Hey everyone, Geoffrey here,
and are you sick and tired of having an argument every single time you're trying
to resolve some conflict, even the smallest conflict? Well, if you are,
then stay till the end of this video for the key mindset shifts you need to make
to stop the cycle once and for all and for the best marriage or relationship
advice.
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post a new video every Wednesday and every Saturday.
Hey, everyone it's Geoffrey here.
And so if you're really having a hard time resolving conflicts in your
relationship,
then these are really the key mindset shifts that you need to make to start
resolving even the toughest of issues in your relationship.
And I've had many clients who after learning this stuff,
they can finally resolve that issue,
that conflict that's been plaguing that relationship for years or decades.
And the reason why I'm making this video is that previously I showed you the
five tips on how to avoid arguments. And if you haven't watched that video,
then I would encourage you to watch it also by clicking the link on the top of
this video. But when I publish a video,
some of you are commenting like what if I'm not even to the point where I can
follow the five tips.
And so that's what this video will address is addressing the key mindset shifts
that you need to make to even start resolving conflicts.
And the first thing you need to understand is how society loves picking sides.
And so no matter what topic you pick, we all love to pick sides.
So we pick a side on which is better, introversion or extroversion.
And we'll pick a side on, you know we say generosity is good, greed is bad.
We say guns are good or guns are bad. We could say rappers are cool,
rappers or not cool. And basically think of any other topic in your life,
any other topic.
Odds are that you've already chosen whether that thing is good or bad,
you've chosen a side. And this is really just how our brain works and you know,
we've been choosing sides, whether we like it or not, we always choose sides.
And once we understand this,
we can begin to understand why you cannot resolve your conflicts,
why it's so hard for you to resolve any conflicts.
And this happens in four stages. So stage one is when we choose sides,
and this is inevitable, you know, any topic we have, we have chosen side,
but then because of confirmation bias,
we tend to surround ourselves with friends, people,
we tend to read news and we tend to just circle our minds.
That makes us jam ourselves further to that side.
And so let's say that you don't like guns.
Well what happens is that you tend to read books. You tend to read articles?
You tend to surround yourself with people who also don't like guns.
It's just a very subconscious thing that we do.
And that's called confirmation bias. And so when we do this,
we are subconsciously jamming ourselves further to one side. But you know,
as time goes on, we're becoming more and more introverted.
We're becoming more and more of an anti gun person.
Then eventually when we jam ourselves far enough to one side,
we start to identify ourselves with that side. So we start saying,
I am an anti gun person, I am an introvert,
I am whatever. We start to form this identity on ourselves.
And the funny thing is that once we form this identity,
we naturally define who we are. But at the same time when we define who we are,
we naturally define who we are not.
And so we start to reject and we judge who we are not. You know,
if you talked to an anti gun person,
they are going to reject and judge pro gun people.
And if you talk to someone who defines themselves as introverted and you ask
them what they think about extroverted people, they're going to say, Oh,
they're just a bunch of loud mouths and never think about what they're saying.
And at the same time you asked an extroverted person what they think about an
introverted person. They're going to think or they're just shy.
They have no confidence. And so when we start rejecting and judging who we are,
not once we identify ourselves. And when this happens, that's when you clash.
You know, if, let's say that your partner has a different identity than you,
I bet you that that will become a source of conflict for you both always.
Because each of you have been convinced that one side is right and the other
side is wrong. You have rejected the other side.
And so if your partner happens to embody what you rejected,
then you're going to have a unresolvable conflict for sure.
And the thing you must understand here is that the more we choose sides and the
more we identify ourselves, the more difficult it will be to resolve conflicts.
And so if you don't see this yet, if you don't see how prevalent this is yet,
then I want you to look into your relationship and ask yourself,
what are the most painful conflicts in your relationship? You know,
the conflicts that really tear both of you apart.
And then I want you to ask yourself,
how does this go against how I've defined myself? How have you defined yourself?
And I guarantee you that whatever painful issues and conflicts you have,
it's an instance when your partner is embodying some part of you that you have
rejected, that it goes against who you are. And so if you find that,
then leave a comment below. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this one.
But do you might be wondering like what's so bad about picking sides?
What's so wrong about it? Well,
here's why picking sides is the really the only wrong thing you can do.
Number one, picking sides robs us of experiences.
And so just to show you this one,
have you ever known someone who only likes one type of music, one type of humor,
one type of movie, one type of books, whatever it is. You know,
their preference is so limited to one thing.
They have such a strong opinion that this one thing is the best and everything
else is terrible. You know, for me, whenever I look at this people,
I kind of pity them because to me,
whenever you pick sides and you only have one right and one wrong,
you're really closing yourself off from appreciating the richness of life.
Think about an orchestra here. So an orchestra,
a symphony is made up of violinist. It has a conductor, it has a cellist,
it has a flute, maybe flute player, it has maybe some drums. I don't know.
It's a combination of many people playing and mastering many different
instruments. And all these instruments they're all different.
But they come together to form this piece of music. But what if you said,
I only liked the violin and you only listened to violin well your symphony will
suck. And the same thing in life.
If you are really limiting your experience to one thing and one thing only,
then you're never going to laugh. You're never gonna like movies.
You're never gonna like music.
You can never really appreciate music because your range that you can appreciate
is so small. And so if you're like this,
you're going to be very miserable because there's going to be so many aspects of
life that you can't appreciate because you rejected so many parts of life and
you only liked the one thing that you like.
And the thing is that when you stopped picking sides and you don't pick sides,
you will begin to appreciate life more. You know, for me,
every comedy show I go to, I have a big laugh. Every movie I watch,
I really enjoy it. I can watch a Disney movie, I can watch a romcom,
I can watch an action movie, I have a good time. And all of them, you know,
I can listen to rap, I can listen to classical, I can listen to country,
I can listen to whatever type of music and have a good time. And so as a result,
every waking moment that I have, I can fill it with some beauty I can.
I appreciate every waking moment because I haven't picked sides.
I appreciate all sides. And so it's not just to prevent conflicts.
It's also that you'll become a lot happier.
And the second thing is that picking sides leaves us handicapped. And so,
you know,
there's a lot of people in this world who have really defined themselves as
introverted or extroverted and they're really so far into that spectrum that
they really hate anything that's extroverted and the extroverted really hates
anything that's introverted. They've really jammed themselves to one side.
But the problem here is that there are going to be times in life when that
introverted person needs to become extroverted because if that person stays
introverted, his whole life then that introverted person can,
have the best ideas, can actually be a beautiful soul.
But nobody would know because he's never going out.
And then the extroverted person has a different problem where they're always
partying, they're always socializing, they're always going out and about.
But what they need to do is to actually sit down in the chair and think for a
little bit, think about their life,
reflect some reflection and thinking can actually do them a lot of good.
And the same thing here, you know,
some people jam themselves so far away into that generous scale.
And so I know a lot of entrepreneurs, for example, who, you know,
they're so scared of being greedy.
They want to be generous so much that they're afraid to charge a premium for the
price for the product.
And so what happens is they keep giving all these free samples,
the pro bono work, and before you know it,
they're bankrupt and they're miserable because of it. And now they're bankrupt.
They can't give anymore. You know, anything in life you think of,
you need a bit of the opposite for you to function. Like for example,
you can't just be orderly all the time.
You can't just expect life to be very ordered, very structured,
because you're going to be, OCD it's going to drive you insane.
You need some flexibility as well on top of your order and structure.
You can't just jam yourself to one side and you can't also just be spontaneous
and just be free flowing all the time. You need some structure too.
And so when you pick signs, when you have only one right and wrong,
you're really choosing to walk with one leg. When you actually have both legs,
you're handicapping yourself and when you stop choosing sides,
you'll become more capable and more complete as a person. You know, for me,
if I need to be introverted for a week, I can do that. No problem.
If I need to be around people and give a talk in front of a thousand people,
I can do that too. No problem.
I can just switch between one mode to another mode.
I have a good balance between generosity and greed. You know, I understand that.
I started this business to be very generous,
but at the same time I realized that I need money to keep my business going and
so I'm kind of balancing the two.
I'm not just jamming myself to one side over the other and when you can really
embrace both sides like this, you can become like a Swiss army knife.
You can be introverted when you need to.
You can be extroverted when you need to. You can be generous when you need to.
You can be greedy when you need to. You can be nice when you need to.
You can be angry and mean when you need to. They all have their place.
They all have their pros and cons and picking sides also makes us frustrated.
Whenever you see like a protest,
whenever you see people are really angry and passionately angry about something,
then you know that they've picked a side.
I mean by definition a protest is a group of people embodying one side of a
spectrum,
one side of a belief protesting against people in another set of beliefs.
And really it's a numbers game.
The more you pick sides and the more you identify yourself,
then the greater the odds that someone will go against how you define yourself.
And so if you live in this hypothetical life where all the topics that could
think of,
you've already picked sides and you've already formed some identity on which
side you want to represent, then anyone you meet,
the odds are going to be pretty much a hundred percent that another person would
have a different side than you. And when you meet such a person,
you're going to feel like it's very difficult to get along with them.
You're going to feel very frustrated,
you're going to feel very impatient with them because they're embodying all
these beliefs that you think are bad, that you have rejected.
And if that's the case, then you can never get along with people.
And the more this happens, the more life will frustrate you.
But when you start choosing sides, you'll be more at ease with the world.
So for me, if someone has a different opinion, I'm like, okay, you know,
I won't get angry. Instead I'll ask them like, why do you have the opinion?
What do you think that? And then they give their explanation and we're like,
okay, cool. That's it.
And so if picking a side as the only wrong thing you can do,
then I want to talk to you about what is called exploring the opposites.
And it's a very simple concept. And you know,
when you look at a very good scientists, when you look at it, very good thinker,
this is really the mechanics of how they think, how good scientists work.
So we all know, we learned in school this one, that scientists form hypotheses.
So before they create a test, an experiment,
they make a prediction and what they think will happen.
But what a lot of people don't know is that a good scientist always forms an
antithesis and this is basically an opposite of whatever the hypothesis was.
So if your hypothesis was that this experiment will work.
Then the antithesis is how it will not work. And so a good scientist,
a good thinker doesn't just seek out to test their hypothesis and whether that's
true, but they also test the antithesis the opposite to see if that's true.
And usually if you talk to like really good scientists,
they find that neither of the hypothesis or neither the antithesis was correct.
The correct one is really the synthesis, which is usually a combination of both.
And so that's the same thing I want you to do here,
which is that you want to look at your most painful conflicts you have in your
relationship.
Then you want to ask yourself how does that go against your definition of self
and whatever that is. That is your current hypothesis.
But what you need to do now is to define the other side.
What is your antithesis? And then I want you to start asking the other side why.
And so one great example of this was, you know, I'm a very structured person.
I'm a very orderly person. I schedule every minute of my day. And you know,
I'm very rigid like that. You know,
there's some people that I've met who are not rigid like that. Uh,
they kind of go with the flow. They don't plan their days,
they just kind of float along. And so when I meet someone like that,
when I meet someone different like that, I asked him like,
why do you do the things you do?
And usually what I find is some pretty compelling ideas on why the other side is
pretty good too. And so now, you know,
I had this hypothesis that my orderly way,
my structured way was the best way.
But then what I did was I explored the antithesis, which are,
I asked people who are not structured, why they're not structured.
And now I ended up finding that the synthesis is true.
That really the answer lies in the middle,
that there are pros and cons to being structured and there are pros and cons to
being unstructured.
The pro being structured is that it makes you very productive,
but the con is that it doesn't really make you very creative and the pro of
being unstructured is that it makes you very creative,
but it doesn't make you very productive. And that's all there is.
There's no right or wrong. It's just different.
And if you start doing this process for everything in your life,
you'll be a lot more open minded and life will become a lot more fun. You know,
you'll be a lot more effective as a person. And on top of that,
you won't have so many conflicts in your relationship because every single time
that your partner has a different idea, you can just ask why?
Why do you believe that you won't get angry? You won't panic,
but you would just investigate and you would find usually most of the time that
neither of you are right. They had the right really lies in the middle,
in the gray area. There's never a black and white.
And so once you adopt this mindset,
then it becomes easier to ask questions to actually have a productive
conversation rather than playing the blame game or being angry and panicking
every time you have a conflict.
And the thing I always tell people is that you have to turn this into your
lifestyle. You know,
if you want to start being able to resolve conflicts properly with anyone,
not just your spouse, and also experienced the full richness of life,
then you need to turn this kind of thinking into your lifestyle.
Not just something you do one day or the week, but something you do at 24 seven.
And one example of this is with the five love languages,
and this is something that I encourage all my clients to do and I would
encourage you to try as well. Now if you don't know the five love languages,
just give it a Google and you will find so many things about it.
But this is something that everyone's raving about.
And so let's say that this is my five love language.
So number one is physical touch followed by a where does the information than
quality time receiving gifts and acts of service. So most people,
what they would do is they would look at the first two. So they say, Hey,
I like physical touch. I appreciate physical touch,
I appreciate words of affirmation. And once they find this out,
most people will focus all their attention there and they forced their partner
to give them only this. So they say, don't give me access service.
I want more physical touch. But what I tell my clients,
which is very different from what anyone will tell you, is focused on this.
So focus on the lower bottom and learn to enrich your lives by appreciating more
forms of love. So what I did for example,
was I talked to people and I really explored what is the value of quality time,
what is the value of receiving gifts? What is the value of access service?
And when we did this, when we explored all five,
something very interesting happened that now we can really feel love in our
relationship a lot more.
We can appreciate more forms of love in our relationship.
So for my partner's point of view,
giving me love doesn't need to be this really difficult thing where she must
question herself all the time. Am I giving him physical touch?
Am I giving him words of affirmation?
But now that I have learned to appreciate all five, you know,
loving me for my partner's point of view becomes a lot easier.
Whatever forms of love she gives, I can appreciate it. And vice versa.
Whatever forms of love I give, she can also appreciate.
And when you can appreciate all five instead of just two of the five,
it really makes your relationship richer because you have so much more love that
you can appreciate. And so now that you've made those key mindset shifts,
the next step is to actually learn the step by step outline of what to say and
what to do to begin resolving conflicts like the best of couples,
which is why I've created this free five part video series that will teach you
the same five step system that I teach hundreds of my clients.
And when they learn this type steps,
they can really begin to master what it really means to communicate and resolve
conflicts as a couple. And so if you're interested in downloading this,
the link to this course, it's in the description box and below this video.
And if you're looking for a safe space where you can discuss your issues and
really get personalized help that you need,
then you can also join our secret Facebook group with other members who are just
as committed and as dedicated to working on their relationship as you are.
And if you want to join this group, the link is also below this video.
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it's so good to see all of her support and all of you being here with me.
And with that, I will see you in the next year.