May 14, 2025 • 13 mins
Enjoy the episode? Send us a text!
You've probably heard people talk about "manifesting" their ideal relationship or saving their marriage just by thinking positive thoughts. But when your marriage is in crisis, hope alone isn’t a strategy. In this episode, Kimberly Beam Holmes—CEO of Marriage Helper and trained performance psychologist—breaks down why traditional manifestation falls short and what actually works when your relationship feels like it’s falling apart.
You'll discover 3 research-backed mental techniques that high-performing individuals use to overcome adversity—adapted specifically to help you save your marriage:
✔ Visualization (the right way)
✔ Resilience-building breathing exercises
✔ The power of intentional practice
If your marriage is on the brink, but you're too scared to take the next step, this video will give you the tools to begin. It's not about perfection—it's about progress.
If you're struggling in your marriage, don’t wait. Get our FREE resource: The 7 Steps to Rescue Your Marriage 👉 https://marriagehelper.com/free
📞 BOOK A CALL WITH OUR TEAM: https://marriagehelper.com/call
🔗 Website: https://marriagehelper.com
📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marriagehelper
👀 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@marriagehelper
Follow our other channels!
📺 https://youtube.com/@kimberlybeamholmes
📺 https://youtube.com/@drjoebeam
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's a lot of people out there who talk about
manifesting your ideal future,manifesting saving your marriage
, manifesting your perfect mate.
What is that really about?
Let's be clear I don't believein manifestation.
I don't believe that we can,like, hijack the spirit world,
and maybe some people would justsay that it's just fighting
(00:21):
over the different definition ofwords that I'm getting at here,
but here's what I'm trying tosay Manifestation, in the way
that most people talk about it,I don't really think is a thing.
However, there are absolutelysome things that you can do
mentally, that we're going tohijack from high performance
athletes, that can help you saveyour marriage and turn your
(00:42):
relationship around.
I know that that might soundcrazy, but here's the thing I
don't want you to check out.
Stay with me, because we canlearn some of our biggest
breakthroughs when we combinemethodologies from two seemingly
unrelated things, from twoseemingly unrelated categories,
such as performance psychologyand marriage.
(01:04):
As someone who's been trained asa performance psychologist in
fact, very soon I will have myPhD in psychology, with an
emphasis of performancepsychology I have done a lot of
studying.
In fact, the past five years,I've really been diving deep
into how do certain people andwhy do certain people perform
(01:25):
better?
Really, you can boil that downto why is it that some people
can look and head into certaincircumstances and situations
head on, be more resilient andcome out stronger on the other
side than other people, andthat's really all.
Performance is Performance.
When we talk about performancepsychology, when we think about
(01:47):
elite athletes, when we thinkabout top level producers, we're
thinking CEOs, we're thinkingNavy SEALs.
What do all of those peoplehave in common?
They can face difficultcircumstances, have higher rates
of resilience and can seethemselves coming through on the
other side.
Guess what?
You are in a situation likethat too.
(02:07):
If you have a marriage orrelationship issue that you feel
like is overwhelming, that itis a huge storm that you are
charging into and that you needto find some more resilience and
some hope of being able to getthrough this stronger on the
other side, then that's exactlywhat I'm going to be sharing
with you right now.
So let's dive into three thingsthat we can steal from
(02:32):
performance athletes and to topperformers that can actually
also help you have a strongermarriage, save your marriage and
even have a better marriagethan ever before.
Here is the first thingvisualization.
Now, this is where thenomenclature of manifestation
and visualization.
You may say it's the same thing.
(02:52):
It's not.
I don't think so.
Visualization is veryspecifically a tool and a tactic
used by performance athletes.
Think about a weightlifterwho's about to go and do some
really heavy deadlifts or evenmore complex movements such as
snatches or thrusters.
(03:13):
If you're familiar with any ofthose Olympic powerlifting moves
and those compound movements,when you're going to do
something like that, most topathletes, they will stop, they
will pause before doing it, eventhe night before.
Even when they are just sittingin an airport waiting to get on
a plane or sitting in thewaiting room at a doctor's
(03:33):
office, they take thoseopportunities to visualize.
To visualize them doing thatmovement perfectly In
deadlifting.
For those of you who areinterested, stay with me, even
if you're not, just imagine thatbarbell being on the ground in
front of you.
You go to it.
You picture yourself graspingyour hands around it, doing the
(03:55):
right move with your hands,making sure that they're placed
in the right way.
You picture the feel of the barunderneath your hands.
You picture where your body isgoing to be.
You visualize you doing it.
My husband is a pilot.
He's in training to be acommercial pilot and one of the
things that he does and thathe's encouraged to do, is
something called chair flying.
(04:16):
So even when he's not able toget to the airport and take the
plane out on a given day, hisinstructors tell him sit in the
chair in your room and justvisualize.
Visualize yourself in thecockpit where all of the things
are and go through differentmaneuvers, go through different
situations.
(04:37):
You can see this many times.
You see the blue angels who dothe crazy moves through the air.
You can see videos on YouTubeof them all in a room together
and going through the movementsof their routines.
They are quote unquote chairflying.
They are visualizing.
Now, why is this so importantand why is this so important to
(04:59):
you in order to save yourmarriage?
How are we connecting the dotshere?
You need to begin visualizingwhat it looks like for you to be
calm during hard conversations.
Maybe you are nervous about adifficult conversation that you
need to have with your spouse.
Here's what you need to do Stopclose your eyes.
(05:21):
Visualize.
Visualize your spouse comingthrough the door.
Visualize yourself taking somedeep breaths and calming your
nervous system.
Visualize yourself beginningthat conversation.
Picture yourself looking themin the eye, maintaining a cool
and collected posture.
(05:41):
This may sound crazy, but it'snot.
The more that you can visualizein your mind's eye you doing
something a certain way.
It's kind of like muscle memory.
You can more easily do it whenthe time comes.
So think of what it is you'rescared of, visualize it
happening and you doing it well,and just keep visualizing that.
(06:04):
Maybe it's that you need tovisualize what it's going to
look like when you do the kidshandoff, if you're swapping kids
out for a weekend, and how youcan do it without getting super
riled up.
Maybe it's that you need toactually tell your spouse
something that you've done thatyou have not admitted yet.
Take some time to visualize howthe conversation is going to go
(06:25):
, how you are going to maintainyour cool and your calm in that
situation, and let that besomething that fuels.
Honestly.
It just creates the opportunity, the most likelihood, or a
better likelihood, that thatconversation is going to go well
.
So, number one visualization.
Number two breathing.
(06:48):
I cannot even begin to explainto you, for top performing
athletes, how much your breathand your breath regulation is
going to make a game changingdifference in how someone
performs.
Because here's the thing whenwe get really riled up, when we
are nervous, when we're anxious,when we're scared, when we're
(07:09):
angry, one of the first thingsthat changes is the cadence of
our breath.
We begin to breathe moreshallow.
We're not getting as muchoxygen into our muscles, into
our veins.
When that happens, we don'tthink as clearly.
There are so many things thathave a domino effect when our
breath changes and in fact, whenwe look at psychology and when
(07:29):
we look at what can really beginto build and rebuild resilience
, we can see that in theamygdala, which was kind of in
the center part of our brain,which really regulates the fear
response that we have, one ofthe ways that we can reset our
amygdala.
So, even if it's overwhelmedwith fear in a given moment, the
best way and this is a NavySEALs training that we can
(07:50):
borrow from one of the best waysto reset our amygdala is by
doing what's called boxbreathing, and that's where you
breathe in for a count of fourseconds, you hold the breath in
at a count of four seconds, youbreathe out for four seconds and
you hold the breath out forfour seconds, and if you do that
consistently for a period ofeven just three minutes, it kind
(08:13):
of resets your amygdala and itabsolutely increases your
ability to handle stressfulsituations.
It increases your resilience.
So how does this apply to yourmarriage?
Well, when you're facing thosedifficult situations, when
you're getting caught in adownward mental spiral of all of
these what ifs and how could Iand how could he or how could
(08:36):
she that's where it's time tobecome resilient, to actually
practice this box breathing sothat you can reset yourself and
continue to charge through thecenter of the storm with the
most likelihood of gettingthrough the other side stronger.
So we're going to practice itreally quick together.
Here's what it looks like youbreathe in, hold it for four,
(09:01):
breathe out, hold at the bottom.
It takes about 16 seconds.
So you want to do that forthree minutes.
So you're doing that about 12times.
It's a great way.
At the end of it, you will feelclearer headed and better able
to handle the situation in frontof you, even if you just need a
(09:24):
timeout in the middle of afight or an argument or a
stressful situation.
Go to the bathroom, take threeminutes to do some box breathing
.
Stressful situation go to thebathroom, take three minutes to
do some box breathing, come outfeeling more resilient.
And then, finally, the thirdtechnique and tactic that we're
going to take from performancepsychology is practice, practice
, practice.
(09:44):
You see, it's absolutely truethat.
Think about just a couple ofyears ago when Simone Biles,
when she had the twisties that'swhat they called it she decided
that she wasn't going toperform for her own mental
health, which was a great call.
But then, coming back that nextyear, she was kind of in her
head about it.
She was nervous that what ifshe did something and it didn't
(10:08):
work?
And especially if someone hasbeen injured in a performance
type setting, they have thesequote unquote twisties.
They have this mental block ofbeing able to do the thing that
they used to do so easily.
Now it feels so hard.
So how do you overcome that?
By just doing it.
You have to just begin doing itand you have to use these
(10:30):
techniques the visualization,the breathing, those things to
help you calm yourself, to getyou back in the swing of doing
it.
But if you let fear continue tostop you, then you're never
going to move forward.
You're just going to keep beingstuck where you are.
So many people in situationswhere their marriage is in
crisis they say but I'm scared,I'm scared to talk to my spouse
(10:53):
and ask them to go to a workshopwith me.
I'm scared to ask what theythink about the future of our
marriage.
I'm scared to do anything.
Because what if I do the finalthing for my last resort and it
doesn't work?
Then I'm completely out of hope.
Have you ever felt that way?
You probably feel that wayright now, where you are in a
(11:17):
paralysis by analysis.
So you're not doing anythingbecause you're wanting to do the
perfect thing.
But here is the true thing youjust have to get started, begin
doing something.
Begin by working on yourself,begin by having conversations
with your spouse and guess what?
It's not going to be perfectevery time.
That's why we have our smartcontact that we teach you about,
(11:40):
which will be linked in theYouTube video show notes below.
That's why we have these otherthings at Marriage Helper that
we point you to Working on yourpies.
You'll see that linked as thenext video you can watch below.
But you have to get started,because you can't do it right
without doing it to begin with,and you're never going to do it
right all the time.
Even the top performingathletes are never going to 100%
(12:03):
correctly execute any givenmovement.
But if you get stuck with thetwisties, where you're scared to
do anything.
So, therefore, you just don'tdo anything.
You do nothing.
If you're too scared to doanything and therefore you do
nothing, your situation will notchange.
Simone Biles didn't go back tothe Olympics and win more medals
(12:24):
by staying stuck with havingthe twisties.
She faced her fears, but shedid it with wisdom and she saw
results, and the same is truefor you.
Don't let your fear block you.
Don't do stupid things, butdon't let your fear stop you
from moving forward.
Your marriage didn't fall apartovernight.
(12:45):
It's not going to be savedovernight, but it's definitely
not going to be saved if youdon't begin doing something
different and doing the bestthings to save it.
So use some more of ourresources below to see more
about that.
With smart contact, withworking on your pies, those are
things that you can begin doingright now.
I hope that this has beenhelpful.
(13:06):
Here's what you can doVisualize good outcomes,
practice resiliency by doing boxbreathing and just begin doing
Practice, practice, practice,practice.
Doesn't necessarily makeperfect, but practice makes
progress, and that's what youneed when your marriage is in
crisis.
Until next time, stay strong.
There's a lot of people out there who talk about
manifesting your ideal future,manifesting saving your marriage
, manifesting your perfect mate.
What is that really about?
Let's be clear I don't believein manifestation.
I don't believe that we can,like, hijack the spirit world,
and maybe some people would justsay that it's just fighting
(00:21):
over the different definition ofwords that I'm getting at here,
but here's what I'm trying tosay Manifestation, in the way
that most people talk about it,I don't really think is a thing.
However, there are absolutelysome things that you can do
mentally, that we're going tohijack from high performance
athletes, that can help you saveyour marriage and turn your
(00:42):
relationship around.
I know that that might soundcrazy, but here's the thing I
don't want you to check out.
Stay with me, because we canlearn some of our biggest
breakthroughs when we combinemethodologies from two seemingly
unrelated things, from twoseemingly unrelated categories,
such as performance psychologyand marriage.
(01:04):
As someone who's been trained asa performance psychologist in
fact, very soon I will have myPhD in psychology, with an
emphasis of performancepsychology I have done a lot of
studying.
In fact, the past five years,I've really been diving deep
into how do certain people andwhy do certain people perform
(01:25):
better?
Really, you can boil that downto why is it that some people
can look and head into certaincircumstances and situations
head on, be more resilient andcome out stronger on the other
side than other people, andthat's really all.
Performance is Performance.
When we talk about performancepsychology, when we think about
(01:47):
elite athletes, when we thinkabout top level producers, we're
thinking CEOs, we're thinkingNavy SEALs.
What do all of those peoplehave in common?
They can face difficultcircumstances, have higher rates
of resilience and can seethemselves coming through on the
other side.
Guess what?
You are in a situation likethat too.
(02:07):
If you have a marriage orrelationship issue that you feel
like is overwhelming, that itis a huge storm that you are
charging into and that you needto find some more resilience and
some hope of being able to getthrough this stronger on the
other side, then that's exactlywhat I'm going to be sharing
with you right now.
So let's dive into three thingsthat we can steal from
(02:32):
performance athletes and to topperformers that can actually
also help you have a strongermarriage, save your marriage and
even have a better marriagethan ever before.
Here is the first thingvisualization.
Now, this is where thenomenclature of manifestation
and visualization.
You may say it's the same thing.
(02:52):
It's not.
I don't think so.
Visualization is veryspecifically a tool and a tactic
used by performance athletes.
Think about a weightlifterwho's about to go and do some
really heavy deadlifts or evenmore complex movements such as
snatches or thrusters.
(03:13):
If you're familiar with any ofthose Olympic powerlifting moves
and those compound movements,when you're going to do
something like that, most topathletes, they will stop, they
will pause before doing it, eventhe night before.
Even when they are just sittingin an airport waiting to get on
a plane or sitting in thewaiting room at a doctor's
(03:33):
office, they take thoseopportunities to visualize.
To visualize them doing thatmovement perfectly In
deadlifting.
For those of you who areinterested, stay with me, even
if you're not, just imagine thatbarbell being on the ground in
front of you.
You go to it.
You picture yourself graspingyour hands around it, doing the
(03:55):
right move with your hands,making sure that they're placed
in the right way.
You picture the feel of the barunderneath your hands.
You picture where your body isgoing to be.
You visualize you doing it.
My husband is a pilot.
He's in training to be acommercial pilot and one of the
things that he does and thathe's encouraged to do, is
something called chair flying.
(04:16):
So even when he's not able toget to the airport and take the
plane out on a given day, hisinstructors tell him sit in the
chair in your room and justvisualize.
Visualize yourself in thecockpit where all of the things
are and go through differentmaneuvers, go through different
situations.
(04:37):
You can see this many times.
You see the blue angels who dothe crazy moves through the air.
You can see videos on YouTubeof them all in a room together
and going through the movementsof their routines.
They are quote unquote chairflying.
They are visualizing.
Now, why is this so importantand why is this so important to
(04:59):
you in order to save yourmarriage?
How are we connecting the dotshere?
You need to begin visualizingwhat it looks like for you to be
calm during hard conversations.
Maybe you are nervous about adifficult conversation that you
need to have with your spouse.
Here's what you need to do Stopclose your eyes.
(05:21):
Visualize.
Visualize your spouse comingthrough the door.
Visualize yourself taking somedeep breaths and calming your
nervous system.
Visualize yourself beginningthat conversation.
Picture yourself looking themin the eye, maintaining a cool
and collected posture.
(05:41):
This may sound crazy, but it'snot.
The more that you can visualizein your mind's eye you doing
something a certain way.
It's kind of like muscle memory.
You can more easily do it whenthe time comes.
So think of what it is you'rescared of, visualize it
happening and you doing it well,and just keep visualizing that.
(06:04):
Maybe it's that you need tovisualize what it's going to
look like when you do the kidshandoff, if you're swapping kids
out for a weekend, and how youcan do it without getting super
riled up.
Maybe it's that you need toactually tell your spouse
something that you've done thatyou have not admitted yet.
Take some time to visualize howthe conversation is going to go
(06:25):
, how you are going to maintainyour cool and your calm in that
situation, and let that besomething that fuels.
Honestly.
It just creates the opportunity, the most likelihood, or a
better likelihood, that thatconversation is going to go well
.
So, number one visualization.
Number two breathing.
(06:48):
I cannot even begin to explainto you, for top performing
athletes, how much your breathand your breath regulation is
going to make a game changingdifference in how someone
performs.
Because here's the thing whenwe get really riled up, when we
are nervous, when we're anxious,when we're scared, when we're
(07:09):
angry, one of the first thingsthat changes is the cadence of
our breath.
We begin to breathe moreshallow.
We're not getting as muchoxygen into our muscles, into
our veins.
When that happens, we don'tthink as clearly.
There are so many things thathave a domino effect when our
breath changes and in fact, whenwe look at psychology and when
(07:29):
we look at what can really beginto build and rebuild resilience
, we can see that in theamygdala, which was kind of in
the center part of our brain,which really regulates the fear
response that we have, one ofthe ways that we can reset our
amygdala.
So, even if it's overwhelmedwith fear in a given moment, the
best way and this is a NavySEALs training that we can
(07:50):
borrow from one of the best waysto reset our amygdala is by
doing what's called boxbreathing, and that's where you
breathe in for a count of fourseconds, you hold the breath in
at a count of four seconds, youbreathe out for four seconds and
you hold the breath out forfour seconds, and if you do that
consistently for a period ofeven just three minutes, it kind
(08:13):
of resets your amygdala and itabsolutely increases your
ability to handle stressfulsituations.
It increases your resilience.
So how does this apply to yourmarriage?
Well, when you're facing thosedifficult situations, when
you're getting caught in adownward mental spiral of all of
these what ifs and how could Iand how could he or how could
(08:36):
she that's where it's time tobecome resilient, to actually
practice this box breathing sothat you can reset yourself and
continue to charge through thecenter of the storm with the
most likelihood of gettingthrough the other side stronger.
So we're going to practice itreally quick together.
Here's what it looks like youbreathe in, hold it for four,
(09:01):
breathe out, hold at the bottom.
It takes about 16 seconds.
So you want to do that forthree minutes.
So you're doing that about 12times.
It's a great way.
At the end of it, you will feelclearer headed and better able
to handle the situation in frontof you, even if you just need a
(09:24):
timeout in the middle of afight or an argument or a
stressful situation.
Go to the bathroom, take threeminutes to do some box breathing
.
Stressful situation go to thebathroom, take three minutes to
do some box breathing, come outfeeling more resilient.
And then, finally, the thirdtechnique and tactic that we're
going to take from performancepsychology is practice, practice
, practice.
(09:44):
You see, it's absolutely truethat.
Think about just a couple ofyears ago when Simone Biles,
when she had the twisties that'swhat they called it she decided
that she wasn't going toperform for her own mental
health, which was a great call.
But then, coming back that nextyear, she was kind of in her
head about it.
She was nervous that what ifshe did something and it didn't
(10:08):
work?
And especially if someone hasbeen injured in a performance
type setting, they have thesequote unquote twisties.
They have this mental block ofbeing able to do the thing that
they used to do so easily.
Now it feels so hard.
So how do you overcome that?
By just doing it.
You have to just begin doing itand you have to use these
(10:30):
techniques the visualization,the breathing, those things to
help you calm yourself, to getyou back in the swing of doing
it.
But if you let fear continue tostop you, then you're never
going to move forward.
You're just going to keep beingstuck where you are.
So many people in situationswhere their marriage is in
crisis they say but I'm scared,I'm scared to talk to my spouse
(10:53):
and ask them to go to a workshopwith me.
I'm scared to ask what theythink about the future of our
marriage.
I'm scared to do anything.
Because what if I do the finalthing for my last resort and it
doesn't work?
Then I'm completely out of hope.
Have you ever felt that way?
You probably feel that wayright now, where you are in a
(11:17):
paralysis by analysis.
So you're not doing anythingbecause you're wanting to do the
perfect thing.
But here is the true thing youjust have to get started, begin
doing something.
Begin by working on yourself,begin by having conversations
with your spouse and guess what?
It's not going to be perfectevery time.
That's why we have our smartcontact that we teach you about,
(11:40):
which will be linked in theYouTube video show notes below.
That's why we have these otherthings at Marriage Helper that
we point you to Working on yourpies.
You'll see that linked as thenext video you can watch below.
But you have to get started,because you can't do it right
without doing it to begin with,and you're never going to do it
right all the time.
Even the top performingathletes are never going to 100%
(12:03):
correctly execute any givenmovement.
But if you get stuck with thetwisties, where you're scared to
do anything.
So, therefore, you just don'tdo anything.
You do nothing.
If you're too scared to doanything and therefore you do
nothing, your situation will notchange.
Simone Biles didn't go back tothe Olympics and win more medals
(12:24):
by staying stuck with havingthe twisties.
She faced her fears, but shedid it with wisdom and she saw
results, and the same is truefor you.
Don't let your fear block you.
Don't do stupid things, butdon't let your fear stop you
from moving forward.
Your marriage didn't fall apartovernight.
(12:45):
It's not going to be savedovernight, but it's definitely
not going to be saved if youdon't begin doing something
different and doing the bestthings to save it.
So use some more of ourresources below to see more
about that.
With smart contact, withworking on your pies, those are
things that you can begin doingright now.
I hope that this has beenhelpful.
(13:06):
Here's what you can doVisualize good outcomes,
practice resiliency by doing boxbreathing and just begin doing
Practice, practice, practice,practice.
Doesn't necessarily makeperfect, but practice makes
progress, and that's what youneed when your marriage is in
crisis.
Until next time, stay strong.
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com