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Day 24: The Power of Successful Relationships
You know, I have a unique privilege on an ongoing basis of having people ask me, "Gosh, what makes your life work? How come you're so successful?" And as I really look at that question deeply, the answer that comes up for me over and over again is that the quality of my life really is the quality of my relationships. Everything I can see that is great in my life has come out of my interactions with people I really care about.
You know, right now it's two o'clock AM, and I'm finishing up here in the studio, these last few tapes and my messages to you. And I just hung up the phone with the lady of my life, Becky, who really has transformed me. You know, she is the strength and the power in my life. I, I have to say that I've always been committed to success and I've always been an achiever and made things happen. But the relationship that I've developed with my wife is probably the single most powerful thing that's molded me and created for me the level of joy that I really experience in my life. I had the success, but being able to share it with somebody I really care about at the deepest level has created the depth of my life.
You know, it's kind of like, I can remember, to give you a simple metaphor, what it felt like when I used to go to a movie and I'd be at the movie, and the movie was like, so great, and I turned and realized I was there by myself experiencing it. And I know that you can enjoy a movie that way, but to me, it just doesn't seem to be quite the same. And I feel the same way in life, that every one of us deserves to have that incredibly rich experience of having the texture of life called relationship.
And I don't know where you are in your life right now, whether you be married or single, or whether you have somebody special in your life or not. But I thought we might just take a few minutes and chat about some of the things, at least, that have worked for me and the people that I've had the good fortune to spend time with who seem to have relationships that really work.
And I think I'd like to start by just saying this: The biggest challenge that people have in relationships that keep them from having the level of intimacy and love that they really want is they're looking for a relationship to be the solution to their problems. And the reality is, if you're going to relationship to change your life, to change who you are, what you're experiencing, you're using a relationship in a way that disempowers you and the person that you want to be closest to.
I think that if you want a relationship to work, there are some cardinal rules that we really have to live by, and there are some skills we have to follow through on. And I think the cardinal rules are: Number one, that instead of going to relationship to get something out of it, if you want a relationship that works, you must approach relationship in a totally different way. And that is, you must think of a relationship as something that you come to to give something to, rather than something you go to to take something out.
What I mean by that is, if you're always looking at the people in your life you care about most, and your thoughts are, "How can I give to this person I love? How can I create more joy, more pleasure, more happiness, more love for this person?" If your focus is consistently on that, then in order to give, you have to put yourself in that loving place. If you're always coming from that frame, then the person you're in a relationship with will always be trying to do the same with you. You know, what you put out does come back tenfold, and the greatest place to experience that is with someone you're totally intimate with.
And by the way, I want to remind you something else: When it comes to the area of a relationship, you must live by the philosophy of constant and never-ending improvement. The philosophy of "Can I?" Z-A-N-I. If you aren't constantly improving your relationship, it's getting worse. You know, because a lot of people say, "Yeah, but I got a great relationship." The minute you hold your relationship in a fixed place in your head, it stops getting greater, because it's like growing. You've got to grow your relationship, and every day it's got to grow, or it starts to die.
"Google sounds like a lot of work to me." Trust me, it's worth it. I'm sure you know it's worth it inside. So don't let these tools be the only tools that you hear about. Use these, but keep expanding your tools. There's so many great teachers in the area of relationship. In fact, that's one of the reasons why on this Personal Power 2 program, this special edition called "The Driving Force" that you have in your hands, I've done this special tape at the end, the one where I interview these remarkable people. And I pick three subjects, as you recall. One of those is how to make your body better, and I got Dr. Deepak Chopra there, who I interviewed. Another one is how to do better in your career, which we did with Stephen Covey. And thirdly, reminder, you gotta listen to that tape, is relationships. And for that, I have two people for you. I have Dr. John Gray, who wrote the book "Men Are from Mars, Women from Venus," and I got a little sample of my interview from Barbara De Angelis, who wrote the book "Making Love All the Time."
So the bottom line is, you gotta expand those tools. And again, if you're part of Power Talk, if you haven't done that, and you really are enjoying what we're doing together, sign up so we can stay together in this relationship over the next year for Power Talk. And each month, you'll get something new. And relationship is obviously one of the themes we come back to again and again. Please don't just listen; use these tools and constantly expand them. And you can have the richness, the love, the passion, the connection you deserve, and you can make it last.
So, what I'd like to talk about here is not only how to make relationships work, but what are the two factors that cause most relationships to die? Because we've all had that initial ignition experience where all of a sudden there's this incredible excitement and attraction. Remember that when you first met somebody you were totally attracted to? Or you thought you were in love, maybe you were. Remember you met this person? God, the minute you're with them, you just felt so incredible. You felt happy all the time for no reason. You started seeing things you hadn't seen before. You began to sing stupid songs in your car and stuff. Maybe in the middle of the night, you thought of them and you called them up and said, "Were you thinking of me?" And they said, "Yes, I was." And you thought, "This is so great." There was this incredible connection.
But then, maybe through the years, that changed. Maybe through the years, what happened is the level of intensity was not as high, or gradually began to drop. How come? Well, there's a law in life that a lot of people fail to pay attention to, and it really costs them major. And the reason is, it kind of creeps up on them. And I call it the Law of Familiarity. The Law of Familiarity simply says this: If you're around anything enough, you take it just a little bit for granted. And unfortunately, I think that's one of the big killers of human intimacy. You know, we get caught up in the beginning, there's these fireworks, and everything is phenomenal, and it's just absolutely incredible when you think about the person constantly, and everything they do is just absolutely wonderful. And then it just gradually drops down. Not because you don't care, not because you don't love the person anymore, but because you didn't do the things you did in the beginning to make the relationship work. You didn't maintain them. You got caught up in your job, in making a living, and doing your business, and studying something new, I don't know what it was, but it happens for most people.
Something I want to make sure I certainly avoid in my relationship, and thus far, I've been successful in doing. How do you make sure that you don't fall in this trap? Well, one way is, first of all, just becoming aware that the trap exists. It's amazing what awareness can do. Awareness by itself can sometimes be curative. But in addition, I have developed an incredible sensitivity for the impact of states on my relationship. In other words, you got to remember that anytime human beings are in intense feeling states, that anything happens around them consistently while they're in that state gets linked up. Remember what we're talking about that during anchoring? Well, specifically, what happens in relationships? Well, people in the beginning, everything is wonderful. But then gradually, around each other, while they're in other states, maybe states where they feel upset, and it has nothing to do with each other. Maybe one of the members of a relationship goes through a major financial challenge, for example, or an emotional challenge with another family member, a mom, a dad, someone passes away. And the trauma, and the pain, and the frustration of those experiences, unfortunately, can be so intense that a person is feeling them all around their spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend, or significant other. Until pretty soon, those negative feelings literally get linked to the person they're in a relationship with, to the point that when they finally get around that person, they begin to feel those lousy feelings.
Remember, the brain uses the Law of Recency to make connections. Meaning, anything that's happening around you while you're in an intense state like that, that happens within that recent period of time, gets linked up. Right, wrong, or indifferent, intelligent or not, invariably negative anchors are what destroy relationships. That's the number one killer. Again, what do I mean by that? Well, people get together, and they have an argument, and they don't clear the argument up, and they begin to link more pain to each other than pleasure. When that happens at a deep enough level, we eventually go through a state we call threshold. Threshold is when there's just much more pain in your mind than pleasure in the relationship, and your brain says, "I've had it."
What do I mean by this? Well, let's say a couple gets in an argument, and it's a very intense argument, and their feelings start to expand. And do you ever notice how when you get into state, sometimes that that intensity begins to grow? In fact, if you've ever got an argument where you were so intensely involved in the argument, you forgot what you're arguing for, but you knew you had to win. You remember a time like that? Well, the challenge with that kind of situation is, as we get more and more into state, we tend to feel stronger and stronger. And pretty soon, we may say things or do things that later on we'll regret. The problem is, the damage is already done. And if we have strong enough intensity, people get angry enough while they see each other's face, more angry, see each other's face, really angry, see each other's face. Pretty soon, they begin to link negative neural associations, major pain, to being with this person. Now, it doesn't usually happen overnight, but through a series of years, or experience after experience after experience, people eventually build up enough pain that they go through a threshold state. What that means is, their brain finally gets the point, says, "This is way too painful for a little bit of pleasure I'm getting back. I have had it. It is over." And that's how relationships primarily die.
How do you keep that from ever happening? One, you become incredibly aware of the power of your states. You realize that whenever you're in an angry state, whatever's happening around you, whoever's around you is getting linked up. So if you're upset, and it's not about your spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend or significant other, make sure you're not focusing on looking at them while you're in these states. Otherwise, whether you want to do it or not, negative anchors are forming. Two, also pay attention, if you're in an argument, you don't want to end that argument staying angry for any length of time. Otherwise, what you're doing is strengthening the anchor of pain to the relationship. So the best way to have an argument, if you want to do one, is make it a spirited debate, but make it short. Make it intense, make it short, and stop it. Don't let it get out of control where you get into state and start saying and doing things that don't support you.
How can you get out of the loop if you're stuck there? Do what we talked about earlier: use pattern interrupts. Again, my wife, Becky, and I, when I first met her, I said, "Honey, you know, I absolutely love you. And no matter how much two people love each other, they're gonna be times when they're gonna have a difference of opinion, when they're gonna look at things in a different way. They may even share the same values, but they may have different rules about how those values are going to be met." And I said, "If you and I ever get caught up in a major argument where we're both getting crazy, let's not let it escalate. One of the two of us has got to get sane." And in that moment or two, our job is to interrupt the other person's pattern. And I said, "Let's figure out something in advance that we could do that would be so outrageous that instantly it would change the other person's state." And so that's what we did. We sat down, we came up with some ways to do it, and we came up with a couple phrases that if, during an argument, either one of us, just for a moment, realizes, "Hey, this isn't working," we can stop the argument immediately, and the other person agrees to do so. All we have to do is walk up to the other person in the middle of the heated argument and whisper this certain thing in that person's ear. I won't tell you what it is, but just trust me, if somebody whispered this in your ear, it would definitely change your state.
The bottom line is, we used it over and over again in our relationship. I told you when we talked about value systems, for example, the kinds of rules that created challenges in my relationship with my wife. Initially, we had these two different opinions about respect. Do you recall? Her idea of respect is, you never raise your voice. My idea of respect was, you never leave the room. We made an agreement: I won't yell, she won't leave the room. I remember one time, she did something, and I got upset. And sure enough, I got upset, my voice raised. She probably got up, left the room. I yelled to her, "You said you wouldn't leave the room!" As I'm yelling at her, breaking my own commitment. But what was interesting is, I was so angry that I went to chase after her to find her. And you know, we have a pretty big home, ten thousand square feet, and we're home by ourselves. The lights were off in various parts of the house, and I'm looking around, trying to find her, getting madder and madder because I can't find her. Finally, I turn this corner down this dark hallway. Just as I head down the dark hallway, all of a sudden, behind this door, comes "Boo!" And I jump about four feet. Ah! And I turn around, there's my wife on the floor, laughing hysterically, going, "Ah, now you got a new seminar story!" The bottom line is, I had so much adrenaline flying through my body, I couldn't be angry. I had to start laughing as well.
If you want to make your relationship work, learn how to interrupt each other's patterns. Learn how to interrupt the patterns that would make each other boring, too. So if you do something over and over and over again, you're involved in the same exact way, day after day, boy, talk about a way of accelerating a relationship heading its way out. That's the quickest way: have no spontaneity, no newness to the relationship whatsoever. But if constantly the two of you are interrupting each other's patterns, looking at unique ways to surprise each other, to play with each other, to trigger excitement in the other person, now your relationship has juice and power. And Becky and I work at it, and that's the only way a relationship happens. You've got to work at it, not work on it. Work at it. In other words, be playful, be focused, make a major part of what your life's commitment is, is to care enough, commit enough, to communicate in a way to create a way of living with the person you care about that makes life an adventure, that makes it fun.
Now, by the way, what do most people do when they find that they've got problems in their relationships? And by the way, the problems in relationships always come down to one thing: whenever they think of this person, now they get angry, they're frustrated with them, they're angry with them, they're not doing what they want, they have all these negative associations to this person. Invariably, if somebody cheats on their husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, it's because right now, the states they used to get when the relationship were brand new, those wonderful states, they're not getting them anymore. They're getting negative states, and they go to somebody new who's got fresh anchors. There's nothing negative associated to them yet. And so, what a lot of people try to do to solve their relationship challenges is just go from one to another. That's like a person who changes jobs every time things don't work out. The problem with that strategy is, when you leave this relationship you're in right now to go to a new one, you're gonna have a problem. You're gonna take "you" with you. And when you take "you" with you, some of the same challenges are gonna come up. You've got to learn to resolve them within yourself and create a way of relating with somebody that enhances the level of intimacy on a daily basis. That's the only way a relationship will work, no matter who you're in a relationship with.
The second thing that destroys relationships is failing to consistently meet the strategy of love and attraction that your partner has. What do I mean by that? Well, what I mean is that every single person in this world has unique triggers or anchors that cause them to feel love and or attraction. And in the beginning of a relationship, we tend to do everything we can to please another human being. So we tend to tap all these strategies. We tend to do the things that cause them to feel attracted and loved by us. But again, as time goes on in a relationship, when we're outside the, what I call the courting stage, you know, that initial stage where there's incredible intensity and power, and you don't even seem to have to work at it at all. But when you leave that initial stage, you still love the person, but do you still have the same intensity of focus on the relationship? For most people, the answer is no. What happens? They still love the person, but they don't express it the same way. In other words, when you're courting, what do you do? You show the person you love them by taking them places, buying them things, looking at them with a starry-eyed look on your face. You also tell them how much you love them. You tell them all kinds of ways, as many different ways as you can. And you touch them everywhere. Now, those are three ways for someone to know that they're loved.
And what's interesting is, my research in relationships has shown over and over again that human beings, all of us, have a specific set of triggers that cause us to feel deep feelings of love. And it's different for all of us. In other words, some of us in life, in order to feel deeply loved, need to be shown that we're loved. We need people to buy us things, or take us places, or look at us with a certain incredible loving look. And there's nothing, nothing in this world that creates a deeper feeling of love than that strategy. Let's say, for other people, you can show them all day long that you love them, you can buy them things, you can stare them in the face and give them these wonderful looks, but that doesn't mean anything. They'll say, "That's nice." What they want to do is they want to hear it. They need to hear you say, "I love you," with a certain tonality, in a certain tempo, in a certain way. And unless you say it, it's not going to work. For other people, you can tell them you love them all day long. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's nice." You can show them, but unless you touch them in a very specific way, they'll never feel the deepest level of love. They may feel like you love them generally, they may feel like you know, you're real close to them, but the deepest feeling of love is triggered differently for every person you're going to meet.
And by the way, human beings are not unique in this area. Animals have triggers as well. Researchers have studied for years what triggers specific animals to have a loving response to each other, to human beings, etc. For example, female turkeys are one of the most mothering animals in the animal kingdom. They're more attentive and loving with their young than most species. Now, what's interesting is, researchers want to find out what triggers this loving response. Their assumption was, it was seeing their baby turkey that would make them have this mothering instinct. But when they tested this research, they found out seeing the baby turkeys did not trigger it. They next assumed, "What must be the touch of the baby turkey against its mother?" They found that was not true. And they thought, "Well, it must be the smell." Again, it wasn't the smell. They found that what triggers a mother turkey to have this mothering response for its young is the sound that a baby turkey makes. That simple little "cheep, cheep" sound. In fact, this is such a powerful trigger or anchor or strategy for the turkey that you can take a stuffed polecat. Now, bear in mind, in the wild, a polecat is a turkey's arch enemy. But take a stuffed polecat on a string, pull it towards a turkey, and a turkey will tear it to shreds. If you take a stuffed polecat, however, and you put inside of it a little tape recorder of the sound of a baby turkey saying "cheep, cheep," the mother turkey will begin to mother the stuffed polecat. That is why they call them turkeys. I'm just kidding.
The reality is, though, that they're not the only animals in the animal kingdom that have this kind of response. Insects even have specific triggers that cause them to mate, for example. So it's not unique for human beings to have a specific trigger for love. What is unique is for you to be aware of it and for you to utilize this to enhance your relationship.
Let me ask you a question: You remember we said in the beginning of a relationship, in the stage called courting, what did you do to let this person know you loved them? You did everything, remember? You showed them, you told them, you touched them everywhere. But as time went by, you still love them, but did you really still do it all? And the answer for most people is no. Whose love strategy did you express your love of this person in? In other words, did you find out what makes them feel loved, or did you assume that they feel loved the same way you do, that it's triggered in the same way? The answer for most people is the latter.
So what happens? Well, in the beginning relationship, you do it all. So you both make each other feel loved. Law of averages says you covered all bases. Let's say, for example, you have a visual love strategy. So how are you going to probably try and express love to the person you're in a relationship with? You're going to want to show them, same way you get it, right? So you're going to probably buy them some nice things, take them places, you're looking them in a real loving way, assuming this person feels totally loved by you. One day, this person's gonna turn to you and say, "You know, honey, I just gotta tell you, I just don't feel deeply loved by you." You're gonna say, "What? What are you talking about? I take you everywhere. Look at that ring on your finger. If that ain't love, what is?" They're gonna say, "Yeah, but you never say you love me." "Oh, big deal. I show you." "Yeah, but I need to hear it." "Fine. I love you." I doubt seriously if that's going to be the perfect tonality that they need to hear in order to feel loved. See, they don't just even hear the words; they got to hear the right tonality as well. It's a very specific trigger and unique for everyone.
Now, let's take the other option. Let's say you have an auditory love strategy, and so you try and express to your lover, boyfriend, girlfriend, significant other, that you love them. How you gonna do it? You're gonna tell them. One day, you're going to turn to them with the most loving tone of voice and say, "I love you so much." What happens? Let's say this person has a visual love strategy. "Yeah, talk. Jeep. Why don't you buy me something? Take me someplace. Look at me." "Don't go do look at me." You're gonna go, "I am looking." "Yeah, but look at me the way it used to." "Well, how's that look?" "Well, you know how you should know how it looks." There's this lack of rapport. Or how about if you get a situation where, let's say, you've got an auditory love strategy, and the person you're with has a kinesthetic one? You're going to say, "I love you," but that's not going to do it. This person needs to be touched in a certain way. Or the most challenging love strategy combination of all for a relationship is when you've got, for example, a man who's very kinesthetic or feeling-oriented. What does he want? He comes home. What does he want to do? He wants to hug. "Hi, honey." And he wants to touch and hold you in a certain way. And let's say you're a visual love strategy, and you go, "Leave me alone. Quit grabbing at me. What do you think I'm a piece of meat? Take me someplace." That's the kind of relationship that creates a major challenge.
The point is, if you want your relationship to last, you got to do two things. The first key, then, to succeeding here is knowing what the strategy is of the person you're in a relationship with. Find out from this person, "What makes you feel most loved?" Don't ask them what they like. They like everything. They want to be shown, they want to be told, they want to be touched. But say to the person, ask the person your relationship with this question: "Can you remember a time when you felt most loved by me?" So really get them to search their memory for a time when they felt deeply loved by you. And then, what your job is, is to use the process of elimination and one by one to find out which one of these three is strongest for the person you're in a relationship with. And the way you do that is not ask them again, "Do you want these three things?" They want all three. Well, your job is, once they're in state where they can remember a time when they felt really loved by you, ask them, "In order for you to feel these deep feelings of love, is it absolutely necessary that I show you I love you by buying you things, taking you places, or looking a certain way?" Notice the key words here: "In order for you to feel these deep feelings of love." Is it absolutely necessary? Not, "Is it important?" Is it absolutely necessary that I show you that I love you in a certain way by buying you things, taking at certain places, or looking a certain way?" Now, the person goes, "Well, yeah, that's clearly not it." So say, "Well, remember that time when you felt totally deeply loved?" And make sure they really get back in that same state of mind. They go, "Yeah." Say, "In order for you to feel these deep feelings of love, is it absolutely necessary that I tell you I love you in a certain way? Is that absolutely necessary for you to feel the deepest feelings of love?" And they say, "Well, yeah, that sounds closer, but it doesn't sound like it's it." So then again, put them back in state. "Remember how you feel when you really feel deeply loved by me?" "Oh, yeah, great." "In order for you to feel those deep feelings of love, is it absolutely necessary I touch you in a certain way? Is that absolutely necessary for you to feel totally loved?" Well, yeah. By the change of tonality or the nod of the head or by the physical response, you'll find out which one it is. In this case, it would be touch. And then you find out the specific touch. Because is it possible that the person you're in a relationship with needs to be touched to feel loved in a certain way, but you do it differently than what they need? Like, for example, maybe you reach out and grab them tight because you assume that makes them feel loved, when really what would make them feel more loved is a gentle touch of their right cheek, or the touch on the back of their neck, or a real light hug. See, you want to find out what the needs of your partner are.
Hey, if you want to succeed in a relationship, you got to have deep caring, which means you got to find out, "What does this person really want?" You've got to communicate every single day about what's really going on with each other, in ways to support each other, and you've got to commit to do whatever it takes to make the relationship work. Strategies are part of that commitment, and they're a lot of fun because once you know your partner's strategy, it means you'll be able to trigger them to feel the deepest feeling of love any time you please. That's pretty exciting. You no longer have to hope you can get through to them. You'll know their trigger. You'll know how to reach them at the deepest emotional level, how to trigger them to feel the love that they really deserve from you.
So these are the two things that destroy your relationships: negative anchors, the failure to pay attention to the states that are getting linked to your relationship, and or failure to continue to meet each other's strategies. And by the way, the same thing is true of attraction strategies. Maybe in the beginning of the relationship, when you're really attracted to each other, you always dressed up, or you went out for dates. If you want this relationship to last, you got to continually do that. You got to surprise each other. You got to trigger those same desires in each other on an ongoing basis. You got to stay out of the Law of Familiarity trap.
An offshoot of the Law of Familiarity is the Law of Use: Whatever you fail to use, you will lose. And the bottom line is, if you don't use your enthusiasm and your passion on a regular basis in your relationship, you will lose it from the relationship itself. And the solution will not be to go get a new one, because you'll run the same cycle. You'll have that initial enthusiasm, and then you'll run right back into the same walls. The solution is for you to develop a lifelong strategy on how to enhance the quality of your relationships. And it starts with these two places.
So, what do you do? I'll tell you what I do with my wife on a regular basis. Every day, we constantly ask effective questions that make us love each other more. We ask them out loud. We look at each other and say things like, "How did I get so lucky to get you?" I can't tell you how often we say that. Every single day, several times a day, when we're together, no matter what's going on. Now, think about that: "How did I get so lucky to get you in my life?" The presupposition in there is, I am incredibly fortunate to have you. And I'm feeling those feelings while I see your face, feeling those feelings while I see your face, feeling those feelings while I see your face. That makes them feel absolutely totally loved. And that makes them love you even more. In which case, they reciprocate back. And now you're on this incredible cycle of pure, deep, passionate, exciting love. And what it does is, it builds you. Stack it day after day after day. So you're feeling good, seeing each other, feeling great, seeing each other, feeling great, seeing each other. Pretty soon, when you see each other, you feel great. That's how you make a relationship work. You work at creating moments. That's really been the secret to our relationship.
What I mean by that is, I believe that by the end of our life, we're not going to remember everything that happens in our lives, but we'll certainly remember certain moments, certain key times where there was incredible deep emotion. And I know that both Becky and I consistently take time aside during a week and during a month to do something special together that we anchored just between us. Special moments, things that are fun. Things as simple as, for no reason, just jumping up spontaneously and scrambling to the beach in the middle of the night to take a moonlight walk. Those kinds of things you do when you're in love. Why don't you just keep doing them so you stay in love? I mean, what a concept. You know, being spontaneous, looking for ways to create moments, is the way to make sure that you'll have this relationship lasting forever.
And lastly, to make your relationship work, give what you most want to receive in that relationship. If you want respect, then give respect. If you want love, then give tons of love. If you want passion, then give tons of passion. Don't say, "Well, they'd be passionate with me, then I get excited about my relationship." Be passionate first. If you're willing to come from the place that your job is to give that what you want, you're going to find that you'll receive back in your relationship all the things that you want. But stay out of the trap that says, "Well, you do it first, and then I'm willing to commit as well."
I guess that's the final thing I can say to you. If there's anything that kills relationships, it's this fear that it's going to end sometime, and people looking at the end of the relationship instead of enjoying where they are in it right now. You know, that focus on, "Well, what if it doesn't work?" is usually the one focus that creates fear in people and causes them to sabotage the relationship in the first place.
One thing Becky and I did right in the beginning of our relationship is, we noticed that we're going back and forth, and we get close, and then we kind of push apart a little bit because we were concerned, "Well, gosh, will it last? Or what if it doesn't last? God, do we want to get this close, and then what if it doesn't turn out?" And then all of a sudden, we have all this pain. Is it amazing what people do and that keeps them from getting close in the first place? We finally sat down and realized we were doing this with each other and we said, "Look, let's just act as if this relationship is going to last forever. Let's just decide that we're going to act as if that's true, and we're going to totally enjoy today." And let's make sure that we both agree that no matter how intense we ever get in an argument, that no matter what happens, we will never threaten the end of the relationship about that argument. Because see, if you're willing to threaten the end of the relationship, what you're doing is creating the possibility that it's over. It's like putting your hand on the button of a nuclear arsenal. You may just be using it as a threat, but someday you may push the button by accident, and it's all over.
Hey, listen, the quality of a relationship comes down to the quality of your commitment to making it work. Nothing in life that has any value can be created without absolute commitment. There's no way around it. And a lot of people think, "Well, gosh, if I commit to this relationship, it means I'm losing all my freedom." Listen, if you're truly free, then you're free to commit to a relationship that can last. John Zahody, in his book "The Secret of Staying Together," wrote, "Mutual commitment is the identity of every lasting relationship." No truer words were ever spoken.
If you want to make your relationships last, number one, realize how important they are to your lifelong happiness. They are the essence of life. No man or woman is an island. The more you can share, and the more deeply you can share with another human being you care about, the greater the quality of life that you live.
So here's your assignment: Take out your success journal and have some fun. Do the following:
One: If you're not already in a relationship, do yourself the favor of identifying exactly what you want in a relationship. That's how I attracted my dream lady. That's how you can attract your dream lady or man as well. I wrote five pages of exactly who this person was: mentally, emotionally, socially, spiritually, intellectually, even physically, how she'd look, everything about her. And I described it in detail. Now, a lot of people say, "Don't do that. You know, don't create those limitations." Hey, it could have changed, but I got clear on what I wanted. And I believe that if you get absolutely clear, you can attract what you want. So if you're not already in a relationship, identify what you want and what you don't want. Because I used to identify what I wanted, and I got that, but I got a package deal. I got some things that I wasn't so thrilled about as well. What I learned to do is add to my list. I went back to it and said, "And here are things I don't want in a relationship as well." I wanted more clarity in my brain. That really helps a lot.
Two: If you're already in a relationship, this might be useful. What do you want your relationship to be about? And what don't you want your relationship to be about? In other words, identify what this thing called relationship needs to be for you, for you to be happy with yourself, and for you to be able to contribute to the relationship in an effective way. Develop a list of unique things that you can do to enhance your relationship on an ongoing basis. You know, Becky and I have this thing we call date nights, where we switch off a couple times each month where we have a night out, and the other person gets to decide where it is, where we're going to go, what we're going to do, and it can be a total surprise. The other person is just a willing and trusting soul who shows up, and it's fun. We've done everything from going and seeing the cartoon, "The Lady and the Tramp," to jumping in our helicopter and flying up the coast to Los Angeles so we can go see a play like "Les Misérables." There's absolute incredible power in spontaneity, but again, you need to create it. And that's half the fun: creating a lifestyle.
So I want you today, right now, to generate a list of unique things you can do, say, create, or experience together that will create positive states that you'll attach to each other and enhance the quality of your relationship. Please give yourself this gift of putting a great deal of focus on how to deepen the level of love, passion, joy, and excitement in your relationships.
Till tomorrow, live with passion.
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