315 Find Bigger Love with Relationship Coaches Patrick and Sam Cullinane

Patrick and Sam Cullinane are relationship experts; expertise which has resulted from their experiences as they moved through the ups and downs of the rocky marriage they endured with each other. The first decade of their 20-year marriage ended with a twelve-month separation and signed divorce papers. The second decade was an invigorating climb back up the mountain which can be described as refreshed love and intimacy leading to newfound closeness and personal growth. Their challenges and discoveries are shared in an easy-to-follow, authentic format in their recent book called, Bigger Love: How to Have the Love of Your Life for the rest of Your Life.  Patrick and Sam now teach their own proven methods to other couples who yearn for over-the-top relationships.

Most Influential Person
Patrick: Sam Cullinane
Sam: Julianna Raye of Unified Mindfulness

Effect on Emotions
Sam: Well, mindfulness allows me to understand what I'm feeling to begin with because I think a lot of times I just let, I realized now that I've let my emotions sort of push me around in my life. Now I recognize I'm not my emotions. They are something that happens to me. So those recognitions have changed my life entirely.
Patrick: The feelings are real, but how you choose to react to the feelings, that's what you have control over. So the emotion is typically your choice in reaction or your body's physical reaction to the feelings.

Thoughts on Breathing
Patrick: Well, that's interesting because we spent a day with a Peruvian Shaman last year who talked to us about breathing and ever since he was talking to us about it, I see it. I'm like, oh my God, somebody told us about this last year and so he was talking to us about this now and so you know how the universe conspires to put things in front of you once you figure it out. Um, but yeah, we will use just taking a normal breath in a day where we're doing what, 28 percent capacity of our lungs and feeding your body. And so just just forcing yourself to breathe when I feel any stress or laying there having trouble sleeping or any of that, I just breathe. I try to maximize my lung capacity, hold it for a little bit, oxygenate my body and then breath out. Then I have to do that, focus on my breathing when I meditate.
Sam: It's amazing, but as soon as I take my mind to my breath, I'm in the moment. It's immediate. So I love to use that in meditation. I use it if I get frustrated, I focus on the breath. Breath is instrumental in my life and my mindfulness practice.

Suggested Resources
Sam's Book: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny and Ron McMillan
Patrick's Book: Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl
App: No app

Bullying Story
Patrick: Sam brought up the fact that she thinks the biggest bully she sees is me bullying myself. Do you know what I mean? My dialogue of beating myself up and that kind of thing. So yeah, absolutely. not doing it. It's, it's part of the love yourself thing.
I recognize that I have a tendency to, to beat myself up a little bit or self deprecate, you know, do those types of things. And so I try not to bully myself by being mindful and loving myself and forgiveness. Self-Forgiveness is the key to all that. It's like, OK, I screwed up and I'm over it.
Sam: I do have a bullying story. I guess I don't know if mindfulness would have helped or not. So I grew up in Salt Lake City when I went to elementary school in Salt Lake City and then we started moving. It's primarily Mormon community and I'm not Mormon.
I was raised sort of Episcopalian and I think when, I can't remember how old they are when they get baptized, but it's older, it's like third or fourth grade, I want to say they're eight. So at age eight they get baptized and I think that's when they start to recognize that they're in this religion and it becomes very important to them as they learn all the stuff that they have to learn.
A lot of the kids weren't allowed to play with me because I wasn't lbs. There's one instance where this kid just was so mean and that was in front of a large group of kids and he was like, what religion are you again? And I was like, I'm Episcopalian. And he said, a pissa what? You know, you're going to hell, right? And I was like, what? [I said to my] mom, I'm going to hell. So that was very damaging, right?
It took a while to figure out how to deal with it. Like understanding different religions, why cultures clash and why war happens and all the bad things. But the interesting thing about that story is that later I was in college at the University of Utah and I saw that kid. I recognized him immediately and he was drunker than shit. He was hammered drunk, which of course is very against the Mormon religion. They're not allowed to drink or smoke or swear or anything.
And I [thought] what a hypocrite, you know, but it turned out that he was actually homosexual, which is also very against the Mormon religion. And I think that once I figured that out about him, I recognized that a lot of people who bully are people that are hurting.
They hurt others because they're hurting themselves. So he probably knew when he was eight. I mean, most of the homosexuals that I know, know early on that they're not like everybody else and that they have different attractions. He probably knew that.
And so he probably was hurting, confused and conflicted and lashed out at me because people that are hurting hurt others. So I think that was an interesting Aha moment for me.