How to Increase Love in Your Relationship | Jonathan Ljungqvist | TEDxZagreb

[Music] [Applause] is there a tool out there to create more lasting love in Sweden where I come from we have around 40,000 marriages each year and each year we have around 20,000 divorces why is it like this how many in here has been in love raise your hand how many near would say love can be quite complicated yeah so so today it's been today it's been one year today it's been one year since my girlfriend Amanda and I started to work on a project on a project to scientifically increase the love back to our relationship and I'm not a scientist I'm not a professor I'm just a regular guy who did an awesome experiment and that experiment changed my life and it changed my relationship and today I want to give you concrete tools so you can do the same the sweat sounds like 16 well-invested minutes of your life good do you remember the feeling of falling in love for me it happened 10 years ago with Amanda I mean every time I looked that Terri was it was like my heart was melting I mean she could be away from me for 20 minutes and I would pick up my phone and send her his texts hey love I missed you do you miss me after 20 minutes I mean I was what guy who could come to her work with with flowers and I usually played these songs to her and I couldn't even play the guitar but time flies huh and seven years passed and after seven years it's not really the same right when it's more you she's been gone for ten hours and you pick up your phone and you send her this text hey don't forget to buy some ships for tonight the movie will start mine don't be late no songs no flowers and last year we come to a make-it-or-break-it point in our relationship I still remember that late October evening when Amanda called she was crying she said Jonathan I don't think our relationship will work i sat down on myself that evening and and I was asking myself why did this happen I mean I felt ashamed over myself because she was the love of my life but why did it happen so I was thinking about it and I realized that I have been living this success chasing life chasing Fame chasing glory as an adventurer out in the world doing expedition off the expedition and for what because somewhere along that path I I lost the sense of feeling certain emotions towards myself and others I could feel the emotions of stress anger frustration but the emotion of love gratitude empathy it was very very hard for me to feel those emotions and I guess that might be a big reason why the relationship wasn't working so a couple of days after that I went to my mentor and I told him everything I told him about the feelings about the love Prabha I told him everything and he smiled he smiled he looked at me and his with playful smile and he took a glass and he said Jonathan I will have explained this in a very simple way because you're only 26 and he took his glass and he added some water and then he also added ten straws in the glass and then he said Jonathan the glass is your brain the water the liquid is your emotions and these straws are the receptors okay Jonathan okay and Manny said Jonathan now the water the liquid is your emotions of frustration stress anger the feelings you have an easy time to feel and here here you have 10 straws strong straws and these straws has a very easy time conveying these feelings and you can feel them it's easy for you right and I said yes and when he said Jonathan now the water the liquid issue is the emotion of gratitude love empathy the feelings you have any haven't harder time to feel okay and then he removed nine straw and only one remained and then he said here you only have one straw and this one straw might even be blocked and this one straw is called oxytocin oxytocin receptor and oxytocin has the following effects it increases your feeling of love it increases your feeling of gratitude and it increases your feelings of empathy do you want to feel more of these emotions Jonathan yes I want to and he said there's one thing you must understand them if you want to grow a muscle if you want to grow a muscle you need to work out almost every single day for a long period of time if you do that you might get muscles like I it's the same ways with growing new pathways in the brain growing new receptors you need to work out on certain techniques basically every every single day for a long period of time if you do that Jonathan you might draw new oxytocin receptors and you might be able to feel more of those emotions again and if you apply that in your relationship let's love let's love Jonathan so I so I runned home to Amanda and I told her about this she looked at me quite impressed is she studying medicine and we decided to give our relationship one more try and we were going to do a project we were going to do the oxytocin project and that meant that we were we were going to work on oxytocin creating techniques every single day for a couple of months and see what will be the result sounds interesting huh so we googled we analyzed we looked for these techniques and we found around 20 and today I'm gonna share three of them are you interested to know what it is good because the first one can change the atmosphere in the room within seconds and we're gonna try that technique okay and this might even be a little bit scary for somebody but it's okay it's okay so I want everybody to stand up quickly because I don't have a lot of time so we stand up and now I want you when I count to three I want you to hug I want you to hug the person that stands next to you or behind you so I will count to three so 1 2 3 let's hard.you let's hug you and hold hold hold hold good job give yourself an applaud your job you can sit down you can sit down [Applause] would you say the atmosphere in this room have changed yes hugging and touching increases the oxytocin productions and I mean starting the day with some hugging and ending the day with some hugging there are other more touching techniques to increase the oxytocin levels but I won't tell you about them dirty audience a man is an expert in giving and receiving hugs so this is so simple but so so powerful to have more hugs every single day the second technique I want to talk about I use it every single day and I've done it for six months now I'd done it for six months and that's gratitude meditation professor Robert Hammond said gratitude blocks toxic emotions such Envy such depression such anger which can destroy our happiness study after study of the study say the same gratitude increases our well-being and for me gratitude meditation has worth incredible well I start every single day going down to the bridge I put some calm music in my ears and I'm focusing on memories of gratitude often from the childhood because when we were childs we felt emotions more strongly I look for moments of gratitude with Amanda I look for moments of gratitude in the future that I really want and I mean starting your day I spent four months in Africa working with these children and some of these children they basically ate the same food every single day we had one football to play with and some of them slept in the same bed but they they were the most grateful children I ever met and I can sit there during the morning some think about them I think about if they can feel so grateful than today I can be grateful too because in the society we live in today many people I mean they take life for granted but gratitude gratitude I would say is the key to happiness the third one the third one I want to talk about this communication when we had our make-it-or-break-it point we had a huge lack in communication so this technique for us was essential and communication in a way that increases the oxytocin production can easily be done researchers has provided us with that information and the first one is eye contact eye contact trigger oxytocin production a deep sense of eye contact how does it feel a little creepy her the second one is to dare to go personal dare to share your emotions because when I did my time in the military I was taught to be a man be strong and don't try but when I tried it when I try to really share the emotions what were in here that made a huge difference in our relationship I promise you all the men who's in here when I did that that created more trust and Trust creates oxytocin production my friend said Jonathan you're in your head so much if you're in your head too much buzz that will disconnect you with your emotions try to go from your head down to your heart and communicate to Amanda through your heart and I love that advice the third one is to talk about relationship fears when we had a rough path there were certain topics but I didn't had the courage to talk about like children like economy like future house and he was quite silly I mean I was with Mountaineer climbing mountains all around the world but I didn't have the courage to talk about children because it scared me but we did it we sat down and I collected all of my courage and I talked about it and it was a such a relief to talk about children to talk about the economy and to talk about the future and we bonded so much strongly so it's very secret tool to create more lasting love yes various and it's called oxytocin techniques and because I only had 15 16 minutes today I can't give you the 17 rest but there are so much for Efrat but there are so much information out there on internet on books on movies there are so much information out there about this and I challenge you I challenge you if you can relate to my story with your partner to do the same to do your own oxytocin project thank you I heard a question here how does it feel how does oxytocin feel do you wanna feel it yes do you wanna feel it do you wanna feel it alright why won't we bring a man up on stage isn't she beautiful well Amanda I whoa I loved you now for ten years and I just want to say thank you I want to say thank you for believing thank you for being the most wonderful person I ever met and thank you for everything we've been through and and I want to spend the rest of my life with you I'm asking you do you want to marry me [Applause] thank you who that was a speech [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 254,073

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Adventure, Emotions, Love, Travel

Id: DSmvNVSXIKs

Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 08 2019