Hi everyone Emma Mcadam here, I've got a new favorite book about relationships and it's
called the four habits of joy filled marriages. So in this little nugget of help I'm gonna sum up
why I love this book, and what I learned from it including how to turn on the relational circuits
of your brain, and I'm also going to talk about what the four habits are. So let's start with
why I loved this book. I loved this book for a lot of reasons. Number one, it's solution-focused. So
instead of focusing on problem solving, or you know communication skills to manage conflict,
or negotiation skills or whatever. This book is all about bringing more joy and happiness
and love to your relationships, and this makes so much sense. Because the reason people get
married in the first place is not so that they can communicate well or stop being a jerk, it's
so that they experience joy and love together. And this book really teaches you how to strengthen
your relationships and specifically your marriage by shrinking the joy gap. The joy gap is basically
the length of time between having joyful experiences with someone. So okay so the second
reason I love this book is because it's pretty short it's succinct I mean like look how thin it
is. I mean I like short books because really I don't have that much time and most people don't
have that much time to read things. So there is a ton of information out there about relationships,
but this one's just really concise and it's still like really action-packed. It's full
of good stories and examples that's another reason I love this book. Reason number three,
I love this book because it provides dozens of really simple exercises, they're like 15
minute activities that you can do with your spouse every day to increase the joy and the love in your
marriage. The basic idea of this book is that when you have joy more often, you feel more affection
and appreciation for each other. And when you have more affection and appreciation for each other,
you feel joy more often and that's what makes your marriage strong. And while you can't force joy or
love happen you can choose to do these little activities that foster joy. According to the
authors there are four main habits of joy filled marriages.Sso number one it's play together.
Number two it's listen for emotion. Number three is appreciate each other. And number four is to
nurture a rhythm. But before we go into detail on these habits, I first want to talk about my
number one takeaway from this book. Which is the idea that there are two main settings for your
brain. The relational brain and the non-relational part of your brain. Which I don't think in this
book they actually give a name to, I'm just gonna call it the transactional part of your
brain. But let's talk about the relational part of your brain first. So the relational part of
your brain is the part that connects. It's gentle and it's kind and it relates to others on their
level. And the transactional brain is all about problem solving and risk avoidance. They give
this analogy of there being like a switch in the back of your neck that you can turn these
relational circuits off and on, and when we practice one of the exercises from the four
habits it's like turning that relational switch on, and when we just try to make problems go away
it's like we're functioning with that part of our brain off. The authors idea of the relationship
circuit really boils down to the brain science research on attachment. So attachment is basically
the most important thing to our brain. I would say it's even more important than survival like
physical survival. Loss of attachment like death or divorce are among the most painful experiences
among in in our whole life. And love family in connection are the most joyful parts of our life.
The author's basically boiled down attachment research into two types of bonds. A joy bond,
and a fear bond. And when we have a joy bond our relationships are focused on connection and growth
and love, and when we have a fear bond we pay attention to the problems. We see threats where
they don't exist and we constantly notice the bad and then we gradually grow apart. They say, "Your
capacity to handle the weight of life's problems directly relates to your capacity to live with
joy and return to joy after experiencing upset emotions. Joy keeps our relationships intact even
when there are problems or upsetting emotions." But you aren't stuck with your attachment style.
The author's highlight neuroplasticity which is one of my favorite words. And they teach you that
you can change your brain. You can enlarge the joy bucket in your brain by constantly using it. The
joy bucket is your capacity for joy. So this book lays out the basic ways to turn on that relational
circuit and fill up your joy bucket by doing four types of exercises. And they use the word cake as
an acronym to do it. Which is great because I love cake. C is for curiosity. So we all anyone
who's been in a marriage knows that we all just carry these stories about our spouse. We tend to
label them as being bad at this or she always does that or you know we tend to selectively filter out
situations that support our stories about them. So they're exercises that have to do with curiosity
they they teach you that instead of labeling your spouse, curiosity is about noticing your narrative
and pausing and looking for alternative facts. So instead of assuming, you wonder what your spouse
is thinking or feeling you get curious about your spouse. A is for appreciation. When the relational
switch is off you can't remember what you even appreciate about the other person and you feel
resentment instead. So take a step back and make a list of the things that you appreciate about
your spouse, and when you share that list you'll feel less resentment and your spouse will act more
like herself or himself. K is for kindness. So when you're in your transactional brain you'll
feel like winning instead of being kind. The author says, "I've learned to go through a simple
checklist of the things that Brenda likes. This includes initiating holding her hand,
telling her she is beautiful, giving her an item she's mentioned needing, or taking initiative
around the house." And he's found that when he does this it makes him feel more affection for her
it invites joy and love in their marriage. Okay the fourth one is e is for eye contact. One sign
that your relational switch is off is that you stop making eye contact and the simplest way to
turn that relational switch back on is to make eye contact. Eye contact is the foundation of
attachment and love. Like just think about how joyful it is to gaze into a little baby's eyes.
Or to to look into the eyes of your lover when you're falling in love. So many of the exercises
in this book they involve eye contact as a way to turn on your relational brain and to expand your
connection with your spouse. So for an example of turning on the relational circuit, let's say
your husband comes home from work and he seems a little cranky. So you say what's the matter
and he's like my boss is such a jerk he's giving me a hard time about this deadline but it keeps
changing up the project on me and it's impossible for me to do this. And anyway if the wife is stuck
in problem-solving mode which is something I do a lot, she might say well can you talk to him maybe
you could be more assertive with him how come it's taking you so long to do the project etc you know.
Then the husband is gonna feel more distanced from the wife because she's not connecting with him,
she's just trying to make the problem like his crankiness go away. If instead she turns on
her relationship circuit she might say something like dang that sounds really stressful. You know
connecting with that emotion and she might look him in the eyes and give him a big hug. She's
she's connecting with him on an emotional and relational level first. Maybe instead of saying
anything she just rubs his shoulders and listens to him talk about his boss for a while. And maybe
he'll talk or maybe he won't and in the end maybe he'll find a solution to his problem and maybe
he won't. But at the very least he'll know that she cares about him and that she's on his level.
And regardless of what happens at work, their relationship will get stronger. And the premise
of the this book is not like you can't make joy happen, you can't force yourself to feel love or
joy in a relationship. And when we've been hurt it can be really easy to try to numb yourself and to
check out to avoid or distance yourself to protect yourself from future hurt. So we start to fall
into these these patterns of fearing instead of loving our partner. And our brain starts scanning
our environment for problems to fix instead of for blessings to appreciate. And that's what makes it
almost impossible to find joy. So instead of doing that you can develop habits that help
you foster joy and move through pain, and build more appreciation by doing the four habits of joy
filled marriages. So let's talk about what those habits are. Habit number one, is playing together.
This seems pretty straightforward but basically you just need to plan times to play together and
to learn new things together. Plan special events together. One of the things they teach in this
book is how to plan in time to do relational sex. Which they go into a lot more detail on
in the book but basically it involves eye contact and appreciation and time to pause and cuddle and
express more appreciation. And this whole section like it has great exercises that involve looking
into each other's eyes and saying nice things and stuff. So I mean you got to buy the book if you
really want to learn about all these exercises. But that's the first habit right playing together.
Habit number two is listening for emotion. And they say communication is useless if
your relational circuits aren't on. So you can use all the skills of empathic listening or whatever,
but if you aren't in your relational brain it won't matter. So he tells the story of being
upset after a fight and his wife trying to get him to talk but that never worked like when when
he was upset he didn't want to talk. So instead this time his wife just sat by him and held his
hand and eventually he was able to feel safe and reconnected again and they were able to restart
the conversation from a better place. So listening for emotion is really a straightforward skill but
it can be really hard to practice because our knee-jerk reaction is to listen for problems. So
one of the exercises in this section is to just ask your spouse about their day and to listen
and reflect back only the emotion. So you're not allowed to do any problem-solving. There are so
many more good stories and details that they use and I just really can't cover them in this video
so seriously buy the book. And just in case you're wondering this is not like a paid promotion it's
not sponsored I just found this book and I really like it. Okay so habit number three is appreciate
daily. So in this section they teach the skill of appreciation which is different than gratitude. So
saying thank you is a polite transaction, it's something we're supposed to do and appreciation
is feeling shared joy. We feel appreciation while we're looking at a sunset. It's like the sense of
wonder and happiness to be spending time together. The book says, "When appreciation levels are high,
your marriage is joy filled. When resentment replaces appreciation, marriage feels like a
burden... Appreciation attracts, resentment repels." So they teach you to establish a
routine of expressing appreciation. You might choose to do this at night before you go to
sleep or you can do it during the day by sending a text message. One of the exercises in the book
is to write down three times you enjoyed being together on a vacation. Or and three things you
appreciated it when you were falling in love, and three more things that you're appreciating here in
the present moment with your spouse. And as you write those things you're basically reinforcing
the joy that you felt in the past and in the present so that you can feel more joy in the
present moment. Okay we're on to the last habit habit number four is nurture of rhythm. So this
this chapter is all about creating space in your schedule to relate and connect. So they say the
first and simplest reason that the joy gap starts to expand is tiredness. It's hard to build joy
when you feel worn out and you lack margin. So as parents of three little kids my husband and I feel
this one. Right if you're so busy and so packed with to do's then your relationship often falls
through the cracks. So they recommend doing really simple things together like eating meals together
taking the time in the evening to relax and chat about your day, and most of the exercises and the
things they suggest take about 15 minutes a day. But a lot of couples can't figure out how to find
the time to do them. So let's think about that for a second 15 minutes a day. If you don't have time
to put 15 minutes into your marriage then you're too busy, or you're not planning well. They say,
"You develop an affection for what you appreciate. Appreciation leads to affection and affection,
leads to more appreciation. It becomes a cycle." As you learn to start your day relationally end
your day relationally and schedule regular times for relational connection. Your capacity for joy
will dramatically increase and your margin for rest will follow suit. So there you have
it that's the basic idea of this book. Now obviously they go into a lot more detail and
they give some really great examples, but I hope this summary has given you a few ideas of what
you can do to improve your relationships. Thank you for watching and take care. All right ready
Freddie. Hi everyone Emma mcadam, what Isound like Kermit the Frog. Let's say your husband
comes home from work and he seems cranky and you're like what's the matter and he's like
my boss is such jerk he's giving me a hard time about the deadline that it uh and I cant do this.
can't do this