This is an ABC podcast. Hey, I'm Brett Kirk and I'm a dad and a husband. In fact, you'll meet my wife, Hayley, in just a minute. But I'm also a son, a brother, an uncle and a mate.
I used to kick the footy around a bit with the city swans. And now I'm a Swannese assistant coach. And I'm a huge fan of mindfulness. I've teamed up with Smiling Mind.
They're the experts in mindfulness. And together, we're bringing you Mindfully. Relationships are a really important part of life. And in this series of Mindfully, we're going to arm ourselves with some practical tips to improve how we get along with others and with ourselves.
Mindfully, creating a calmer and happier you. What do you think of when I say the word, relationship? You might immediately think of the romantic variety, but the relationship with your partner is only one type you have in your life. There's your relationship with your mates, your colleagues, your family, and even yourself.
We can all get bogged down with the busyness of everyday life. And sometimes looking after these relationships can take it backseat. We've all come home from a stressful day at work and totally taken it out in our partner, the person who we love the most. I can be the only of that, which I'm sure the person standing next to me can attest to.
Affirmative, yes, I can. That is my beautiful wife, Hayley. Amazing mother to our five-spirited kids, published author, and super coach to our daughters under four-dains football team. And the funniest person I know.
She told me to say that. I did not. Hayley and I have been together for 22 years and have been married for 15. Hayley and I have been practicing Mindfulness for a while now, both together and on our own.
Mindfulness is about being present. So in those early days, like we met at uni, I was totally besotted by you. No. I can sort of visualise the times or maybe the library in the park sitting on a tree that you are totally in the moment with the person.
And that's like a honeymoon period, I think with the relationship. Do you get a sense of the same thing? Yeah, those days at uni were really special. And yeah, we were really present with each other and we made time for each other.
And as the years pass and you feel like you're always banging on about, I don't have time or, yeah, you have to make that time. Which I think we always have, but it has always come down to us making sure that we communicate. What do you think are the most important things in communicating in a relationship? I think being a really good listener and I think both of us have learnt to be better listeners.
It's definitely something, I think, a hand on heart that I wasn't a great listener. And it's something I'm continuing to work on every day. I think that's the great thing when you're in a relationship with someone that knows you so well and loves you and cares about you that can pull you up when you're not in the right space. Because as you said, five kids, we both work full time.
It can get pretty crazy and hectic at home. But it's the importance of being able to know each other and go, hang on a second. You're not listening. Come back here.
You're not with me right now. Yeah, just remembering that we're on each other's side and our relationship in the house with seven of us in the house, our relationship is the most important because if it's not working, it filters down to our children. I think sometimes when we have tension in our house and in our relationships, both with us and with the kids, what happens is I think it's our relationship not only with you and I, but also our relationship with ourselves. That takes it backwards because you've got these other responsibilities going on.
And that consumes you. So what happens is you're not working on yourself or what we feel is the most important thing. And then all of a sudden things pop up and we probably don't handle it as well as we should because we're not working on those things that you spoke about. Yeah, for sure.
And that's something that I'm learning and working out every day. I feel like that I'm responsible for six other humans. I'm going to say six kids now. No comment.
So I feel like I feel very responsible for the six other human beings in our house. And you are great at reminding me that I have to also consider myself. Last, and I'm sure a lot of moms out there and parents, but moms, especially, you can put your needs last or you can put working on yourself and working on your own relationship with yourself on the back burner because of all this other stuff you've got going on in all the other relationships. So yeah, and you know what, you're great at reminding me of that.
And I do do my breathing at night, my gratitude, meditating, and I'm getting better, but yeah, like everything it takes practice. Yeah, thanks so much for sharing, Hailey. It's been great having this conversation with you. And I'll see you later on.
I guess I will. Have you listening here, Zon? Mindfully. Someone else who uses mindfulness in his marriage is Dr.
Ben Buchanan, a clinical psychologist who is super passionate about mindfulness and relationships. Now, Ben, is it true you incorporated into your wedding ceremony? It is. When we were getting married, we really wanted to set the intentions for what our marriage was about.
And so what we did, we had a reading about the effects of mindfulness on relationship satisfaction, particularly when relationships are going through stress. Yeah, so how long have you been married for now? It would have been seven years, I think. So it would have been a little bit of stress in that time.
Can you tell us how you navigate when things get pretty stressful in your relationship? Yeah, so there's certainly lots of stress in relationships. And much of the stress is caused by our own internal dialogue, you know, the narrative that we tell ourselves and slowly building resentments, perhaps. And so for us, mindfulness is a way that we both individually make sure that our minds are strong and we can cut through that.
And so if you can cultivate a sense of mindfulness, that the unhelpful narratives that just build up over time, that you can become aware of them. And if you become aware of them, you can let them go. So there are any practical tips that you and your wife use that other listeners could try and see if it works in their own relationships? When we first became interested in mindfulness, my wife and I tried meditating together.
But we soon discovered that that wasn't quite a cup of tea. It didn't really work. We didn't want to meditate at the same time. We like slightly different sorts of mindfulness meditation.
And so what we do individually is our own separate individual mindfulness practice. I do it through the smiling mind app and some other apps. And my wife does it through her yoga practice. But then when we come together, this is where the everyday informal mindfulness comes into play.
And being mindful is essentially tuning into what is already happening, opening curious way. Every day we try and be mindful with each other. And that usually takes the form at dinner time, TV off, phones away, no distraction, coming out of our own internal clutter that we've built up during the day. And simply resting with each other and inquiring into each other and being curious about each other.
I often speak to different people. The first thing that always comes up, people talk about being time poor. What advice can you give to people that say mindfulness, meditation, I haven't got time to do that type of stuff. What it can be is a five minutes per day or even five minutes a week of getting out your phone, getting your meditation app, getting your headphones and setting time aside.
And what I've needed to do in the past is put reminders in my phone to do that. And then you can start to compound on that and say, hey, this is actually working for me. I'm actually feeling more clear. I'm getting a sense of clarity.
What about working on ourselves, which is really important? What about if you're in a relationship with someone and they're not really keen on going into that space? They just think it's airy, fairy, the type of sitting cross-legged, sitting in a cave somewhere when you start from meditation and mindfulness. I would suggest that if one person in a relationship wants to get involved in the other doesn't, that one person, do it alone, practice it alone, model to their partner how important they think it is by doing it.
And maybe the partner will become open and curious to it if they're seeing it being done. Mindfully, with Brett Kirk. Dr. Addie Woodin is the CEO of Smiling Mind and a mindfulness guru.
Addie, why is a healthy relationship with ourselves important? If you think about relationships, it kind of starts with you, doesn't it? It's hard to relate to other people without thinking about how you are in that relationship. And a lot of the time we actually spend focusing on others and we forget that being compassionate and accepting and encouraging of ourselves is really important to feel positive and also to connect with other people.
We actually have to be our own cheerleader in a lot of ways in order to thrive and to connect with people deeply. Because if we have a negative or critical view of ourselves, that obviously has an impact on how we interact with the world and with the people that we care about the most. Now coming up, there's going to be four mindfully meditations. There are all about relationships.
Can you tell us a little about them? Yeah, they cover a whole range of different topics. So self-compassion is a really important part of relationships, as we said earlier. So there's one about relationships with yourself.
And that's about cultivating an inner mentor rather than an inner critic, which I think is a really interesting thing for people to have a think about. There's mindful listening, which is about being in the moment and learning how to listen well. I don't know about you, but sometimes my mind drifts off and I forget about what I'm actually talking about with someone. So it's learning to do that better, listen better.
There's one about using mindfulness with your family and the meditation actually asks you to consider taking a beginner's mind to your family. So imagine looking at your family like you've never seen them before. How curious can you be? How would you interact with them differently?
So that's an interesting one to do as a family. And then one with the friends. So how do we look at cultivating gratitude about the people that we care about in our life? Which is pretty important, I think, to recognise that friends are very important and we should be grateful for the fact that we have good friends in our life.
Mindfully. Well, let's start helping our relationships be less reactive and more empathetic with the four smiling mind meditations that are coming up. Make sure you check out the other great Mindfully series, helping you navigate work, sport, home, school and sleep. You can find Mindfully in the ABC Listen Up, or you can subscribe in iTunes or wherever else you get your podcasts from.
And if you know someone whose relationships might benefit from these meditations, let them know about Mindfully. Mindfully is brought to you by Smiling Mind and ABC Audio Studios. It's produced by me, Alex Lullvack and my bosses are the executive producers Justin, Kelly and Rachel Fountain. And I'm Brett Kirk and I've loved sharing my own experiences with you.