How to Repair Any Relationship

When you assassinate someone's character, telling a person that who they are and what they want is awful is evil and that they're always going to do bad, it's hard to come back from that. In communication, somebody is going to have to drop the ego. If you master two sides of the family coin, one is appreciating one another and you can apologize. When you don't go and get along well, that person trusts you, that person counts on you. Any relationship can be repaired by a new level of appreciation and a new level of apology. There's three things to avoid in all of family communication. In every element of communication, based on the research, and it's so simple. Number one, avoid contempt. If you wish bad things for the other person, the communication is going to go wrong. I tell people all the time, if you have contempt for her, don't have the conversation right now. If you have contempt for him, limit your exposure to him. If you have contempt for them, get into some spirituality. Like you have to understand when you are in a place of contempt, you want something bad for them. You believe they are bad, so you have bad intention for them and you believe they have bad character. This is not the time to communicate. When you are in that place of contempt, you want bad things for them and you think they are bad. The trick there is don't communicate. Remove yourself from the situation. Ask for a pause, ask for a break. Limit your exposure to them so you're less triggered. You have to be very attentive to this thing called contempt. And there's books written on this that when you have ill contempt for other people, I'm telling you what, it's just like, it's almost impossible you can flower up your language, but they can feel it. They can feel you don't like them. They can feel you think they're less than they can feel you think they're jerks. You can feel, or they can feel that you want bad things for them. You can say all the right words in the world. That communication that I just described supersedes it all. They can sense it from you, so avoid that contempt. If you feel contempt, don't start the conversation yet. Take a breather. Find a place of centeredness and peace. If you're in constant fighting all the time and you have contempt or they have contempt, you got to work through the contempt before you can fix the communication. You got to fix how you feel about each other before you're ever going to get the words right. And so it's so important for usually when Contempt. I'm going to share with you the hardest thing. When there's contempt, somebody is going to have to drop the ego. Somebody is going to have to insert humility, compassion, service to the other. Somebody's going to have to do it or we're just going to limit exposure. But we are not ever going to repair on a foundation of contempt, ever. We must fix that foundation. There is no trick, there's no strategy, there's no communication, there's no copywriting. There is nothing that is going to fix this situation. If we don't address the foundation of contempt. We must insert humility, curiosity, humbleness, service, compassion. We must get back down to being humans who forgive and who can meet each other again without that. I hate you, Ness, because I hate. Hate just kills. Where there is hate, everything dies. And so we can't do it with contempt. That's first C. Second C. This is really hard. Second C. Condescension, condescending tone. This one is so hard. Honestly, one of the harder things I do is a high performance coach. When someone is venting or they're talking through a role, playing a situation with me, I'll have to listen. I'll go, is that how you plan to talk to her? Is that the tone you plan to use with them? And they also, oh, oh no, no, I'm not gonna use that. I go, oh good. Because that tone right there would probably ruin the relationship. They're like, oh, yes. And now you got them baseline back to listening to themselves. Because most people can't listen to the tone they're communicating in. They're just not self aware enough or they haven't practiced enough. This is so hard to teach people when someone's being condescending. Most often they're just triggered. They're trying to control. And the truth is it's estimated about 34% of men, 34% of men. So one out of three men cannot distinguish, they cannot hear the tone of condescension, by the way, not just their condescension. They can't hear it on playback from other people. They don't identify the tone as condescending. Where 70% of people go, that's clearly a recording audio of a condescending person. 34% of men can't hear it and about 27% of women can't hear it. It's shocking. Most people are not aware of condescension in the moment. And if I shouldn't say, most people, 30 some percent of men, almost 30% of women. And so you have to go, oh, when someone's speaking to you in condescending tones, you have to ask them, hey, I'm not sure what you're trying to convey here right now, but the tone to me doesn't sound good. How do you think you sound right now? And when you can say that without labeling, blaming, or being harsh to them, they might go, oh, I remember, even for me, one time I was in an argument with my wife. It was way early in our marriage, and I'll never forget this line she said to me, she said in a different way, but because I'm open, I could hear it. She said, what makes you think you can talk to me like that? And I was like, oh, yeah, I shouldn't talk to you like that. How did I sound to you? And it was like, oh, I didn't know. In that moment, I'm just arguing passionately for something. But to her, why are you talking to me like that? And she voiced that, and it was like a critical thing in our marriage. I was like, oh, I didn't know. I. Okay, shoot. You know, so sometimes you have to call it out. Condescending, don't do it. But if you hear it, talk about it. 3rd C. Do not do character assassination. What does that mean? Please don't assassinate their character. You're a terrible person. You're an asshole. You're awful. You hear these things. People say these things to them, or you know what? You always want bad for me. You always do bad. It's like it's telling a person that who they are and what they want is awful, is evil, and that they're always going to do bad. Like when you assassinate someone's character, you know, it's hard to come back from that in communication. And I know you've been many of us subject to that in your own families. Someone accused you of something and you never forgot it. That's why I say don't accuse people, but don't go after their character. You know, you just lack integrity. You're a liar. You're a terrible person. People say that all the time. You're a liar. You're terrible. You're awful. It's like name calling and questioning who they are is never going to serve the relationship. I like to tell people, if you master two sides of the family coin, one is appreciating one another fully, appreciating the other person, appreciating their personal freedom, appreciating their ideal, appreciating their trauma, appreciating their struggle with, like, you Full on appreciate their personhood. And you can apologize when you don't go and get along well, if you can do both of those things, that person trusts you, that person counts on you. They know you see them and they know when you do wrong, you can apologize for it. That's like, those two levers are huge. Those two sides of the coins, huge. Appreciation apology can repair almost any relationship. Any relationship can be repaired by a new level of appreciation and a new level of apology. But most people, they get their ego in the game. I'm not going to apologize to her because she did this, then I did that. That's not owning your behavior. And so I say, don't delay apology, don't delay apology. Because A, it's the right thing to do. But also B, I've been with a lot of people who lost a family member. They forgot mortality. They forgot life is short. And they never got to apologize. They never apologized to their brother, their sister, their mom, their friend. They never apologized. And they carried guilt with them forever because they just didn't do it. Now if that's you, you got to learn to deal with that guilt. You got to learn to let that go. You got to march on with time because time has changed. But I'm here to tell you, be proactive about it. Once you learn that lesson, apologize, apologize fast. If I get in a fight with someone, I apologize that day. I never wait. Even if I believe they are wrong, it doesn't matter if they're wrong. If it didn't go well, I can apologize. Hey, I wish that went well. I don't know. It went off the rails. I'm really sorry. I apologize. That's not how we should relate. It's even if I believe they're wrong and I'm wrong, doesn't matter who's wrong. It didn't go well between us. I'm sorry. It didn't go well between us. I apologize. I wanted that to go better. I don't have to blame. I don't have to complain. I don't be condescending. I just go, I'm sorry. That didn't go well. That level of humility to take the L in a relationship is so huge in families. You know, someone, it's okay. You don't have to be perfect to apologize. They don't have to be perfect to receive an apology. If it didn't go well between you, that's where we get into relationship and systems. We stop thinking about individual ego. We go, it didn't go well between us. I'm sorry. That sucks. I want it to go great between us. I'm sorry. I apologize. Because you were part of the relationship that's hard for people to own. It takes a lot of work. But once you do, you'll see the family gel.