I write this at a time when I'm 11 weeks away from becoming a father, it's the most critical time to be maintaining a healthy, thriving relationship with my wife and the mother of our child.
Studies show that before our baby is even born, if we have an argument, or smash something loud, the baby feels that, and becomes more stressed as the neurons in her brain are developing.
I also speak to many clients who must overcome so much more to have great relationships largely due to their parents example in their most influential years of development.
Let me ask you this, what If you could predict the future?
What if you could prevent mis-understandings and pre-empt how to have a fun, adventurous, connected relationship in which you’re always both growing together?
You can.
If you understand the only two reasons all relationships fail or succeed, you can begin to learn exactly how to satisfy anyone's needs and when someone's needs are satisfied, they feel appreciative and connected to you.
1. Strategies
Everything we do is a strategy.
You’re not being in a relationship; you’re doing a relationship.
Just like you’re doing the dishes, or doing a million other daily things you do in life.
How you do your relationships is based on your strategies.
The majority of these are all learned from who you observed when you were a child and adolescent.
If you had separated parents, you might create the same challenge they had, in your life, not because you wanted to, but because you learned by observing the strategies they had.
If a relationship fails, be it personal or professional, it’s because you are using ‘un-resourceful’ strategies.
It’s like a builder trying to use a hammer when he needs a screw driver.
If your relationship is succeeding, you are using ‘resourceful’ strategies.
You know which communication tool to use for which situation.
When there’s potential conflict, you can manage your emotions and remain calm because you have learned the resourceful strategy.
2. Associations
Anything and everything you experience with your senses you associate to, with either a negative or positive emotion.
Have you ever heard a song you don’t like?
That song is a negative association with your auditory senses.
These are the negative associations we create in relationships and this is why people say they reach breaking point after they had tolerated the same behaviour from someone for a while, because that negative association continues to multiply and become stronger in that same physical environment when it first happened.
This is why learning communication strategies are so important for not only our relationships, but our career, our health and much more, so we can prevent that breaking point from ever happening.
A positive association is like when you hear your favourite song.
When you do something and then you feel good.
The goal is to create as many positive associations with people as possible, especially if there’s a negative association with them.
It can be something as simple as changing the lock screen on your phone to something that makes you feel happy so that every person you speak to and see is being associated with what makes you feel happy after you have just looked at your phone.
If you’re having a challenge in a relationship with someone, The first step is always awareness
Ask yourself “what am I seeing in others that is actually me?”
Because that won’t change until you change
What we repress and pretend to not be, is what we will notice is expressed by others around us.
After you have awareness, ask someone who has the exact result you want, what strategies they use in their relationships?
Ask them how they positively associate with other people and understand how they like to be communicated with.
Better yet, ask someone who not only has the result, but is helping other people get those same results as well.
