MATT & JANELL LEWIS
From the start of their marriage, statistically speaking, they were doomed.  Friends, pastors and the occasional meeting of people on the street or an airplane would all tell them the same thing; “fifty percent of all marriages today end in divorce, and over seventy percent of second marriages also fail.”  Matt had just ended a 9-year marriage and a few months later entered into a second marriage with Janell.  On the other hand, Janell had spent most of her life as a self-proclaimed “strong, independent woman” who lived on her own and, in her mind, controlled everything in her immediate environment. Matt had two children under the age of three, and Janell had no idea what she was in for.  You might say they jumped into marriage too soon, before reality had a chance to set in. 

Within the first couple months of marriage, reality showed itself ten-fold!  Matt and Janell were faced with the battle wounds of divorce, the struggles of a new marriage, buying a new home, Janell becoming an instant mother, and on top off all of that, they decided to begin a partnership with the launching of a new production company.  They headed out to the east coast with the children for three months to produce some live stage shows.  Within those three short months, their “happily ever after” began approaching a tragic and bitter ending.

Matt was still battling a great amount of guilt over his divorce.  As a father, naturally he was worried about his children.  His guilt over what the situation might mean for his children began to take over and an unhealthy balance between his children and his marriage began to unfold.  Truthfully, finding harmony in a blended family is an adjustment and always takes time.  Almost immediately after they were married, Janell began to feel a wedge between them and wondered at times if Matt even realized that he had a new wife. 

On the other hand, Janell had some very heavy control issues.  What a perfect situation for a “control freak” to step into!  She quickly realized that two small children under the age of three completely took her perceived “control” and “freedom” away.  Matt, clouded by his fears around the situation, unintentionally began to put an extreme amount of pressure on Janell to embrace her role as mother to his children.  Although she had every intention of being there for the kids and developing a relationship with them, she felt she did not have time for her own adjustment to the situation.  She began to feel the weight of the responsibility and wondered what happened to the “honeymoon period” that she had waited her whole life to experience!  The pressures of the new family and the new company became too much for her and she began to feel extremely depressed and overwhelmed.  This “strong, independent woman” began having days when she could not even get out of bed.  She started having extreme back pain and issues in her spine, felt completely alone, and all within the first six months of the marriage.

You might say that the deck was stacked against them!  The chances of this couple having the story-book ending they had always dreamed of were far from a reality.  Matt and Janell had been in a vicious cycle of “I’ll change when you do” for most of their young marriage.  They were both wrong.  It was about two years into the marriage, with a trail of harsh words, sleepless nights, broken furniture and broken hearts that, through a mutual friend, the couple found Dale Halaway and Lisa Ulshafer with Seminars That Inspire.  Little did they know at the time that this would be a major turning point in their own lives as well as in their marriage.  They began personal coaching on a weekly basis.  

When Janell first started coaching with Lisa, she was having a very difficult time with her back pain as well as getting through each day taking care of kids and feeling motivated. “I was in a downward spiral, and slowly felt that the passion and determination I once had experienced so abundantly was now being sucked out of me.  I felt that I was literally deteriorating, physically and emotionally.  Something had to change.  I was very deep into living life as a victim and blamed those around me, the situation and the outer circumstances for most of my problems.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that it wasn’t Matt, the kids, or the outer circumstances that needed to change, it was ME.” 

Slowly but surely, Lisa helped Janell begin to chip away at some of her destructive patterns of control, fear and of mindlessly pushing herself to extreme measures.  This did not happen overnight but incrementally, layer by layer.  “For a while, I wondered if I was even getting anywhere but eventually I began to notice small things change in my daily life.  I began feeling moments of happiness and gratitude.  I started having more patience with the kids and began to open up and accept the situation.  Eventually I realized that the reason everything had seemed so hard in my life was because I had been in such resistance of my circumstances that I was the one sabotaging my own happiness. I was acting as if all this had been done to me, instead of taking ownership of my choices and embracing all that came with those choices.” 

Matt also had a very profound experience in personal coaching.  "I always had a picture in my head of the person that I wanted to be, but it seemed like a distant goal that was never going to be realized.  So, instead of trying to reach that goal, I just pretended, put on a front and tried to fool everyone into thinking I was that person.  Some were fooled and some were not, but the one I was fooling most of all was myself.  I was trying to please and be liked by everyone.  I was trying to be perfect, and when I could not be, I was filled with anger, and at times even rage.  My emotions were running the show and I felt powerless against them.  My thinking was so distorted that I believed I was doing everything I could and it was never enough. So clearly, in my mind, the one who needed to change was Janell.  I knew I needed help, but I thought Janell needed it more.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  It didn't take me long to realize that pointing the finger at Janell was not going to fly in my coaching sessions!”

Matt learned that when he took responsibility for everything that was happening in his world, he would start to see real and lasting results.  “The truth is, how I was showing up was influenced by a tremendous amount of guilt and fear.  I wasn’t dealing with the emotions, I was just suppressing them, and in the final analysis, giving them more power. The pressure was building up from all the suppressed energy and I felt as though I was going to explode and often did.  I had to make the shift from running from my emotions, to going directly into them.  I needed to embrace my fears and release them.”  

After a few months of personal coaching, Lisa introduced Matt and Janell to a seminar that was coming up with Dale Halaway entitled, “Relationship ‘N You.”  Matt says, “I knew that Janell and I needed help or we were not going to last as a couple.  Janell was the only one who could attend the seminar because I was out of town.  I urged her to go.  I wasn't opposed to going to a seminar but I still had it in my mind that Janell was the one with the real issues, and quite frankly, I think Janell thought that as well.  It took some coaxing to get her to go and even up until the day of the seminar she felt resistance to going.”  Janell wrestled with anxiety around going by herself.  “It was mostly fear, I already felt so vulnerable with my issues in my sessions that I felt like I didn’t need to go and talk about them in a room full of people to be judged by them without even having my husband there.  I guess I had this idea that it was going to be some sort of group therapy or something. Then I remembered Lisa saying that going to the seminars would take our personal coaching sessions to the next level and completely accelerate our healing process.  So, reluctantly, I signed up.  I also decided if I didn’t like the first day, I was not going back.”

Janell was nervous.  She actually had not met Dale yet and wondered if he was going to put her on the spot or embarrass her.  “I remember sitting there by myself in a room full of strangers feeling very uneasy when Dale walked in but then the way he conducted himself put me at ease.  The moment he started speaking I was intensely interested in what he was teaching.  It soon became clear that he did not have any ulterior motives and that he wasn’t going to exploit me as I had feared!  He genuinely wanted to pass along what he had learned in his life experiences to inspire and help others.  He started talking in depth about ‘needy energy’ and how our relationship with ourselves is reflected in and directly affects our relationships with others.  I began thinking of my step-kids, Matt, and various people involved in situations I was struggling with.  It all started to click.  I realized that I am accountable for everything and for the way I react to others, and as Dale listed the different types of needy energy I was able to relate them specifically to my situations.  I realized that I had been in a victim mentality, blaming everyone else, and God, for the incredible burdens I was carrying.  The amount of insight I received from just that first day was amazing.”

Janell could hardly wait to tell Matt about the seminar.  Matt says, “After that first day she called me very excited about what she heard. I was excited for her on the outside, but on the inside I was very skeptical.  I thought that she was a little too excited.  For all I knew these people were in the brainwashing business.”

The second day turned out to be very interesting for Janell.  “I got very sick.  My stomach ached, and I felt like I was going to throw up all morning.  I thought I had eaten something bad.  Lisa took me aside to help me process the energy and I soon realized that I had a great deal of resistance coming up; so much that I was making myself physically sick!  I didn’t understand why I was reacting so negatively after the incredible experience I’d had the first day.  I learned in the seminar that we have gotten stuck in our negative patterns because they have become our identity.  I had identified myself with my control issues and my fear for so long that I was afraid of losing who I ‘thought’ I was.  It’s not easy to break the negative patterns that we’ve held onto for so long because we think they are serving us but it’s all an illusion.  We are hurting ourselves by thinking that things such as anger, fear and resentment are protecting us.  I continued to struggle with resistance to the process, the seminars and personal coaching afterwards. It took some time, but once I broke through that resistance, I began to see incredible results and lasting changes in my life on the other side.”

Matt attended the following seminar, mainly to find out what all the “hoopla” was about. “I went into that weekend with my usual smile, sense of humor and poise, but inside I was extremely guarded.  I thought I had heard it all before until I attended that weekend.  I was hearing concepts and things that I had never ever heard, and what's more, they were right on the nose.  I remember writing notes like a madman every time something resonated with me.  I began to realize that my need to have my guard up was really based in fear.  I was afraid of what I didn't know.  I was afraid to admit to my wife that I was not the know-it-all I pretended to be!  I was also afraid that the belief system that I had clung to so tightly would start to crumble all around me.”

Matt was also fooled by his own personal illusions, “I didn't realize that admitting that I didn't have all the answers, learning new concepts and allowing myself to be vulnerable was the very thing that was going to cause my wife to put her faith and trust in me as her husband.  My beliefs did not end up crumbling, they became strengthened.  I gained a deeper understanding to things that I had only been able to scratch the surface of before.  It took me about 5 seminars to start to realize that Dale was not only teaching but was truly living what he taught.  I had never before been able to make any real or lasting changes in my life until I started using the TransCovery Process.  It's like when someone gives you advice when you're going through a crisis and they tell you to ‘just forget about it!  Let it go.  It's them, not you!’  That kind of advice may be true, but how many people do you know who can actually do that?  I know I couldn't just forget about it!  I wanted to, but I couldn't.  Dale gave me practical tools to actually process the feelings that I was experiencing.  Having the tools to process these emotions has been one of the greatest assets that I have gained from Dale and Seminars That Inspire.”

After being fully engaged in their own personal coaching and attending seminars, Matt and Janell began participating in couple sessions together with Dale and Lisa. Janell recalls, “Although we had noticed drastic improvements in our marriage and family, something was still a little ‘off’ in our ability to be a truly united team and some very deep issues still needed to be addressed.”  This was when some major turning points started to happen in their relationship. 

Matt remembers very clearly the first time he came face to face with himself in a joint session.  He finally realized, with Dale and Lisa’s help, how detrimental some of his behavior had been to Janell and to their marriage.  “If you were to ask me a year ago if I had the need to be right, I would have answered you with an ‘absolutely not!’  How can you have the need to be right, when you are already right?  Right?  I remember dealing with this issue in one of our couple sessions like it was yesterday.  Janell had been struggling with resistance to just about everything and I was picking up on these new concepts we were learning from Dale quite easily; so easily in fact that Janell was getting very frustrated with the ease in which I was able to implement them into my life.  Only that wasn't exactly what she was frustrated about!  What really got under her skin was the way I would simply smile with an air of superiority as she struggled.  I thought I was just more enlightened than she was at the time.  I thought it was silly how she couldn't get this!  And I'm not sure I would have accessed what was really going on if we hadn't been doing couple sessions.  I was sure I was not being arrogant.  Absolutely positive!  It was during that session I came face to face with my prideful, arrogant self.  Let me tell you, it was not pretty.  I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and humiliated, and then… deeply humbled.” 

After Matt saw this part of himself, it struck him really hard what this had been doing to Janell and to the marriage.  “I had not been sending a message of love to my wife, but a message of hurt.  It was a form of abuse.  The truth was that Janell and I had been passive/aggressive in our abuse of each other for some time now.  Dale asked me what it would be like if I treated Janell as though she was my Queen?  And then to Janell, what it would be like if she treated me as her King?  And imagine if we both treated each other that way at the same time?  To me, a King should be willing to die for his Queen, not stand there and quietly mock her in her time of need.  It was a real turning point for me.  Dale says that pride is a very tricky thing to detect, and I am certain that without Dale and Lisa taking Janell and I through joint sessions, I would have been trapped in this deception for some time.  Otherwise, it very well could have sabotaged our relationship before I was able to access it.”

Once Matt was able to let go of his pride and judgment, the dynamic of the relationship changed, and Janell’s healing process began to accelerate dramatically.  She had some very large unresolved issues, not only with Matt, but also from past relationships.  In one particular session, Dale began questioning Janell about the way she felt around Matt and the kids. “I hadn’t truly forgiven Matt for what happened the first couple years of our marriage.  I remember feeling overwhelmed with resentment and anger towards him.  There were times throughout our marriage when I felt he had brushed me aside and been incredibly insensitive to what I was going through and what I had taken on in order to be with him.  I did not feel safe with him, even though he had changed and made improvements.  As a result, I was living in the past but I did not want to let it go.” As Dale began taking Janell through the TransCovery process, she realized what she was doing to herself.  “Dale showed me that the resentment was doing the opposite of what I thought; it was hurting me, not protecting me from Matt or anyone else.  I remember very clearly the moment I made the decision to let it go.  I was overwhelmed with emotion.  I was shaking and crying.  The room felt freezing cold to me and then it was replaced with a feeling of warmth and love that I cannot put into words.  In that one instant, my love for Matt deepened tenfold.  Something inside me shifted. I finally got out of my own way and allowed myself to really feel the love.  The anger I felt began to dissipate.  I felt free from the chains I had draped around myself under the illusion of protection.  That was a major turning point in our marriage.”

Another big lesson Janell learned in the joint sessions was that she was taking experiences from past relationships and placing them into her current relationship.  “I was deeply hurt many years ago.  I had not personally resolved the trauma that I went through and as a result, I was projecting it onto Matt.  I thought that I was protecting myself with fear.  I was unable to let him in completely because I automatically assumed, mostly unconsciously, that he was going to hurt me too.”

When Dale helped Janell process what had happened to her years before, another magical shift happened within Janell as well as in the marriage.  “So many couples do this to each other.  They don’t resolve their previous experiences and they are left carrying them into their current relationships.  Again, it goes back to taking personal responsibility.  Resolving what had happened to me years prior was not an easy or quick experience.  It was traumatic, heavy and very frightening.  With my teacher and coach, I realized the importance of having someone from the outside help you to process things that are of such a deep nature.  There is no way I would have done this on my own and what was so wonderful about it was that Matt was by my side the whole time.  He saw me in my most vulnerable state.  Previously, I would have been afraid to show him my weakness but this experience brought us closer together in ways I could never have imagined.” 

Matt recalls, “Witnessing this transformation with Janell allowed me to see past all the stuff I’d been judging her for.  Sometimes, in our day-to-day lives we tend to focus on our mate’s shortcomings.  We can tell you all of their idiosyncrasies and annoying habits but as you sit in a couple session and really experience the fears and pain that are motivating these issues in your mate’s life, it gives you a whole new outlook on them as it melts your judgment surrounding them.”

Matt and Janell’s decision to heal and transform their lives has been the saving grace in their marriage. It has been the single most important life-changing action that they have ever taken.  Janell says, “It has become very clear to me how important it is that both of us are engaged in healing ourselves, together.  It took a lot of time, effort and courage, but we eventually started hearing each other out and we made real changes without judgment or resentment towards each other.  We started working through problems with each other very quickly and were focused on loving each other unconditionally because we were now able to get out of our own way!  If only one of us had been healing, we would have not had the trust and personal responsibility as a team to really understand each other and make this marriage work.  Our own issues would have blocked us from seeing the real problems together.  When you are in a marriage, your ‘stuff’ becomes interwoven.  Had I been doing this on my own, I don’t think I would have made it past some of the really deeply rooted issues holding me down because of the dynamic between each of our issues.” 

As a result of Matt and Janell healing their relationship with themselves as well as with each other, their relationships with their kids improved dramatically, as did their parenting style.  Janell had struggled in the past with feeling like she was not part of the family unit but once the structure of the family was in place, her bond with both kids strengthened and flourished.  “Once I came to the place where I felt solid in the marriage, I felt safe enough to open my heart up to Xander and Chloe.  I stopped resisting them and my love for them grew in a beautiful way.  Taking on the role of parent and taking care of their needs felt less and less like a burden.  We started doing more together as a family and I stopped feeling like I was the outsider, separate from Matt and the kids.”  Matt started to notice a huge difference as well, “Janell became more involved with the kids, and started enjoying them more.  In response, the kids became even closer with her.  We became a family, and our approach to parenting became consistent and unified, working together, supporting each other.  I finally felt that we could truly give the kids the stability they needed and what better gift to pass along to your children than the example of a truly unified partnership”

This new beginning has now become a way of life for Matt and Janell.  They will continue with their coaching sessions and learning as much as they can from the seminars in their pursuit of achieving enlightenment and self-mastery.  “This is an ongoing journey, and the single most important thing in our lives now is our transformational healing because it just makes everything else fall into place” says Janell.  “I sometimes think of what might have happened had I not found Dale and Lisa a few years ago.  I know for sure that Matt and I would have been one of the seventy percent who got divorced.  And personally, I was blindly on a path to destruction; beating myself up, pushing my body to death, stuck in negative and fear-based thinking, punishing myself for the past, and projecting awful things into the future.  My entire perspective of life and the people around me has changed drastically.  I now know that I have the tools and support system to be OK no matter what happens in my life.  I no longer get myself worked up over the past and future.  I am learning to be present, and what a great gift that is, to be able to experience everything life has to offer by actually BEING THERE!  I feel more of the true freedom every day because I have taken responsibility for myself.  I am no longer the victim of people around me and various circumstances.  I live in gratitude.  On top of that, I have witnessed a huge transformation in Matt.  He is becoming the man I always knew he had the potential to be.  Everything in our lives is so much more beautiful!”

Matt recalls, “To be honest, it is really hard to even comprehend not having done this process for the past two years.  It's like asking what would it be like if you didn't stop beating your head against the wall.  What we were doing before was insanity.  I shutter to think of where we would be had we not dedicated ourselves to this healing.  Our home would be broken, we would have left a trail of heartache and pain and the children would be left to pick up the broken parts and try to piece together some kind of sense from the nonsense.  Our disagreements, arguments and misunderstandings used to be explosive to the point where we would end up screaming at each other.  I would end up acting like a fool and going into self-abuse, and Janell would end up curled up in a ball on the bed, not being able to move for days.  We would take a simple discussion and turn it into a week long ordeal.  It's funny because as I write this now, I can remember how it used to be, and now it seems so foreign.  It’s hard to believe that we actually treated each other that way. I guess the truth is that we were at choice.  We could have chosen to run from our fears and keep living the insanity.  I thank God that we were brave enough to take that first step.  We not only have the knowledge of how to gain ease and flow in our lives but we have experienced it first hand!  I love what Dale said to me in one of our last sessions, ‘The power comes when the intellectual understanding translates into an experiential understanding.’  We know that there is still a long way to go, but one thing is for sure, we are going to keep going.  There is no turning back.”

**Matt and Janell both have a background in the performing arts.  Matt headlines on the strip in Las Vegas as Elvis and has been with the Legends in Concert company for over 14 years. Janell has been a professional dancer and model, toured the world in over 35 countries, and has performed in numerous shows in Las Vegas and around the globe.