This video is one section, it's one day, for my online course "30 Skills in 30 Days
for Better Relationships". The full course includes daily exercises to lay the foundation
of connection, and warmth, and positivity in your relationships, plus a guided workbook,
and these videos. So check it out, the link is in the description. Okay, back to the video. No
one ever goes home, and says 'I can't believe it I didn't trip and tear my pants today'
or 'I had the best day ever, no one crashed their car into me today', it is our nature to discount
the day-to-day good things that are happening, and only to notice the bad. Now this may be natural, but
it's also poisonous for relationships. In order to love, we need to choose where we put our attention.
If you look for the bad in your friends, and your boss, or your husband, you will find it. If you look
for the good, you will find it. You can create your relationship reality by what you choose to see.
This video is sponsored by Better Help, where you can get professional, affordable, online counseling
for around 65$ a week. So check out the link in the description for 10% off your first month. So let me
tell you a story. An elderly woman, traveling by bus, had a layover during her journey, she purchased a
bag of Oreo cookies from a vending machine in the bus terminal, and she found a place to sit down. She
placed her cookies on the table next to her. She sat down, and started to read her newspaper, and
pretty soon she was joined by a young man who, to her surprise, he opened the package of Oreo
cookies, and began to eat them. The woman didn't say anything, but just glared at him, then she grabbed a
cookie, starts chomping on it right? And the young man sitting next to her, he has this kind of funny
look on his face, like 'what are you doing?', and then he goes, and he takes another cookie. So the woman
is now like furious, like this man is stealing her cookies right? And he, and so she glares at him
again, and this time grabs a cookie like kind of angrily, like 'rrr' you know, like 'these are my cookies'.
The young man he's like 'okay, all right, I gotcha', then he very kind of quietly, and carefully,
takes another cookie, a third cookie, and there's at this point just, one cookie left.
So he takes the last cookie, and hands it to the woman. She is like completely appalled, she cannot
believe the nerve of this man. So she grabs the cookie, picks up her newspaper, and leaves right?
When she sits down on the bus, she opens up her bag, looks inside, and she finds that her package of
Oreo cookies was in her newspaper, and that she had been eating the young man's cookies the whole time.
In this story, the woman completely believed that she was being mistreated,
taken advantage of, practically abused. 'What a rude, young man!' she probably thought. She saw herself
as the innocent victim, just trying to put up with the insolence of him right? Her perception
created the belief that he was terrible, and she was a victim, but in reality,
he was being remarkably generous, and she was quite rude. She was being passive-aggressive,
she was being mean, and she was actually stealing his cookies. So if we don't pay attention to our mind,
we tend to notice the bad, and to only pay attention to the negative in our lives, and
in our relationships. It's easy to notice when our child leaves the bathroom a mess, but it's
pretty difficult to notice when they don't. It's natural to see the worst in
our relationships, it's natural to see the worst in our boss, or in our husband, or in our friend,
but we can actually change that. We can manage our perception, and thereby our level
of happiness by choosing what we pay attention to, and we can choose to see the good in others.
We're all human. We bring our own strengths, and flaws to our relationships. We can conquer
blaming, and hurtful thoughts, by choosing to accept others as they are, by practicing gratitude, and by
giving others the benefit of the doubt. Instead of assuming the worst, we assume that people have good
intentions for what they do. So, for example, if your wife is taking a really long time to get ready,
you could focus on how irritated you feel, or how frustrating it is, or you could choose to say to
yourself 'I have a beautiful wife, and she's taking the time to look good, I'm so thankful for her.'
How you choose to see the problem, what you choose to put your attention on, is going to determine how
happy, or how cranky you are in your relationship. Let me give you another example. If you're feeling
frustrated that your husband seems to be working all the time, you might start to feel resentful,
and you might start to think 'oh he's such a workaholic, all he cares about is his job',
and instead, you could replace that with 'I'm so grateful that my husband loves to work,
and is willing to work hard to support our family'. Now, later in this course we're going to talk about
being assertive, and making requests. You can still make the request that he spends time with you,
but if you're focusing on learning assertiveness skills, or making good requests, or solving problems,
and you have the mindset where all you do is notice the negative, then it doesn't matter
how good you are at making requests, your relationship's going to suck. You're going
to be unhappy in your relationship because you're only noticing the negative. So if you want to have
a happy relationship where you nurture love, you have to make an active practice to manage
your perceptions, to notice the positive. So we're going to talk about a couple ways to do that. So
the first one is choosing to see the positive. So you need to make a habit, an active practice,
to notice the good in your life. You need to develop the skill of assuming
positive intentions, and you need to learn to focus on what you do want for the relationship, instead
of what you don't like about it. The second skill is having healthy expectations, this is
learning to be compassionate with other people's flaws. We're going to talk more about that in
an upcoming section, and the third skill to do this is understanding your responsibility, and
this will let you let go of shame, and blame, and comparisons, and learn to own your side.
Now, we're going to talk more about each of these skills in upcoming sections,
but we can improve relationships in leaps and bounds, if we become encouragers instead of critics.
So take a minute to do the workbook activity 'Fostering Appreciation', and then we're going to
move on in to the homework activity. So, for today's homework activity, we're going to talk about how to
create a habit of noticing the positive. Noticing the positive does not come naturally to most of us.
So, one of the ways we're going to practice this is by building a habit of daily gratitude.
I'm going to ask you to get a journal, or a notebook, and every day bring to mind the positive
things your partner has done. It's important to choose a time to do this that's going to work
well for you. So many people find that bedtime is a really good time to practice gratitude.
Set a reminder in your phone so that you don't forget, and write down at least three positive
things that your partner has done that day. You can use a journal, or a gratitude app, or even
just the notes section in your phone. If you want to go the extra mile, you can share what you're
grateful for with your partner, but that's not necessary. So this is how I practice this. Every
day at 5:00 pm, which is a really stressful time for me, I'm cooking dinner, making dinner,
or eating dinner, and my kids are tired and upset, right? Every day at 5 pm my phone chimes
'remember the positive', and I ask my family, who's around me, to share with me the best parts of their
day, and I share mine. When you take the time to look for the positive, your heart is going to open
up, you're going to feel more open to the people in your life, you're going to feel more gentle,
and more appreciative. When you change the way you see your partner, the way you feel
about them will change. The habit of noticing, and remembering, the good is something that quietly
feeds the seed of love, and if you do, it just a little bit each day, your love is gonna grow.