Category Archives: The GREAT Relationship

“Well, Jonathan, that’s easier said than done.” This is a common phrase and objection I hear from people when we talk about creating a GREAT relationship overall and/or specific strategies towards that goal. My response is, “Yep, that’s exactly why most people don’t get it done—lots of talk, little walk. Everyone says they want great relationships with spouse, children and self. However, look around. This is why most people have crap relationships, why most people complain about their children’s poor behavior and why most people don’t learn how to master their emotions. People complain about it being easy to say,  but hard to do.”

Of course, it’s easier said than done—it’s hard work. Period. Anything of great value rarely comes cheap, free or easy. Since when were great results ever easy? When did we start expecting that? Greatness, in any and every field, simply requires hard work.

Greatness Is Hard Won

Too many people buy into the pervasive, and TOTALLY unsubstantiated, myth that real/true/great love should be easy, should “just flow”, etc. Please, please, please, someone show me where this works in any part of life. Why is Google great? Did Google “just happen”? How about Apple? How about Michaelangelo’s David? How about any Super Bowl winner? Olympic gold medalists? The Cathedral of Notre Dame? Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.’s movements? Please show me where true and lasting greatness was not hard won?

The three areas I help people with (marriage transformation, parent training and self-mastery) all take hard work. Why should that discourage us, though? Shouldn’t we be encouraged knowing that if we work hard to learn and practice, practice, practice the best ways to create a great relationship that we’ll earn our outcomes? So, if we are going to do hard, we might as well learn the best ways to do it so our hard work is well-rewarded.

Hard and Easy or Easy and Hard?

The question then is not whether it’s hard or easy. The question is, where do you want hard and where do you want easy? We know that the convoluted and complicated habits and messes we get stuck in are actually quite easy to continue perpetuating and falling back into. Bad relationship habits are easy to continue. It’s just that the results of these patterns are really hard to live with. The work I require my clients to do is undoubtably hard to do, but boy! the results sure are easy to live with. Success story after success story keep rolling in like these two this week:

Thank you so much for helping me save my marriage! I don’t know what I’d do without my husband! He is so amazing for me in so many ways!”
—A Marriage Transformation client who loathed her husband and was ready to leave him

I can attest a LOT of very hard work went into this outcome. But the hard work is over for them. The easy part of living with what they have created, and earned, continues on and on and on.

[My wife] is amazed. You changed her life today with what you taught us about mastering strong emotions. The change in her in turn changed my life and hopefully her extended family’s lives, too. You definitely do not hide your talents under a bushel. I so appreciate you.”
—A Self-Mastery and Parent Training client

So it’s not whether the work is hard or not. It’s going to be hard. The question is where do you want the hard and where do you want the easy? Easy to keep doing, but hard to live with or hard to do, but easy to live with?

Short term: EASY to continue habits = Long term: HARD to live with

Short term: HARD to change habits = Long term: EASY to live with

Take courage. The work is hard. The results are worth it.

RELATED POST: Hard or Easy?

Been bopping around Disneyland the past few days with the fam. Disneyland in my opinion is Customer Sevice Mecca. If you care about customer service like I do (as a relationship strategist I teach and coach on it in the corporate world as well as teaching the customer service mindset as a core relationship strategy in marriage and family work) then Disney not only practices what they preach, they eat, breathe, walk and talk it. They even have a musical number centered around the concept:

Watch “Be Our Guest” from the movie Beauty and the Beast.

“Be our guest, be our guest!
Put our service to the test.”

I was. And I did.

And once again I was wowed! And once again reminded about how to do relationships, any relationship, right.

Watch the vid. This is how they approach it. The amazing amount of people pressing in on these people is astounding. Yet they remain energetic, enthusiastic, talkative, engaging and persistently patient and pleasant. Even when dealing with moronic or obstinate customers they treat them with kindness and respect (i.e., the classic “When’s the 3:00 o’clock parade?” question).

Just as in the above clip, they like to not only give great customer service, they also like to show it off and have fun doing it. They like to make a big deal out of great customer service. And what do people do? They, like me, talk about it. And we want more. And we come back for more. Again, and again, and again. Sounds just like what most marriages need (especially with such crappy stats)…

Q: So how do you apply, or think could be applied, “Be Our Guest” customer service in marriage and family relationships?

“I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”
—Ender Wiggin, in Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

The key to a GREAT relationship is REALLY understanding, which is the soul of compassion. To know someone so fully that you can see past what you disagree with about them to what really makes them tick. To fully understand them as they are instead of as they “should” be opens up the door to truly loving someone.

How do we then really understand someone? It requires a lot of shutting up and a lot of listening.  Simple? Yes. Easy? No.

Shutting Up
Shutting up is not about just closing the mouth, it is about opening the mind to what the person is really saying—to where you can hear them from their hopes and dreams and pain and desperation. It is not about shutting down your opinions. It is about shutting off the noise of your opinions, judgments, corrections, and criticisms long enough so you can really heart what the other is trying to really express even if they are doing it poorly.

Deep Listening
Listen for what is really being said. Listen for their suffering that is at the root of what they are expressing. Connect to it and let the compassion you feel for suffering well up inside of you.

But what if you don’t agree? Fortunately, you don’t have to agree to listen well. Understanding ≠ agreement, so don’t get bogged down in “Yeah, but I just don’t agree with what you’re saying.” Instead, listen so deeply to what is being said that you connect with their suffering in a such a way that your compassion is triggered. When you connect to your compassion they will feel that compassion in your speech and body language. Then they will feel understood. Then they will feel safe with you. That is the deep place that we use deep listening to take us to.

My dad, and educator, once gave me a book on teaching and learning called To Know as We Are Known. The title says it all. That is the secret of what we all want: to be known by others as we know ourselves. That kind of knowing is true understanding which is the very soul of compassion.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts on how YOU use compassion to listen and understand better as well as what gets in your way…

“Create Your GREAT Relationship Brand” workshop/fireside this weekend. Hope to see ya there! http://ping.fm/qN59A

Any dads relate?

“I stand outside this woman’s work.”

“Now starts the craft of the father.”

Please honor the mother of your children. Work your craft to be a father of honor.