Disrupting Relationships - How Conflict Creates Innovation in Love & Leadership
Meridian Point Podcast - Episode Transcript
Host: Kumar Dattatreyan
Guest: Raquel Reis, Relationship Coach
Date: August 6, 2025
KUMAR: Hi everyone, Kumar Dattatreyan here with the Meridian Point. And today we're joined by Raquel Reis, a relationship coach who brings a revolutionary perspective to how we navigate conflict and connection. Based in Brooklyn and working with couples and individuals worldwide, Raquel believes that conflict is growth wanting to happen. I love that. I'm definitely going to be asking more questions about how that works. A philosophy that perfectly aligns with our exploration of disruption and innovation.
With certifications in health and wellness, business and career coaching, and relationship coaching, Raquel helps people disrupt destructive relationship patterns and innovate new ways of connecting. Her science-based, actionable approach demonstrates how relationship challenges aren't problems to be avoided, but opportunities for transformation. She's also contributing to an upcoming collaborative book, making this a perfect time to explore how personal disruption in our closest relationships can ripple out to transform every aspect of our lives. So without further ado, let me bring Raquel on stage here. Hi, Raquel. Great to have you on.
RAQUEL: Great to be here. Thank you.
KUMAR: So let me start off with, you know, the "conflict is growth wanting to happen." I love that phrase. I got that. I sort of pulled it out of our conversation we had before this podcast. In the context of disruption and innovation, how do you see conflict as a catalyst for transformation rather than something to be avoided?
RAQUEL: Well, first of all, I love that phrase too. I find it so helpful and so hopeful because so many people when they have conflict, when they can't see eye to eye, they start to doubt themselves in the relationship and feel like something is wrong with them. Maybe this is not the right relationship. Maybe this is not the right person. Maybe something is wrong with me.
And I will say I did not coin that term. It was given to me by two dear colleagues and mentors, Brett and Christine Eartheart. They came up with that term. But really, at the heart of it is that if you are together with someone long enough, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when your differences are going to come into conflict. And this is the point where people get stuck. This is the point that people get stuck, you know, they do their best to try to solve it. When they can't, they either resign thinking this is not the right relationship or just make do - just like, okay, it's not terrible, I can compromise.
Where really, with the right tools, with the right roadmap, there are solutions that are not intuitive to us. Most of us are really misinformed when it comes to relationships. There's so much more that can be done. I am not saying that every relationship is meant to last and that you need to stay in any situation, but most of us are just misinformed.
And I also - I mean, when I work, I like to give my clients business analogies, sport analogies, health analogies. I come from the background of health. So sometimes in health coaching, when we look at health, we don't treat symptoms, we treat the underlying cause. So the conflict is the symptom. This is where we get stuck. There's actually a world underneath that we're not even getting to speak about. Most of the time people come to me and they get stuck in how they speak, not about what they speak about. That is the difference. It's the how - how we speak, how we manage it. So the language we use, the way we say the words that we say, how it's interpreted.
KUMAR: Are you saying that's primarily the source of conflict?
RAQUEL: That and also how we see and how we think. A lot of survival instincts is running the show.
KUMAR: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, conflict happens all the time everywhere, right? Work relationships, relationships at home. You may be in conflict when you ride a bus and someone sits in the seat that you are eyeing. And hopefully it doesn't come to blows or anything, but it's all around us.
What would you say are some of the - you said there's kind of a world underneath for people that have been in relationships for a long time, whether it's work relationship or a home relationship, your partner - the worlds that are underneath, how do you sort of start to peel back those layers and what would be an effective way to resolve that conflict. I mean, conflict isn't bad, right? It's a good thing in most cases. I don't know what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to ask a question here, but it's not coming out as well as I intended.
Basically, we should embrace conflict because of the potential that it can have to improve our relationships with someone. But most people are conflict averse and we sort of stay away from it. What would you say to someone that is in conversation or in a moment of conflict where they're trying to avoid it?
RAQUEL: Okay, you said a lot. I did, you did. I think it would be useful - so first of all, I don't think conflict is not to be avoided, but it's also not necessary. I think that sometimes we think that conflict is necessary to get our way or to get our needs met. So that's where the difference... The conflict is not the problem. It's how we go about addressing our differences, our different values, our different needs, our different views.
So my goal is not like let's fight it out - this is not what I'm here for. But so I think it would be useful to understand a couple of things. So I know that when you wrote my bio, you mentioned that my approach is very rooted in science. It's science, it's intuition, it's really tapping into our highest wisdom, all of us. And it's very much about separating - I call it human spirit and human instinct, because so much like we are, the survival limbic brain is running the show in ways that we don't know.
And I don't know if you have worked with negative bias override. Are you familiar with that concept?
KUMAR: No, I don't think so.
RAQUEL: So negative bias override. First of all, our brain always finds what we're looking for. If we're looking for how someone is misbehaving, doesn't care, doesn't see us, we will find evidence for this. We will start responding for this, for what we look for. In some ways, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But the negative bias override is literally our very precious, very dear, very hardworking survival brain that wants to keep us safe and keep us away from danger. And it's just scanning for danger, scanning for danger. So we really scan way more readily for danger and threat than for goodness.
And an example would be if you met ten sweet dogs that you loved and you just adored them and then one dog would bite you, you might start being afraid of dogs. Or if you had a great day and there was one negative comment, you go to bed with that one negative comment. Our brain just latches to danger.
So we need a lot more positive interactions to register that someone is a friend, that someone is on our side. We actually really need to err on the side of kindness and generosity and courtesy.
Gottman Institute, which I'm hugely influenced by and studied a lot of their research, they're one of the leading institutions in the world for the science of long-term relationships. They studied couples - probably hundreds of thousands of couples. They studied that and they have very specific numbers, but what they have found is that there are some behaviors that can predict if a relationship is going to last or if it's going to end. And there's a specific number of positive to negative interactions.
So couples that are happy and are in long-term relationships have twenty positive interactions to one negative interaction. And even in time of conflict, they still maintain five positive interactions to one negative. So there's still maybe some humor. They would turn to each other. There's not going to be like contempt and sneering. There's still friendship. And even when it's four positive interactions to one negative interaction, we are actually starting to inch into disconnection and possibly divorce.
So when you think about it, when we meet someone, we come and we're just like - we bring our best. We see their best. We're literally showering each other with positivity. That's what we do. We don't even have to effort at it. Sometimes we have to hold back and let's stop trying to make their life better. We think it's how we feel that's created, but it's actually the behavior. Like the more we see each other's best, the more we bring our best, the more generous we are, the more kind we are, the more fun we are, the greater the connection, the bond, the safety is.
So sometimes when couples - primarily, but I also had people come to me with business partnership conflicts trying to dissolve a partnership - usually we call it the love account. It's like a bank account literally. There's like a ratio of positive - your love account is probably very low, if not in the negative.
KUMAR: Depleted, right.
RAQUEL: Very depleted, yes. So the first thing that we do is actually reestablish that connection and safety. So your brain is not just on guard. You know how when we are on guard, someone can look at us, you know, someone can come home in a pissy mood, and if we are already feeling ignored and not cared for, we're just like, you know, what a selfish jerk. Sorry. I hope it's okay to say that here.
And if we are connected, if we feel warmth and connection and safety, they come in a bad mood and we're like, oh, what happened? They must've had a bad day. Totally different response. So just feeling safety. Safety is the foundation of everything. Feeling safe, feeling safe in a connection, feeling safe in - everyone is here for the greater good. They got my back. We all want to know that they have my back, they care about me, we're on the same team. When you know that, everything is possible.
Does that answer some of your question? I feel like I want to answer another question but I'll stop now.
KUMAR: No, it did. It did answer some of the questions I had, right? So about conflict specifically. And I'll tell you what I was thinking at the time when I asked the question. So I'm working with a coach and we're thinking about a program to help teachers coach their students in conflict resolution. Because I think that conflict resolution and conflict skills in general are so unrepresented in schools, especially in K through twelve schools, and certainly in college when people go off into university they don't get that kind of help there either, right?
Because it's a very structured approach to learning and to education and then they don't really learn about conflict resolution and relationship building except for the personal relationships that they may have as kids growing up into adulthood until they get into the workplace. And then they have to learn how to work in teams and work with their colleagues and develop relationships there and so on.
And so there's lots of training available in the corporate world that focuses on conflict resolution and team building and safety in the workplace and psychological safety, things like that. So when you were talking about the relationship couples and the studies done on hundreds of thousands of couples and what makes couples strong, I was really startled by the statistic that when it starts dipping into the four to one ratio, four good to one negative ratio as being sort of the point at which it starts to devolve into a contentious relationship, I'm still surprised at that level, right?
And this podcast, obviously, I think all relationships and healthy individuals, it starts with the relationships you have at home because you bring that mood into the workplace, right? And I think that's one of the questions that I wanted to ask you is that...
Before you ask me, can I say one more thing, which will answer your previous question, too? So you said we have to embrace conflict. So notice that it's not twenty to zero or five to zero. These are the couples that are together twenty years and one day they're just like, we just have nothing in common.
KUMAR: Yeah.
RAQUEL: You need to address problems or you need to address needs. This is not about not addressing needs. So that's another important piece there.
KUMAR: Yeah. Is there like a tool - like say you're in a relationship and is there some tools that are available to sort of keep track of your bank account? Or how do you measure those things? Twenty to one.
RAQUEL: Well, you're a guy. I will tell you that this is not a question that a woman will ask. Maybe, maybe, maybe a woman will.
I think you can. I mean, I think you can tell, you know, when you're really stuck in the muck. So to answer you, you did ask me - I think you asked me five questions.
KUMAR: Yeah, I asked you a bunch.
RAQUEL: Yes. You asked me, how do you go from the symptoms to the underlying? So that is actually one of the first things that I do with my clients. I literally very quickly and very programmatically take them through two processes. One is I call it relationship poisons where we literally go through a handout with the ten most common relationship poisons that we all have.
People actually - it's we sometimes laugh a lot because it's so not what we like to admit in public. It's so unpalatable, but it's so universal. And they're just like, are you in my brain? There is actually a handout for it. I'm not crazy. But you literally go, and the rule is you can only identify your own poisons. And the poisons are talking excessively over someone, blaming, talking over someone, trying to make your point, trying to prove how - everything they're doing, point out everything they're doing wrong.
So it's very pragmatic and you just go and you mark every behavior that you do. So we look at that and you can only identify yours and there's no story. There's no like, yes, but I do it when they do this. Just do I do this? Is that part of my strategy? And it's a very innocent strategy. We do it with the best of intention. We actually do it because we do want connection. This is exactly where our efforts to establish connection completely backfire because I don't know where we got the idea that if we complain or demand, someone will love us more and will want to give us more. You know, it's just erroneous. You know, it's a little erroneous, but this is what we do. This is what reptile survival brain does.
And it's almost like survival brain speaks to survival brain. And we always want to come from instinct into regulation, into seeing each other's good intention. When you start seeing your own behavior, it's actually easier to forgive others for what they do. And then we actually start to identify like, what is the actual - there's always, so when you have those poisons, it's actually a clue. There's always a very valid need that is worth taking action on its behalf. There's just more effective ways to get it. This is actually creating the opposite of what you want.
KUMAR: Interesting. Yeah. So just sort of thinking about what the poisons are and writing them down is enough to raise awareness, kind of self-awareness of what those things are and maybe cause a change in behavior is what you're saying.
RAQUEL: Yeah, you see what they are. So this is one of the first things. We almost look at it as a boat with leaks and we're closing the loops. So we want to do less of what harmed the connection and more of what enhanced the connection. The smallest - and it doesn't have to be perfect. The smallest change creates massive change in orientation to one another. I actually see it in the first session.
Just by how I - like the type of question that I - I mean, I'll give you my secret. One of the things that I do when people come to me highly contentious, I ask them what had them fall in love with the person in the first place. And just by them recounting those qualities, they already start softening.
You know our brains are amazing. Our brains are slaves and when we learn to be the master of our brain, we just learn how to orient it really. What we look for, we find and most of the time we just act unconsciously. So the smallest changes - it's remarkable to see. I have seen a couple that start a session in two different rooms on two different computers and end in the same room and feeling warmth and affinity toward each other. It can happen very quickly when we take our armor down and it can happen in a business setting too. There's very specific ways that we can create safety once. And the first step is just to see it. We just do it and we justify it and we're just like, right. But it's not helpful.
KUMAR: Yeah, I want to go sort of connect the thread there between personal relationships and business, right? And one of the things that when we talked earlier, you mentioned that when people work on their relationships, they immediately see improvements in self-care and workplace communication. How does sort of improving your personal relationships, how does it create that ripple effect in the workplace? And why? Why does it do that, you think?
RAQUEL: Well, first of all, everything that I've described to you, you can already see how it translates to every other relationship. So once you start seeing it, you can't unsee it. And it feels better. So just in terms of relational skills, you know, and what you said about schools, how unprepared - I mean, how unprepared we are, then we're unprepared as adults. We have some romantic movies or thrillers or suspense movies to teach us dramatic relationships. And there's a lot of subtleties.
We always laugh. We're like, why do they call it soft skill? What's soft about it? Relationship is the fabric of our life. There's nothing soft about it. This is the most important thing.
And if I can also bring another study. So the Harvard University ran also one of the longest researches, and they linked - the quality of our relationship is the number one factor, not just for happiness, but for health, success, longevity. We are herd animals. The quality of our relationships, feeling connected, feeling part of a community, a tribe, feeling like someone has our back, we have other people in our life that we are connected to, just empowers us in general.
I can get nerdy and start talking about secure attachment. Secure attachment is what we learn in relationship coaching. It's how to be securely attached to each other. We have this myth of the lone rider, self-sufficient, did it all on your own. I think if you look at successful people, nobody ever did it completely.
KUMAR: Yeah.
RAQUEL: And really like we - you can imagine, you can think about it when you have a lot of conflict and stress at home, how do you go to work?
KUMAR: Yeah, it's all connected. It's all connected.
RAQUEL: Yeah. And I will also say that I think so much has to do with self-care. I think that when we are well-rested, when we are not overdoing it in one area of our life and underdoing it in another area of our life, we're just that much more capable to show up generally and in a grounded way. So once you start looking at what's happening, you're like, oh, yeah, if I just went to bed a little earlier, so many areas of my life will align. It's not that complicated. Those are simple things, right? Simple things you can do to improve the quality of your life and, of course, the people that you care about.
KUMAR: One of the things you said in a prior conversation was providing good customer service. This is a term you used, right? Treating our partners with the same courtesy we show strangers. What other simple things can people do to sort of build a positivity bank, if you will? Right. So if we need to be at, you know, ten to one or twenty to one positive to negative interactions, how do we do that? What are some small things that you would suggest that people do?
RAQUEL: There's - I mean, this is such a good question. Thank you. And, you know, it goes on. There's some very obvious things that we can do and then it also requires us to really look at who is it that we're speaking to? Who is it? What is a deposit for them? Because what's a deposit for me is not always a deposit.
KUMAR: So that's - are you doing it for you or are you doing it for them?
RAQUEL: Well, you're probably doing it for them. It's just not - it's meaningless to them. You know, if someone feels cared for with acts of service and all you do is tell them how beautiful they are, like you might be showering them with love but they're starved. They're like words are cheap. You know, you might be doing it for them but you really need to see who is in front of you, what is meaningful to them. That's where intimacy and getting to know one another is.
But then there's just like very universal and very simple things that everybody can do. I mean, first thing is just appreciation. And I'm gonna throw another - what we appreciate, appreciates. So if we appreciate how inadequate they are, how much they misbehave, what they're doing wrong, that would start appreciating. If we appreciate how they're already contributing to our life, how are they enhancing our life, all the goodness that's come. Literally thanking them, just taking a moment to thank, you know, just thank you for this, thank you for that. It's incredible. We all like to be appreciated. People are motivated by appreciation more than anything else. You would just see what you like grow just by acknowledging it, thanking the person in front of you, not taking it for granted. We take so much for granted when we start looking at it. So that would be one very simple thing.
KUMAR: Yeah.
RAQUEL: Another very simple - and this is actually part of business training as well - how a conversation starts. And I would also add how a conversation ends. Beginning and ending register in our brain much more than the time in between. You can think if you had a wonderful weekend with someone and you had a fight at the end.
KUMAR: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
RAQUEL: Yeah, so beginning and ending. So, I mean, at home in romantic relationships, it can be how we say farewell and goodbyes, you know, just taking a moment to look at each other, say, hey, honey, have a great day, love you. Again, beginning and ending. But the same is with just the conversation, starting with an appreciation, just say, I really appreciate how hard you've been working. You've done this and this really well. Immediately, their brain registers, like this is a friend, this is someone that is on my side. You're not getting defensive, but the surprising thing that you as a communicator, your brain starts registering that as well. It goes both ways. And then you're two friends trying to figure out a local problem, not a global all-encompassing.
And then ending with an appreciation, no matter what. I've had conversations that went really badly. And the only thing I've done at the end was just say, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you for thinking about it. If anything changes, let me know. Sure enough, a month or two later, I forgot about it. They came back and gave me everything I wanted. Just because you learn not to punish someone for nothing like you.
KUMAR: That's great. There's a question from the audience from Richard. Hopefully, I didn't see it until a few minutes ago. How do you balance disruption, relationship, equity and the need for hustle? Oh, I hope he's there. Can he say a little more about that? I'll see. Richard, if you're still there, can you share a little bit more?
OK, tell me and I'm going to write it down. Disruption. Yes, it's up on the screen. Also, this balance, disruption, relationship, equity and the need for hustle. So the way I interpret this, if you're there, Richard, maybe you can say a little bit more in the chat. The way I interpret this is the disruption of maybe the work that you're in, the need to hustle, to stay ahead of the game and relationship equity. I would say that how do you balance those things, those needs with also the needs of the relationship?
RAQUEL: Yeah. Well, that's a great question. And sometimes it means looking at your specific situation and choices. But I also come from, and it might sound decadent to some, I think that a hustle is a choice. And even if we look at how to solve conflicts, conflict is a choice. If you come to the conversation knowing that we are friends, we got this, we can do it. Getting help, if you need help to figure out how to do it that way, that would be very smart. You'll have a very different experience where you're just like, I'm gonna get my way.
So hustle in life is a choice. Sometimes it's hard for the brain to grasp that. And I think that - how am I going to say it without sounding too esoteric? Some of what we do is we actually think about what is it what we want to get at the end? Like, what are we hustling for? Usually we're hustling for more time, more space, more resources. Who am I going to be when I get that? I'm going to be grounded. I'm going to be calm. What if you start from grounded and calm now? And it does require some figuring out. I'm not saying that the answer is simple. It just means that you stop assuming that that's how things have to be and start looking for other solutions. I don't know. Did that make any sense?
KUMAR: It makes sense to me. I don't know if it made sense to Richard. He hasn't shared any other messages here, but let me check on that. Kumar, if it made sense to you, I would be really curious to know how you view that.
KUMAR: Yeah, I think that's great. I think for me, I'm always in hustle mode. Yeah, I am. I am always in hustle mode. My latest passion is this project I'm working with, with that educational coach, right? So thinking about bringing coaching into the education field and equipping teachers, especially K through twelve, with the tools to help them impart these listening skills and collaboration skills and just teamwork type skills into their students, because it's something that can really have an impact on kids, you know, early in their development that they can carry forward throughout their life, right? So these skills can be very important, not just in the workplace, but also in relationship building.
So that's my latest. It's a hustle, right? It's oh, I want to do this. And of course, I love the podcast. I'm going to keep doing those because I get to meet amazing people like you. All these things take time, though, and it takes time away from the relationships at home and self-care and all those things. And I see that I see myself being stretched a little bit and not quite balanced in my life. And so the question that Richard asked kind of resonated with me, you know because for me it's always striving to keep a balance and not always doing a very good job at it.
RAQUEL: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like this is all of our - I mean, this is so connected. And when you said it made sense to me, like it's a choice, like did you see any possibility for yourself?
KUMAR: Yeah, I mean, I think I need to be more intentional about the things that bring me joy, right? And take inventory. It's one of the worksheets. I don't know if you do this, but with my coaching clients, my one-on-one coaching clients, I do have an inventory of the things that they enjoy doing, right? And my coaching is different, a little different. I mean, even though it's more executive coaching, I still, I don't call myself a life coach necessarily, but I think so much of your persona is, it's all intertwined, right? Your home life and your work life, it's all together. And you said this yourself earlier that if you have good, strong relationships at home, chances are you're gonna do better at work with the connections that you make at work. And that's what I believe as well.
And so one of the things that I do, I have my clients do is sort of take inventory of all the things that they're passionate about and including the things at home. And then I ask them to sort of prioritize them and rate them. And I haven't done that for myself. I have my clients do this, but maybe I should do more of that.
RAQUEL: Yeah. And you know, sometimes, I mean, I think it's a little bit of what you - you know, so businesses that work, that grow very quickly can implode. There's, and that's where leadership and executive coaching comes in. It's what got you here cannot get you there. There's only so much that you can hustle. And then you have to learn how to delegate more. You, whatever it is that you need to learn. Delegate, work smarter, focus on yours. Sorry, my English suddenly is running away from me.
You're a genius. So that's in business. There's just only so much capacity. And you need to start to develop more leadership skills, which, by the way, this is where relationship skills come very handy. How to empower people, how to inspire them. The same with families. A couple come to me the first few years of marriage. It's like a business that's grown very quickly. You usually buy property, you have a couple of kids. I mean, just becoming parents for the first time, then having a second kid.
KUMAR: It's huge, yeah.
RAQUEL: It's huge. Moving, promotions, career advancement. This is the busiest, most hectic time of your life. People don't realize that good things can be stressors in business and in life and really start throwing us to a stress cycle. This question is so universal. Thank you for asking it. This is the million dollar question - how do we deal with it all? And the work harder is never the solution. We actually choke in relationship. We're like what are you going to do with all this time that you're not fighting now that you're actually solving effectively where like a challenge is actually an opportunity to get to know each other better and make our differences work for us and not against us.
KUMAR: Yeah. So Richard did respond. He said, thank you, appreciate you guys thinking about that. So I think we, hopefully we answered your question, Richard.
RAQUEL: Yeah, and feel free to reach out if you need, either one of us. We like to solve those kind of problems.
KUMAR: Yeah, we're getting a little short of time, so I'm going to ask you a few lightning round questions, sort of like rapid fire.
RAQUEL: Okay, but let me just warn you, I'm not a fast thinker.
KUMAR: That's okay. Rapid fire, I might take a breath. And this is me demonstrating to you, taking care of myself and not hustling you.
RAQUEL: I see that. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. There's a lesson in that. It's all encapsulated in that - how you responded to that.
KUMAR: All right, so here we go. What's your go-to phrase when someone says relationships are hard?
RAQUEL: Well, my whole message is relationship can be so much easier than you think. There's a solution. It can be so much better. Let me show you how. Okay. All right. This is my message. I hope everybody can hear it. It can be so much easier. We are struggling so unnecessarily and we work way too hard. We really do. Like this is about stop - stop over functioning. It's a lot simpler and easier. We're just like spinning our wheels quite a bit when it's really good.
KUMAR: That's really good advice, yeah. I need to think about this after this call here. You mentioned brain science and attachment styles. If you could teach everyone just one fact about the neuroscience of relationships, what would it be?
RAQUEL: Well, I'm going to have to think about it, but I will answer, but I may change it later. I think it's the what we appreciate, appreciates, what we look for, we find, and the negative bias. And that, OK, so here's actually this would be my message. So usually we look to solve the conflict before we feel connected. And it's actually connection that helps us solve it so much better. OK. Begin with the end in mind.
So coming back to like - you know, actually, I would say the biggest thing that I learned for myself and for all my clients is how to regulate, how not to respond when we are in a stress cycle. So learning how to not problem solve when triggered, learning how to not try to solve your life at midnight. It's very simple. Nothing good is going to come out of it. You actually, like your limbic system, you have no access to your executive functioning. You're just in survival. So just knowing how to step away and come back to it when you're in a regulated state. It's the difference between, I mean, it's really, it's the difference between a horrible experience and a lovely experience, like a wonderful experience.
KUMAR: Yeah, I love that. All right. Last one. What's the fastest way to reframe an argument into an opportunity?
RAQUEL: The fastest way is to - I love that sentence. You make sense when you actually listen and like see how do they make sense. Even if it doesn't make sense in your world, like how does it make sense in their world? And it can be just as simple as, hey, I see that you, I mean, first of all, the fastest way is to stop and wait until you're both calm. Just be like, hey, we're both a little triggered. Let's just calm down and come back to it. This will be the first one.
But then it can just be like, hey, you seem upset. Is there anything you need right now? It's almost like acknowledging what's happening or listening, just listening. So there's demonstrating to you a poison. Under the poison, there is a need. If you're accepting the challenge to be the bigger person, I know it's really hard in this time, especially when you are right and they're wrong and they're doing something that is not delightful. They're being a little jerky. But you're like, what is it they're actually saying? They're saying they miss me. Even though they're like, you're never home, you work all the time. They say they miss me. What is it that they're saying? I mean, that is - and again, if you want a slogan, it's from furious to curious. When we get curious.
KUMAR: Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Furious to curious. Yeah. It's curious. Everything is possible. What's happening? I wonder if they have a good reason. What's going on here?
RAQUEL: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really like that.
KUMAR: All right. I didn't really get to ask you anything about your book and running short of time. Tell us about your book. And maybe anything else that I did not ask you that you think would be valuable for the audience to hear.
RAQUEL: Sure. So I am so honored and excited to be part of a collaborative book that is put together by Julie de la Roca. She's an award-winning author. She's a TEDx speaker. She's a podcaster like you. And she actually turned some of the most powerful podcast interviews that she had into a book. So we are a group of, I believe, fourteen women that are - the book is called Confident You, Raw Conversations. So we each come with conversation in our areas of expertise. It's really raw. It's really about the good, bad and the ugly, giving you the tools to normalize what's happening for you and to see your way into personal power.
And my chapter specifically is about a huge part of my work, which is the power of one to change a relationship. It takes two to fight. It takes one to stop the fight. Nobody can fight with themselves for too long. So really putting the onus and responsibility of relationship on yourself, not on the other, right? So what can you do to make it better? And it's kind of amazing. It's not fun. It's way more fun to see what the other person is doing. I mean, that's fun, but it's just easier. It's easier to know everything that they're doing wrong and how they need to change. It's incredible to see how much influence we have and even if we just change the tiniest thing that we think is insignificant and justifying. What's available in that clean space? It's empowering. Clients tell me that all the time. I don't want to be the bigger person anymore, but I get it.
KUMAR: But you're right. I mean, it can be hugely influential that if you look inward and look at making changes in how you approach the relationship, it can have a profound impact. It also creates incredible, it's incredibly empowering. When you ask me, how does it affect every area of life? It builds self-trust. No drama, no big deal. I got this. It's nice to work in the world like that.
RAQUEL: Absolutely. Yeah.
KUMAR: Well, Raquel, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. There's so many questions I didn't ask you, but I feel like you answered them anyway, because we had a good, rich, and deep conversation. So I really appreciate that. Is there anything that you were dying to get out that didn't come out yet in my questions or in our conversation?
RAQUEL: I mean, there's so much I can talk about it for days. Relationship is my jam. I would just say if you're struggling, reach out. There's so much help. You don't have to do it alone. The solution can be so much simpler than you think. I personally give free consultations. So reach out. You're going to get a full one hour. You know, if you're asking me about exciting projects, the book launch is going to start soon and we're going to have a lot of exciting webinars and workshops around that. I am starting a group coaching for women. So there's a lot, a lot of solutions.
KUMAR: Awesome. And we should definitely talk about your project because there's so much overlap. And it's not soft skills. It's like core skills, I would say, you know, that every human should have and develop. But for sure.
RAQUEL: Yeah, you know, it's very important.
KUMAR: Well, Raquel, it's been such a pleasure. I think I'm going to have to have you come back on so we can delve into more of the questions that I didn't get to ask. But in the meantime, hopefully all of you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Thank you so much for joining. And we'll have your ways to contact Raquel in the show notes. So please, if you have questions or you want to have a more in-depth conversation about relationships, both at home and at the workplace, Raquel is the person to ask. All right. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye.
RAQUEL: Thank you.
---END OF TRANSCRIPT---
