How to build a healthy relationship? I can give you a little heads up, it's not
luck, it's not magic but you're going to see a little magic in this episode.
So do you ever get up in the morning and wonder, hmm wonder if gravity is on today hmm..
No. You know that it's on, gravity is always on and it always works have a little
demonstration for you. This is a steel ring. In just a moment, I'm going to let
go of this steel ring. What direction do you think it's going to go? Oh yeah, you're
pretty sure, right? Really? Will you be totally surprised if it does something
else? Okay, now watch, watch. Not surprised,
are you? Why? Because you understand gravity.
When we talk about principles, gravity, gravity is a natural law, okay. It's going to
happen whether you believe in it or not, it's going to pull things down just like
it did that steel ring. Now what if that steel ring is placed first on a chain
like this one? Now I'll show you exactly how I'm going to do this. The ring gets
placed on the chain like this. Now when I let go what's going to happen? Same thing,
right? It's still going to fall. Wait, what just happened? Did you catch that? Now how
did I do that? Some of you might know how I do this, to some of you it might look
like magic, some of you might think that it's luck, well what is it? Is it magic? Is
it luck? No, it's principles. There are principles
behind this trick that allow me to do it every time, it's not luck and it's not
magic. I'm a psychologist not a magician. So what would happen if you knew what I
know about this trick? Well you could replicate it and a lot of times when I'm
doing a keynote or a seminar or a training, I'll invite people right up
onto the stage and teach them in front of everybody else how to do this trick
the first time they try it. Amazing, right? Well, no, it's just simple
principles and as we apply those principles, it changes the outcome so
there's probably things in life that are more important than a trick with a chain.
What if we could apply the same concept to relationships? How do we build a
healthy relationship? Well folks, I'm here to tell you, it's not magic, it's not luck.
There are principles that determine the success of a relationship. What would
happen if you knew what those principles are? See, that's what we're talking about.
Now to introduce the relationship principles, I first want to refer back to
research that was done, this was probably 20 years ago Dr. John Gottman
who is one of the nation's leading researchers in relationships and
specifically marital relationships but I think this applies in other
relationships as well. He found in his research that roughly 70% of all of the
problems in a relationship are unresolvable. Unresolvable. I tell some
people that, a couple I'm working with, for example, that 70% of the problems
around resolvable, some of them just throw their hands in the air, it's like
well, what's the use then? And others are just relieved
because they don't feel so weird now that they're experiencing some of these
things. What Gottman found is that this number
is absolutely consistent in the research that's been done, it's been replicated, we
already know this. Now really quickly, when Gottman talked about problems,
I think he meant primarily conflicts. Anytime you bring two
different people together, you're going to have conflict. Why? Because we got
different preferences, we got different backgrounds, we've got different beliefs,
we've got different languages, we've got different genders and so we're going to
have some conflicts because of the differences.
Now a little word about differences, differences give us a reason to have
that relationship in the first place. If two people are exactly the same, there is
no need for a relationship. One of you is unnecessary so the
differences actually make us relevant and interesting to each other, okay. In a
marital relationship, even at the level of gender, it's the differences that are
interesting. Think about it. So to come together in a relationship, we have to be
different, that makes us relevant and interesting to each other but those
differences are going to cost conflicts and I think that's what Gottman was picking
up on in his research. Now unresolvable, what does that mean?
You know what? I've done a lot of work in child custody cases and in divorce cases.
I used to do child custody evaluations for the court and in the state of Utah,
when someone files for divorce, they have to list a legal cause for the divorce
and the most common one is, irreconcilable differences.
Irreconcilable differences, unresolvable conflicts, huh, well those sound like the
same thing to me but here's what's interesting from Gottman's research,
she found that this was true for the miserable, highly conflicted headed for
separation and divorce couples about 70% of their problems are resolved.
He also found that this was true of the happy, well-adjusted, stable, satisfied
couples. There was no difference between these two groups in the number of
unresolvable problems that they had. In fact, you could not distinguish between
these two groups based on that metric. Isn't that interesting? What that
suggests to me is that these two groups are doing something very different with
their unresolvable problems. So going back to Gottman's research, let's go over
here to the miserable couples first because here's the short version, folks,
we want to do more of what works and less of what doesn't in order to
establish and maintain a successful relationship. So let's go to Gottman
because his research showed a four-part process,
he called this the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, if you like that kind of
imagery. The four things that were predictably found to to put people on
this side of the equation on the miserable side of the equation and he
identified first criticism, okay. Now criticism doesn't have to be real or
intended as long as it's perceived, we're off to the races.
Criticism leads to the next one which Gottman called
defensiveness. This totally makes sense because if you're being attacked, what do
you want to do next? Get your shield up, protect yourself, you're going to be
defensive, that's a natural response. Defensiveness leads to the third thing
and that is contempt. Now the way Gottman described this
contempt is kind of like defensiveness turned hostile. So you got your shield up,
now you draw your sword, you want to get some counter-attacks in there somehow
okay. So it's a retaliation really and then that third one contempt
leads to the last one, Gottman called that stonewalling. Stonewalling is turning
away from each other instead of turning toward each other, it's like building up
a stone wall or a more permanent form of defensiveness against all of that chaos
that's happening from the contempt and the defensiveness that's going on, okay,
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Now I didn't share those with you to alarm you
because probably you do these things, right? And Gottman acknowledged, yeah, most
couples do but the thing that puts them on the miserable side of the equation is
if that becomes the habitual way that they deal with their unresolvable
problems and if they're not willing to change it. So glad he said that part
because that gives us some hope, right? So what's on this side over here? Principles.
Principle. Like what I shared with you already about the chain and gravity,
right. It's not magic, it's not luck, the people who are on this side of the
equation have understood and applied certain principles that allow them to do
that, it's not luck, it's not magic, there are nine of those principles that I'm
particularly fond of and I'll share at least a few of those with you here on
this video. In fact, I think I just give you a summary of all night and then we
can delve into the details in some other content. The first one is what I first
shared when we started doing daily videos here. In fact, you can link to that
video right up here, it's about how to be positive no matter what. The first
principle is positivity and I pick that one because it has to do with two
processes in our mind that are constantly going on, evaluation and
creation, go review the video and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.
That principle works and it saves relationships. One of the interesting
paradox is there is that you have to do a positive evaluation of what it is in
order to set yourself up to actually go create something even better. Think about
it, your marriage for example, your relationship,
whatever you're in right now could be worse, right? Or it could be better and
it's easier to focus on that sometimes because you want it to be better but to
make it better, sometimes you have to accept first that it's already good, that
changes the energy, it changes the dynamics and it sets us up for the
creation mode where we're going to go actually improve it. So positivity is
that first one that I want to share with you. The next one is values, having
some common set of values and sometimes this ties into religion or prayer or
meditation or mindfulness, where we can come together to decide on a
higher purpose for this relationship, that tends to be a solidifying factor in
relationships and has shown to be an effective way to create a healthy
functional relationship to have that common shared value. The next one and
this is not going to surprise anybody, you got to be humble enough to be
willing to change personally and this is hard for people in general because we
know that we're right. Now check in with this because it's not that we think
we're right, we know we're right and when we dig in in that place and insist on
being right, we treat each other terribly and most of the conflicts that come up
in a relationship or what my friend Brett Williams refers to as the right
fight. Brett wrote a book called You Can Be Right Or You Can Be Married. I love
that title but Brett's convinced that every conflict that comes up in a
marriage for example gets back to who's right instead of what's right. We got to
be humble enough to let go of that so that we're willing to change. The next
one is tied right to it, that we are humble and willing to change
we're willing to allow others to change okay and this gets back to that same
pride because when we know that we're right about our judgement of somebody
else, we kind of set up a secret resistance to allowing them to change,
meaning that we're willing to see them in a different light and let them move
forward and learn from their own mistakes. Quit bringing up the past, let
someone change and be that better person that they're already striving to be. The
next one, respect. Treating people with respect, you can see how that could be
really important. Love. I believe that our job in a relationship is to love people,
no matter what and even if. Let's get rid of the judgement, let's get rid of the
I'm better than you kind of an attitude but humbly, just accepting our ability
and probably responsibility to love in that relationship. Followed right on its
heels, I'm going to list compassion. Compassion
I think combines love with kindness and gentleness and treating people in a
compassionate way. The last two that I'm goig to list today in this list of nine
are work, good old-fashioned hard work because it's going to require some to
maintain this relationship and finally, fun. Wholesome recreational activities
where you give together for the sole purpose of enjoyment and when we're
enjoying our life, what else is there? That's like the main purpose so we can't
leave that off the list. If we're not having fun, we're doing it wrong. I just
shared with you nine principles. I could probably think of two dozen or more that
might improve marriage. These are absolutely powerful and these power
tools will help you to actually create and maintain a successful healthy
relationship. It's not magic, it's not luck.
Right, not luck, not magic.
These principles make a difference. I know that you've had some experience
with some of these, I would love to do that and our other subscribers would as
well. Comment below.