In This Episode

Hanna Baer is an educational therapist who works with her husband work together in their business, Neuro-Fun, Whole-Child Therapy. From putting God at the center of their relationship, prioritizing their family before their business, and learning to communicate, Hanna and her husband are able to grow their marriage and business to its full potential.

Highlights

01:33 Hanna Baer is the co-founder and CEO of Neuro-Fun Whole-Child Therapy. She and her husband share the same passion of working with children and helping them succeed.

10:44 It was at a conference that Hanna and her husband met. Their love story stemmed from having the same professional and personal beliefs.

15:36 In business, Hanna shares, that it is the passion that keeps you going but business is not always about passion. There are other factors such as marketing, finance, etc. that need to be well thought of. Hanna sees herself as a big picture thinker, while her husband is more into the detail of things.

25:27 When the husband is willing to step in, it’s important to trust that our husbands can do things their way or that things will be okay. We are conditioned to hold onto things because we think they won’t be done correctly. But all we have to do is to let go and allow God to take care of whatever needs to be done.

 28:05 Rebbetzin Bat-Chen created a Hot Topic Bonus about priorities, which should have God as number one on the list.

30:50 In a family, the roles are much clearer than in a business. When you start your business with your husband, it is not automatic that the husband is the CEO or the wife is a CEO. It is important to recognize each other’s talents and where there are weaknesses.

33:53 Neuro-Fun is in the process of building a team to delegate tasks because from a big-picture perspective, it is much better in the long run. However, Hanna’s husband believes that they can still do it themselves. Learning to communicate and take responsibility are key to a successful business.

39:30 Giving your business over to God is also a big factor in allowing your business to flow. This also allows you to carry over respect for the processes that you and your husband need to work together.

Links

Hanna Baer: Website | Facebook

FLOW Mastermind – A Business Mastermind for an Integrated Life

FLY Mastermind – A Marriage Mastermind for a Fulfilling Life

5 Surprising Ways to Improve Your Marriage

Marriage Breakthrough Retreat

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REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Welcome to the Connected For Real Podcast! I’m Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, a marriage coach for women in business, and my mission is to bring God’s presence into your life, into your marriage, and into your business. Let’s get started. The following is one of the many conversations I had with experts and professionals about real life and how it affects marriage. Let me know your takeaways on Instagram or Facebook, @connectedforreal. Enjoy.

And we are live. Welcome everyone to the Connected for Real Podcast, and we’re also live on Facebook and YouTube. This is Hanna Beer—Beer or Baer? Before I—

HANNA BAER

Baer.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Baer. Baer. I did not mess up your name. Before I let her introduce herself, I will just let you know that I am Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman. I am a marriage coach for women in business and I am fascinated with the relationship between everything else and marriage and how everything affects marriage and how marriage affects everything else, so we’re going to talk about that and we’re also going to talk about Hanna and her husband’s business because they’re in business together and season three is all about working together with your husband on the same business, and we’re going to get you some really great tips and ideas on how to make that work even better. So, Hanna, introduce yourself and tell us all what you do.

HANNA BAER

I’m Hanna Baer. I’m an educational therapist. I am co-founder of Neuro-Fun Whole-Child Therapy, where we work with children that are struggling to succeed and we say on purpose children that are struggling to succeed and not children with special needs because we work with the typical kids that are basically falling through the cracks where we as where we see that parents don’t really understand—what is going on with my smart child, my wonderful child—working with the whole child, with the parents, with the teachers, with nutrition, the nervous system, the learning skills, the behavior, the emotions, like really with the whole the whole child as it says, and working with them—

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Right, and that’s why I—

HANNA BAER

What did you want to say?

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

I said that’s why I invited you to be here because it touches my heart that somebody comes from a holistic perspective. I see that when I help women in business. It’s not like, “Let me help you with your marriage, let me help you with your business.” Let me help you figure it all out and make it all align and really from every aspect, so I love that about what you’re doing.

HANNA BAER

I think that there you’re very right in that it is similar because if you want to address difficulties in a marriage, you really have to look at what is the underlying issue because otherwise you’re just doing—you’re looking at the symptoms. I mean, if I have a disagreement with my husband, it’s a symptom what is under it, and that’s exactly the same with behavioral or learning or emotional difficulties. What are the reason/reasons for that? And that can be going as far as a child that was born in a certain way and doesn’t get enough oxygen, like systemically, into his body. So what you get is a constant stress and if you function in constant stress, I think we all by now know what that does to the body, but if you are in a full class and you are in a class with the windows closed, you get a child that all the time functions in survival mode and will start jiggling and will start trying to get out of the situation. He will not be able to focus and I can I could go on and on and on and on and that that child is going to get diagnosed with one thing or the other, but it doesn’t really address what is truly going on with this child. So, yeah I really feel that you and you the same thing—what you see as a marriage coach is that you take on certain roles. You identify with the difficulties and the child does that too. They will not think that the circumstances around them are what is causing an issue or their body is causing an issue. They think that they are the problem and I think that that is something that you see in marriages too, so—

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Yes. Oh my gosh, I’m just thinking of all the people who suffered through school and then they’re finally free to wiggle whatever they want and whenever they want. They’re so happy and they use much in the world and they’re the most productive and the most like focused and the most able to make a change in the world because they’re finally free. So, I’m happy that you’re giving these kids the tools and the ability to find their own freedom now. They don’t have to wait for it until they finally figure out themselves.

HANNA BAER

No. Now and I think that validating a person and validating their thinking and validating who they are who they are that in and of itself creates enormous change. It’s like you as a person are intact. This is how your body functions.

Yeah, I have one kid that we’re working with who has a million questions and is not used to being allowed to ask a million questions and just the fact that any question is taken seriously, even if it is the weirdest question you can just see there, it’s almost like letting out a breath right. So yeah, I think it’s the only way to work with the whole person. I don’t think that working on symptoms works in any in any situation.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

I agree with you. That’s why you’re here.

HANNA BAER

Thank you.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

I love it. I love it because there is something so powerful to going deep and a lot of people are not willing to go there because it’s too scary, maybe painful, maybe unknown. It’s like, “Uh, I don’t want to go there, so let me just stay here,” and even with physical symptoms, you have Dr. Cerno, who explains the back pain and how your body is trying to protect you from your emotions and you’re like, “Yes! But no, because now I have to actually deal with my emotions,” so what I like that he says is you actually don’t. All you have to say is, “This is not physical. It’s my emotions and even though I’m not dealing with them now, I know it’s not physical,” and then eventually you’re going to have to deal with emotions because it’s going to come up in other ways but it’s such a nice comforting thing to know that it’s not urgent to work with it right now. Just awareness is—

HANNA BAER

Right, but what you’re saying—what I think is essential is that you cannot—because that is something that I have a lot of difficulty with that emotions and anxiety and even flight-fight response that you see not just in in kids but also in ourselves all too well. When your husband or your wife reacts a certain way, it can push a button in you and you react a certain way that is it’s like it’s instant. You’d haven’t even thought about it and that is physical. That is a physical response so working on emotional difficulties, on anxieties only from a like psychological or mental perspective, I don’t think that’s the answer.

I mean for me, one of the one of the things that I see is like the vagus nerve is of enormous importance and we know that by now. I mean, just—

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

What is that nerve and charge—what is that nerve in charge of?

HANNA BAER

It’s basically the nerve that has a very big role in the autonomic nervous system. So, it’s the nerve that is very much involved in fight and flight, which means that if you are in any situation, which for whatever reason you think is threatening and for a child that could even be sound or like I said, the feeling that you’re not getting enough oxygen even though that is totally subconscious, the part of your nervous system that makes you want to bring yourself into safety or response to danger, that is what is going to be an overdrive and reacts too fast. That is what you want to slow down so—

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Yes, and I love that you say it’s not just enough to deal with the psychology behind it. It’s really physical too. You have to get to the point where you’re addressing all the different parts, the beliefs, the thoughts, the emotions, the feelings, the physical reactions and when you put that together, that’s also looking at it from a holistic perspective. I love that.

HANNA BAER

Right, and we all know the situation where you’re put in a situation that makes you extremely nervous and you just want to get out of it—I mean, that’s the same for our kids in school.

I have one kid I work with who was born here. Fluent Hebrew speaker goes into [store] but grown up in an English-speaking family—goes into a [store] and if there’s—sorry, yeah goes into a store and if there is not another English-speaking speaker, there only Hebrew speakers and he’s fluent in Hebrew, he will not ask for help. He will leave. That’s a totally irrational response but it’s totally fear. That’s totally a physical reaction because on a mental level, he knows that it doesn’t make sense, so he thinks he’s an idiot. I’m thinking, “Yeah, what you’re doing is logical. You keep yourself safe,” but that’s what I’m talking about. There’s a whole physical component to it, so let’s address that.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Yes, let’s address that.

I want to go to your marriage because you guys work together that’s fascinating. I made an entire season three about this because it is so good. How did you get to working together and how is it for you?

HANNA BAER

Well, I think there you need a little bit of background information.

My husband and I met at a conference of Professor Feuerstein here in in Jerusalem. My husband lived here already. He’s originally Canadian and I knew that I had to be at that conference. There was just such a gut feeling that I had to be there because I had had a tough year as a teacher in special education, which is what I was at that moment, and I knew I had to be at that conference. It was at that moment the only thing that kept me going. So [I] get to the conference and we met and started talking about children with autism and it was the first time that I met anybody who spoke my language, where it came to looking at the child behind the symptoms and not just at the label. So we started talking and then we ended up in the same workshop and people who don’t know my husband, my husband is not a pushy person but it was interesting because he was kind of pushy in getting to sit next to me, which is something that is like a running joke in our family and we just started talking and then after the conference, we decided to go for a cup of coffee and walked for 12 hours in Jerusalem and then I had to go back to Holland. Yeah, it was a long walk.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

You must have been tired. Twelve hours of walking.

HANNA BAER

It’s just big joke and I’m telling you this background because we started talking and we joke amongst each other. We have never stopped talking.

For both of us, if we start talking about the kids that we work with and we came back to Israel, we’ve been—we were gone for 14 years and we came back. In the meantime, my husband was a clinical director of an early intervention center in Montreal and even there, we shared the same passion about how you feel that children or any person, really, should be addressed for who they are and not for the diagnosis or the labels that we put in them and it was always our dream from the moment that we started to really be interested in each other and getting married and so on to start working together and to have our own clinic, our own program. So, we knew that when we were coming back that that is what we wanted to do. We really wanted to set up here and work in a way with kids that is totally according to how we believe that it should be done—that we also believe that you need to work closely with the parents.

It’s interesting because we had the experience at one point as parents of one of our daughters, where the teacher said, “You have to have your child assessed because your child is having difficulty reading,” and I looked at our daughter and I was like, “That’s not being the stubborn person that I can be.” I thought that’s not the difficulty that she has but at the same time I also felt even as a professional that I wasn’t being hurt by the other professional by the teacher and that is an  experience that we see with a lot of parents. So we feel, wait a second the parent is the expert when it comes to the child. The parent is part of the team, and for us, that is one aspect that is super important for us—for the parents to be part of our team. We will listen totally to what a parent has to say. We take the observations and the knowledge of what the parent says about their child totally serious. So, for us to work together like that—that was like a long, long, long dream that we held on to, so it was really—there was no question of What are we going to do? It was very clear what we were going to do when we got back here. So, yeah that’s what we’re doing.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

That’s beautiful. So what are the challenges of working together with your husband? Now, that we know that you’re both really—

HANNA BAER

Yeah, here comes the debate.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

No, no. Listen, we get that you love it and it’s a dream and I think that for a lot of people working together on the same project and really bringing something into the world, it’s like birthing an idea—an ideal into the world together is really exciting and adds a lot of interest to the couple into the conversation and it’s fun to work together. I don’t want to work with anyone else but my husband sometimes because it’s the person I want to be hanging out with but there are challenges so let’s get into it. What are the challenges?

HANNA BAER

Well, I think that you put your finger on it when you say it is exciting to work with somebody who shares the same passion, but when you build a business—in a business, it’s the passion for what you’re doing that keeps you going but your business is not only about your passion. The business is about the finances and the marketing and the bookkeeping and the planning—the going ahead, the looking at the big picture and there you bump up against each other’s personalities.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Can we say maybe weaknesses also? Like if one of the people—not into taking care of the paperwork then who’s worse at it? Who’s gonna take care of it?

HANNA BAER

That and also like when you are building a business, it is very different. In Montreal, I had a private clinic that grew organically, so I had in that sense already—but it grew organically. I didn’t—I never had to do any marketing because I had a waitlist and then you get to a situation where you both have to work together, where one has more experience being an entrepreneur in a way—not totally and the other has always been an employee. Those are two very different mindsets. That’s looking at things in a totally different way. In addition, I am a big picture thinker and it’s interesting because you really discover of each other how the other person learns and that is something—or addresses problems and that is something that you don’t discover, or at least I didn’t, in just regular married life because you don’t need to go as deep in understanding that, so I need to understand the big picture and I go from there into the detail. My husband goes from the detail into the bigger picture. Wow that is tough—that you really need to understand each other not to lose your patience with each other. I can lose my patience with my husband. Like, “My gosh, you drive me crazy. Let go of that detail. It’s just—seriously, can we move on?” and for him, it’s like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m missing all kinds of details. I cannot see the bigger picture without the details.” That’s taken a while to understand that of each other. That has definitely caused—we’re not the fighting type, by the way. Not at all, so I won’t say it has caused fights because that’s just not how we function, but that has really taken a lot of patience with the other trying to understand where the other is coming from, having these light bulb moments where you’re like, “That is how you see things,” and the interesting part I think then and the real challenge becomes not how can I change you because that’s always a losing battle but how can I change how I explained things so that you quicker come to how I lead to—man, it’s a journey.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

I love that you’re not the fighting type would you say that’s like resentment? Like you just—

HANNA BAER

No.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Okay, good.

HANNA BAER

No. You have to realize—I think it was a real blessing that I left far from my then-fiancé. We always joke that there’s a plaque on the wall of the [inaudible] building dedicated to us because that was before the time of now, where you so easily—I can talk to my parents while driving the car because my parents live in Holland, which is insane, but we were forced because we didn’t see each other and because there were long periods of time that we didn’t see each other and I was already 31 when I met my husband, so you have baggage, and we both needed to work through a lot of baggage before.

Well, that’s not totally true we both wanted to really be together so there were a lot of baggage that holds you back, baggage that creates fear, baggage that creates insecurity, baggage because you might because of which you might misunderstand the other and if you then don’t see each other you’re forced to really communicate, and I think that that for us has been separate from the fact that we are people that for whom that really is important, I think that has been a big gift because that has definitely set a tone for our marriage.

I think that as a woman working with my husband, I had to really look at the role that I have taken on as a woman in a relationship and in the business. My husband is a feminist. That is not me who says that. [It’s] our daughters. We have two daughters and our youngest said at one point, “Abba, you have set the bar really high because how am I gonna find a husband because you have set the bar really high. You’re a raging feminist and you always praise Ima,” and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s true,” then why did I take on the role of thinking that he is the CEO that bigger decisions should be made by him? If I take the lead, am I going to make him feel bad? I will still do everything in the house and around the family even though the roles have changed totally in being both business owners, so that is a big part of how do you make it work together because that’s where resentments will start setting in and that to me, that has been almost the biggest part of the journey because that is not something that he has put on me. He never said like, “You’re responsible for the house and I’m not,” so why did I take that on to the extent? It’s interesting because we have had a lot of discussions looking back on how we started our marriage life and how things evolved between us, where we were like, “Why did we do it like that? We didn’t even discuss that. That was automatic. Wow.”

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

It’s automatic. It’s based on what you grew up seeing. It’s based on what you believe is supposed to be. There’s so much. I’ll tell you from my life, there’s so much guilt and shame about me letting go of meal planning and my husband being in charge of supper or that my husband does all the laundry and I just have to put it away. It was born from that frustration of like, “Wait, I’m doing this and this and this,” and it’s not because anybody made me but because that’s just how I was supposed to do it. No.

HANNA BAER

And who told you that you’re supposed to do it like that?

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

That’s the thing. Nobody said it but we assume that’s what was expected and I think it’s also from hearing everyone else complain about how much they have to do, so you’re like oh it makes sense because we all have to do it. No, no, no.

HANNA BAER

Bat-Chen, I have another question then. I have another question for you because that is something that I also found fascinating. It’s like, in your head that you want to let go of it. You have a husband who is totally willing to step in. There’s absolutely no problem there, then why is it so hard—I don’t think I’m a control freak, okay? I really don’t think I’m a control freak but I’m discovering that I am because how hard is it to let go of certain things where your husband is 100% totally fine to step into it and then because you’ve been always doing it to not go like, “It’s okay to do it your way. You don’t have to do it my way.” That is ridiculous.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

And that’s the symptom, by the way. That’s just a symptom of how we have a hard time letting go to God because God says, “I got you. I’m taking care of this,” and you’re like, “Yeah, I know but I just have to make sure it’s done the way I want it to be done,” or, “I just want to make sure that I’m still holding on to it, to take responsibility, or to take credit or to something—” We’re so—

One time, there was this exercise where this woman was saying you have to close your eyes and let go of this specific thing that is holding you back and just let God take care of it. So, I was all excited I went to my backyard and I took a deep breath and I closed my eyes and I let go and I open my eyes, I have not let go. It sounds easy but not easy. Not easy at all. So, then I did it a couple of times and eventually, I slowly was like, “Okay, I’m letting go a little bit. Ah, no. I can’t. Why can’t I? Why?” and it’s really deep.

I think one is condition. We’re conditioned to hold on to things because if not then they won’t be done or they won’t be done right. It’s also the lack of trust that it will all be okay.

HANNA BAER

I think that that’s what it is in the end because it I don’t think—it’s interesting because towards our own children, we can be, in my opinion, more generous than we can be towards our partner.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Oh, yes, and also we put ourselves last.

HANNA BAER
Yeah, oh yeah. For sure. That’s for sure. That’s a big deal. That’s a real big deal.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

I have a bonus episode it was called the Hot Topic Bonus. I did it like maybe a year ago but it’s a really good one because it was about priorities. Somebody asked the question about priorities and then I went into what the real, the right way to prioritize is, and the way that we automatically do things. Priority number one is God because He runs the world and He’s here like we’re here for Him, so you have to figure [out] Am I aligning to what He wants or am I not because that’s the first place where you start getting that conflict is if this is aligned, then it really goes smoothly and things just flow and if it’s not aligned then I am feeling a disconnect.

HANNA BAER

Which is the hardest to do.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Yes, it’s not easy deepest then there is you because if you don’t take care of yourself then you won’t be able to take care of anyone else. If you cut yourself off and say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Everybody else is more important.” You’ve just cut off everything. It’s not fair to them, it’s not fair to you, it’s not fair to God because He put you here to take care of you before anyone else. You cannot do that, so you have to be next and then your marriage is first before your kids and that’s really hard for people because everything for—

HANNA BAER

And your business

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

What and before your business. Yeah, I would put business under kids. Yeah, I would say that your family comes first before your business. In my Mastermind, the whole point is that God is the core and then we have marriage and business and parenting and all the stuff that’s happening in life and then you, as a container,  to hold all these things and when you align it all correctly and make sure that you’re prioritizing according to the seasons and the rhythms, then things will flow. There doesn’t have to be a balance where everything’s always exactly balanced that doesn’t—

HANNA BAER

That’s always wonky—

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

That’s always wonky and uneven. There is a rhythm and [a] seasons and like sometimes the business is taking up and sometimes the family needs more time and sometimes there’s holidays and sometimes there’s a fluidity to life that’s really beautiful and there’s tools that you could use in order to make that flow. So, I really like that.

The way to mirror that for business is that God is first in business too because He is the ultimate [inaudible] and He’s putting you here to do your mission. You both feel very called to do that mission and then you have to take care of you because you’re the CEO of the company and without you, nothing will run so you can’t—

HANNA BAER

That’s essential what you just said because you’re not both the CEO.

It’s when I met my husband, my dad asked me the question is this a person with whom you feel you can run a business and there wasn’t even on the table at that moment. Is this a person with whom you can run a business because family is like a business. In a family, you both have your roles, like we said earlier and whether those roles work or not, that is a constant adjustment but there is clarity in the roles in a family. When you start a business together, the clarity of roles is not there and it is not automatically that the husband is the CEO or the wife is the CEO. Those roles, especially in a business, really and I think much more than in a than in a family, because in a family you have and even more like we said earlier that the traditional roles that come in, but in a business you really have to find out where are each other’s talents and where are each other’s weaknesses, and in our business, I’m the CEO and because I am the big picture thinker and my husband is the clinical like the details of the clinical and how it all fits into each other. That’s totally his strength but to get to that clarity and then to say one to the other when you step on each other’s roles to say, “Wait a second, you’re not responsible for that we’re both founders so you need to know the bigger picture but you’re not responsible for the bigger picture,” that I think is the big challenge of being in business together. It’s a much more subtle almost it’s a much more subtle adjustment of roles all the time because it’s not as clearly defined.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

And you know that’s beautiful is that you’re the CEO and some of the other interviews in this season are not as clear. Some of them will be like, “We’re both CEO,” so who makes a decision on what is very difficult. It gets really tricky and like you said, automatically we want to make our husband the CEO because it makes sense. It’s how we work it’s how we brought up how everybody is doing it it’s just like oh that’s the automatic but like what if I have the strengths of the CEO? What if the whole business will just like sit around and rot if they do it because they’re not into pushing things and being like, “God, let’s do this,” and, “Let’s do that.” Big picture. I love what you’re saying.

So here’s the question though. Do you have a team? Do you delegate the things that you’re both not strong at?

HANNA BAER

We are reaching that point, yeah, where we have to start doing that and there you see also the role of the CEO because I’m saying we just have to do that because in the bigger picture that makes sense and my husband is much more like, “No, we can do it ourselves,” because you’re losing time and energy, yes, to the little things that are draining because that’s not where your unique abilities are. Your unique abilities are with the kids. I mean, I always used to joke my husband can get a stick to talk. Sometimes it’s because there’s such a—he can be so subtle with the interaction with kids. This is not because it’s my husband. I’m totally not objective there. It’s others that have said that. Baruch Hashem. Thank God that it’s just fun to watch him interact with the kid because at any age, he can get—even if he doesn’t speak the language, he can get a child to interact with him and that is not where my strength is. My strength is much more in the diagnostic thinking. Again, it’s like the bigger picture. So, that’s where you have—where you need the other person. You need the person to do that and not like do all the little nitty-gritty little things. So, yeah there. That is very much where you see you need a different way of thinking. You’re not responsible. You don’t have to be responsible for everything.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Yes, and the most amazing thing happens when a lot of times I talk about marriage being the old-fashioned way—was the man was always on top, the woman was always on bottom and then marriage coaching—counseling—and there was no coaching then—but marriage counseling and therapy was like, “Let’s get the woman to the level where she could have a conversation and be an equal,” but what happened now was we’ve empowered women so much as a society and culturally that women are on top and men are on [the] bottom and then the more you empower her, the more the gap starts to get really, really big and there’s this gaping hole between their mindsets and their understandings and their ability to connect and so people think, Okay, well the more I empower myself the more the gap will grow so I should not empower myself anymore. Just keep yourself small and stay there saying not to make it worse. Just keep the balance. Don’t step on any more eggshells. Just stop. But really, what I’ve found as a coach is that when you stop thinking about how it’s taking away from the marriage that you grow and you actually take responsibility for your growth, the real growth, the inner growth, the connection to God, the alignment, the ability to lean into your purpose, what it is that I need to take responsibility for, then it no longer makes it about who’s higher than who, then you’re both even, then you’re both equal because you’re both human and you’re both here for God’s purpose and you’re both here on the same mission to connect to God and to bring God’s light in the world, and so suddenly it changes the whole game because you brought God into it, and that that lights me up. That’s what I do all day. It’s like, bring God into it because that is the only thing that will save your marriage. If not, you keep having these women who are like, “Oh, I outgrow my marriage and that’s why I just can’t stay married anymore.” It’s like, “No, no, no. That’s not gonna work,” and then you have the women who are like, “Oh, I don’t want to grow up. I’ll grow my marriage so I’m not going to lean into my purpose.” That’s not good either. There is another option which is heal it and make it really, really good.

HANNA BAER

Because you don’t have to become empowered over the back of the other person. It’s like you don’t become empowered by breaking down the other. That’s just—

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

And I think was one of the things that I was trying to do for a long time was I was trying to pull him along. I was going up the hill, like pulling him along with me, so it was like I was carrying a lot of weight.

HANNA BAER

Yeah, I recognize that.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Yes, I’m sure because it’s very common and I did it for a long time too. I would push him like, “Come on, come on. You can do this and you should do that, and let’s work together and let’s go to this and let’s work on our mindset together,” and I don’t know whatever stuff was working for me. I was trying to like push it down to him and pull him up and there was a lot of exhaustion because I was in charge of his growth and he wasn’t moving so it was like dead weight that I was carrying up and it was taking slowing me down and making him really frustrated like, “Why are you trying to change me?”

HANNA BAER

That’s an interesting one. That’s a very interesting one because what you just said like you are responsible for his growth. That’s a very tricky one. That’s a very tricky one. Also in having a business, like you said earlier, give it over to God. If you are a spiritual person, and I’m on purpose saying not a religious person, if you are as a spiritual person and you see how closely connected your spiritual growth is with your business then the necessity for your business partner to be on the same page with that becomes even more important and then to let go of the other also in that respect because forget it you have had your own process, so the other also needs their own process—that is a huge step I found that maybe even more difficult than the nitty gritty of the business because a lot of anxiety I found—like what I never anticipated in in starting a business together or in general not even together is that you are on a constant roller coaster and to be able to stay on that roller coaster and literally not fall off the roller coaster is because of that—because of the spiritual part and then if the other is not doing it the same way or is not at that same point to let go of that, that is I think the deepest breath to take and the harder you push, the least it works. That’s with anything. That’s with our partners, it’s with our kids and it works the other way around too. “Keep pushing me and I’ll also go into the opposite direction,” so it’s only fair that it doesn’t work the other way around either but that I find that that is the big challenge and the interesting thing is that I see that that has changed. It’s interesting. I see my husband make discoveries of things that we have spoken about before and I’m really talking about the spiritual part, also of the business part but it comes from that spiritual, and it’s interesting because my husband is a very spiritual person, so it’s not like, “Oh, he had not like looked into that.” It’s not like that at all but it’s like where it comes to combined with the business, I see him making discoveries and saying things or I’m thinking We’ve talked about that before but because I have let go and I haven’t totally let go because what I have been visualizing and focusing on is like I have this vision of us in a joyful way working together. That’s what I what I keep focusing on because I do believe that we will be able to do that that it’s not the nitty-gritty of the business and I see that happening, so I think that letting go that’s a big, big step—that letting go of the spiritual part, having the other person have their own process because again there, it’s also their also anxiety is connected to that because you want the business to grow. We grew very fast, by the way. We really grew very fast. We grew within the COVID period—is when our business started to grow very fast, so that’s the other funny part because what you tend to do is you’re all in life and also in business, you tend to look at what is not working and not on what is yes, working, so we had certain goals and I’m all the time thinking going ahead, going ahead, going ahead, and at one point, I took a step back and I think, “Wait a second. We reached our goal. We need a new goal.”

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

In my retreat, I have a virtual retreat and one of the things that I talk about is how I have a CALM Method—that’s like the four letter—C-A-L-M, the CALM Method, which basically allows you to let go and let the other person take responsibility for himself because you’re no longer responsible for him and what happens, which is magic and it’s amazing it’s this is how God created it, but we don’t think it’s possible until we actually see it come alive because it blows your mind is instead of you carrying the dead weight, you suddenly are being pushed by your husband. You have the support, you have the the assistance and the emotional, physical, technical, advisal—he just wants you to succeed and he wants you to be happy and he takes responsibility over himself to make sure that you are being supported, so without you having to do anything just working on yourself and taking responsibility for yourself and letting go of what is not yours, you suddenly turn around and realize that oh the walk up hill has become really much easier and it’s because I’ve let go and somehow the transformation happened without me even realizing. It’s behind your back because you’re so focused on yourself. You suddenly have this like, “Oh, and now it gets easier and it’s in flow, and it’s nice. This is nice. I could get used to this,” but you should get used to it. That’s how it should be because he wants you to succeed. He loves you. He wants the best for you, so let’s let him support you in the best way possible and it’s amazing to watch. I love watching when the women come back from retreat to retreat to update me on how they’re doing and, because it’s a free retreat so people can go and sign up. I’ll put the link on the screen, but yeah people are amazed at how this works because it always works.

HANNA BAER

It’s interesting what you’re saying because I think that that is something that even works with our kids.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Oh yes it works amazing.

HANNA BAER

It’s amazing we made Aliyah. We came back to Israel with two teenagers and instead stepping back and trusting their path that I think with everything that we did, with the support and in all, which ways that we were there for them because they really were our major priority, but it’s that trusting their path with the difficulties because you want–that’s the same with for me at least the same with my husband, I want to protect my kids. I want to protect my husband. It’s like you want to protect your family. It’s like letting go. I mean, you say it’s giving it over. I think that that is the best, the biggest service that you can do to the other person. It’s very, very, very powerful.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Yes. Yeah. Oh, this has been such a fun conversation.

HANNA BAER

Good. I’m enjoying it too.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

I love it. I love it and we have a heart and a like and everybody is like, “Yay!”

How can people find you because the work you do is just phenomenal and I wish all kids had the access to what you’re doing.

HANNA BAER

So do I. Pretty much, I think that that for me is always the biggest, biggest challenge to keep my balance with how much nonsense I see going on and judgment and just judging a person with even a kid that comes in with major behavioral difficulties, that’s a person. That’s a person is not the behavioral difficulty it’s the person behind that behavioral difficulty. Anyways, that’s a whole other hour we could talk about that.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

But I think that it’s all parallels because we’re all talking about the same thing, which is the holistic and the connection with that divine spark. So you’re if you’re looking at the symptoms and you’re trying to fix the other person it’s never going to work and if you t help them see that they have the power over themselves and that they can do anything they want to do if they just believe in it and push through and want it enough then it’s mad it’s magical. It really is just like such a pleasure to watch when people come alive, and for you even more—

HANNA BAER

The light comes on. That’s huge. So, we offer a 30-minute free get to know each other session where parents really can see like what it is that we do and we are very straightforward. We see if we are the right people to help somebody. They can find us at our website. We have a page on Facebook at Neuro-Fun, Whole-Child and our website is www.neuro-fun.com/ neuro hyphen fun dot com. I don’t know I see it I can chat with the hosts and other guests here but I don’t know if I put it on there actually.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

We’ll put it down in the in the comments. Neuro-fun. I love that. Who knew the brain could be so much fun?

HANNA BAER

Oh, it’s not just the brain. It’s the body—just it’s interesting because if you look at how gorgeous the body is, that’s where you see God too. It’s so it’s a miracle how everything works. It’s so beautiful.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Yeah, if you’d pause and look at anything, you will find God. It is so magnificent. It’s the work that we’re here to do—is find God in everything and bring God into everything. That is what I’m all about. I love that you said that. Ah this makes me happy.

Thank you so much, Hanna. I love speaking with you. We are going to for sure and—

HANNA BAER

Yes, I enjoyed it very much too.

REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN

Thank you, thank you, and everybody who’s listening is welcome to check out the links in the description. Come back next time to hear our wonderful lives that have all that have to do all about marriage and all that good stuff how to make your life feel Connected for Real.

And that’s it! Thank you for listening to the very end. I would love if you can leave a review and subscribe to the podcast. Those are things that tell the algorithm, this is a good podcast and make sure to suggest it to others. Wouldn’t it be amazing if more people became more connected for real? And now, take a moment and think of someone who might benefit from this episode. Can you share it with them? I am Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman from connectedforreal.com. Thank you so much for listening, and don’t forget, you can be connected for real.

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