A Powerful Ritual for Better Relationships

Hey there. I thought I would do a slightly different type of video for you around some of the success habits or principles that I have and some things that I've learned that have helped me. And this one has to do with relationships. And some of, you know, many of you don't, that prior to being married to Maria, who I've been married to for 12 years, together for 18, I was married twice before and I got married, I know, when I was about 30, then again around 35, and both were amiable divorces. And when I got divorced the second time after that, I had to ask myself a question around, you know, who was I in a relationship? What were my philosophies? What was my relationship story? What were some of my expectations? And I discovered that I had some messed up thinking about relationships and my role as a husband. Needless to say, I got those resolved and have had a magical relationship with my wife, Maria. Not that we haven't had challenges, issues, personally problems, yes, we have. But because of me learning communication skills and being in a partnership, we've been able to get through them. And thankfully she already had a lot of these skills. But one of the things that I wanted to share with you, which is the real purpose of this video, is something that just happened a few minutes ago between her and I, and many years ago, she and I were having some issues around my former marriage, my children, raising them, living between two homes, one week here, one week there. And so one of the things that we agreed to is whenever we had an issue and challenge that we didn't know how to overcome ourselves, we would seek professional help. We would seek somebody with more experience and expertise than us. So I know I'm going deep into a little bit of detail, but I want you to understand the context of where I'm going with this. So we went to see a marriage counselor. His name is Dr. David Wexler, I think of the Marriage Institute here in San Diego. And he gave us this one exercise that we've been doing almost every single Saturday morning at 7:30 to 8:30. And the exercise was that we talk about each area of our life like a partner would. And so he gave us this framework of let's talk about, you know, your personal health, spiritual, mental, emotional and physical. We talk about how we see ourselves, how we feel, etcetera, Individually, how we see the other person in the form of, here's what I'm observing. No blame, no shame, no guilt, no justification. We ask of the other person, do you need any help with anything you Know, spiritual, emotional, mental, physical. And we do this where she speaks and lets me know how she's feeling about those areas of her life. I speak and I share with her how I feel about those areas of my life. We ask each other if we need any help, we share any observations, then we move on to the next topic. So the next topic might be business. And so I share with her, here's what's happening in our company. Here's what's going on with whether it's employees, what's working, what's not working with revenues, cash flow. She shares with me any observations she is having. Then we move on to, let's say, our investments and how they are doing. And we have a discussion around business, wealth, money, employees, all of the things that you'd probably be interested in every day. So we talk about health, wealth, relationships, career, business, charities, fun experiences, trips we want to take. We talk about the children. And the point that I really want to get to is every Saturday we have this ritual now where she has a coffee. I usually have already had my coffee. We talk about life. We talk about our life individually and together. We talk about sex. Are you getting enough of it? Are you getting the type of sex that you want? Are you getting the emotional connection that you need from me, the mental stimulation for me? We talk about everything in a calm, relaxed way. And we're never more than seven days away from going deep. We talk about anything that's urgent, critical, or important when we need to. But then we have one time every week out of all of the hours in a week, we can go deep. Imagine starting that ritual with your significant other, with your children. You may not want to talk about some of the things I just shared with your children, but I think you get the point is when you make the time to make yourself available to talk about the important things, you're never too far away from digging in and talk about things that need to be talked about. So I talk to my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother, my children, my friends, my employees, on a scheduled basis so that we're never too far away from dealing with the important stuff. So I thought I would share that with you. Because what I can share with you is after I leave every meeting with my wife, I don't know if it's a meeting, it's a bonding. I feel like there's resolution, that there's direction, there's understanding, there's a feeling of, you know, that was good. And so go deeper, be honest, be truthful, speak your mind calmly. Caringly, lovingly, with compassion, with empathy. And that's all I want to share with you today. I hope you enjoy that.