Brian Johnson introduces ten core ideas for optimizing relationships, including Gottman's five-to-one positivity ratio, managing triggers, and active love as deliberate practice. The masterclass covers standing versus falling in love and how to focus on your own performance rather than your partner's.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living 101 Masterclass Series. Today, I'm excited to focus on Love 101, how to optimize your intimate relationships. You might notice today we have a very special guest, my wife Alexandra. Thanks for joining us. I'm thrilled to be here. Oh. She's going to help us walk through our top 10 favorite big ideas on how to optimize our intimate relationships. And we're really excited to have Alexandra start teaching her own series of these classes, starting with mamahood101 and then a Rock youk Goddess Life, how to Rock youk Goddess Life series. We've had requests for more of her feminine energy. I'm not quite qualified to teach those classes, so we're thrilled to have you for those as well. My pleasure. Well, for now, I'm going to give a quick overview of our top 10 big ideas, and then we'll dive in deeper with Alexandra's help. Let's start with big idea number zero. Actually, before we jump in, we're going to talk about what is love. We're going to talk about our first date. Alexandra was the first woman I had met who had read Leo Buscaglia's book Love not once but twice. And Leo Buscaglia talks about love as a process of actualizing together. He says the healthy relationship is one in which each individual is committed to their own actualization, and that relationship is all about supporting the other in actualizing their potential. I love that definition of love. We're going to talk about that in a little bit more depth. That's our zero idea. The first big idea changed my life as I really embraced it. It's the difference between falling in love and standing in love. So standing in love, choosing to love, using your relationship as a huge part of your pract in optimizing and actualizing falling in love versus standing in love. Our second big idea is that we need to be healthy if we want to have a healthy relationship. We as individuals need to have a solid foundation on which we're standing if we want to consistently give our most loving selves to our partners. We're going to talk about our fundamentals again. What's your number one super important stuff? The third big idea is to help your partner be healthy. If a loving relationship is all about helping your partner actualize their potential, and we need to have a solid foundation if we want to actualize our potential, then it just makes sense to help your partner be healthy. What are your partner's top fundamentals? What do they do when they're most on what's their number one most essential self care habit. We need to know that about our partners so we can celebrate and support them. And in rocking that, we'll talk about what Alexandra and I do. Super big idea that I don't think is focused on as much as it needs to be and could be help your partner be healthy. The fourth big idea is five to one. The magic number of love. We're gonna talk about research out of the Pacific Northwest John Gottman who can bring people into his lab and in a matter of minutes tell us which relationship is going to flourish and which one will not. Crazy. 92% accuracy. By measuring the number of positive interactions to the number of negative interactions, we're going to talk about that and how we can apply that to our relationships. The fifth big idea is presence. The greatest gift we can give another is our presence. That is love. We're going to talk about the iPhone effect, one of the greatest obstacles to being present and how to overcome that. Alexander will share some great ideas about cultivating our presence. The sixth big idea is kryptonite. We rarely go through one of these classes without talking about kryptonite. If you have your number one self care non negotiable habit, awesome. Well, what do you do that throws you off? Because if you are engaging in behaviors that consistently make you more wobbly, you're going to have a tough time standing in love. We want to identify and then remove our kryptonites and we want to know our triggers in relationships. What is it that our partner does that really triggers us and what are we doing on those days when we allow ourselves to be most triggered? Dealing with removing kryptonite is a huge part of optimizing our intimate relationships. The seventh big idea is called three fingers. When you point at someone, you're wagging your finger at them, telling them all the things they're doing wrong. Count how many fingers are pointing back at you. 1, 2, 3. Pay attention to that. Eat your projections right. Realize that how you're responding to someone says more about you and your current state than it does about them. Three fingers. The eighth big idea is one of my favorites. Active love. When you find yourself in that inevitable oops argument ics, which is a big part of the theme we're going to come back to again and again in the class that relationships aren't perfect. That was a big issue that I had was thinking that relationships should be perfect, fixed, mindset style. And whenever we had a conflict, I thought something was wrong with our relationship rather than, hey, we just needed to do some work. Now, when you have one of those oopses, you tend to run around in your head thinking about all the things your partner did that you find annoying. Well, one thing you can do is drop out of your head into your heart and practice something called active love. It's one of the tools that Phil Stutz and Barry Schwartz share with us in their great book the Tools. We're going to talk about that beaming love rather than running around in your maze thinking about all the things that annoy you. The ninth Big idea is another one from our other classes that applies perfectly to relationships needs work. After those challenging interactions where things don't go the way you want, you tend to think about all the things your partner did wrong. That's not helpful. You may have noticed it's much more helpful to say, look, my performance needs work. What could I have done differently that would have avoided that conflict? Rehearse that, apologize and say, look, I could have done this better. And I commit to doing that in the future. Guess what happens then? Your partner says, well, you know what? I could have done this as well. And you're able to resolve conflict much more quickly. Again, it's not about not having conflict ever, but finding your equanimity more and more quickly and more and more gracefully needs work. The tenth Big idea. Practice, practice, practice. Leo Buscaglia says, if you want to master anything, you need to practice. You're not going to be a master chef without practicing and studying. You're not going to be a master mechanic or artist or whatever without practicing and studying. Well, guess what? You're not going to master your relationships without practicing and studying. It's rarely talked about, but you need to actually put in the energy to study and to practice if you want to truly optimize your intimate relationships. We're going to have a bonus 11th idea in this class as well, which is, are you looking for love? A lot of the individuals participating in this will be in a relationship. We're really excited to serve you. And of course, many will not currently be in a relationship and they're looking for the next optimal awesome relationship. We have some ideas we're excited to share to help you discover and then most importantly, maintain a relationship with your ideal partner. So that's a quick look. I'm excited to jump in. Let's do that.
