like or feel like for me in that moment? And why am I staying silent? So those are two of the main major ones I would say, like for an immediate helping to just shift and interrupt that thought cycle that could start to just brew and get us deeper and deeper into that dark space. And also, I would say to take the pressure off, having to be positive and thinking I have to have this ton of hope all the time, like take that pressure off. You don't need a ton of hope. You just need a little tiny bit, a little tiny drop, and that's enough to interrupt that thought cycle. And I call those maybe moments, which we can explore a little bit later. But those, it's about interrupting that thought cycle. And for me, it started with reflection, which is the first habit because I was doing what I said earlier and going on feeling detours. I would do anything but feel. So developing that process for me started with reflection. And that was identifying what I was struggling with. Can I put words to it? Can I label different feelings? Anger was a huge feeling that started to come up. And and just really approaching things by in that moment, what can I do right now to pause and maybe prompt myself to interrupt a thought cycle?

SPEAKER_01:

We'll be right back after this brief message. And we're back. Let's dive right in.

SPEAKER_00:

I like that. The five habits, real quick. July, I'll just run them down. We each have a word.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, let's do it. So the first one is reflection. And this is about pausing long enough to maybe face a feeling, which is a very difficult thing to do for a lot of different reasons. But when you're ready and if you need support, get support to do that as well. But the first one is reflection. It's pausing long enough to do that. And habit number two is the, I think the biggest one for this generation, especially for young people, millennials, Gen Zers is the emotional habit of risk because there's so many relationships. We don't have to go off a tangent here, but I'm in a deep dive of AI right now and our relationship with it, and just that backdrop of people feeling completely alone and isolated, but always so engaged because the relationships aren't both ways. It's not two ways. There's no risk involved, especially when it's not a real person on the other end. So the emotional risk, letting yourself be seen. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Letting yourself be known. Awesome. Reflection risk and the last three. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep. Then we have release, which is the emotional habit of letting go. This is something that has no bar or bounds. I mean, this can look so different depending on who you are, where you are. It could be a physical meditation, it could be running, it could be journaling. For me, it's poetry. And this is where you find that habit of emotional release, where it is a part of your lifestyle. And I say that helps us prevent a breakdown, prevent a fallout. It's preventative work. Number four is receive. This one's really difficult if you're like me and you do not like compliments to let love in. When you are just someone who's like, I'm gonna do this all myself. I got this, I don't need nobody. This is an art to practice receiving, receiving support, a hug. If I'm really angry and my husband knows he's the most patient man on earth, he will come and give me a hug and he'll be like, Hug me back. I'm like, this is all I can do right now. I could just receive the hug. I can't give it back.

SPEAKER_00:

I understand today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Maybe in a minute. And then the fifth and final habit of hope is repurposing. And this is about taking any situation. And as you said in your mantra earlier, nothing is a waste. How can we repurpose it? How can we reclaim it, rechannel it? My mother always collected vintage things from garage sales, and she would like reclaim the furniture and repurpose it. She always had this beautiful way of seeing value in anything, and that's how I like to look at repurposing.

SPEAKER_00:

It is beautiful. Never thought of it that way. Thank you for that. You know, in your research, Julie, how does hope influence the way we handle, let's say, conflict in marriage? Is there a hopeful way to disagree that can strengthen a relationship?

SPEAKER_03:

Definitely. I think I know other guests have probably said this too, because I've listened to your podcast. Staying curious is a huge one. And this is helpful in any crisis intervention, any crisis in any relationship. And this was something foundational in my crisis intervention work is not staying curious closes us off. So staying curious, not just about your partner, but also about yourself. Am I capable of becoming more compassionate and being curious about that? And it's it's one thing to be curious about another person and help build empathy and dismantle those walls that can build up, but to stay curious about what we're capable of, can to continue to be open to that journey of discovering that just because I feel this way, that doesn't mean that's all of who I am. And it it's not a period, it's a semicolon. Can I keep going on this journey? And can I be gentle with myself enough to do so? And I think most people who who are probably listening to this, who want to improve their relationships, their marriages themselves, they're they're probably really hard on themselves. And it's giving ourselves like some grace and saying, you know, this process is a process. And in order to be in a relationship, this is something that's never gonna end. It's ongoing. So having making sure when we have hope in a relationship, it's also identifying that at the at the center of everything is our own worth and value and making sure that we keep fueling that and being curious about what that can be.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that curiosity. Yeah, Julia. Julia, how do how do the five habits you've written about show up in the daily dynamics of a partnership in small ordinary moments?

SPEAKER_03:

One of the big ways they show up in these in little big moments, little moments with marriages is is in realizing our resistance to processing our feelings, realizing what holds us back. My my husband will say withholding love. Do we withhold love from each other, serving one another, supporting one another? And only we know what we withhold. Only we know what we hold back. And when we withhold, what I've recognized is this, and I'll give an example. When I work with people, I usually do so in like keynote settings, workshops, things like that. And people will come and speak to me afterwards and they'll they'll share very significant, vulnerable things. And I'll see them in real time grappling, even if like we're telling jokes and we're having fun. I'll see them grappling with withholding a smile and withholding joy. Because what I've realized is when we withhold, we hold withhold everything. We withhold creativity, talents, joy, struggles, strengths. We get in this mindset that becomes a place where we're not just withholding the good, we're withholding the heartache and we're withholding it all. So we're withholding hope. And so I think it's in your day-to-day recognizing what am I withholding? And again, why am I staying silent about it? What would support look like or feel feel like for me in this moment? What's a way I can release it that's healthy and not hurtful? And just kind of getting into a habit of continuing to develop a process to process our feelings because our feelings are the biggest hope blocks.

SPEAKER_02:

With with I'm curious with that, withholding hope is I guess the opposite of hope. What would you say is is it fear? Is it despair? Um anxiety. Yeah, what is it? Why do we withhold?

SPEAKER_03:

So I'm sorry, could you ask that again?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, just the the flip side of hope. Because you're talking about withholding. And for for me, it is I think about fear, you know, this risk, um, this despair, you know, that I don't have hope. Almost flipping hope. What's the what's the opposite?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I mean, when we don't have hope, we our motivation goes away. Um, our ability to emotionally regulate and connect. It is it it's making us um almost shut down the parts of our soul that can't breathe or that need to breathe, that need to be free. Um and so yeah, I would say what you mentioned fear, control, um, those are the big things and doubt, doubting our inherent worth.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So painful. That resistance, I can just relate to that resistance, right? Kind of digging my heels in. I don't know what that's about. Maybe ego, stubbornness. I don't, I'm not sure. Wanting to be right or I don't I don't know what that I'm gonna think about that though, some more. Why why would I be resistant? Having a good connection, let's say, in marriage, you know, in that moment, what's it gonna take to melt me? Can you either want to be relate to that? Sometimes I feel like a little bit of ice cube goes through my blood. It's like, oh, but I get hurt.

SPEAKER_02:

Like pride, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, I'm gonna take us all the way back. I once, I mean, all the way back, like teenage relationships. And somebody once told me, You have a cold heart. And I said, Thank you. I try really hard because I was so determined not to have any feelings, even in a relationship, that I was like, yes, it's working. It's a wall.

SPEAKER_00:

Help out that's pretty cute. I think we can all relate to that. I love how you also say, Julia, that hope is contagious. I can see that. Do you find that partners can reinfect each other with hope?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, a hundred percent. And if you're not in that place and you're and again, this goes to the debunking that hope means like false positivity. It doesn't. I like to say instead of false positivity, it's feelings process. It's someone being able to be really present, to be able to process their feelings and be really present. And it the only way to hope is really honesty. So you can, I think I believe that you can't really have hope if you don't have some measure of fear and doubt, because then it would be useless. So it's it's acknowledging all of those things. And yeah, so I 100% believe that it's infectious because and it doesn't have to be like someone's being really positive for it to come and come get to me, come attached to me. It's it's the it's the ability to continue to see that someone can still have expectation and a sense of worth and they can still show up fully and be present and honest. And that is contagious. It it inspires motivation and it inspires in general.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Julia, if you could give one daily habit to couples who want to strengthen their relationship through hope, what simple something could they start doing today?

SPEAKER_03:

I think a great one is letting go, release, letting go of maybe that's pressure, maybe that's expectations, maybe that's the past. I think the art of letting go is something that has to be a habit in order to hold on to hope. And it it it has to, you have to let go in order to receive, to let in. And identifying what you want to receive could be a great way to try and figure out what you want to make room for and where you can make room for that. I was angry for a really long time. I was angry. And when I repurpose that anger into preventative professional work, it actually made space for me to receive other emotions that that anger, when it was hurting me, was blocking. And I realized the world isn't out to get me, or the person who's trying to love me isn't trying to hurt me. But when I had this like anger about me, it was blocking their ability to show and share love with me. And so it was, I had to figure out how to release it. It and it doesn't have to be in a personal relationship that you release something. Like I shared, I released in a professional way, and that helped me in my personal life.

SPEAKER_01:

We'll be right back after this brief message. And we're back. Let's dive right in.

SPEAKER_00:

So release that could be the sixth habit of hope, maybe, Dr. Julia. I love that word release. That's another good R-word. What about for singles? We have many singles who listen to Stronger Marriage Connection. It might be dating or starting new relationships. What does it look like to build a foundation of hope instead of just chemistry or how compatible are we?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, I love that. And for all the singles out there, thank you for showing up for your marriage right now, because that is you're putting in the work right now, and it's about becoming. And I like to say it's about positioning. A lot of my journey personally was about positioning. And it you read some of it earlier, instead of taking shots at the bar, I ended up going to bookstores and hanging out. And it was a positioning. I was positioning myself to discover what I was capable of being, how I could continue to grow. I positioned myself to go to grad school, even though I didn't drop out once or twice, but three times. But I kept positioning myself. And again, it goes back to the process as a process. So wherever you're at on your journey, just keep going and keep growing. And I think the it's less about outcomes because we can achieve goals all day long. We can get the marriage. But if we hate ourselves in the marriage, then we're not actually achieving probably the health goals that we really want, who we want to become, I say is just as not as much, if not even more, important than what we do or who we do it alongside. And so I think if you are single listening to this, or wherever you're at in your relationship, a status, that you remember that this is a journey, and it's who we're becoming on that journey that will bring the hope into your heart, and I believe attract the kind of person who can see the worth for what it is, for who you are.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, great advice. Julia, some of our listeners are our parents, they are teachers, they're leaders. What can they do to model and pass on the habits of hope to the next generation?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, that's such a wonderful question. I work a lot with parents and educators. And I think there is this assumption with our young generation right now that they might be, I'm gonna just share a couple of cultural assumptions that they are lazy or a lost cause. And I think reminding ourselves of what this generation is up against is huge. They have pressures they cannot turn off, like we had the privilege of doing. And there's there's three significant things that this generation has shared with me that are reasons they struggle in silence. And one of them is that they don't want to look weak. The second one is they don't want to be a burden. And three, they don't think anyone cares. And this starts to create what I call a cycle of silence where they stay silent because they constantly think no one cares or they don't want to be a burden, which is the opposite of sometimes what we assume about this younger generation that we're parenting and educating, that they they don't care about anyone else, but they care so much that they like suppress and struggle in silence and suffer in silence. So it's remembering that they're going through a lot and not always trying to fix it or teach them or educate them or give advice, but holding a space where we can ask open-ended questions to give them different ways to release and to express so that they don't have to hold it all in. It's almost getting to know them, but giving them getting good at finding ways to get to know the young people in our lives. And it might not look like talking. Why don't you send me a song that you've been like that you love right now? Why don't you draw me a picture of something that's been on your heart? And and it's getting to know them. I would say the number one thing is holding that space to get to know them, and because they are holding in so much and they're feeling lonelier and more hopeless than we can imagine.

SPEAKER_00:

Music. Music, what a connecting piece. Poetry, like you said, Dr. Julia. Pictures. Oh, that's beautiful. You you have a wealth of knowledge, obviously, and personal experience to share. Tell us more where listeners can find out about you and your book, of course, The Five Habits of Hope. And we're gonna add those great resources to our show notes for everyone to find easily.

SPEAKER_03:

Thank you so much. The book is the Five Habits of Hope stories and strategies to help you find your way. You can get it wherever books are sold or listened to. I did the audiobook myself. It was so much fun. So if you want to listen to the audiobook, then you can get that where on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you tune into your podcast or your um your audio books, you will find that. And you can find me anywhere at Dr. Julia Garcia, Journey with Dr. J. And I am traveling all the time, working with organizations and schools. So hopefully I'll be in a community near you soon.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so it sounds like you will be. We'll have to add that to our show notes too when we find out what college you're gonna be at, maybe in the fall, right? Fall of twenty. Yes, I'll be in Utah in the fall. Tell Dave, real quick, and our listeners, about your podcast. How do you describe it? It's on the go podcast. What do you say it is?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, it's a pop-up podcast that we yes, again, I launched it right in parallel with the book. So it's been, it's been a lot. Um, but it's still in motion. We are doing pop-up podcasts where when I travel somewhere, I'm finding select communities where we do live audience podcasts with the communities there. So it's it's been a lot of fun. We filmed quite a few and we're slowly trickling them out, but it's it's been a lot of fun, and that's a journey with Dr. J.

SPEAKER_00:

That is clever, Dave. Isn't that something?

SPEAKER_02:

Love it. Absolutely love it. That is very clever. Oh wow. Hey Julia, as we wrap up our our time together, we like to ask all of our guests a couple of questions. This first one in in honor of the name of our our podcast, Stronger Marriage Connection. What do you feel like is it is a key for a stronger marriage connection?

SPEAKER_03:

This one word that I'm gonna share with you. Maybe. Maybe more. Maybe I can forgive them. Maybe we can be more in love than I've ever before. Maybe I can love myself. Maybe I can let go of something enough to let what they're wanting to share with me in. And I this word maybe was the most pivotal moment for me. I say, if you don't take anything from what I the book, if or what I'm saying here, just remember maybe, because I didn't always believe I had worth or value or purpose or that I was capable of being married, having a children, having a home life, having a relationship with anybody that was real and had depth. But what interrupted that thought cycle was maybe. Maybe I can. Maybe is the tiny seed of hope I'm referring to. It's not, yes, I love myself and I can't wait to be loved by my husband or partner. It's maybe and maybe creates momentum, and momentum creates possibility.

SPEAKER_02:

That is man, that is awesome. Maybe creates momentum. It feels like it's that turning point of yeah, that glimmer of maybe. And that's like the I don't know, it's like this upward um motion, even of yeah, getting out of the depths of despair. Maybe there is hope. Maybe there is a different path, maybe ah, beautiful. Never heard that. Julia, that is that is uh that is great. Um and then uh our second question before we wrap up is uh we call it our takeaway of the day. If there's a take-home message that you want our listeners to remember from our discussion today, what would it be?

SPEAKER_03:

Let yourself be seen. And never never give up that fire inside that ignites your own your unique path towards hope.

SPEAKER_02:

Love it. Yeah, I absolutely love it. Liz, what about you? What's your takeaway of the day with Dr. Julie?

SPEAKER_00:

I had so many notes, Dave and Julia. I can't write the sides, although, although I think the the word that did stick with me is that that sixth habit, as I teased Dr. Julie about, is that resistance, just watching that resistance and and letting go, you know, like the like the song from Frozen, right? If I had a good voice, I spelled it out. Don't make it. I love that. Um, you know, let it go. I just think it's so true. Um, that's what I'm gonna be focusing on most. And uh, Jay, what about you? What's the golden nugget from our time?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, Liz, I do. That one resonated with me as well. That word release, the the ability to release. I think we whether it's the release um being down on ourselves, maybe we said or did something that um that drags us down and that causes us to to look down.

SPEAKER_00:

Um that was the better, that's the better R term. That's a better six habit, really. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, being able to, yeah, to release it uh the past and look forward and not stare at the rear view mirror of life. But there's there's hope in the windshield, there's hope moving um forward and upward. And I I absolutely love that. So So man, Dr. Julia Garcia, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing these uh bits of pieces of nuggets of wisdom. It's been so very uh helpful and what a joy to have you. I hope the listeners will actually um I hope they'll tune in to the to the YouTube version of this because if you could see Julia's smile right now, that that would bring you hope. Like this this gal is is full of hope and happiness and light and goodness. So um, it has been such a joy, truly, uh Julie, to have you on today.

SPEAKER_03:

Thank you. It's such an honor to be a part of your podcast, and thank you so much to everyone tuning in listening, and thank you for having me here today. It meant the world.

SPEAKER_02:

Ah, you are just great. Well, our friends, that does it for us here. Uh, we will see you next time on another episode of the Stronger Marriage Connection Podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. And remember, it's the small things that create a stronger marriage connection. Take good care now.

SPEAKER_02:

Thanks for joining us today. Hey, do us a favor and take a second to subscribe to our podcast and the Utah Marriage Commission YouTube channel at Utah Marriage Commission, where you can watch this and every episode of the show. Be sure to smash the like button, leave a comment, and share this episode with a friend. You can also follow and interact with us on Instagram at StrongerMarriageLive and Facebook at Stronger Marriage. So be sure to share with us which topics you love, which guests we should have on the show next. If you want even more resources to improve your marriage or relationship connection, visit strongermarriage.org where you'll find free workshops, e-courses, in-depth webinars, relationship surveys, and more. Each episode of Stronger Marriage Connection is hosted and sponsored by the Utah Marriage Commission at Utah State University. And finally, a big thanks to our producer, Rex Blanas, and the team at Utah State University, and you, our audience. You make this show possible. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of the Utah Marriage Commission.