- Being in love is something that we all want,
so why are we so bad at it?
I don't know about you, but when I was a kid,
I was raised on fairy tales.
Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they overcome
some obstacle, and then they live happily ever after.
That literally never happens.
What if we think everything that a relationship is
and could be is completely wrong?
What if there was so much more to it
that we could have that we're missing out on
because we're just missing the target?
We're aiming at the wrong thing.
(playful music)
In my 20s, I knew I wanted to get married.
The way that I was dating didn't really reflect
the type of relationship that I wanted to have
when I got married.
So that led me to the question,
Who has a great relationship that isn't talking about it?
So I decided to quit my job, sell everything I owned,
and spend the better part of a year visiting
15 states and interviewing over 100 couples.
I would sit down with a couple,
and I would hear their story,
and I would just think to myself,
I didn't know that this existed.
Like, I didn't know a relationship this good was possible.
And it gave me insights into how to create
that type of love, which was really awesome.
Nobody had ever taught me how to have
the type of marriage that I wanted.
You never get a class on this kinda thing
in college or in high school, so where do you go
to get answers?
You've got self-help books over here,
you've got therapy over here, and there's nothing
in the middle.
But the problem with all of those resources
is that they're focused mainly on teaching you knowledge,
which is great, but those things don't do you any good
unless you actually take action on them.
So I believe that one of the biggest gaps
between an ordinary couple and an extraordinary couple
is extraordinary couples are action takers,
not just insight chasers.
When you bump into your first struggle in a relationship,
you might think,
What if I chose the wrong person?
Get rid of that mindset.
It does not serve you.
It's not gonna help you get where you wanna go.
Being in a relationship inherently exposes you
to your deepest insecurities and your biggest flaws,
the things that make you most uncomfortable and vulnerable.
And that's okay.
Some of the most rewarding things in life
are the things that are most difficult.
I would argue that happiness is not the right goal
for a relationship.
When you pursue happiness as a goal in your relationship,
it's all about what can I get out of it.
It's all about making your partner responsible
for the quality of your relationship.
But you have no control over that.
You don't have control over their feelings,
their words, their thoughts, their moods,
but you have control over all of those things for yourself.
When you pursue growth,
it's all about what you can control personally
to contribute to the overall quality
of the relationship.
There is an ideal ecosystem for your relationship to grow.
(piano music)
You need a clear ideal to strive for,
somebody to learn from.
You need regular nourishment.
And you need to be grounded in a good community,
the people that you spend the most time with.
The skills you learn inside of a romantic relationship
apply directly to every other relationship in your life.
If you learn great communication skills
or conflict management skills inside
of your romantic relationship, it's gonna apply to work,
it's gonna apply to your friendships,
it'll apply to every other aspect of your life.
Imagine what that would do for your community,
for your workplace, for your country or for the world.
Can you imagine how cool, like,
how much it would transform our world
if everybody was just really good at relationships?
This is something that you can control
and that has a huge impact on your happiness
and your quality of life, and nothing matters more.
The only way to transform your relationship
is to transform yourself.
The only way to change your relationship
is to change yourself.
The only way to improve your relationship
is to improve yourself.