If you're able to build safety for yourself in a space as vulnerable as sex, you're able to build safety for yourself everywhere. Hello,
and welcome back architect Nation. I'm Enoch Sears. And this is the show we'll discover tips, strategies and secrets for running an architectural practice that lets you do your best work more often. Have you ever had trouble finding an architectural photographer who could really make your project shine? Today's episode is sponsored by renowned architectural photographer Tobin Davies Tobin Davies eliminates the hassle by traveling to your location to create the stunning photographs your project deserves. And we are happy to support him here on the Business of Architecture podcast, visit Tobin davies.com, or they photos.com to book a shoot in less than 10 minutes, and ask about the special offer for Business of Architecture podcast listeners. Again, that's Tobin, davies.com, or Bo, a photos.com. So just a heads up for those of you who are listening, the content we may be sharing in this episode may not be for young years. So we'll see where this conversation goes. I'm super excited for the top we're gonna jump in today, which is sex and architectural practice. Now, you may wonder, Enoch, what are we talking about here, sex and architectural practice. But I'll give you a bit of background here. In my own personal growth journey over the past several years, my wife and I, about three years ago, got to a point where we discovered that our marriage relationship was one in which it was not living up to the ideals that we that we wanted into having this is like our shot, you know, to have the most intimate relationship. And it's like, it just wasn't there. It wasn't there. It was disappointing. It was frustrating. There were some things I was holding back from my wife that I finally was able to share with her about my feelings for her lack thereof, some resentments I had against her things like that. And then that's sort of down this path and journey of getting help on our marriage, and which then is delving into our sexuality. Now, what I discovered, which has just blown my mind, is that as I have gotten more in touch with my sexuality, and my expression of that sexuality as a man, and within my marriage, I've started to notice that I'm discovering so much about myself that then relates to business that then relates to sales relates to marketing relates to financial management relates to coaching our clients and what we do. So I'm happy to have on the show today, Dr. Marina Braun, who is a licensed certified sex therapy supervisor, as well as a licensed couples and sex therapist. She runs Nassau wellness, marriage and family therapy in Garden City in New York. And the reason we met is because her husband, who's an architect, join smart practice and is part of our coaching program. And we ended up connecting because on one of the calls that I was on with her husband, she overheard and she jumped in and she said, Hey, I have some background information here that, uh, I think I know what's going on. And she shared some just incredible advice. So, Marina, what do you think about this idea that that sexuality, like sex is is like a super important or powerful entry point into up leveling our performance in all areas.
I mean, I live and breathe sex. So I obviously think sex is hugely important relationship quality, hugely, hugely important. And sex and intimacy are such a source of self empowerment, self knowledge, confidence, building, connection, exploration, creativity, all these things that we need for growth, for marketing for connecting with other people. That is we are neglecting that part of our lives. And not working on the our intimate relationship, our sexual relationship, who we are as sexual beings. We're kind of doing ourselves a disservice in fully tapping into our true, confident potential. And we need that confidence to build our businesses.
I love it. Now, Marina in my life, I'll use myself as an example here. I was brought up in a very orthodox religious frame with a lot of religious dogma, and a lot of teachings about sexuality, and a lot of teaching about abstinence. Fine. So when I married my wife, I had never slept with another woman never had any sexual experiences that anyone except for my wife. Out of that was my intention. So I kind of followed all the advice and everything, and really, frankly, knew nothing about sex knew nothing about my own sexuality knew nothing about my sexual expression as a man as a matter of fact, found over the course of 18 years of marriage or so that it was really what I would say is suppressed and repressed. I was ashamed of my sexuality. I felt I was I was afraid of it. Because when I see a beautiful woman, and I get sexually triggered, I feel totally guilty and like a terrible human being because I'm a married man and I have chills You're in. And so then this came into the bedroom where both my wife and I come in from the same culture had similar issues as well. Like just, you know, no one ever taught us how to have sex. No one ever gave us permission to explore our own sexuality in the bedroom. You know, like, for instance, I know my, there's a story that my wife is fond of reminding me of all the time, when we were first married, she expressed to me that she was like, I can't wait to have some oral sex. And I was like, I was so repressed. And in the box of my religious like teachings, whatever said, Oh, we can't do that. That's bad. Now, regardless of whatever moral frames people have on the show, you may be listening and, and I'm not going to judge how you view sexuality. But at that time in point, that's an example of me having a very tight sexual frame of what I thought was okay, and not okay. So as we've explored this, my mind has been blown. Marina by how much like the sexual act and sex with my wife, reflects, in my own personal development, things like vulnerability, right? Let's just talk about vulnerability for a second, like, what what is vulnerability? What does it play it? What role does it play in actual sexuality, whether you're married, whether you're not married, and your partner's what, tell me about this idea?
Well, vulnerability is this feeling that we feel of, you know, kind of being exposed, and on the good end, it's being exposed and held and safe and understood, which leads to connection. And on the bad end, it's, I'm vulnerable, therefore, I'm unsafe, right, because I'm not being held, understood, nurtured, met the way I need to be. Right. And sexually, I mean, sex mostly happens naked, already vulnerable. Right? If we come in with scripts of shame and guilt, shame and guilt are the two hardest feelings to hold extremely vulnerable. If there isn't understanding and empathy for that, not just from our partners, but from ourselves. increases that unsafe vulnerability, can really stand in the way of connection can really stand in the way of that sexual expansion can really stand in the way of pleasure, right, because in order to have really pleasurable sex, you want to be really embodied vulnerable, safe, first and foremost. And in the present, guilt, shame, all those negative scripts, all that doubt all that unsafe vulnerability takes us out of the moment, really blocks out pleasure, really blocks the opportunity for sexual expansion, right, and I'm a big fan of sexual expansion. Sexual expansion is expanding your sexual repertoire, expanding your sexuals cells, expanding your sexual beliefs, expanding your sexual experiences, all of that extremely pleasureful, enriching, safe, if it's done consensually beautiful, helps you grow as a human being, guilt shame, the vulnerability that feels unsafe, really blocks all of that.
I mean, I've experienced that for sure. You know, I mean, there's, there's an it's interesting, you know, sex is just like, there's so much vulnerability there. Because you're seeing like you said, you're exposed, you're seeing another person's body, you're seeing all the creases, all the love handles, all the imperfections, all the perfections everything at once. And when you talk about safety, let's explore this idea, like what does it mean? Because I hear this a lot it's bandied thrown around, what's your definition of being safe? So
safe is really regulated nervous system, right? Like, our nervous system is not activated. It's not perceiving any threats in our environment. We feel we are in a calm connected state.
Okay, there's a debt for our partner. We
want to provide that for ourselves first.
Okay. What does that look like to provide that for ourselves?
Mitigating guilt, mitigating shame, mitigating negative self talk, a lot of self love, self acceptance, self empathy.
Beautiful. Now, how might something like this relate to leadership? Let's take it let's say this the same exact principle which is vulnerability, self acceptance. How does this then impact how we run our businesses?
Running a business growing a business is all about self expansion, right? My circle was this. Now I'm growing it into this I'm growing a wide network I'm communicating with people if there is fear, shame, rejection, right rejection is one of those trigger feelings that rejection tends to trigger our shame trigger guilt trigger are not good enoughness very parallel to how we can feel forced, sexually rejected or if we're so truly rejecting ourselves. Right. I'm not a good enough lover. So if we're not able to step into that confidence and expand provide Our value bring our value show up authentically. How's our business going to grow? Right? Where it's going to be? So micro, we're always going to be focusing on like, Am I doing it right? Am I good enough? Am I perfect? Can I send this email? If it's not perfect? can I connect with this person? If it's not perfect? Can I give them this if it's not perfect? If you're gonna focus on that, you're gonna get really stuck.
You know, when I was, when I first started, I've run several businesses. But when I started in architecture practice, which I've done a couple of times, you know, it the rejection was hard, like, it's really hard. And I just had some major programming against rejection, just feeling if someone told me no, I would just feel, you know, back then it would be like, sometimes a week long, I feel kind of disappointed and depressed and low energy and like that, that was really painful. You know, someone doesn't accept my proposal, or I go into a meeting and it doesn't work very well. So how does that like? How does this relate to sexuality? What would be the?
Well, let me tell you, Okay, I wrote a whole dissertation. I love it. Um, basically, what happens is, rejection really triggers our sense of not good. enoughness what is not good? enoughness? You know, the feeling we feel of, you know, they didn't reject my proposal. They rejected me.
Right? They didn't there's something wrong with me. I'm, I don't measure up. Yeah,
like, it's a meat problem. Not a, they didn't like the proposal problem. Right? A proposal is easy to fix, you change some wording, change some numbers, I don't know, judge it up however you do. And it's fixed rate. There's nothing wrong with you as a person because your proposal didn't get accepted. But what it tends to do the rejection tends to not make it about the proposal tends to make it about you as a human being. Right? And when you feel like something is fundamentally wrong with you, you were rejected, because there's something fundamentally wrong with you. What does that activate guilt and shame?
Got it exactly. So these two things we link up. We get told no for the proposal, we link that up to our self, we internalize that and take it to mean something about me as a human being by worth, how do we how do we unlink that? How do we free ourselves from that? Now, to give a little background, I'm asking these questions, not only for myself, but our listeners, but I've experienced these things as well. So how do we, how do we unlink these things,
you need to remind yourself of that 300 times then 3000 times for your brain to rewire. Now, you you really need to start that separation, right? Have one it's again, expanding as a human. So through sexual exploration, through intimate exploration, through self exploration, through partner exploration, expanding as a human really getting to know yourself, right, feeling really solid in yourself. And then the separation of I am not my proposal, I created my proposal. But if my proposal gets rejected, my proposal gets rejected. And I can choose to move on or I can choose to modify my proposal. This does not speak about me as a character. Right? I course correct.
Yeah. Marina one thing that I so one thing that I found for myself is that I've been aware of these things that I've been doing my own self work. A lot of times, sometimes when I just repeat the mental affirmations that I tell myself and remind myself that it just doesn't seem to sink as deep. But when I in the sexual in the sexual arena, when because the emotions are so raw, they're so present when I deal with the same thing in that arena. It seems to be like a whole body, it seems like it sinks down a lot deeper is there's something happening there about the way that we reprogram our brain 100%
Yeah. Because you're you're doing it on multiple levels, right? versus telling yourself you're not you're a proposal, you're really only doing that on the cognitive everything lives on three levels, cognitive and emotional and nervous system. Right. And when you're safely exploring and expanding sexually, that's happening on all three levels, right? You're like cognitively probably you're saying like, we're going to try this. So you're planning you're using that you're getting excited emotionally, you're feeling safe and connected. And then your nervous system is literally having a safe and connected experience and goes like, Hey, I like this. I'm not unsafe, I'm not getting activated. I'm actually feeling stimulated. I'm getting to this optimized state and then I feel the warm and fuzzies after Great. This thing that was scary is now actually a rewritten experience that sound expanding experience, it's now safe.
What's your experience of kind of the cultural context? I know this is a broad question. But like sex in America, in the society in which we live, I'm going to speak as someone who lives in America. And of course, there's a wide variety of sexual practices and teachings and all across the board. But we do we know we have generations. So we know there's our parents and our grandparents. And I'm sure sexual practices and the way we communicate and talk about it is different. How would you compare like the general baseline of society now if you kind of had a draw on average for what people know about sex and how they practice it, and how they use it in their life, versus an enlightened view of sex? You know, being an expert in that which you are, I'm sure you have like this idea of like these best practices, enlightened view, how big do you think that gap is just from your general experience?
Pretty big. Really, that's a pretty big gap, I would say a lot like across the board, quite close sexually. EQ, very shame based religious base purity, culture based sexual beliefs, and forming sexual experiences, very rigid, narrow definitions of what sex should be of what male and female sexual roles are, of, you know, this very closed marriage in love is the only place for sex when like, really like I'm if there's a religion I follow it's hedonism, right? Unlike a very pleasure focused person. Sex is about pleasure and connection, as long as it is done safely, and consensually. unwillingly, sex is about pleasure, connection, exploration, learning about yourself, learning about your partner, your partners. And I see sex much more as play. And like a thing you grow and expand in then like it is for making babies or it is, you know, on your partner's birthday.
Yeah. I love to play. I mean, let's face it, it can be really fun. It's funny, because you sound what you're saying is very reminiscent of kind of how my wife talks about her view on life. So my wife is like, she was we've talked about this before offline while she went on a medicine journey last year, Rana and like, what came up for her during that experience was, like, just being in touch with the pleasures of life and realizing that like at her core, she just loves experiencing pleasure, just having fun, just doing things that are pleasurable, you know, whereas it feels like the culture that I the frame I took on as a kid was like, I don't know, you can't have too much fun. You know, if you get if you haven't too much fun, there must be something wrong, because you know, you're supposed to be kind of restrained. And there may be something happening wrong if you're having too much fun. Yeah,
which I think is unfortunately, you know, there is a lot of kind of religious informing of that. And I think, you know, I'm very opposite. I'm like, we are wired for fun and pleasure and connection. And I, not everybody, unfortunately, but like, I am grateful to live a life where I can focus on pleasure and connection, in the many ways that you know, I like it. And that's a point of gratitude for me every single day, like, why would I limit my fun?
That's a good question. Because it's too fun, Marina? Of course, yeah. Like,
what? Why don't ya might explode? Yeah, like, why do I need to suffer? Why do I need to struggle, like struggle and suffering are organic parts of life that we have to deal with? Why would then I limit my own counterbalancing of that, that I am fully in control of?
For people who are, you know, we have a lot of listeners who are very high performance oriented, they're always looking to be the best versions of themselves. They listen to this podcast, because they're hungry for information. They do have a growth mindset. What would you say to someone who maybe is thinking, you know, this idea about sexuality and exploring their own sexuality being an access point to up leveling their performance in all areas? And is this something you see with your clients that other areas of life improve?
Yeah, definitely. I think that, you know, a lot of people even they're like, oh, yeah, I'm having great sex. Okay, well, tell me about your sexual repertoire. And there'll be like, Okay, so these are the things I do. I'm like, great. How are you kind of like, playing around with those things? How much variety? How much space are you bringing in? There'll be like, I don't know, not much. And I'm like, Well, what if you know what if you jazz it up a little? What if you tried something different safely? Conceptually, what if you like added this or what if you tried this? Or what if you made it a goal to like, you know, Do do do it like this or do it outside or do it however, right? Or if you made a goal to if you're usually like having much more quickie sex, but you're having it frequently awesome, but like, what if you focus a little more on gourmet sex? What if you focus more on like, sex?
That sounds delicious.
Gourmet sex. So there's this like, really great concept in sex therapy that there's buffet sex and gourmet sex, and that you should have a mix of both, like really a lot of busy people, people who are growing businesses, people who have kids, they have a quickie, right? And you should get that Quicken. Like there's nothing wrong with a quickie. I'm all about the quickie. However, you can't have 100% Quickie, right, that's 100% per se. You need your quickies. And your quickies are almost like your maintenance sex. And then you have your gourmet sex, right? And that's the sex where you like, start out with your partner like texting them being like, I was fantasizing about this or like, I watched this porn and like, this really resonated with me, what do you think about trying that? Or like I saw this cool new toy? Or I saw, right? Like, what do you think about like, incorporating that? Oh, great. We have this Friday night where we can get a hotel room and our kids with a sitter? Awesome. Why don't we like do it like this and bring the this and bring the this and, you know, like you start like that, and I'll follow like that and do this and you like really set it up. And then it becomes gourmet sex.
I love it. My wife, she was intrigued by this. How to build a sex from show on Netflix, which we watched all all episodes, have you seen that? It was fun, because it kind of broke broke me especially just out of our traditional ideas about what's possible in sex. So that was fun. So there's an entry point. For those of you listening who may be maybe you're way more sex advanced than me, but maybe you're just like a newbie, like I was go check out that show. It may. It's quite entertaining. And it also has a bit of an architectural slant to it because she designed sex rooms. So maybe this could be your new niche. You know, some market young architects out there, I'm gonna become the second room architect.
That's mine. And George's dream is to have called Sex dungeons Rs.
That's great. He doesn't share this with me on our calls. This is like this, I like this. Will be wanting to hire someone like that. I'm like, I would love to bring in you know, someone who's an expert in that and help spice up our sex life. All right, so let's bring this back just in closing. Marina, we've talked a lot about sex, which is all great. The opposite of focus is the Business of Architecture. But how do the two relate like why? Why might sexuality be this entry point for helping people grow, businesses better unlock untapped sides of performance they haven't met before, be able to show up as more powerful leaders in their life take risks they wouldn't have taken before. If
you're able to build safety for yourself, in a space as vulnerable as sex, you're able to build safety for yourself everywhere. Right. And what I mean by safety is safety from internalizing rejection, safety from internalizing not good enoughness safety from internalizing I'm a failure, safety from internalizing, I shouldn't be doing this. You're really building safety, to regulate your nervous system to regulate your feelings, your thoughts, to say, this is separate from who I am, I'm able to have a hard experience and not feel that deep guilt and shame about it.
Imagine that we have an army of architects who are feel their self worth at a very high level, who feel confident in their own skin, who feel confident negotiating when clients tell them that they want them to discount their fees, who feel like their value is so incredibly high that they can charge premium fees and they're not scared about racing to the bottom. Imagine what that would do for the architectural industry. Amazing. Marina, where can people go to find out more about your amazing work and listen to your podcast and a download that you prepared for the audience? Yeah,
you can go to simply great relationships.com And we prepared a little download for your audience. Forward slash Bill way and what I'm actually gonna do is I'm going to compile all my favorite optimizing and improving your sex life and expanding your sex life downloads into one and you can download that and make things spicy. I love it.
Ready to Thanks for opening our eyes here and bringing some amazing content here to the Business of Architecture podcast. We appreciate it.
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And that's a wrap.
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