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About this episode

Are you and your partner living your best shared life, or just navigating the daily grind side-by-side?

Many couples get caught up in routines, letting old patterns and outside pressures shape their relationships by default. The possibility of building something inspired by both partners’ deepest dreams and values can feel elusive, especially when life’s challenges, stresses, or feelings of being stuck appear insurmountable.

In this episode, listeners are guided through a transformative approach to co-creating a shared future with their significant other. The conversation explores the concept and practice of dream building as a couple, providing actionable steps to create a clear, compelling vision together. You'll discover how to honor and support each other’s aspirations (even if they differ), learn practical tools to sidestep habitual negativity, and understand the science behind emotional connection and growth. Whether your relationship feels stagnant or you’re looking to deepen your intimacy, this episode offers a roadmap for moving from conflict and limitation to collaboration, curiosity, and mutual empowerment.

Mary Morrissey is the founder of the Brave Thinking Institute, the world's premier provider of transformational training and coaching. Through life-changing books, events and programs, Mary has helped millions of people tap into the power within them to achieve new levels of success and experience a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.

Episode Highlights

07:57 How having a shared vision as a couple can deepen your connection and help you navigate even the toughest challenges together.

10:20 Why moving from simply imagining your dreams to clearly blueprinting them is essential for bringing your vision to life.

16:28 The importance of getting specific with your dreams and honoring both partners’ aspirations.

25:46 Practicing daily gratitude and shifting your mindset to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

28:56 Setting intentions for your day and visualizing the outcomes you want.

33:12 Simple three-phase process of blueprinting, bridging, and building your dreams.

38:26 How to overcome perceived limitations.

42:36 What to do when your partner is not on board.

44:48 Transform moments of tension and discover additional resources to keep growing together.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Take a deep breath together before important conversations to foster presence.
• Individually write a detailed vision for your ideal future in health, relationships, vocation, and time/money freedom.
• Share these visions openly without editing or judging each other.
• Give space for each partner’s unique dreams, even if they’re different or seem unlikely.
• Actively imagine how you would feel if your dream life was already true.
• Practice daily gratitude for your partner and relationship.
• Commit to one small action each day that moves you toward your shared dreams.
• Tell your partner three things you appreciate about them each day, expecting nothing in return.

Mentioned

Brave Thinking (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Building The Vision of Your Dreams Meditation (free guided meditation)(link)

Shifting Criticism For Connected Communication

Connect with Mary Morrissey

Websites: bravethinkinginstitute.com

Facebook: facebook.com/bravethinkinginstitute

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YouTube: youtube.com/@bravethinkinginstitute

Instagram: instagram.com/bravethinkinginstitute

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/brave-thinking-institute

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

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Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

If you have a topic you would like it to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. 

Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon, if you purchase the book from this link.

Episode Transcript

Mary, thank you for joining us. It is a deep privilege and honor to be sharing this time with you and to share you with my audience. Many people, who have been listening to the show for a long time, have heard me mention you, as you've been such an influence in my life. So thank you for saying yes and being here.

I'm thrilled to be here, Jessica. It's my privilege.

Yes, and we're going to be looking at how to dream-build and vision with a significant other. This is something you have brought to the world and have such gift and genius around. I know that you have a story, and this could be the whole talk to talk about how this became your life's work. But for people who maybe just are getting to know you here, what would you like to share around dream-building and how this became of importance for you?

It became of importance to me because I was diagnosed with a fatal kidney disease and told that, at the most, I might have six months to live. The science that was available in 1967 when this occurred, there were no transplants, no dialysis. Then a woman who understood dream-building came to my hospital bed and suggested that in this infinite, we know it now through science, there's every possibility that could ever be, ever has been. It exists in this energy, and the one that we most get coherent with is the one that's going to be ours. So when you're in a coupling and one of you has a dream that isn't shared by the other, or the other one has a dream and you're not sharing that, the ability to bring those into coherence has not only the ability to bring greater dreams than you've ever imagined into your lives, but a deepening of the love that brought you together in the first place, and the whole new levels of that that are always available to us if we're just willing to go deeper.

So I followed the process she gave me. This is before we knew mind-body science, in Harvard, UCLA, Stanford, none of the major teaching hospitals. They're all over the United States now and the world. The idea that the emotional side of our nature has everything to do with the physical side of our nature. Why, often, do we have stomach pain? Because we're in emotional pain. So I didn't know that I was in deep emotional pain at the time. The story is longer, but the net result was, I was in emotional pain and there was a lot of self-loathing going on in me. Toxic thinking, toxic body. So how then we change our results so we have a closer relationship? This is empowered relationships, what we're doing in this podcast.

So these are some empowerment tools for creating a life of a shared vision. Not exactly the same. Each of you are individuals. But that there's enough shared vision for a life you would love living, that's more expansive and with growing goals, over the course of your marriage or your connection. There's some tools for that, and there's some science behind it. Because almost everyone has dreams. Very few people understand the art and science of building dreams. My work in the world, since I was able to build the dream of greater health, and then I began to study decades of other people's work regarding this and put it together in a coherent system that works. I'm seeing it work with thousands and thousands of people all over the world, changing their results and creating the vision of a much closer marriage or connection relationship, with untold depths to be discovered and brought forth. The gift of that kind of love is that love changes everything about us. So that's my work.

Well, thank you for speaking specifically to partnership, intimate relating, and the love and the connection and what can come from applying dream-building principles to this partnership, and the possibilities. You're also giving some insight to how this can be applied in different domains of living. So physical health. I mean, I know that it can be applied to any domain of life. You're speaking about really serious hardships or conditions that might feel impossible, that still, the science and all that you've been able to bring into a system works, and you've seen it over and over and over again. So I'm hearing that for people listening, that even if you feel this overwhelm, stuckness, or bind in your condition or circumstance, that this can be a path to develop a different outcome that is more in alignment with a dream or a vision. So for people listening who might not know, we're speaking about dream-building, we're speaking about vision, and you have a whole way in which you look at what dream-building is. Do you want to help people understand that?

So as I mentioned, very few people understand dream-building. So dreaming just keeps us in, we use our imagination. We imagine: Oh, wouldn't it be great if we could do a European trip together, or we could take our kids to wherever it is in the world, Disneyland? Or whatever your vision of these longings that come, what would I love, and the discontents that we feel, of feeling hemmed in or not able to do the things we want. So I call those holy signals from the soul. That longing and that discontent is really life speaking to us, that there's more life seeking to happen by means of us. Most of us look to our conditions for permission to have a life that we would love, for a family, for whatever it is in your expression.

So dream-building has an art and a science to it. We bring those two things together, and as Henry David Thoreau said, you pass an invisible boundary, and all sorts of things begin to happen. Because the lack of difficulty was not in the world. It is in us. Then our way of interacting with all possibility generates the result we have. So how do we get to something that we would really love? So number one, you have to dream it up. No dream comes true if you don't dream it up. But not just a casual, like: I would just love to have more money at the end of the month. I'd love for us to have more money at the end of the month.

When we're working with physics, the art is in the definite specific vision, where you can imaginally step in and you literally can see it. We're on the plane, we're going to Disneyland with our kids. There's plenty of money in the bank for all the things we wanted to do while we're there. We're staying in a very nice place. So you're casting a vision of a segment of your life that just brings you alive, that's just like, I would love that! It doesn't matter what that is. It matters that you get a crystal clear picture of it. There's something called the law of specificity. You know it to be true with building a dream house. You've got to get a really clear blueprint. It can't be casual. You don't go to the builder and say, build me a bigger house than I have, one that I like. The best builder in the world can't build that. But if you say, I want a four-bedroom or a three-bedroom, I want it on a cliff, I want it near the ocean, I want it downtown in a high-rise, whatever you would love. 

To get specific about that is number one. You have to blueprint that dream, so that you imagine it with crystal clear clarity, definiteness, and measurability. Meaning, you wouldn't say, since I love to travel, in my dream, I'm traveling all over the world. Well, you're not going to travel all over the world. None of us have enough time in one lifetime to go all over the world. But we could go to some of the places in the world, and you could travel 24/7 and not go to all the places in the world. So we went to Paris.

One time in a DreamBuilder event I was doing, a woman came out of the crowd. She thought she couldn't dream because she had a lot of stories. So we just began to work with unpacking. She said, I can't dream, you don't understand. I brought her to the stage. She wanted to tell me everything that had happened in her life, why she'd been hurt and couldn't dream. I said, all that's true. But in this moment, if you keep breathing three more years, you're going to have a life. Not maybe, absolutely. If you still were having life, would you want good health in that life? Well, yes, I would want good health, and I want my husband to have good health too. I said, and where might you live? Do you want to continue to live where you're living now? No, we've dreamed of it, but we can probably never do it. But our dream was to live in New Mexico. I've always loved those adobe houses. If I could live anywhere, I'd live in New Mexico, and I'd have an adobe house, the kind that was built before 1940 with the arch doorways. That'd be what I'd love to live in.

Then I said, so if you could travel anywhere, where would you love to travel? She said, Wyoming, I have always wanted to go to Wyoming. And Mary, me, I'm thinking somebody would want to go to Paris or go to the Taj Mahal, or dreams that I have about traveling. But they're not my dreams, they're her dreams, what brings her alive. I said, and what would you do in Wyoming? Then she got very tearful, and she said, I would go there, and there's a place I could go and volunteer for two weeks, where you are given the ability to love animals back to life who have been used in medical experimentations. That was her dream. So then I just simply helped her see that it wasn't that she couldn't dream, she just hadn't had the support to take what she actually would love and shape it into a vision. But that's the first part of dream-building, blueprinting.

Then the other is what we call bridging, it's phase two, which means that then we practice being a match for the dream we have, not then, but now. You can't actually get to your dream. You have to come from your dream. Let me explain that in a way that's easy to understand. So let's imagine you and your spouse dream something, and you know that this dream you have, you don't have the money for it, maybe your jobs don't give you the time to do it, whatever the constraints are as to why you don't already have that result.

Well, how do you do that, if you don't have the money and you don't have this and that? You get your attention off circumstances and situations. We're not denying them, but we're denying the power they have over the spirit indwelling you. That there is a power breathing you. You can't even breathe your own breath one time or make your heart beat one time on your own power. Spirit of life is given unto every one of us, and it is willing to give us as much of itself (life) as we're willing to allow.

This is a new kind of thinking, where you're thinking and living from a vision. So with a partner, the first step is to create a vision that has lots of different varieties to it that answers what you would each love. To make welcome when your partner says something where you're going: Hmm, I don't know about that, I don't know if we can do that. There's just no editing. The beginning of visioning is that there's no editing between you. You each individually write, if you could imagine your life three years from now, what components would you love to have in it, where are you? There's four to address. One is our health. The other is relationships, to describe ideal relationships: ours, kids, parents, friends, whatever it is that you would shape as an image into a life. This is the relationship part of your life, the health part of your life, fully life-giving to you.

So you want to know, give your partner some space, as they're writing their own vision, to begin to unearth really what they would love. We're in a world where we spend so much of our time dealing with what's coming at us, that to take some time and really inquire and listen about what's seeking to come from us. Just the very act of doing the visioning together will bring you closer if you're not editing your partner's ideas. So just every idea is welcome here as you begin this process. It's four domains. Health, relationships.

Then, vocation. It doesn't mean your earning income. Vocare is what you do with your time and talent. For some of us, we do earn an income doing what we love doing with our time and talent. We have professions, or we take jobs. But in your vision, what are you doing with your time and talent that really brings you alive? You let that vision be a north star. So to hear what your partner's vocational dreams are, and your vocational dreams.

The last quadrant. So you have health, relationships, vocation. Time and money (freedom). So time and money (freedom) shows up in our bank account and in our calendar. So we would love to do something, but there's no room in our calendar. Or we would love to do something, and there's not the money to do it with. But we don't let that keep us from having the dream. So in this dream, if you did have time freedom, if you did have money freedom, and you do this just so that you can know what you would love. Because once you know what you would love, and there's some simple steps you take, without changing the circumstances that you're facing right now, it's an amazing thing how you begin to—and there's a science for this—attract to you, circumstances, situations, and conditions that help you begin to establish new patterns that produce a different life.

Your results are only produced one of two ways. Either by design, so you have a blueprint for it, or default, and you keep thinking the same thinking. Yeah, I would love that, but we don't have that. We keep thinking the same thoughts and we keep having the same results. You know that's true because you go to holiday dinners with perhaps a larger family you're related to, and you only see them once a year. You ask Uncle George, how are you doing? And he gives you the same story he had last year. He's living by default. Then you look at your own life and say, am I living by default? But in a partnership, you can support each other. Just do an experiment. Just make it an experiment that let's imagine a life that we absolutely love together in four areas, and you each write your own, and then share them with each other. You're going to see a lot of intersections. But remember, the key to this is no editing. So your partner isn't diminished or shut down. Even if part of you is going, how the hell are we ever going to do that? We're not doing that.

Right. It just sounds so critical to give support, as you said, with the attendant or the participant that came up to you and was really describing all the reasons why this is so difficult.

I've got to finish that story. A few years later, I'm doing the same seminar. We've got a thousand people there, and we're in Los Angeles. On one of the breaks, this little woman who I had forgotten, I talk to so many people in person, when she walked up, I said, you look familiar to me. She said, well, do you know who I am? I said, well, I don't know your name, but I can remember we must have had a talk sometime. She goes, I'm the woman who couldn't dream. I said, oh yes. Well, how are you doing? She says, we live in New Mexico, we live in an adobe house with my beautiful arch door, and I'm going to show you a picture of it. And guess where I just came back from? Wyoming, I've had a great two weeks. And just the life emanating from this woman. Captured a vision, believing there was no way for her to have it. But once she had the vision and she began to do that practice of endeavoring to live the life she imagined, each day a little bit, all sorts of things began to shift for her. Which is of course what Thoreau says and others.

So it's worthy of an experiment with our own lives, because this is our only one and true life in this constellation that we know of. So to experience all of what life can give us that we would allow in our lives, is a beautiful way to begin to practice as a coupling, coming closer together, knowing that that love that brought us together has no limit. Love can be experienced, and how we can be more in love and more connected, honoring each other, celebrating each other, in ways that actually grow us and the relationship at the same time.

It seems like such a special, and I'm almost like sacred and having reverence for this ability to support one another, and also just individually to give room for this life, the creative development and growth within us as you're speaking. That it needs energy, it needs attention, it needs to have space to be responded to or lived from, as you said. Yet, the habitual tendencies and the patterns, whether or not it's our thinking or our conditions, that tend to become what people focus on. So like you said, that's true, or we're not negating that that is a part of your experience. And what is also true is giving room and space for life that's in you, emerging in you. Not only is that also true, but there's something bigger that you're speaking to, the evolution, the growth, the possibility, and that we get to partner with that as an individual person having a dream and being able to work that.

But then to be able to be in partnership, where we can have reverence for one another's dream, and almost how sacred that is, that life, and not to edit or poo-poo it, if you will. To really give room for possibility, even if it might feel threatening on the front-end. Like, I don't understand how that would happen or fit. But just to be in the place of wonder and curiosity. Am I hearing that right?

Yeah.

So the experiment, you're encouraging people to do this experiment. You also talked about even when your conditions or your circumstances don't seem to be a match. Do you want to speak to the bridging, you said the second step?

Bridging is the physics. It's the science of it. So when you dream up a dream, there's a vibrational match to that dream. So you step into it imaginally and you test, does it give me life? Would I love this life? If not, if there's a part of it that goes: Well, I would love that too. Make the dream. There's no too big a dream. The important thing is that you want to build, in your mind and on paper, a dream that you would love. That it answers the question, what would I love? We have been trained, from the time we were little kids, to ask: what can I do, what does my money say I can do, what do you think I can do? We look outside of ourselves, to circumstances, situations, conditions—meaning permission or agreement from others, what others think we can do—as the frame from which we live our little life. When all the while, we are more than all of that.

So bridging then is, once this is the life I would love. When I step inside that imaginally, I feel like this. When I'm in this life, I feel like that. So you're going to be in this life as this other life can come into existence. So we bless the life we're in, we live in gratitude. Gratitude is the frequency that's harmonious with abundance. Most people have knee-jerk gratitude. Meaning, if you do something nice for me, say something nice to me, surprise support of some kind comes in, I respond with gratitude. Now that's different than generating gratitude. You generate gratitude for being alive. You generate gratitude for the opportunities that are here. It's a practice. But what that does is it puts you in a higher vibration. So your dream, by definition, is a higher vibration than the struggle life.

So struggle life has a lot of density to it. So when we dream a dream, we feel free. It's airy at first. But we want to put the construction of enough. In physics, it's called mass, where you think from this enough. You're taking little baby steps of things you could do with what you have from where you are. So visioning, vibration, and action tie together.

If I say, Jessica, I'm feeling anxious, Jessica is going to ask me: Well, let's talk about what's going on, what you're thinking. Well, I'm thinking about the anxiety of this. I'm thinking anxiety-producing thoughts, my body tells me I'm feeling anxious. So you don't have to wait for your body to tell you, you actually choose the vibration. But if I'm thinking that regardless of whether I believe it or not, other people have achieved extraordinary things with what seemed like very little means. So why would I not want to do experiment with my own potential, with the potential we all have?

So bridging is very much like we all use technology, our cellphones, our television. When I pick up the remote control for my television and if I turn it on, maybe what my husband was watching or what I've been watching, that same channel is the first one that comes up. So the pictures on that channel are exactly a match to the vibration of the broadcast. So the broadcast, if it's CNN, I can count on it that I'm going to have problems, difficulty, fear-inducing suggestions. So adrenaline, cortisol, all these things are going to happen in my body if I'm always tuned to drama, difficulty, what bad things could happen. We turn the TV off, but it's a challenge to turn us off from the drama channel when we have a habit of thinking from what's wrong, what's missing, how long is it going to take, what's wrong with us.

So we start first with the dream, and then we begin to practice. If this all worked out, how would I feel? You just completely eliminate the how it's going to work out. If you get stuck in the how, you will never build your dreams. If you knew how to do it, you'd already have it. So there's a thinking that's at a higher level and a different frequency than the one I've been on.

So this works with just having a better day. So you imagine, when you wake up in the morning, first thing I'm going to do is be grateful that I'm given another day of life. I got to wake up today, not everybody did on this planet. Many people this morning just didn't wake up. But I got to wake up, this is my day. To start that day in gratitude. Then imagine, it's the end of the day, as you're moving through the first phase of your day. If I'm fortunate enough to breathe all these hours of the day, which is highly likely, I will have created a day. What day do I want to create? How do I want to feel as I'm getting ready for bed? You make that a vision for this day, that I want to be saying nicer things to my spouse today. I want to be a better spouse today. I want to be a greater parent today, or a more influential difference-making person at the work I'm doing. 

But what would matter to you that when you got done with this day? You would say, for me, I would say: Well done, Mary. I'm not asking for perfection, but I'm asking for progress. So I've got a vision for my day, and then I practice coming from that vision. Measured at the end of the day, I can see some ons, I was really on there, and offs a little bit. So next time, if I had it to do over again, I would do this. You're actually changing the frequency just right then in your imagination, and you're much more likely then tomorrow to live from the vision you have up for the next day.

So it's a way to make it simple. And you're also speaking, you and your husband, just now and then—you and your spouse, you and your wife, you and whoever your partner is. Always, there's a partnership between you and the power breathing you. That you have a vision for what really matters to you, and each day is like a block in the building of that. That if I make this block solid, where I'm doing everything I can do today, and I'm not asking for perfection of myself, but I'm leaning into progress, you're going to see that because your vibration is changing, that attracts to you all kinds of things you can't make happen.

You're having different thoughts. As you said, the emotional nervous system experience and whole system, that you're going to think different thoughts if you're in a different state emotionally, or connecting with the vision or the dream that's different than perhaps your habitual or what you've been experiencing up until then, you're going to think differently. I mean, this is true, I'm sure people can relate, if they're at an engagement, some function, and they're meeting with people maybe that they met for the first time, that are doing things in the industry of interest. Like, let's say I have an interest, you mentioned animals, of opening up an animal sanctuary, and then I meet somebody that knows somebody. I'm going to hear different thoughts and get different ideas by having that conversation, that I wouldn't have ever maybe had, had I not had that experience or been in that topic of conversation. I think something can happen similarly when we're connecting with the vision and the emotional experience of living into that. That we're going to have different thoughts, we're going to think different things, and we're going to have different conversations with people, and they're going to give us different feedback. It's a whole constellation.

It's all kinds of things, and we make this simple in a coupling. So remember, dream-building has three phases: blueprinting, bridging, and building. So the building phase are the actions we take. So the blueprinting is the design, what would I love? The bridging is, rather than me wanting to get to that, who can I be today that's a match for that? In what way today can I be a match for my vision, coming from that, while I'm doing ordinary things? Then the question of building means, what action can I take today to move me in the direction of my dream, even if it's a baby step? This is really important.

But if you just do something every day and you ask yourself, this is building, one of the ways to take what seems like no opportunities and turn them into opportunities. Because the way we've been trained to think, we say: Well, there's no opportunity, I don't have the money. So it's just, today, I want to be closer to my spouse. I want to have a deeper richer connection. I want more romance back in it. I would love fun again, whatever the vision is for your relationship. Life is happening, we've got patterns, and things are going on. Yet, probably we both want that, and we've got all the reasons why we're not having that. So ask yourself this question. This is something you do every day, and then take a five-minute power move on something you can do, which is, what can I do today with what I have from where I am that could help bring that about?

So we're not as close as we used to be, what can I do? Well, he's busy. Your mind is going to want to pick up all the reasons you can't. Refuse to let yourself off the hook until you get some ideas on what can I do, with what I have, from where I am, to make that move. Not waiting for them to make a move, but me make the move. An idea like, you know what I could do? For the next 30 days, I could every day tell my spouse three things that I really appreciate about them and not expect anything in return. Now that's going to grow me because I'm going to want to hear stuff back. But if I make this into a complete give, I receive feeling good because I did it.

So for the next 30 days, with the right heart and spirit, I'm going to look for and pay attention to, and then speak to three different things in that day that I really appreciate about my spouse. Then just notice what that did in the next 30 days. Don't measure it along the way, just wait for 30. But do it for 30 days. So when you're asking, what can I do with what I have from where I am, you want to write down every idea. Here again, you do not edit. An idea comes, you're like: Well, I'm not going to do that. But regardless, write all the ideas that light you up and the ones that are like: Eh, I don't want to do that. Write them down anyway.

Until you've got about 10 different ideas of what you could do with what you have from where you are. One time, I wanted to create a new program. It was the DreamBuilder program, only I wanted to produce a digital version of it and have an auditory version of the whole system of transformation. It was about $50,000, in an era, 20 years ago, where I'd gone through some things in my life and I didn't have $50,000 to just direct over there to that endeavor. So I thought, well, we could get the deposit for this and get it going for $10,000. I didn't have $10,000. So I just asked the same thing. I just said, so what could I do with what I have from where I am? What could I do to generate the first $10,000? One of the ideas that came was, you could get some extra money if you worked three nights a week at Burger King. I knew when that idea came, I was not going to work three nights a week at Burger King. But I wrote it down anyway. I had learned to just write it down.

Because once you get enough vacuum past your own thinking, ideas come to you from the crystal clean water. It's the same thing with water. You have to get enough suction, and then this crystal clear water rises up and clarity comes. Ideas you have never thought of about something you actually could do, even if it looks like a baby step that moves you in the direction of your dream. Take that, and over this time now, you're building more mass, more relationship with your vision. If you will just do this, do an experiment with your life. Life's happening anyway. Notice, if in fact you do this, I promise you, because this works every single time when we work it. These are invisible laws, just like gravity, magnetism. This is all happening, meanwhile we're having our lives. Your life matters to you. It's very, very important.

Mary, I am appreciating how you are high-level distilling this for people listening, that this is enough to work with, and that you are offering the coherence of how this works. I also want to say, for people listening, you have tremendous amount of curriculum and opportunities to deepen the understanding. I mean, people might have some objections around, how do I know if it's just my ego wanting something? You have so many ways in which you support people to check out, does this vision match, and what is it? I mean, you have several questions that support people tuning into, is this a vision that I can really feel integrity around? So for people listening, just letting them know there's so much curriculum to support what you're describing high-level.

Lots of it is free. Lots of it is free online, YouTube channel, and then of course our website. We have a lot of free things that can help.

Yes. Just as we're winding down, you mentioned just here right now, perhaps a key to this, which is if perhaps you and your significant other are not quite on the same page, if your vision seem at odds, or perhaps one isn't interested in experimenting with the practice of dream-building, that one could still be in what you're describing all the steps, even if your partner is not or is afraid to or isn't interested in. Do you want to speak to that a little bit more? You just did.

No, but specifically. This is a question that I receive all the time. Well, my partner has zero interest in this. So the question is, do you believe your partner loves you? The answer usually is yes. Because if they don't believe they're loved, that's another whole conversation. But yes, I do. It's just that they can't see what I see. So let your life be the message. Don't try to get them to do what you're doing. Do your visioning that includes them. Do your who I'm going to be, so that we can be closer. Whether they share your vision for the relationship or what you're going to be as a family, you have your own vision of that and you can bring influence into the family, not by trying to get them to agree with the way you're doing it in your life.

Let me go back. When I first came into this, I had healed from that kidney disease, and the doctors were baffled and saying, there's no science for this! We don't know how your one kidney that was left after we removed the other—that the surgeon said, I saw it, it was pockmarked, it was shriveled—how that kidney is functioning five months later as a fully functioning kidney. I have no idea how that's occurring. Do what you've been doing, I guess. But I don't know if this is going to last, and if it does last a while, I don't know how long. Well, that's been almost what's been 55 years now. Because I moved to a new frequency, and kidney disease did not exist on that frequency. The way I moved from CNN to the nature channel or the romance channel, that CNN is not on the same channel as that. It didn't exist there.

So as I began to want everybody, when this happened for me, and then I'm studying how this occurs, and the art and science of this in the writings, and I'm getting that out of the university, I wanted everybody I knew to have it, and I became like a beating drum. Try this, it gives you more life. Even my parents said: God, Mary, it sounds like you got religion or something. I realized, pushing it on people, it's a fault. It's an understanding. Einstein said, match the frequency of the reality you want, and it must be yours. Must, because you're on that frequency. Match the frequency of the reality you want, and it must be yours. This is not philosophy, he said. This is physics. I was trying to pass it on.

Finally, I realized within two or three months of this, and I'm getting pushback: Oh, this is not the way to give it. The way to give it is for me to do it for myself and let my life show it, and some will get interested and some won't. That's exactly what happened. I had dear friends, who are still friends, but they just never got interested in how things occur, and how you can have things you want to occur really occur. So in a relationship, which is our focus today, what a precious thing to be in a relationship. The opportunity for the growth and the experience of being trained by love itself, when love actually becomes our teacher. When we learn to install a habit, I believe it's very important in relationships, which is, whenever there's a bit of a temptation in us to pull back or criticize or judge, is to just ask ourselves the question: so what would love do here? Anytime you ask that question—again, we're talking about asking empowering questions for ideas—what would love do here, you will always get an idea.

Now, the challenge of causing ourselves to act on it then is how love grows us. So part of me wants to be mad about this and punish about this or slam doors and not speak up about this, all of which are toxic expressions of thwarted love. So what would love do here, we cause ourselves to take that step. The depth and the power of two people who love each other, connecting in this arena, there's a power in that, that they call holy matrimony, whether you're legally married or not. Because anybody can get married signing papers, but holy matrimony is another whole thing. Again, it's not a legal issue, it's a connecting issue.

Wow! Thank you, Mary. It's so beautiful. I will just comment before we wrap up here, that what you're describing, what would love do here, for people who are maybe associating love and the sense of just giving, you're speaking about, and one can actually define this in their own dream of what that love looks like, but it can be this healthy, we both are honoring our authenticity in a way. So it doesn't have to be like: Oh, I just give to you and I defer my own wellbeing or my own happiness. You're talking about something different, and thank you for just giving possibility to all of this. Well, for people who are listening and want to get connected to what you teach, what you offer, where would you like to direct people towards?

I would like to direct you to, I guess, our website first, which is Brave Thinking Institute. So you can go to bti.com, and if you also go to bti.com/empowered relationship, we have a gift for you that helps you vision. It's the technology of how to really vision a life you would truly love. You and your partner can do this together or separately, or you just do it yourself.

I just want to say to those of you that are here right now listening, there's a reason that Dr. Jessica's podcast is so successful, is because she brings week after week after week, people to you, where even when you get one idea or more than one idea every time you do this, you're on a new plane of discovery of the beauty and the wonder that this life has to give you. So I want to thank you, Jessica. All the tools, the strategies, the techniques. But the love with which you train people and couples helping them have lives they truly love, and then the kind of people you bring to this podcast, to also bring talent, time, and energy to support them. It's a beautiful, beautiful work, and I'm privileged today to be part of it.

Yes, thank you. Can you just tell people briefly what is on BTI? Because you do live events, you do workshops, you do so many things to support people to have access. Do you want to just briefly describe, you said free resources?

I have a YouTube channel, Mary Morrissey. You can find it there. If you come to the website, Brave Thinking Institute, kind of the getting started program is called the DreamBuilder. It's an online program. It's video-based. That's something to explore. We do DreamBuilder Live, three-day training in this, three times a year. One in-person in January, in Los Angeles. We just completed last weekend, and then there'll be another one in the fall. So you could get on the mailing list, and we'll let you know the things that are happening that are free. Then of course, there's other things where you can get involved.

It's such a special gift, to be a part of your teachings, a part of the work and the whole team you have that supports people. My husband, Reid, and I have been to your trainings, and it's really cute to hear the different things that he'll say, particularly what you've mentioned in today's episode. Doing what I can with what I have and where I am, it's such a good way to have language together to be able to support one another in bringing forth what our dreams are. So again, thank you so much for everything you've offered and all that you give to the world, Mary. It's a privilege.

You too, Jessica. Thank you so much!