This is an audio/video/workbook compilation by Tony Robbins called The Ultimate Relationship Program. I find it to be brilliant! This content rich set confirms that our relationships can be a source of renewal and/or incredible drain depending upon how functional they are.
First, let me say that no matter how bad things are, they can get better. People come to our offices after years of bad habits and neglect and think their fate is sealed. This is no more true than you thinking that any relationship in your life is doomed or impossible. These dynamic systems respond to healing input.
So let’s begin…..
My intention in doing book synopses is to help the time starved chiropractor get information to live the life they love. I also hope to inspire you to follow up on the things that most resonate with you or direct you to the tools you need to get your next level.
Love and Passion: The Ultimate Relationship Program
by Anthony Robbins and Cloe Madanes
Tony begins with Seven Master Skills
They are:
1. Heartfelt Understanding. So often we are in our heads, our agendas, our obligations, our distractions and addictions. If you feel irritated, annoyed, neglected, etc., then stop. Breathe for a few minutes into your heart. Bring your attention into your heart. Listen, talk and act from there.
2. Give Your Partner What they Really Need. When you really understand someone you do not clean their car when what they need is a hug. Be in a relationship with this person: not with your expectations of a partner, or your own needs. Be with your person and their unique needs.
3. Create and Build Trust and Respect. Trust comes in many tiny little experiences. Your home deserves your best and yet often gets your worst. Be respectful. Demand that of Yourself.
4. Reclaim Your Playfulness, Presence and Passion. We can all get so serious and consumed by our work. Commit to being playful. Sounds like an oxymoron but some of us can get so agenda centric and forget to have fun and BE with one another.
5. Harness Courage and Embrace Honesty. So many relationships suffocate because of people hiding in niceness or making peace. Speaking your truth does not have to be an act of aggression. Done from the heart, it can be an expression of love.
6. Uncover and Create Alignment. Work on a project together. Bring your goals together and plan something side by side.
7. Live Consciously: Be the example of what you want in the world. So often we focus on the other person and what they should do differently. Just keep being that thing. It works.
The 10 Disciplines of Lasting Passion and Love
1. Live the Discipline of Putting the other person first: It’s not about you.
This skill involves putting the other person first. When you really allow yourself to feel what the other person is experiencing, you are going to be more connected and are starting in a place of concern rather than power, righteousness, or judgement.
2. Live the Discipline of Loving No Matter What: the Power of Love, Adoration and Praise. From the beginning of the audio series you can hear Tony and his wife, Sage talking with one another about the struggles and triumphs of relationships. They call one another, Baby, Sweetie,etc. They fawn over one another in tone and endearments throughout the series and stress the importance of tone and endearments in all of our relationships.
3. Live the Discipline of Being Yourself: Emanate and Express Your Natural Essence and True Core. Know Yourself. Then be true to yourself. This step requires time and consciousness. Make the decision to know who you are while you are here on this planet. IF you have gotten swept up into your life and feel lost from this, STOP. Make the time to carve out a few hours to connect with you.
4. Live the Discipline of Knowing Your Partner Has Positive Intent: Eliminate Threats and be Conscious of Judgments & Remember the Power of Language. This step changes the landscape of critical conversations. Think of a time you wanted to talk with someone about hurting your feelings or a critical conversation that needed to happen. Maybe you launch into that conversation upset and said things that snowballed into worse things. Maybe you got shocked because instead of hearing you, the other person became defensive or attacking. You may have walked away from that conversation thinking the other person was wrong, or a bad listener or any other litany of judgments. But if you had STARTED the conversation with an acknowledgement of knowing that no one comes to a relationship to do a bad job or to hurt the other person, you might have radically changed the results you got. (okay, Son of Sam is the exception to that rule.)Try it. It is a game changer.
5. Live the Discipline of Giving Freedom: Unleash the Power of Forgiving, Forgetting and Flooding. In this section, there are some deep and powerful discussions on the depths of love that some of us have never known. This section explores the incredible power of committed relationships. The concept of flooding vs stacking is introduced earlier but is emphasized in this section. Many people unconsciously “stack” grievances upon people in their lives. “they do this and then they do that. They did this.”, etc. They cram every bad memory into each new moment and conversation. They stack bad decisions and behaviors as a way of protecting. When someone “floods” another person in their life, they actively retain the good memories. Tony and Sage recommend beginning the DISCIPLINE of writing down the jokes, the laughs, and the good memories. This creates a brain habit and a foundation to lean on during harder times.
6. Live the Discipline of Daily Intimacy and Full Engagement: Open Your Heart and Hold Nothing Back. Tony and Sage recommend setting aside time for your relationship. It can be carved out or can be a personal commitment to tune in with great presence when your loved ones are in the room.
7. Live the Discipline of Polarity: Enjoy the Power of Dancing energies. Within us we all have masculine and feminine traits and within our relationships there are masculine and feminine energies. Tony and Sage spend time talking about relationships that have a lot of love but not a lot of passion. These relationships fall into the best friend categories. They encourage exploring the feminine and masculine energy in your relationship and igniting the spark. They emphasize the importance of this energy for the feeling of aliveness it brings.
8. Live the discipline of Loving the Truth: experience the Power of Vulnerability. When we express our truth we empower the other person to stand up for us, to be there. So many relationships do not go to the depths of love that they could because someone is holding back. As you follow the truth, it deepens the level of intimacy.
9. Live the Discipline of Utilization: Tap into the Power of Higher Meaning and Constant Growth. Some relationships become a suffocating trap because neither party continues to grow and evolve. your partnership can be a sacred way to express your gifts to the world. Relationships that serve something other than themselves are deeply bonded.
10. Live the Discipline of Gratitude and Giving: Appreciation is the Power. Sometimes Gratitude comes naturally. Many people think of it as a feeling that comes upon them. Gratitude can be cultivated as a habit. Beginning and ending each day with what you are grateful for in your relationships changes the nature of those relationships just with that act.
Tony also talks throughout the series about the 6 Basic Human needs:
These needs apply to all of us and sometimes we try to meet these needs in unproductive ways. If these needs aren’t known or being met directly, we may seek them out in more destructive or unproductive ways. On Tony’s website, there are many great videos. One of them involves a young girl who has tried to commit suicide. Tony brings her to a conscious awareness of her desire for significance in a way that is profound. These basic human needs are getting played out in our offices, our families and of course, our most intimate relationships. Understanding these needs and meeting them in constructive and conscious ways creates tremendous power.
1. Certainty/Comfort. We all want comfort. And much of this comfort comes from certainty. Of course there is no ABSOLUTE certainty, but we want certainty the car will start, the water will flow from the tap when we turn it on and the currency we use will hold its value.
2. Variety. At the same time we want certainty, we also crave variety. Paradoxically, there needs to be enough UNcertainty to provide spice and adventure in our lives.
3. Significance. Deep down, we all want to be important. We want our life to have meaning and significance. I can imagine no worse a death than to think my life didn’t matter.
4. Connection/Love. It would be hard to argue against the need for love. We want to feel part of a community. We want to be cared for and cared about.
5. Growth. There could be some people who say they don’t want to grow, but I think they’re simply fearful of doing so–or perhaps NOT doing so. To become better, to improve our skills, to stretch and excel may be more evident in some than others, but it’s there.
6. Contribution. The desire to contribute something of value–to help others, to make the world a better place than we found it is in all of us.
Action Point
Evaluate this list to better understand your personal motivations and examine which ones seem the most significant to you. Then, look at what you do to fulfill the needs of others. It will likely make a difference in what and how you do what you do. It also could make a difference in the way you describe and explain what you can do for your patients.
Five Things You can take Away and Implement In Your Life:
1. Stacking vs Flooding. Stop stalking. Start creating a file on the computer called Love and another called Support and pile in evidence of all the love and support in your life.
2. Carve out time to cultivate your most important relationships including the one with yourself.
make it a discipline the way you carve out time for work.
3. “I am not getting out of this car.” Tony and Sage share a statement that Sage made at one point when they were having a great day. She turned to Tony as they were driving along and said, ‘I am never getting out of this car.” It became a statement about the level of love she was offering. She was promising not to leave if the going got rough. She was letting Tony know that there was nothing he could do that would make her stop loving him. Try for one week to observe how willing you are to leave ANY of your relationships. Is there anyone you love to that depth. What if you loved everyone to that depth? (Stalkers, please sit down. we are not talking to you.) What if you loved you practice to that depth?
4. Change your pronouns. Many times we have a pronoun problem in our relationships. We say I when we should say we. We say we when we should say I. Take more personal responsibility where you can by saying, “I”. Create more of a team felling by incorporating “we”.
5. Choose Gratitude. Don’t wait for it to happen. make this a personal discipline and a way you look at the world.
Sending you Waves of Strength, Courage AND TOOLS to Create a Life that Blooms,
Pam
