Opposites attract. We hear that all the time. But sometimes you attract for the wrong reasons, and one reason is that you have certain gaps in your life, a vacuum, and you are drawn to this person who looks like they can fill that vacuum. That may work while the courtship period lasts, but once the dust settles, it does not become a good thing. On today’s podcast, Michael Silvers brings on marriage mentor Jeeva Sam to share how you can build a better working relationship with your spouse so that you’re able to meet each other’s needs physically, emotionally, and spiritually. From breakdown to breakthrough, Jeeva has been mentoring married couples along with his wife for over 35 years.
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Building Better Relationships With Jeeva Sam
I’m excited. I’ve done a fun show. They’re always fun and everybody’s fun. We had Michael Nitti, Tony Robbins. I don’t even remember. There’s been so many. I know Scott and Nancy, they’re relationship coaches, have done a lot of retreats internationally and they were brilliant. It’s been a lot of fun. We always have fun and we continue to have fun. Everybody, you know how we do this. I always let the guests introduce themselves. We don’t do the big buildup, even all the years of stages and that’s what I’m used to. We let them all do what we call the earn the ride. Why would we even listen to them? That’s important.
To be able to tell your story in a short period of time that attracts people, that’s a great learning lesson. Maybe we’ll do a podcast one day on that, on a wholesale, and on earning the right on how do you do that. My next guest is amazing when it comes to relationships. When you build relationships in your life, everything works because business marriage, your children, and everything is about relationships. If you don’t have a good mentor in that, or you’re finding places that you can’t quite solidify that, that’s critically important. Without any further ado from the great country of Canada, let’s give a big round of applause for Jeeva Sam. How are you?
I’m great, Michael. It’s good to be with you.
It’s awesome to have you. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and then we’ll jump right in?
My wife, Sulojana Sam, we’ve been married for 37 years and I spent 35 years as a pastor in a congregational setting. We combined our marriage experience and my pastoral expertise and came up with the forces of mentorship. We take married couples who are at the point of building upon their marriage. We’ve mentored them from the point of breakdown to breakthrough. For as little as ten weeks, we guarantee the results.
One common denominator that causes a lot of entrepreneurs to tank is a troubled marriage. Click To TweetThat was quick. That’s the way to do it. It’s about those results because we get driven by sometimes when we get too much into our actions and it’s like, “I’ve got to do all these actions.” We forget that the results are important. You should enjoy the whole way and the process. If the result is a better relationship, better working relationship, and relationship with your kids, first of all, what is it that no one is looking for? Secondly, how can you be of service to the other person? What do you think of that, being of service to the person when it comes to relationships?
I think a lot of the reasons why people come to us with presenting symptoms is they simply get focused on themselves. You get married for what you can get out of it or what your spouse can give you, how they can meet your need. That’s why it’s an interesting paradox, but sometimes you attract for the wrong reasons. One of those wrong reasons is that you have certain gaps in your life, a vacuum if you will, and you are drawn to this person who looks like they can fill that gap. They can come and take over the vacuum. For a while, in the courtship period, that’s exciting because like, “We are meant for each other. We complement each other.” All those good things, which is good.
When you start getting married and you start doing life together, all of a sudden, one person finds that the other person sucking their life and the energy out of them. At that point, that does not become a good thing. If we start with the attitude that, “We’re here to serve each other. We’re here to enjoy life together. I’m going to put your needs. I have mine and you put my needs ahead of you, we’re at the way that we meet each other’s needs. It’s going to be a happy relationship for both of us.” Whereas the one person that’s always after, “I need this, I need that,” and you’re not going to meet the other person’s need, then you’re building at a deficit in the other person’s bank account that you have with them. Sometimes that bank account gets way too low. It’s a bit overdrawn to the point where you cannot even bring it back up to zero. That’s when people tend to come to us.
It’s great that they have a place to go to and that’s the communication that also it’s the relationship within the communication. Even though we know how little is verbal because it’s everything else that we are, it makes a big difference still how we communicate, how much we have in our bank, how much we’re bringing to it, and how much we’re being of service when we started. That’s critical. When you started down this road, there’s a tendency for a great book that launches us forward or a podcast that keeps you going. What keeps you going every day or what even started you down this path, a great book, something you read, or whatever that was?
The greatest book that I’ve ever read and kept on reading is the Bible. That is my sourcebook. However, we got into this from a need that was presented to us. Many years ago, there was a movie called Fireproof that gave a lot of publicity. In that movie, there was something called the 40-day love dare. Even though the movie script could only have four days’ worth of it, people were asking for the book, and so the producers had to come up with the book. The largest Canadian Christian television network wants to emphasize that but they want to do a slightly unorthodox way were to encourage the audience to go along with it and do it every day,
They recruited three couples and we were one of them and they posted on their blog each and every day about that day’s challenge, that day’s dare and how we did it and how we found it, and so on. When we did that, we started getting some correspondence from married couples who watched us. We would be out somewhere shopping or in a church setting or whatever, and somebody can come to you and say, “Weren’t you the couple?” People started asking us for help. My wife’s Sulojana was inclined to do something, but I said, “Honey, I’ve been pastoring for over 25 years and if we start getting involved with married couples, they’ll suck the life out of us. Trust me, we don’t want to go there.”
I brushed it off and then a few years down the road, I’m starting to mentor some entrepreneurs in the spiritual realm to provide them with some profit and so on and teach them of religion principles. These are mostly guys that are flourishing in their businesses, but all of a sudden, they get to see and it’s like, “I don’t understand,” because they are doing everything right. I got the revelation because I felt one day of this voice inside of me, the voice of God saying, “Ask them before the marriage.” When I asked them, it was the common denominator that was getting them to tank, or at least not advance beyond the circle.
It’s like they hit a ceiling. At that point, I was like, “We got to do something to work the marriage.” In a short span, maybe about four weeks, I had six different people call us and say, “Our marriage is in trouble. You guys did something with that television station a few years ago. Would you be able to help us?” At that point, I told him to slow down and said, “We have to do something about it.” That’s when he called me and got started with it. It was amazing because we didn’t have the foggiest idea of what we would do. We’re flying from Toronto to Los Angeles, 5 to 5.5 hours, one day to come to Azusa a few years back.
During that flight, all of a sudden, I get this nudge in my spirit. “Why don’t you write that and start writing?” I started typing. Before we landed, we had the outline of our process. It flawed and then we had to test it and validated it. Sure enough, as soon as we brought home a call on Facebook and organic posts, a couple raised their hands. We worked with them, they got the breakthrough, and we kept on going since then.
I love it. That it’s meant to be. It’s a bigger picture. It’s when the spirit moves through you. You realize that it’s not about me anymore. It’s truly about, “I’m here as a vessel to be of service on this planet.” How does that show up or how do I show up? That’s a critical piece. I know I’m taking it out of the religious realm, but to be a mentor. The best mentors I know talk about, “The spirit moves with me to how can I be of service to a larger population because my gifts were not given to me for myself?” I think that’s the great thing that you two are doing is you’re truly bringing love, mercy, forgiveness, faith, and you’re helping people down a path that sometimes they’re stuck. They hit a roadblock and that’s huge. Sometimes audiences listened to these calls and they’re doing other things, they’re driving, vacuuming, who knows what they’re doing. What are three takeaways that you could give our audience were when they listen to this, they could say, “I can use that right now?” If they decided to never listen to a podcast again, which we know you’ll be on all the time, what are three things that you could teach people that they could use immediately?
The first thing is to always have hope. No matter how bad things look like, that is not your ultimate destiny, so don’t get wrapped up in all the problems that you’re going through, especially in relationships. I found over the years that people tend to give up on marriages way too soon. Always have hope that there is a way that you can turn things around. The second thing that I would say to people is to reach out and ask for help because there’s somebody out there who will be willing to help you. You have to humble yourself and ask for help. The third thing that I would tell people is to take the long view and have an internal perspective.
For example, a couple comes to us, they’re in their mid-30s and they’re ready to call it quits. We tell them, “Let’s look at your average life expectancy. Let’s say you’re going to live up to 75, that’s your age. You still got 40 years of married life together. It never takes that long, but why don’t you take two years off your life right now and got things back on track in your marriage? You still got 38 good years of marriage more likely.” That’s what I mean by the term perspective, the long view. When you put those three things together, you’re always going to have a breakthrough.
The three R's of marriage restoration: repentance, reconciliation, and resolution. Click To TweetWhat’s great about what you said is there’s a tendency if we complicate everything or what are the biggest distractions and obstacles, we always see in our life is time and money. It doesn’t matter if it’s business relations. Even going to church, temple, or wherever you go. You’re too busy. By what you did, you took some of that out of there because it’s not about you have to do this ten hours a day. If it’s important to you, it should be part of your soul. That takes time to build. For the readers, I want you to know that we don’t talk about religion on the show. Not that we do or we don’t. I don’t shy away from it because I think that within the personal development acuity, especially there was a big backlash back in the ‘70s, ‘80s, everybody stopped talking about it. It’s who we. I used to go on stage as Jeeva, there was one time I was five minutes late. I was never late. I said to the audience, “I am so sorry. I went to mass this morning. I wanted to ground and go to a morning mass. There was LA traffic.”
I’m from here and I’d never seen it. There was one person that says, “You shouldn’t mention like that.” The rest of the audience said, “Thank you.” Why have we moved away from that? Why are we fearful? What I love about what you’re doing is you’re bringing this to the masses. You’re bringing this to whatever religious background I have, wherever I come from, whatever community. Whether race, creed, and color, it doesn’t matter. We all have that side in ourselves that’s hurting, and needs that better relationship. I was at mass and the homily was about, “This country needs community, needs to be brought together no matter where you come from, what religion you are. We’re all God’s people.” I know the atheists will say, “I don’t believe in God.” We’re all spiritual, we’re all here, and we need to work together and be together. That’s what your wife and you were doing, brings us together.
You have to recognize the way that we are created. I’ve learned this from the Christian context, but I believe a lot of other faiths as well is that we are spiritual beings with the soul in the Bible. If you take care of stuff on the external side of things like learning a good pattern that you can use to resolve conflict and so on, that’ll work for a while, but you to take out your soul, which is your mind, will, and your emotions. A lot of good counseling therapy will help you do that, but there’s still a deeper part of you, which is the spirit being, and that’s where you got to learn to forgive people where you have to deal with your past hurts and traumas. We always talk about the three R’s of restoration of our marriage, which is repentance, reconciliation, and resolution.
If you talk with the resolution and ignore the other two, you will have success for a while, but eventually something else will pop up. Usually, for the soul, some repentant feelings or some old beliefs in your mind will come out and sabotage it. You’re much better to start with them, with the repentance area and the spiritual. We start them off with repentance, move them to reconciliation, and teach them how to work with their feelings, emotions, determination, and then finally we get them to resolution. Quite often we find that by the time you take care of the spirit and the soul realm, the body takes care of itself. A couple comes to us, they don’t want to even touch each other, they haven’t been together physically, intimately for quite some time, but most of the time when they come to us and we don’t have to teach them how to get physically intimate again. Once we started to take care of all the deep hurts in the spirit realm and bring them to reconciliation, then the physical opens up.
The brilliance of what you’re doing is you’re helping them heal. Being able to forgive, it cleanses your soul. It opens up your being and it helps yourselves. From a biochemistry background when you hold onto something, people wonder why the rates of heart attacks and cancers is all up? You work with people when they let that go, blood pressure goes down. The body reacts in a different way. You’re healing them physically, mentally, and their soul. I appreciate what you two are doing. I’m sure you’ve seen that in your own practice.
The fancy term is psychosomatic and when you break it down, it’s suitcase the soul, mind, and body. There’s this soul-body connection. I would add the pre-new mind there and the spirit as well. You cannot ignore that connection but when you realize the significance of that connection and you work in all three in the proper order, spirit, soul, and then body then we’ve seen tremendous transformations. Some of them have been married for a year. We’ve had one couple over a year. A couple came to us and are married for many years. It does not matter where they are. Once they begin to realize the significance of taking care of those deep hurts, a lot of them, unfortunately, go back to childhood, or people along the way that hurt them, authority, figures, and so on.
Some people don’t want to go there. A little scared of going there. When you’re so desperate for a breakthrough, you go wherever you need to go. It’s like you go to a problem with a brain tumor or something, and you go to a brain surgeon, the surgeon says, “This is what I’m going to do. This is what you need to do.” You’re like, “Yes, sir.” The surgeon is like, “Cut me a check for $100,000.” Nobody asks any questions because you need it so badly, and then you do it. When people take this connection that seriously and when you do that, you are going to have the breakthrough. Even if you come up with something, that’s going to last for the rest of your life as long as you keep on applying it.
It’s that application and continuing piece. I’m sure you even have clients come back to you for a checkup or a refresher. Sometimes you need to ask, “Are we heading in the right direction? Have we let go of the things we need to?”
In the beginning, we’re doing a three-month mentorship and then we realized that some of the couples, when we follow up with them, we needed a little bit more handholding accountability, which I find this one of the keys to the success that we are able to create for people is because we keep them accountable to us. We teach them some daily habits and you have to do them 63 days in a row, which is three 21-day cycles. Those new pathways that start to form in your brain get deep. If you don’t practice some of those daily disciplines, then you feel something is missing in your life. We instituted a monthly follow-up with people. We had three months to that. For most of the couples that come to us, we worked with them for six months. Three months on a weekly basis, the next three months on a monthly basis, and then we offered them a continuity process.
They can continue to work with us for another year if they choose to however long, because of that ongoing accountability. If you think about it, it makes total sense because anything in life that we want to be good at, that we want to succeed in, we realize we cannot do that on our own. We need mentorship. Here is a marriage that one of the most long-term enterprises that you’ve ever taken in your life. Why do we think that we can get through that successfully without mentors? When we have somebody that you’re accountable to, it increases the chances of us succeeding. The big thing we’re concerned about is the next generation because we find children repeating the mistakes of their parents and some of the hurts that the parents have had when they’re not dealt with. They have serious repercussions for the life of the children down your number of generations. That’s why we call it marriage mentorship rather than coaching or consultant.
Part of the reason for the show is the legacy, the future generations, and how do we create the healing? For everybody out there, Jeeva Sam is part of the show. There’ll be mentors with us. Their mission and what they’re creating is huge. The minute I met you, I said, “Join us, we’ll join you.” They did and we did. I’m very honored that you’re part of this because we make the change only by doing it together. We create a long-term legacy and the habit within ourselves that keeps going. I want to thank you for being on the call. What’s the easiest way to get in touch with you?
Our website is one of the easiest to remember because our last name is Sam. It’s Jeeva and Sulojana Sam, we’re from Canada, TheSams.ca, you can go there and find details about what we do. There’s an application form, if you’d like to connect with us and get some mentorship. There’s also a free resource that we have to download right on the front page. It says, “Download now.” It’s called Your Marriage Can Survive Any Crisis. We started putting this resource on when call it, hit and started to affect marriages. It’s based on the thesis that crisis does not produce cracks in a marriage. A crisis exposes the cracks that are already there. It’s got a little bit of analysis, but a lot of practical, and applicable steps in there that if you follow them, you can get help, and it will be better but even if you started back to see some of them, then you will notice a change in your marriage.
Marriage is one of the long-term enterprises that you've ever taken in your life. Click To TweetThank you for doing that. Any last things you want to tell our readers before I do the formal sign-off?
Marriage doesn’t have to be complicated, even though relationships can be complex. It’s simply applying a few simple principles and doing all over again. One of the things we tell couples is you don’t even get married simply by saying, “I do,” once but you don’t want to keep your marriage going. You have to keep on saying, “I will make this work. I will find a way. I will love you, even when you don’t seem so lovable.” It’s one set of I do’s, and then a whole lot of I will’s. If you keep doing that, you’ll be fine.
It’s been a moving call. I appreciate it. Take the information, reach out to them, and get to know them. That’s how we build those relationships. Jeeva and his wife will also be part of future Mentor Studio calls. We’re very excited to have you on the team. I wanted to thank everybody for being part of this. Our mission is to bring this out to communities around the world that can’t afford it, or can’t get mentoring. We have a lot to do in 2021 to start traveling in 2022. I wanted to thank everybody for being on the call.
TheMentorStudio.com, join us and be part of the team. We’re going to take this worldwide. I wanted to let everybody know that the next show is one of my mentors, Mr. Jim Britt. Jim was Jim Rohn’s partner. He trained a gentleman named Tony Robbins. We’re very honored to have him on. He’ll be the next show. He’s also part of the team of The Mentor Studio. Also, wants to us take this to worldwide readers. He is going to introduce me to a gentleman who has helped 200 villages in South Africa become self-sustainable. That made my whole day. It’s part of the mission. The experience we’re all bringing together. Help your relationships and build your relationship. Even for myself, The Mentor Studio, and everything we do. I want to thank you so much for being on.
You’re very welcome, Michael. It’s my pleasure and privilege to be able to contribute to the mission of The Mentor Studio.
Whether you have morning, afternoon, or evening, whenever you’re reading to this, have a great day. Mentor somebody else, be of service and donate your time. It’s easy to give money, but it’s not, I understand, but donate your time. Be there for people and make a difference in their world. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye, everyone.
Important Links
- Michael Nitti – Previous episode
- Scott and Nancy – Previous episode
- Jeeva Sam
About Jeeva Sam
Pastor Jeeva Sam and Sulojana specialize in mentoring those who are hungry for wholistic transformation and supernatural success in their personal lives, relationships, businesses and other spheres of influence.
Pastor Jeeva brings 35+ years of pastoral experience to this enterprise.
With 36+ years of marriage expertise, he and Sulojana offer Marriage Mentorship that brings about Breakthrough to couples on the brink of Breakdown.
The Sams serve on the Leadership Team of the Ontario Prophetic Council. They provide godly practical wisdom and Spirit-led counsel to high achievers in business, sales, arts & entertainment, media, politics, and other mountains of influence through the Mentorship Plus Mastermind.
They are blessed with three great children–daughter Priya (recently news anchor on a national Canadian show) and sons Sathiya (anointed worship leader, recording artist and Spirit-Led Freedom specialist) and Jaya (physiotherapist and worship leader).
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