Hey guys, Geoffrey here.
In this video I'm going to show you the five key mindset shifts you need to make
to become a better communicator in your relationship.
And I really want you to stay until the end of this video because you know when
it comes to becoming a better communicator,
what I find is that the problem is not tactics.
I think we all understand the importance of listening. For example,
the importance of asking questions for example,
but it's the mindset shifts that is really blocking us from executing on these
tactics,
the properly and more effortlessly and just like myself and just like all my
students. What you'll find is that once you can make this mindset shifts,
doing all the right tactics and becoming a better listener and becoming a better
communicator will just come more effortlessly to you. And before we start,
I want to let you know that I'll be hosting a free live masterclass.
So be sure to stay till the end of the video for the announcement on how you can
get into that masterclass.
And if you want more content and more videos that can empower you with the right
skills and knowledge to design a thriving relationship,
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post new videos three times every single week.
And the first key mindset shift I want you to make is that it's not about making
statements, it's about asking questions. So I think a lot of people,
when they picture communication, they picture making statements.
They picture them saying things like, I think this, I think that.
Here's what I feel. Here's what I know. Here's what I think.
But understand that without questions, without first discovering,
your statement will mean nothing. In fact,
it causes your partner to be more defensive. So to give you an analogy here,
imagine you're going to a doctor and the doctor doesn't ask you any questions
and he makes a statement. Here's what you should take.
Would that statement have any weight? Probably not. In fact,
it's going to make you very defensive the same way when your partner starts to
make statements to you without asking you any questions to understand your point
of view,
you're instantly going to get defensive and your partner is going to get
defensive as well. When you do the same,
so understand that without questions your statements will mean nothing and will
cause more defensiveness in the longterm.
And right now when your conversation is all about you expressing statements and
then your partner expressing statements back,
you're going to butt heads a lot and your conversations will be more like a
debate than it is an actual conversation. But when you ask questions,
understand that your questions add power to your statements.
So the first advantage of questions is that it adds safety to the conversation
here. It tells your partner that you are here and ready to listen and willing to
listen and willing to discover.
And you know the same way when someone is asking questions about you and really
trying to get to know you, your guard goes way down because you're thinking,
Hey,
there's no need to justify myself to get all defensive because this person's
just trying to, trying to discover,
not trying to judge me or criticize me for any reason and the safety leads to
more receptiveness.
She'll be much more receptive to what you have to say because she's going to
think he understands.
He's not just saying this because this is what he thinks is right.
He's saying this because he understands my problem and he knows how to fix it
and it allows for better solutions as well because you understand both sides of
the story and when you understand both sides of the story here,
you can give better solutions and again,
we go back to the example that we gave about the lawyer or the doctor or the car
salesman where as a car salesman for example,
asks you a lot of questions about your needs,
about what you're looking for and what what your problem is. Exactly.
Whatever recommendations he makes,
you're going to be a lot more open to it because you're going to think he
understands my problem, he understands my situation.
So whenever you're communicating,
you have to begin your communication session with just asking a lot of questions
being into discovery mode.
And 80% of your conversation should be about you asking questions and you
discovering things from your partner's point of view before making any
statements. And the second point here has to do with the first one,
but I want to approach it from a different angle here and is that you want to
prioritize discovery over solutions. So when you ask a lot of people,
what is their idea of a successful conversation,
they're going to name things like it's a conversation that's fast,
that's efficient,
and also a conversation that ends with a good solution at the end.
But understand that if you're prioritizing speed and efficiency and you're
prioritizing solutions,
what you're doing is you're rocking that communication debt.
So what is communication debt? You know, in financial terms,
debt is when you're borrowing,
you know from the longterm to fund something in the short term you're making
something easier in the short term,
but you're making it more difficult for you in the longterm.
And that's exactly what you're doing here.
Because what happens when you try to prioritize efficiency here is that you're
telling your partner you don't have the patience for long conversations,
for difficult conversations.
So if there's something in her mind that's really difficult to express,
it's really complex to express.
You're discouraging her from expressing things with you better to keep it to
yourself.
Because if it becomes very complex and the conversation becomes very long,
you're going to get impatient.
And sometimes also what happens is because you haven't discovered,
if you're getting to solutions too quickly,
you are sometimes giving solutions that may not be relevant or may not be what
she agrees with.
But yet you're hell bent on imposing it and wanting her to act on your solutions
because you think solutions is a key to success in a conversation.
And if you think about this, this is exactly like racking up debt.
You are trying to make things easy for you.
They're short term by making this conversation very fast and efficient and
solution oriented.
But what you're doing in the longterm is destroying safety and creating lies of
omission and commission like we talked about in the previous video,
and making communication more difficult for you in the longterm because as she
represses more things,
things are going to get a lot more complex and a lot more difficult to address
in the future.
So what good couples do instead is they prioritize discovery first over
solutions.
And so what they do is they start the conversation by simply asking a lot of
questions. What do you think about this?
What is your perspective on this before even coming up to any solutions or any
suggestions on what the solutions might be?
And this puts you in a much better cycle because while it might take longer in
the term, what happens is you're showing your partner that, Hey,
you're here to discover, you're here to listen.
You have the patience to sit through my complicated,
messy mind and come to win win solution together.
And when you prioritize discovery first,
you can also make sure that whatever solutions you recommend you suggest are
good solutions,
are good solutions that you both agree on because you understand the problems
from both perspectives.
So a good rule of thumb here is that you never want to go into solutions or
suggesting any solutions until you can say in your mind,
I understand where you're coming from. And if I was you,
I would have done the exact same thing.
So you want to keep discovering until you can say that.
And if you cannot say that right now, then you haven't gone to the core,
the core understanding of what she's actually trying to tell you.
You need to dig deeper, ask more questions until you reached that point.
And you know what's often funny when you do this,
you know when you prioritize discovery first over solutions,
you will find that the solutions just come a lot more naturally.
You don't have to impose anything or force a solution to your partner,
but both of you can come to a win win solution much more easily.
And this is actually how the best salespeople and the best negotiators do
things. You know, the best negotiators,
the best salespeople do not come to an win-win by simply stating their
solutions.
They discover things from both parties first and when they discover enough
things, they realize that the women's solution is so obvious for both parties.
Now the third point here explains why a lot of you may struggle with number two,
may struggle with discovering more and asking more questions and why you cannot
help perhaps to judge or to get into your solutions right away.
And the mindset shift I want you to make here is that there is no right or
wrong, no black and white, just a set of pros and cons. And this is very,
very crucial.
So as humans we are just wired to think that is good or B's bad or BS.
Good and a is bad. You know, I think about politics, for example, think about,
you know, all this social issues that you have in this world.
It's always containing two people taking very extreme sides, black or white.
And the same thing happens in your relationship.
You might have think a is correct and your partner,
they may think that B's correct.
And you both have a very black and white view on that topic.
And when you have this polarizing viewpoint that is very extreme,
like this is going to cause you to butt heads. And then when, when conversation,
win-win communication becomes impossible and you no longer are interested in
discovering more about your partner's point of view because you're convinced
already that your point of view is correct. So here's the reality.
And both you and your partner each have good reasons to believe what you believe
in. You're convinced right now that your beliefs are correct and you have many,
many good reasons to think why you're correct. Well, guess what?
Your partner has the exact same mentality.
And when you start actually exploring your partner's point of view and
exploring, why do you think what you think is correct or right,
you will realize that in this world is black or white.
Everything is just a set of pros and cons.
And the only reason why you're feeling impatient,
the only reason why you're butting heads right now is that you're not
discovering your partner.
Set of pros and cons and acknowledging in your head that you know your partner
may have a completely different set of pros and cons than you do.
But once you discover it,
you might realize that your setup pros and cons wasn't actually correct.
Did you fail to discover or consider many aspects that your partner was
considering and understand that this is a mental habit that you can develop over
time. So you know one thing you can try it for example,
the next time you watch a movie, if you think a movie is good,
think about why it's bad. Try to find out why that movie is bad.
If you think a movie's bad,
think about why it's good and you can do the same thing with social issues.
Like if you stand very extremely to one side of the social issue,
try to consider the other side, right? And vice versa.
You can do this with politics as well or you can do this with simply your likes
and dislikes. If you like certain foods, if you like to do certain activities,
think about why those activities are bad.
And if you don't like certain activities, think about why they're good,
consider why they're good.
And what happens here is that you're training your brain to be a lot more
inquisitive,
to be a lot more curious of the other side and not only understanding that your
site is correct,
but considering the fact that there are other perspectives that you may have
failed to consider. And when you can build this mental habit,
you can be a lot more curious.
And you can do number two here a lot easier because now discovery becomes a part
of second nature to you to understand your partner's perspective until you can
say, ah, now that I understand your set of pros and cons,
I would have done or acted the same way as you did. I get it.
And the other mindset shifts that can help you implement number two a lot better
is always think that it's an environment problem, not a people problem.
So here you have to notice how much you actually try to blame people whenever
you have a communication with them. So whenever,
let's say you find your part of stonewalling you and they're not really being a
great communicator, the first thought that comes to your head is,
my partner is such a bad communicator.
My partner can't communicate what an emotionally unavailable person,
whatever it is. You blame people for having different ideas. For example,
if you, you find that your partner has an idea that's completely illogical,
you think, Oh,
you're such an illogical person and you start to get impatient with that.
Or if your partner makes a bad decision,
let's say you instantly blame that character,
but I want you to understand that blaming character never leads to anything
good. It causes people to be very, very defensive for one.
Once you blame the character,
the guards go way up and there's nothing you can say or do to easily get that
guard down again. And when they get defensive,
what happens is you tend to push harder on the blame. It's like,
how can you not see how logical you are?
How can you not see how much of a bad communicator you are?
You are a bad communicator.
You start to stress your blame even more and this causes even more defensiveness
and puts you in a really bad cycle. Here.
What I've noticed is that couples who are successful, they blame environments,
not the people. So if someone makes a bad decision, they ask,
what caused you to make that?
What were the factors involved that caused you to make a decision?
They tried to identify the environmental problem,
the situational problem that is causing those decisions rather than the person
itself.
And what happens when you do this is that you will start to become one team.
You will really start to become like teammates. We're trying to find a win,
win solution together and not just blaming each other all the time.
And the other thing too is that, you know,
it's easier to fix situations than people.
If you can point the problem to some external force like a situation or a
circumstance, you can detach yourself from it.
This conversation no longer becomes personal.
And when in longer becomes personal, it's easier to just come to a solution.
It's almost like that phenomenon where, um,
it's really hard for you to come to a good solution when you're experiencing the
problem.
But when you're simply coaching someone in the problem and it's someone else's
problem,
you only have all these good solutions and you can think of objectively about
solutions during that time.
When you externalize a problem like this by blaming circumstance,
you're giving yourself the same advantage as well.
There's a thing that happens when you blame environments is that people become
less defensive and each of you become more curious about discovery of solutions
because again, you're externalizing the problem.
This is not longer a personal problem and it's easier to discuss non-personal
problems. So there's so many benefits of simply blaming environments,
not people.
So once you to adopt this mindset and really start to understand what it means
to actually blame environments and never blame people and you'll find that your
communication will take on a completely different culture,
completely different character. Once you can do this.
And the last one here is also very, very important is that suggest don't impose.
So most couples,
when they're trying to come to the point where they get to the solutions,
they get to, how do we fix this problem?
They straightaway try to impose. So they might say something like,
here's what we should do. Let's do this. Right? Well that's great.
There's a better way and more finessed way of you trying to bring up your
solution. So the way I like to do it, it's in two parts. So number one,
you want to ask for permission to state your viewpoint. So you might say, Hey,
I need you. Would you like to know things from my perspective?
And let your partner decide to say yes or no to that to say yes,
I want to hear from you. Or no, I don't really want to hear from you right now.
If your partner says no, that means that you haven't discovered enough.
You need to go back to discovery mode and really understand what is she really
trying to tell me? Because if she says no one's during that point,
she's trying to tell you, dude, I, you haven't listened to me fully yet.
You don't really understand what I'm trying to say. Just take a moment.
But if she says yes, then go ahead with your suggestions.
But when you state your suggestions, don't just impose again,
say it in this way. Here's what I think,
I think XYZ and then end it with what do you think?
And when you ended with,
what do you think during implying that you're trying to make this into a
dialogue rather than imposition. So notice how the questions here,
I really important that you are expressing your solutions as suggestions,
as a dialogue,
as an invitation for her to take it or leave it rather than an imposition.
Here's my solution. Take it.
And what you find when you structure your solutions like this is that people
will be a lot more receptive to it. People will be a lot more open to it.
And even if your partner disagrees,
you are structuring your suggestion in a way that allows for more dialogue to go
back and say, Oh, you don't agree with my thinking.
Can you tell me more about that? And you can ask more questions.
And then once you ask more questions, you discover more things.
You can go back to the solution again. So again, remember suggest, don't impose.
Now you want a free resource that can help you outline the five step blueprint
of how you can deal with conversations in a better way.
That actually creates more safety clays,
creates more openness and creates deeper connection.
Then you want to download my free guide in the description box below this video.
And if you want internet free masterclass that we talked about in the beginning
of this video where we're gonna discuss the five proven steps to rebuilding your
relationships from the ground up,
then you can also check out the link in the description box below this video.
And this master class will teach you the five step process that all my students
and myself have gone through to rebuild our own relationships.
And I think you'll find a lot of clarity on the next steps you need to take to
actually start rebuilding this from the ground up if you're struggling with the
relationship and know also that I'll be extending to you a special offer at the
end of that masterclass. So you know that special offer,
you can only get it if you attend that masterclass, if you're there to show up.
Um,
so be sure to sign up and reserve your spot as soon as you can by clicking the
link in the description box below this video. And of course,
if you want to connect with me on a more personal level,
I have a free Facebook group where you can actually ask your questions and get
good advice on those questions. And if you want to join that Facebook group,
the link is also in the description box below this video. Now in the meantime,
let me know in the comments below,
what did you find most insightful or eye opening in this video?
Leave a comment below. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
And if you found this video helpful and valuable, then uh,
go ahead and click the like button and subscribe to this channel for more
content like this one. But in the meantime,
I do want you to watch this other two videos and communication and how to become
a better listener so that you are better equipped to create this,
a deeper connection between the two of you in your relationship.
In the meantime, I will see you in the next video.