Cultivate Podcast
Step into the world of "Cultivate," where we're all about growing together – personally, spiritually, and in our businesses. Join our heart-to-heart conversations as we share stories, laughter, and genuine insights on building connections that truly matter. Discover how nurturing relationships can be the key to unlocking your personal potential, finding spiritual fulfillment, and achieving success in your business endeavors. Let's grow, laugh, and learn together on the journey of a lifetime with Cultivate.
Cultivate Podcast
Embracing Stillness and Cultivating Growth in Relationships and Faith
The eeriness of an empty house can be as unsettling as the chaos of one filled with laughter and little feet. I, Lorelco Mulzac, found myself grappling with such silence as my children returned to school, leaving me to confront the anxiety it stirred within me. Tune in to hear how I've navigated this shift, employing the quiet to refocus on my businesses. Much like our eyes adjust to darkness, I discuss the journey toward embracing the stillness, allowing the unseen opportunities within it to become visible and manageable.
Within the tapestry of life, relationships stand out as intricate threads that require careful nurturing. I get raw and real about the complexities of staying in relationships that comfort us, despite their detrimental nature. We discuss the difficulty of letting go of nostalgia, the courage it takes to shine a light on the dark corners of our partnerships, and the importance of recognizing our own patterns. Join me as I share insights on how to cultivate healthier connections, emphasizing the need for self-healing, overcoming pride, and embarking on a journey of self-reflection that leads to genuine growth.
Marriage is a profound union that demands continuous nurturing, and in this episode, I explore the critical role self-reflection and healing play in sustaining these sacred bonds. By confronting our personal traumas and striving for progress rather than perfection, we can breathe new life into our relationships. The episode culminates with a discussion on the dynamic nature of faith and how actionable love is the cornerstone of a fruitful relationship with God. I invite you to reflect on how continuous growth can revitalize both our spiritual connections and our most cherished relationships. Let's share this journey together, and remember, amidst it all, life's blessings and goodness are ever-present.
Welcome to the Cultivate Podcast. I'm your host, larell Komolczak, and I'm so glad you tuned in. I hope you're doing well. For me, I'm doing really good.
Speaker 1:I took my kids to school on yesterday, on Monday. For the first time in a long time They've been at home, and so I really didn't know what to do with myself All day Monday. I was like man, what do I do? I have work to do, I have some meetings to attend and all that kind of stuff, but I'm like yo.
Speaker 1:My house is now extremely quiet during the day and I did not know how to handle that, and it was weird for me to experience a house that is extremely quiet and I felt some anxiety. I'm not going to lie, I felt some anxiety. Here and there. I felt like man. This is new.
Speaker 1:This is a feeling that I'm not used to, because I feel like I've become so familiar with operating amongst chaos. I'm so used to operating around chaos. When my house is screaming and yelling, when my house is full of, you know, somebody crying, somebody hitting somebody. My house is just full of just stuff like constant movement, constant doing things. This is always. It's always something I got to get myself involved with when it comes to my kids, and I love that they were home. I love that we had a great time at home. I'm not saying that the time is up, I'm just grateful for this time now because, listen, when you get so familiar doing one thing no, okay, I'll say it this way I'll say it this way. I've gotten so used to chaos that chaos doesn't feel like chaos anymore.
Speaker 1:Chaos was like unfamiliar to me before, like before kids, I had my wife and I was just me and my wife and we were just chilling, you know, doing our thing, working. And then we had kids, and then we decided to work for, you know, work for ourselves and do our own thing. And then you know, with the kids at home, not having a lot of you know, we don't have family, we're not around. Family, you know, have a lot of help, and so it was just us. We're doing everything together, traveling together, we're going places together, eating out together. We do everything together, so we also work together.
Speaker 1:So it's like we had to integrate our lifestyle with our children, which is beautiful, because I feel like that's how it's supposed to be early on, in my opinion, if you're able to do it, be around your kids and allow your kids to grow with you. And as you grow, they grow. And as they grow, you're instilling things disciplines, values and beliefs at an early age, setting the foundation so that when they get older, they'll be able to hold on to that. Those things will be rooted within them. It'll be their foundation, and so I felt we did a great job at that. Yes, therefore, we're not done setting foundations, of course not, but those days of them being home with us all day, every day, while we're working, we've gotten so used to it while we're working, we've gotten so used to it. And so, like I said, chaos don't? It just didn't feel like chaos. But now that the chaos and it's good, chaos too, it's not, I'm not saying, I guess, bad.
Speaker 1:Now, now that the busyness is out of the way, I feel like my brain is trying to recalibrate. What do you do? Now I say, well, I know I got things to do, I got a lot of things to do. I'm busy, but my mind is telling me yeah, but you, where's all the other stuff? Where's all the busyness? Like, what? Like you can't, you can't just do all this without within, in quietness. There's no way you can do all this in silence. There's no way. And my brain is trying to figure it out, like how do I get to doing all this movement? How do I get to doing all this movement? How do I get to doing all this work? How do I grow my businesses and stuff like that when there's no chaos, because I'm so used to moving with it? What was unfamiliar to me has now become familiar.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like being being in the dark for the first time when all the lights cut off for the first time. When you're in the dark for the first time, when, when all the lights cut off for the first time, when you're in the dark, hold on, it's my wife, hold on, give me one second, a little bit. Okay, all right, yo. It's kind of like turning off all the lights for the first time. It's bright outside, you know it's daytime, but let's say you walk into a room where there's no lights. At first glance it's like I can't see anything. There's no way. I just I can't move, I can't see anything. So it gets scary because you're like man, how do I, how do I, how do I get to my next destination in this room or in this place when all the lights are off.
Speaker 1:But over time, if you stay there long enough, your eyes will begin to adjust to the darkness and what you thought you couldn't see, you'll start to see glimmers and glimpses of things in the room, because your eyes have not adjusted to what was in the room, it's adjusted to the dark, where darkness doesn't really seem that bad anymore. It's bad, it's cool, it's kind of scary. But you know I can. At least I can see a little bit. You feel me. At least I can, at least I can see something. You know I'm not doing one of those things where you know you close your eyes and you try to feel around, like you stay in the dark long enough. You begin, you begin to see some stuff, and that's kind of how I felt, like all the lights turned off for a minute.
Speaker 1:When I start having all these years thankful to the lord for them and then all of a sudden, like I got adjusted. My body, my brain, my mind just got adjusted to the busyness. I'm like, oh, this is, this is what it's supposed to be, this is how it's supposed to, this is how I'm supposed to live. Like just busy, 24, constant movement, screaming. Somebody peed on the floor. Oh, okay, I'm going to go get that.
Speaker 1:In the middle of me working, okay, you know, somebody slapped somebody in the face, somebody got a bloody nose, bloody lip, somebody threw a car oh, my God, lord, have mercy. Oh, somebody's having poop in their hands and putting the poop on the walls. Yeah, that happened to me. All that, all that chaos, all that business, in the middle of all that I'm working. So now all that is gone. I gave it to the preschool. Y'all take care of all that. That's what your job is. Now. My job is to just solely focus on what, on what I do, and my brain is trying to figure that out. So, yeah, my brain is trying to figure that out.
Speaker 1:And it's been interesting because, like, it's been fun, it's been great, it's been incredible. How do y'all manage that? Is that something that you manage? Is that something that you are accustomed to doing? Is that something that you've experienced before, like being familiar with the unfamiliar, or maybe you've gotten familiar with the relationship, knowing that relationship isn't for you. Maybe you've gotten accustomed to doing certain things, knowing that maybe those things aren't really meant for you. Maybe you've adjusted your habits and your lifestyle to something that has not been good for you, but initially it just felt awkward. But you kept doing the awkward thing and that awkward thing became normal. I don't know about you, but that's kind of that's just how I feel sometimes, where you do certain things for a long period of time that you felt this awkward or you've been.
Speaker 1:You know, you've been accustomed to doing things or being with someone that you know you ain't supposed to be with. Has it had? I don't know, it can't just be me, but I've been in relationships before where I just knew maybe I should not, I shouldn't be entertaining this relationship, I probably should cut this off. But I stayed in longer because I got accustomed, my eyes got adjusted to the environment and I feel that many of us are in places and with people that was once unfamiliar. But because we stayed too long, we have adjusted to the environment, to the lifestyle, and now it's become a habit, now it's become a part of your life, when you really didn't want that to be a part of your life to begin with.
Speaker 1:And maybe you got there because there were some unhealed wounds. Maybe you got there because maybe that individual reminded you of something in your past that you felt, that you haven't felt in a while. Maybe it reminded you of someone, maybe it reminded you of something, and you tried to hold on to that feeling. You tried to hold on to that nostalgic feeling, that emotion, and along the way of holding on to that one little feeling, all these other bad stuff began to flourish, began to grow, weeds began to grow in your garden. You're like man I know I should tend to these weeds, but I'm still holding on to this one bloom, I'm still holding on to this one little flower and miss all this stuff going on in my garden. There's this one thing I'm still holding on to, not realizing it's the weeds. That's choking, the one thing that you're holding on to. And so we've become adjusted.
Speaker 1:We adjust our life to the unfamiliar place that now becomes familiar, and many of us are in relationships that we have unfortunately became familiar with, the one thing that was once unfamiliar, and that goes both ways, good and bad. But I'm really talking to those who are really dealing with relationships that you probably are trying to figure out how to change that up. Because when you start making adjustments and start making changes like, let's say, I put on the lights, I turn the lights off, I put the lights back on. That's an adjustment. Like whoa, the lights are bright. Hold on my eyes, my eyes. You know I turn the lights on out of nowhere. My eyes, it's an adjustment. Now I can't, I can barely see. It's a glare and it's an adjustment. That's kind of how it is for some of us. We're trying, we're we're putting the, we're turning the lights on because we've been in the dark for too long and in our relationships we got to turn the lights on man Cause a lot of our relationships are are failing because we have adjusted to the unfamiliar, we have become accustomed to doing the wrong things in the relationship only because it just became familiar.
Speaker 1:We got used to it, we got used to it. We got used to not being honest with our wives. We got used to not being transparent. We got used to not being vulnerable. We got used to just living life, saying hi and becoming roommates in the marriage. That's, we just become used to that. Oh, that's, that's normal. Oh, I'll see you in the morning. Bye, I'm going to work. Peace. And it's become mundane. It's like it's just a thing that we do now and then you turn the lights on. It's like yo, this is crazy. We, we got to make some adjustments. We got to make some changes.
Speaker 1:Now the question is what do I do to cultivate a relationship that is thriving, that that brings forth fruit? That's because I don't want to. I want, I don't want God to look at my marriage like a fig tree that that's not bearing fruit. He says cut it down, kill that thing. Cut that thing down. If it's not going to produce fruit, kill it. I don't want God to look at my relationship like a fig tree. I really want God to look at my relationship and say okay, that's bearing fruit, continue to live, continue to flourish. But that only happens when I'm connected to God, that only happens when I'm connected to the vine, right? So if I'm in a relationship and I'm not connected to him and I'm not bearing fruit, then what am I doing in that relationship? I'm dying bearing fruit. Then what am I doing in that relationship? I'm dying in the relationship.
Speaker 1:We're both two people dying in the relationship and we have to address what's wrong. We have to address the wound. We have to address what went wrong Because somewhere along the line we got too familiar with the one thing that we were not familiar with to begin with. Somewhere along the line we lost sight of ourselves. And what do I do to cultivate a relationship that actually grows? Let me give you the steps on how to cultivate your relationships.
Speaker 1:Number one heal. I think too many times in relationships we look at our spouse and we say yo, you're the problem, yeah, it's you, you're the issue, instead of looking intrinsically, instead of looking at ourselves and say you know what, maybe there's something in me that haven't healed yet, maybe there's something in me that I haven't dealt with, that I have not identified or discovered, that needs some healing, that needs some work. So I mean, I've done this so many times in my relationship where I'm like, hey, babe, you got some stuff, you got to work on you, out here talking all this stuff that's on you, that's on you. And then the more I start talking, the more I start to realize, wait, a minute, this is a me issue, this is and that's where pride gets in the way. Pride gets in the way of all that when we're trying to heal and when we're trying to get ourselves together, pride can find its way in there and just kind of derail you from you getting the help that you need from you, getting the discovery that you need from God, or from your counselor or your therapist or from your community. You got to have people who's going to be honest with you. Hey, bro, that's on you, bro, you got to get you right.
Speaker 1:And so many times in relationship we try to point the finger instead of looking at ourselves and say maybe there's something in me that I got to heal from, maybe there's something in me that I need to be, I need to be restored, because relationship is the long game. That's not a short term thing. Being married is a is a long term thing. It's not. I think we look at marriage nowadays it's like a short term. If it don't work out, it don't work out. It don't work out. That's not how marriage is intended. A marriage is intended for it to be the long game, for it to be, you know, to prosper long, for you to grow old together. And we have this different outlook on what marriage is like and we can just. It's like a, you know, a switch on off. If we all go, we all I guess we'll just cut it short and we never fight for our marriage, because we're never fighting for ourselves.
Speaker 1:Instead of looking at other people, sometimes we have to look at ourselves. And yes, there are. We are in relation. Some of us are in relationships that, yeah, it's all new. They got to get themselves together. I get it. They made some mistakes. I understand that. But sometimes we got to look at ourselves too, because we're not perfect.
Speaker 1:I've talked to some people. They said they got the gift of marriage today. They got it all together. I ain't never heard of like that. They have the gift of marriage, that they just their marriage is just flourishing and got no issues. If you ain't got no issues, it means you ain't talking, because we all got issues. We all got stuff that we're dealing with and it's all.
Speaker 1:Some of those things are uncomfortable, but when you get in the trenches of healing, when you start becoming vulnerable with yourself and vulnerable with others, vulnerable with your spouse, you start to uproot some stuff. That just becomes uncomfortable. It's just like whoa, this is a lot, bro, like you got to deal with that. Oh, I did not know that you had to deal with all that. And then when you start to confront those things that you've been hiding, that you've been putting in a back burner, that you've stored away somewhere long, locked up somewhere else, when you begin to address those things. It up another piece of of you. It opens up other parts of you that that you didn't know existed. This is where recreation comes in. Like recreating yourself or rediscovering yourself comes into play, because now there's some other areas of you that just that was just laid dormant for such a long time because you never healed.
Speaker 1:You didn't know that that function could work. You didn't know that you had that. You didn't know that that function could work. You didn't know that you had that ability. You didn't know you could think that way because you chose to heal In order to cultivate a great, thriving relationship. You got to heal. You have to go to therapy sometimes. You got to figure out what's in you that needs to be uprooted, because some, some things that are in us are killing us and it's killing our relationship, and we can see it. You can't hide it. We know you hide something. You can't. You can't run from it. So you might as well be open, take that stuff out and heal.
Speaker 1:Number two seek understanding. Seek understanding for me, man, I'm gonna be honest with y'all. Y'all. I have this thing where I can be. I can be slightly defensive sometimes. Slightly defensive because I have this thing where I want to be perfect and I'm learning. Now this is what I used to do. I'm learning now to strive for progression, like I'm progressing. I'm getting better each and every day.
Speaker 1:But back, you know, in my earlier years I was like I got to be perfect for my wife, I got to be perfect. So anytime she tries to tell me something that I could work on and work on in the marriage or work on, you know, in my business, or whatever, I get defensive, like, what are you talking about? I'm doing, I'm doing great. I feel like I'm the best for her. You know, one time she's like I, one time she's like I don't think you're doing good, I'm doing wonderful. What are you talking about? She said no, your actions, something about you is off. I'm like what are you talking about? I got defensive, got mad. I'm doing just fine. And she's seeing something in me that I didn't even see in myself. I didn't know that I was dealing with my father's death differently at this time of the year. I didn't know that this holiday I was, I was looking more down than up. I was. I was thinking more than what I should be. I didn't know that this that's where I was at. So I became defensive.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh no, instead of seeking understanding, and what do you mean by that? Stuff that I'm still working on to this day, obviously like, babe, what do you mean when you said that? Taking time aside after you heard what you heard, that that could cause you to be defensive, taking time aside to say you know what? What did you mean by that? Let me seek some understanding. Let me not be defensive here. I think you have my best interest in your heart, so let me figure out what you're trying to say so that I can, like, really hear you and then make some moves and make some steps to be better. You know what I'm saying and so I think that's that's number two that for me, we got to seek understanding. So, yeah, I mean the Bible says in all that, getting get understanding, get understand, understand like seek, seek it, search it, search it out, instead of putting the stop, sign up and saying no, I don't want to hear that. Stop trying to be perfect. No, I don't want to hear that I'm good, I'm great. Remember that healing that we were talking about before. We were quick to say no, I'm good, instead of saying no, I probably need to heal. I need to address that wound. What do you mean? How can I, how can I better serve you in this way? Which leads me to my third.
Speaker 1:After seeking understanding, you got to serve. I'm talking about. You want to cultivate a relationship that's thriving. You have to serve. You have to sacrifice yourself, especially as the man you have to really serve your wife. Your wife has a lot of emotions. She's a lot of stuff that she's dealing with. She has a lot of stuff that she's going through. She got a lot of stuff that I mean. There's postpartum that she has to deal with. There's pre-partum, you know there's no kids before kids, fertility issues. There's also there's a. There's a lot of things that can happen in marriage. You have to serve the same way god serves us, like how he served us by dying on the cross. That's the ultimate sacrifice. The ultimate service that God could ever do was die for us. That's what we got to do for our wives is die daily. It's to sacrifice the for her is to serve her in order to make sure that we have a growing relationship. We have to serve.
Speaker 1:What does that look like? Sometimes it looks like sitting down and just listening to her talk, then let her get all those feelings out. Just let her talk. You ain't gotta say nothing, you ain't gotta offer no advice, just sit there and listen and I can guarantee you like afterwards she'd be like it just happened not too long ago. My wife was just feeling all these emotions and I was like talk to me, what's up? She just started talking. I'm just sitting there listening. Now I'm not daydreaming, now I'm not looking at sports, or you know, I had some cheesecake I was trying to eat too and I was like I thought about it initially this cheesecake over and finish this, because the vanilla bean, the vanilla bean cheesecake goes crazy. I said, let me go finish that up. You know I don't really eat like this, eat this type of food, but you know, since, wife, you ordered it, I want to. Nah, let me focus, let me sit here with her. I had to really think about the best way to serve her in that moment was to listen. Afterwards she said thank you for just listening. So, yeah, no problem, that's what I'm here for.
Speaker 1:But you have, you have to find different ways to serve. If she needs her feet rubbed. Hey, baby you feeling anxious, let me go rub your feet. Hey, baby, you need to relax. Let me go on and do that for you. You want some food? Let me make you some food. You hungry? Let me order some food, like whatever you need to do, serve. Wives need to do the same thing Serve your husband. That's this.
Speaker 1:When you serve and do things for others, when you sacrifice yourself for others, you begin to lift yourself up in the process. God begins to restore you because of your servitude. God begins to give you strength because you decided to empty yourself for somebody else. And too many times we try to try not to serve others because we want all the strength for ourselves and we want to be the ones. That's that's the strong one, when we should be the ones that say okay, god, I'm going to empty myself out and serve and I'm going to allow you to give me the strength to keep going.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying empty yourself out for just anybody, just do everything with no boundaries. No, I'm not. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying your relationship in your marriage, when you serve and when you sacrifice yourself for your spouse, god will give you strength to do more than what you thought you could do. He would give you more of an ability to do other things that you never thought you could, god would begin to pour more blessings and more fruitfulness into your life because you've decided to serve your spouse.
Speaker 1:There is power in servitude, there is power in serving your wife, and it's all about a sacrifice Like what are you willing to do? Like I've seen the opposite. I've seen those who don't serve their spouses and they end up in divorce. I've seen those who don't serve their spouse and it ends up in a toxic relationship. Like it's one or the other. I'm going to serve, I'm going to be selfish, it's one or the other. Either I'm going to serve or I'm going to be selfish. It's one or the other.
Speaker 1:And I've learned that selfish, selfishness gets us nowhere. Huh, being selfish, holding and hoarding on to Whatever it is that you're holding on to, it gets you nowhere. But it's when you allow yourself To empty out, to give. But it's when you allow yourself to empty out, to give all of who you are for somebody else, to make sure that they're happy, to make sure that they feel good, to make sure that they feel loved and valued and affirmed. That goes a long way, and it goes both ways, because when you have two active parties serving each other.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about sex crazy, you feel me Intimacy, wow, crazy, you feel me intimacy? Wow, you feel like all these things begin to like. You begin to see things flourish and blossom out of nowhere like man, our finances, because we're deciding to serve each other. I feel like these three areas healing, seeking understanding and servitude are three areas that will really help to cultivate the ground and cultivate a great, a strong foundation in a relationship. I really do, I really believe and there's other things too, I'll discuss more, you know, over time but when you talk, when we're talking about cultivating relationships, we have to, we have to dive deep, guys, and we have to go deeper than just yeah, just talk good to each other, that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got to talk good to you. Just love god. I got it, love god. But what else can we do, like when, when loving god feels like it ain't getting us nowhere because you ain't addressed nothing? Yes, you can love god and not address anything. You can love god and cheat. Let's just be honest with you. We can love god and we can oh, we pray together. That's great. A marriage, you know, they say, a family prays together, stays together. Marriage you praise.
Speaker 1:I got all that, but we have to address some things too, and we got to put in some practical steps to make sure that we are actually growing and not becoming stagnant or plateauing in our life and in our marriages and our relationships. We got to put in some work. We got to put in some effort. It goes beyond loving God, and loving God is actually putting in the work, because love is an action. I love God enough where I'm going to do these things to make sure that this relationship is fruitful. I don't want to be the fig tree that God says cut down. I want to be the fig tree that grows up to be strong, that bears fruit. We're talking about cultivation y'all.
Speaker 1:So I really hope that this podcast episode was really good to you, talking about cultivating relationships. Yeah, yeah, I think this is good. I think this is good. I think I'm going to stop right here too. This is a good stopping point. I don't want to over-talk, but I hope this was good to you. I hope that you learned a lot in this message and in this episode, and if you have any other messages or any other topics that you want me to discuss, like, hit me up man, dm me, send me, send it to me in the comments. Like tell me so I can really like help y'all if y'all need the help. You feel me. That's why I'm here, for I've experienced a lot in my life and I think I have a lot to share. So tell me what you want to hear from me so that I can help pour into you. You feel me. All right, y'all, I'm hard on a minute. Be blessed. God is good, god is great and I pray many blessings over your life. Talk to you in a minute, peace.