This video is one section, it's one day,
for my online course "30 Skills in 30 Days for Better Relationships". The full course
includes daily exercises to lay the foundation of connection, and warmth, and positivity in
your relationships, plus a guided workbook, and these videos. So check it out, the link is
in the description. Okay, back to the video. No one ever goes home, and says 'I can't believe
it I didn't trip and tear my pants today' or 'I had the best day ever, no one crashed their
car into me today', it is our nature to discount the day-to-day good things that are happening, and
only to notice the bad. Now this may be natural, but it's also poisonous for relationships. In order to
love, we need to choose where we put our attention. If you look for the bad in your friends, and your
boss, or your husband, you will find it. If you look for the good, you will find it. You can create your
relationship reality by what you choose to see. This video is sponsored by Better Help, where you
can get professional, affordable, online counseling for around 65$ a week. So check out the link in the
description for 10% off your first month. So let me tell you a story. An elderly woman, traveling by bus,
had a layover during her journey, she purchased a bag of Oreo cookies from a vending machine in the
bus terminal, and she found a place to sit down. She placed her cookies on the table next to her. She
sat down, and started to read her newspaper, and pretty soon she was joined by a young man who,
to her surprise, he opened the package of Oreo cookies, and began to eat them. The woman didn't say
anything, but just glared at him, then she grabbed a cookie, starts chomping on it right? And the young
man sitting next to her, he has this kind of funny look on his face, like 'what are you doing?', and then
he goes, and he takes another cookie. So the woman is now like furious, like this man is stealing
her cookies right? And he, and so she glares at him again, and this time grabs a cookie like kind of
angrily, like 'rrr' you know, like 'these are my cookies'. The young man he's like 'okay, all right, I gotcha',
then he very kind of quietly, and carefully, takes another cookie, a third cookie, and
there's at this point just, one cookie left. So he takes the last cookie, and hands it to the
woman. She is like completely appalled, she cannot believe the nerve of this man. So she grabs the
cookie, picks up her newspaper, and leaves right? When she sits down on the bus, she opens up her
bag, looks inside, and she finds that her package of Oreo cookies was in her newspaper, and that she had
been eating the young man's cookies the whole time. In this story, the woman completely
believed that she was being mistreated, taken advantage of, practically abused. 'What a rude,
young man!' she probably thought. She saw herself as the innocent victim, just trying to put up
with the insolence of him right? Her perception created the belief that he was terrible,
and she was a victim, but in reality, he was being remarkably generous, and she was
quite rude. She was being passive-aggressive, she was being mean, and she was actually stealing his
cookies. So if we don't pay attention to our mind, we tend to notice the bad, and to only pay
attention to the negative in our lives, and in our relationships. It's easy to notice when
our child leaves the bathroom a mess, but it's pretty difficult to notice when they
don't. It's natural to see the worst in our relationships, it's natural to see the worst
in our boss, or in our husband, or in our friend, but we can actually change that. We can
manage our perception, and thereby our level of happiness by choosing what we pay attention
to, and we can choose to see the good in others. We're all human. We bring our own strengths,
and flaws to our relationships. We can conquer blaming, and hurtful thoughts, by choosing to accept
others as they are, by practicing gratitude, and by giving others the benefit of the doubt. Instead of
assuming the worst, we assume that people have good intentions for what they do. So, for example, if your
wife is taking a really long time to get ready, you could focus on how irritated you feel, or how
frustrating it is, or you could choose to say to yourself 'I have a beautiful wife, and she's taking
the time to look good, I'm so thankful for her.' How you choose to see the problem, what you choose
to put your attention on, is going to determine how happy, or how cranky you are in your relationship.
Let me give you another example. If you're feeling frustrated that your husband seems to be working
all the time, you might start to feel resentful, and you might start to think 'oh he's such
a workaholic, all he cares about is his job', and instead, you could replace that with 'I'm
so grateful that my husband loves to work, and is willing to work hard to support our family'.
Now, later in this course we're going to talk about being assertive, and making requests. You can still
make the request that he spends time with you, but if you're focusing on learning assertiveness
skills, or making good requests, or solving problems, and you have the mindset where all you do is
notice the negative, then it doesn't matter how good you are at making requests, your
relationship's going to suck. You're going to be unhappy in your relationship because you're
only noticing the negative. So if you want to have a happy relationship where you nurture love,
you have to make an active practice to manage your perceptions, to notice the positive. So we're
going to talk about a couple ways to do that. So the first one is choosing to see the positive.
So you need to make a habit, an active practice, to notice the good in your life. You
need to develop the skill of assuming positive intentions, and you need to learn to focus
on what you do want for the relationship, instead of what you don't like about it. The second
skill is having healthy expectations, this is learning to be compassionate with other people's
flaws. We're going to talk more about that in an upcoming section, and the third skill to do
this is understanding your responsibility, and this will let you let go of shame, and blame,
and comparisons, and learn to own your side. Now, we're going to talk more about each
of these skills in upcoming sections, but we can improve relationships in leaps and
bounds, if we become encouragers instead of critics. So take a minute to do the workbook activity
'Fostering Appreciation', and then we're going to move on in to the homework activity. So, for today's
homework activity, we're going to talk about how to create a habit of noticing the positive. Noticing
the positive does not come naturally to most of us. So, one of the ways we're going to practice
this is by building a habit of daily gratitude. I'm going to ask you to get a journal, or a
notebook, and every day bring to mind the positive things your partner has done. It's important to
choose a time to do this that's going to work well for you. So many people find that bedtime
is a really good time to practice gratitude. Set a reminder in your phone so that you don't
forget, and write down at least three positive things that your partner has done that day. You
can use a journal, or a gratitude app, or even just the notes section in your phone. If you want
to go the extra mile, you can share what you're grateful for with your partner, but that's not
necessary. So this is how I practice this. Every day at 5:00 pm, which is a really stressful
time for me, I'm cooking dinner, making dinner, or eating dinner, and my kids are tired and
upset, right? Every day at 5 pm my phone chimes 'remember the positive', and I ask my family, who's
around me, to share with me the best parts of their day, and I share mine. When you take the time to
look for the positive, your heart is going to open up, you're going to feel more open to the people
in your life, you're going to feel more gentle, and more appreciative. When you change the
way you see your partner, the way you feel about them will change. The habit of noticing, and
remembering, the good is something that quietly feeds the seed of love, and if you do, it just
a little bit each day, your love is gonna grow.
