4 Ways to Be More Intentional in Your Relationships

You can improve your relationships. And I think you're going to find that and we're going to start it right now. Do you want to improve your relationships? Let's do a gut check. How much ambition have you had recently for great relationships? Have you woken up about it? Have you journaled about it? Have you thought about it? Is it in your goal sheet if I parade it in your house? Show me the piece of paper that says improve this relationship. Show me the piece of paper that says create great relationships with everybody I meet. Show me the paper. Have ambition for great relationships. I know that might sound common sense, but it's not common practice. That's why so many people who could achieve greatness do not. I want you to think about this. Your ambition for the quality of relationships in your life is the umbrella principle. It's the umbrella value ethic that is driving how your relationships are right now. I can't tell you how many people I've coached and worked with in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s who never, ever set a true, genuine ambition for great relationships. Relationships that were vibrant, relationships that were deep, that had depth to them. Relationships that made them feel engaged, happy, joyous, fulfilled. What most people do is they take the relationships that show up in front of them and go, I guess that's the way it is. I guess my parents are like that. Why have any ambition for anything better? They're never going to change. They start dating or they get married and they go, well, I guess it is what it is. I've been with her for five years, she's not going to change. And you get this idea that people don't change. And what you do is your ambition keeps falling. And you allow your dream, your desire, your ambition for great relationships to continually get knocked down. Every time someone doesn't understand you, you've let your ambition for vibrancy and intimacy and sexiness and fun and joy in your partner. Relationships fall down. Every time you get in a fight, it stacks on. Every time there's trouble, it stacks on. And you keep getting more and more frustrated with the person. Your frustration grows into closed down communication. And now there's this distance, there's this block. And what people do is they immediately stop keeping their ambition for great relationships alive. I had the blessing of horrible relationships. Anyone else? I mean, I had terrible relationships, just awful, just the worst terrible relationships. When I was a young man, right? Just came up like I had this terrible relationship. I grew up in a town where everybody beat me up. I grew up in a town where Everyone, there's a lot of really, really, really awful adult behavior. Grew up in a place where there wasn't a lot of good communication. My first relationships with people I dated were just horrible judgment, just off just, like, negativity and just, you know, huge demonstrations of anger. And it was just like, whoa. And the blessing was, sometimes we need a change. For me, it was, I got a knock in the head with my car accident. Made me realize, actually, I don't like that. I want phenomenal relationships. I want phenomenal relationships with everybody around me. And so how many of you ever had that ambition before? And maybe you picked up a book like, how to Win Friends and Influence People, or How to Talk so People Listen or How to Argue and Win Every Time, or you picked up these books and you're like, oh, I need to learn how to share and communicate. Well, that was me. I was that dork my whole life. When I struggle with something, I go to books and I just start reading on things. And one of the blessings was I read about these people who had great relationships. And I never had that, but I kept my ambition. Here's the hardest thing to ask anyone to do in this particular year. Raise your ambition for your relationships, especially now. Some of you have been shut in with your family for so long because of the pandemic that you're just like, we're trying to survive, and you're trying to blunt out the difficulty by just turning on the TV all the time or handing over devices all the time. And the ambition to have great relationships with the kids, with the spouse, with everybody else has kind of faded into, I'm just going to survive. But I'm here to warn you as your coach that I'm just going to survive in this relationship. Jeff's trying to get through the days with this family. That ambition is lower than your potential. That ambition is hurting your intentions. That low ambition not to have something great is cheating you from fulfilling the destiny you were probably meant to have but would require great relationships. And as your coach, I'm here to say, be wary the fact that you are so wary in your relationships. Be attentive to the fact, like, oh, wow, we are just trying to survive right now. Because that's a slippery slope, isn't it? How many know that, like, when you just try to survive, imagine you run a business, right? You're a CEO, you're an entrepreneur. You're running your business. If you allow just surviving to last for months or years, that company never survives, right? Someone in that company must have Ambition for what? Growth? For better service, for better relationships with the customers. If you don't have that in the business, the business flat then dies. That's the same thing in marriage and relationship. The same thing in child parenting. The same thing every time we don't keep an ambition to challenge ourselves to do better, we end up hurting the very thing. And so I'm here to say have ambition for great relationships again. And I know your first impulse can easily be, well, you don't understand my husband well, you don't understand these crazy kids. You don't understand this team. You understand my business. You know what? Don't be a you don't understand person because that stops you from learning. People say you don't understand, they cut off the very advice they need to hear because they want to self justify. Does it make sense that it's hard? Does it make sense? It's much more difficult with someone who doesn't listen. Does it make more sense when you have an obstinate husband, team or person in your business? Sure, those are roadblocks, those are difficulties, those are struggles. But just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible to improve. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible to improve. You can improve your relationships and I think you're going to find that and we're going to start it right now. Do you want to improve your relationships? Let's do a gut check. How much ambition have you had recently for great relationships? Have you woken up about it? Have you journaled about it? Have you thought about it? Is it in your goal sheet if I paraded in your house? Show me the piece of paper that says improve this relationship. Show me the piece of paper that says create great relationships with everybody I meet. Show me the paper. Show me how often that piece of paper got journaled on. Show me how often you wrote that down and then we can have a conversation that I don't understand. Right? So let's start with have you had the ambition? And if not, let's reignite that today. Let's reignite your desire for deep, compelling, beautiful, awesome, fulfilling, intimate, zesty, fun relationships. Again, you can have them. And if you stopped yourself from believing that, it only means you disengage from the skill set. You just, you just disengage from the development here. And that might sound like harsh or judgmental a way for a coach to kick off with it, but I'm a high performance coach. I'm supposed to hold your feet to the fire. A little bit and challenge you and say, this should be an area that you love working on. Raise your hands if you love communication. Yeah, you guys, I know, I get it. This is a great and a fun and a fulfilling and a great place to focus. So please, let's up level our ambition together, my friends.