This Conversation Could Save Your Relationship | Harville & Helen

I came here with my biggest enemy I'm leaving with my best friend took his wife and went and of course everyone just cheered what are some of the most common communication mistakes that all of us can make in relationships whether it's our intimate Partners our friends our co-workers our teammates and what's the first step in starting to transform that the basic mistake that most people make in a relationship is to assume that they partner sees the world the way they do and then to behave as if that's true and then to be shocked and judgmental

when it turns out not to be true um and but that's reality that um nobody sees the world the way you do everybody sees the world differently and that's what's normal what's abnormal is to assume that that's not normal so what that means is that in order to not have a relational problem or to resolve a relational problem you have to learn something that we think is relatively new uh in the human scene which is listening that in order to listen when you listen you get to know that you are living with somebody different from

your fantasy about who they are so to listen is to discover the otherness of your partner partner and then in order to make that work you have to not only Discover it I I've had I sort of giggle because uh many times in the process it's like well I got it clear who you are but that that but you suck you're worse than what I thought you were before I got to know you but you so you have to discover and then accept that this is the person you're with and they live in that world

and your job is to share your worlds without judgment and then U and stay in that so that that becomes very exciting and creative if judgment is removed but if you judge each other's world then that's a pathology because there's nothing you can do about your world except share it and maybe grow bring the Two Worlds together to grow into something new but I would think that's the biggest problem we call it the objection to difference in fact one day I remember it sort of consolidating in my mind what is the couple's problem and because

you know there are lots of symptoms but then there's one thing that produces all those symptoms and which is the um rejection of the difference that your partner is I think that's the major human problem and especially a couple's Marie your question is so good Harville makes a point that I think is the answer to your question also so we grow up and uh the value system of the culture is to be the best what people don't know is that learning to be the best is called monologue and that's how people talk and there is

a place for being accurate and precise if you want to have good relationship ships there's another way to talk and it's called dialogue yeah we've talked about this before when I had you guys on the show because dialogue has changed my life it's changed my relationship and I just want to say for everyone um they've got a new book out and I don't know if we've entered this but how to talk with anyone about anything I've read it cover to cover it is excellent so we're going to be diving in in this conversation between intimate

relationship but also friendships and team um family members you know anyone that you have conversations and you want to be relationship with so what I loved what I heard both of you say and I wrote this down in the book it's that difference is a key feature of Nature and that notion that oh my gosh I remember when I was in the first workshop with you guys and it was like they are different and we're going to get there a little bit later I want to talk about the accepting and the appreciating and the advocating

we'll go there but difference is a key feature of Nature and like it was a light bulb moment for me right and I said that in the workshops I say hey everybody human beings are part of Nature and guess what nature is dietic dark light hot cold wet dry sweet sour so your partner is different than you and the goal of marriage is to learn to accept difference yes so I got curious about that and I I kind of do strange research on Google that they have never found a particle even the smallest particle after

you break down all the other particles in which one particle was identical to another particle even at the uh subatomic level Sub Sub Sub sub subatomic level difference it's the difference between the particles that determine what the particle becomes and what it does so I thought well what about universes and galaxies so far um nobody's been able to say there's a single identical Galaxy all galaxies so from the galactic level down to the quantum level difference defines nature and so and so then anything any objection to a re rejection of difference I hate to use

this word but it's kind of pathological it well it's silly it's like you're fighting against reality real but you don't have to agree with difference yes it's about learning to harmonize and and people you know yeah but political party you voting for well that's not what I'm voting for and I also I made the note too in the book it's like we struggle in our relationship because of how we talk and not what we talk about and I think that's so insightful because the tools that you give in this book about how to talk with

anyone about anything speak to just that so this is a piece of this is a question that I have that actually arose from our last conversation when we had you on the show and I want to talk about the advice that you have for those of us who struggle with how to balance our own individual needs with the needs of people that we're in relationship with so it could be our significant other but it could be our friends it could be our co-workers so let me read you what somebody wrote to me about uh this

conversation what happens when you don't agree with what your partner wants from you in your example you think you're spending enough time together but they may want to have a lot more time with you how do you manage when you have a different Viewpoint and your partner expects you to change or do something different to make him or her feel better but you don't want to mhm what would be your advice well you just keep trying to come up with a plan for both of you are happy and Harville suggested I tell the story uh

there was a opportunity for us to have a vacation and I was multitasking working with in two different worlds with one with women and one with women and men and I was tired and he had two kids when before we married I had two and we had two together who we love but I was tired our vacation I just want to uh and Harville said no no for a vacation I want to travel to another part of the world I love nature I want to be someplace different and I said Harville can't can't we just

sit on the sofa and um relax and have movies and travel watch um yeah just you know and just rest and take care of our bodies exercise and he said no I don't think that's right and then he woke up he said Helen let's get a motor home and so we got a motor home and we had more fun in this motor home where Harville would he planned we went to uh uh in Mexico well once we got on the road uh uh I I just went and watched TV shows in the on our vacation

so so what we discovered is is the thing we just talked about is difference yeah I'm a Wanderer Helen is a nester uh she wants to stay home you know like a hen take care of the eggs and I wouldn't go out and look around so we came to this conclusion that if we had a motor home I can wander and drive and she can go in the back and look at travelogs and then at night we can talk about what I saw in front of me and what she saw on the video so that

we would then share and we found that so successful I think we did that about 22 times yeah that's amazing and what I'm hearing there is there was an interest to keep exploring the differences and to also keep being creative about possibility where you felt like you could get your desires for what an ideal vacation for you looked like as you you know Josh and I we vacation is interesting because I I know this question a lot of people have this you know my partner wants X Y or Z but I really want something different

a b or c Josh and I noticed that on our vacations too where he loves to not have plans and discover things and you know I can be a little bit of a control freak in in a good way and I have my I know that number one croissant place in Paris and we must find you know and so we've had battles and the way that we've settled it is some days are absolutely free flowing There Is No Agenda I'm like I am at your service wherever we want to wander and discover and then other

days I get to then check things off my list of the best of X City we're going to go visit that so um thank you for sharing that story and the beauty of that is that that you can have two outcomes yes and one is if you hold the difference in tension y it produces a third option that could not come out of one or the other person yes or you can take turns and say okay I want to go have a structure day I want to have a free day y but if you collaborate

in the and using dialogue to really listen to each other each way then you get all kinds of options yes and you don't have to polarize you then have to just invent yes and and when couples discover that there at another level of Consciousness because most of us live it's me it's me not you y or it's me or you but it could be us and that's the kind of uh Consciousness that ultimately um produces the best relationship possible when it's us when it's us not me or you you know I I want to underscore

also what you said which was so key for me when I read it in this book was we are so trained especially in our culture you know can only speak to here in the United States because this is where I was brought up we are so trained to win we are so trained to you know and and especially I'll speak for myself as a woman there's also some interesting kind of subterranean messaging around surrendering and that makes me weak so if I submit and I'm using bunny here here for my listeners you know I'm being

a little F factious you know to Josh's point of view that I'm somehow not a powerful or strong woman so there's a lot of layers to this but I love bringing it back to dialogue and this interest in us we are born in relationship we're wounded in relationship and we can only heal in relationship so when there is difference continue both of you to look for a compromise or one day you do this next day you do this or to are arguing about where to go for on vacation when your one selects the next year

just make sure both of you are happy and connected let's look at another situation which happens for I think most of us let's say you've had a major blowup with someone in your life again it could be your your intimate partner or it could be a friend or it could be a boss or a cooworker and there was either a big disagreement or there was some type of breach of trust what are some strategies that we can use to start to rebuild that connection after something big and hurtful goes down and we just don't feel

equipped to re-enter that let let's assume that um the blowup was somebody was really mad at you because you did whatever they said you did and I think it's important just as a little sidebar that one thing we've learned over the years we used to think there was a cause and effect relationship between you know you're upset and I did something and what we now know is that I can never be the cause of your upsetness but I can be the occasion and I'm the occasion because you have a background a childhood I did something

that triggered a memory in you and you uh not knowing it and we don't do it uh intentionally not knowing it that memory sort of move from the past into the present and you thought it was me doing that you don't know you had a choice or you don't know that you had a reaction to what I did so hardly anybody knows that so this is why the person who feels uh who was the one who did the wrong and uh and is therefore accused or in some sense judged by that um has to do

something really courageous which is I'm aware could we have a talk would you be willing for us to have a talk because I'm aware that I've really upset you um and you have to go ahead and say I'm aware that I've really upset you oh and not say I'm aware that you decided to interpret my behavior as directed at you because that's anybody upset cannot take reality you have to say I'm aware that I that I upset you and I really um I I I'm I'm sorry about that I I apologize for it but mainly

I want to know what what's happening for you in other words you go to curiosity it's a principle it's not not so much a tactic it's a principle you go to curiosity I'd like to know really like to know what your thoughts and feelings were when you experience me doing X would you be willing to tell me don't do the exercise let me see if I've got that did I get it because then they know you're practicing a skill and just say really it's really important to me that I hear you accurately so would you

let me check with you if if I'm getting it because I might miss something and then you go to more curiosity so is there more about that and then they'll always generalize because this pain hases not really come from you you it was triggered in the moment then they well you're just like everybody else or you're just like Peter or my other boss or or whatever and um and God and he was like my father and so you just mirror that what you have to do is hold that reality without judging it uh in any

way shape or form or defending yourself that I didn't do that you you everybody decides what they're how they're going to respond to an experience uh because that would be adding insult to injury is that I'm making this up and that's what somebody will say to you you're telling me I made all this up no you have to ask them for it because they are telling you their truth that's where we get to uh difference they're telling you their truth it's not your truth and here's the magic of that is that they've been operating and

telling you about it out of what we would called the emotional brain the lower brain and when you mirror them back and say let me check now am I getting this they have to go to their prefrontal cortex to check so that they then come out of the affect into cognition and after a while they'll say well you know um there's something like um you I've had this feeling before and um and um I I just hope that we I just I'm thank you for listening to me and I um and it's okay you know

I don't have the training to go in and say well tell me what happened for you so that the person who is Accused has to take ownership of the process not necessarily of the behavior because it has a history but of the process of allowing a person who has been injured by their own memories to feel held because when they were little nobody held them when they were hurt so when you do that you're actually and you don't want to call it therapy but it is it is therapeutic because nobody listened or somebody did do

that and then nobody listened to their reaction and told them to quit quit complaining you know and shut up and find you know what parents do to children what bosses do sometimes to employees and I think that's the important thing if you're going to listen you have to give up judgment no matter what you hear it's their world and if you judge them then you've annihilated their world um and now they're doubly hurt because they got hurt they told you about it and you told them it's your fault yeah so so that makes sense it

does make sense and um I'm so excited for people you know for those listening right now and you're like wow this is deep it is deep and it's nuanced and so much of I know what I have struggled with in my own life in relationship comes down to these basic elements and that's why I always get so excited and I'm such an advocate for your work and your mission and specifically for dialogue because I've watched in myself you know whether it's Josh and I having friction and we both the temperature gets taken down or when

now I mirror in very I call it stealth ways with my parents or you know my friends or co-workers or anyone and it's amazing how it can take what can feel like is a contentious touchy delicate you're walking on eggshells kind of situation and really support someone in getting out of that kind of crocodile brain right and moving into the wise Al brain your your terms um thank you for that so let's talk a little bit more about dialogue I've mentioned it we've you know for those who didn't he first episode what are the elements

of safe conversation dialogue and and how we've talked about how it can transform any uh relationship but let's really break down what are those key parts of dialogue well it's it's a a structured um we just be bald about it it's a structured process um meaning another way to say it it's a skill and a skill requires practice so you have to know uh it's just like tennis you have to know how to hold your arm so that it's counterintuitive if you hit a ball naturally it's not going over the net you have to hit

it when your arm doesn't feel right and do that all the way follow all the way through so it's like every skill it calls on your brain to do something has never done before so as we begin to develop this process discovering it first between ourselves we had our first two days horrible fights we ended up yelling at each other both dates the first date he took me to a very expensive restaurant I don't need an expensive restaurant so at the end you know I like Kentucky Fried keep he took me really expensive so I

just said just to let you know uh next time I don't want to go to a restaurant like this well he started yelling at me and then I took him to a um I got two tickets to a play that had just opened and no one had um uh and they were doing a play and surprise I want you to let's go to this play together the play was Eis and a guy was punching out the eyes a child was punching out the eyes of horses well Harville just yelled and yed treated car going home

and uh he credits me that when we got to my house and and he was still yelling at me going inside and I go I didn't know what it was about I didn't and so then that I said hey stop one of us talk and the other listen yes and they come to S so that was the beginning of dialogue but it's taking turns speaking and then the other person listening and mirroring back and saying did I get it right yeah and and that in fact was the beginning of our Discovery because I I'm a

coup's therapist and I was doing a Coupes therapy that was based on a problem solving conflict resolution mainly using your brain to um figure out things and it wasn't a very successful form of marital therapy but it that was the field that's all they had and when Helen um sort of yelled at me and said one of us actually you said one of us talk and then the other one talk in other words let do parallel monologues but not at the same time turns but take turns talking I realized that did calm me down and

I have uh a clinical Sensitivity I was could have killed her two minutes before and I'm now calm so what's happened here is that she called us into the prefontal cortex and calmed down so I went to my practice of couples um the next day and for the first time instead of them looking at me and doing what I now call parallel Psychotherapy which was called couples therapy two people in a room makes it couples but it was really parallel Psychotherapy as if only one person was in the room because you work with one at

a time and then work with the other I turned them for the first time to face each other and said now and I started off sort of like what Helen did one of you will talk and then the other one will talk but then they were got into that they said but couldn't he tell me back what he's hearing and so I learned from couples what they needed to have a conversation so I said oh do you want him to to reflect back what you're saying she said yeah I hadn't come up with mirroing at

that time was okay would George would you do that and so he said well yeah I I can say back what you said and so he did that um and then I kept asking her okay so is there so that's the mirror let me see if I got that we weren't using sen stems then as Helen talk about C stems in a minute but it would just reflect back and then um she amazingly said well uh I said what else would you want andh she said well i' I'd like him if he would ask me

if I have anything else to say so that was the beginning of what we now call is there more which is the there a curiosity City pieace well so he said yeah she said yeah I do he said okay I can ask you had anything else they were in Texas so they spoke with Texas like got anything else and she said yeah um so she gave some more things and so I said is there do do you want him to do something else different well he could yeah he could tell me is he getting it

all so she asked for a summary now I'm learning this for the first time okay now you got your summary is there anything else you want well I like like to know if he thinks I'm making sense or am I crazy well he had said to her so many times that you don't make sense or that's crazy you know they and they just kind of did this like you know people kids tussling and hurting each other and um he said well it doesn't make sense and she said I want you to know that I don't

ask I'm not asking you to agree with me I'm asking you to see how I'm thinking so she asked for validation mhm and he said well if I don't have to agree with you I can see how you could come up with that conclusion MH you know and then I said is anything else she said well wonder if you know how I'm feeling when I had that experience so she was asking for empathy so essentially that's what a dialogue is the one thing that we added it it took about five or six years to actually

crystallize that with enough practice for it to be enough for me to see that that was our going to become and became the therapeutic process that's the engine of AO couples therapy couples learn to dialogue they don't need anything else because dialogue helps them hear each other discover each other become safe for each other all the things they were complaining about not having they get it in this new way to in this new way to talk so the one thing that we added which was um actually was a gross oversight U but it's one of

the most important things is always when you want to talk to your partner ask permission make an appointment and when most of us just start walk up and start talking and so Helen she's running a movie Her movie and I'm running up about something else oh I'm I'm just put my movie on her screen and say I don't ask her if she let me put my movie on I just start projecting it yes now so Helen is a wonderful person and she'd probably say well okay um but if she had a bit different personality she

would say would you get your damn um uh movie off of my screen I am watching this thing I am having my own set of thoughts right here so what we finally discovered was that those are boundary violations and there's nothing more disruptive than a boundary violation that leads all the way from uh talking while without asking permission to war that's what's going on on the planet now is people crossed boundaries and when you cross a boundary you have a war and so we have built in the first thing you do and after you come

to one of our workshops we'll say always from now on we're going to task you wiiz whenever you want to talk with your partner about anything say is now a good time and if and if they say no not now when say when it is if not now say when and you will make an appointment to talk and we found is that that regulates about 50% of the problem it actually does I mean I see this all the time because Josh and I both work from home and we really have to watch ourselves because it's

so easy you love this person and they're right there and you're so comfortable to Just Launch into whatever it could be exciting it could be something fun it could be an invitation but um I know for me like I can get so myopically focused I get most humans can and I'm like and the my instant reaction is frustration you know and so then the whole then We're Off to the Races so this now we have another problem now we have another problem so is this a good time and I think it's also so useful in

work relationships you know we have technology right now I think you know in our company we use something called slack and I encourage the team to actually turn it off when they're in Focus time because you get these pings and dings when you are in the middle of doing something that's just basically interrupting and not asking permission you know and it just sends our brains I think in a Haywire kind of fight ORF flight state which you know you do that enough times 20 30 times a day you're exhausted at the end and then you

know you're with your partner forget about it it's you know fight City so thank you it's just like is this a good time to talk is this a good time and and if not say when when yes if not say when yeah um so some of those key sentence stems because I think for most of us because if we haven't done your training which I'm actually excited to go back to another Workshop you guys can just Google they do workshops they're amazingly effective Ive please go um some sentence stems so is this a good time

and if they say no when would be a good time that's a sentence stem that's a sentence stem let me see if I got that for mirroring right did I get all of that let me see if I heard that right would you yeah we we like it it let me see if you got if I got that let me see if I heard that right sort of put you into a legalistic thing I love that so did I get that did I get that um anything any other sent stems that we love for the

dialogue process well the big one is there more about that is there more about that's like the magic sense is there the other person just relaxes when you say that and that's that's probably one of the most and that did we didn't start with that I didn't quite pick that up for a while how important is there more is one day someone who knows people at the Mayo Clinic said uh uh Helen and Harville I'd like the dialogue work to go to Mayo Clinic and have people analyze it about what what might dialogue do where

people say it feels so good to use it and suddenly um relaxing neurochemicals are released uh left brain hemisphere right brain Hemisphere and especially between the two is the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and it releases relaxing neurochemicals dopamine acetycholine norepinephrine and serotonin and people who live in this part of the brain that they live life is a life is a wonder the Mayo Clinic says a person who lives life from the upper brain sleeps better and wakes up feeling better and lives longer and has a healthier life so both for your relationships being healthy you

your whole body you are a healthier person yeah if you use dialogue yeah that the re the research on it is your brain your brain changes it's not just a new habit that you know you can get out of doing but you the structure of your brain changes so it becomes integrated yeah they they recent they discovered a couple decades ago uh neuroplasticity the the more you use a certain part of the brain the better it does get easier too because I feel like it's been years now since I've had my first experience with dialogue

training with safe conversations and the more you practice it like any skill the more integrated it does become and it just feels like a lifesaver to me for for human beings so I want to go on to another concept you're welcome called and this one was a game changer for me as well zero negativity what does that mean and how can we start to practice that in our daily lives especially when they can be high stress environments okay the because I and I say Harville in our workshops let me say this because when you say

okay you're going to learn to live life with zero negativity I'm afraid people will leave the room and the big thing is learning to F convert a frustration into a request it's deciding that you will do what Helen said when you're frustrated you will ask for what you want and just stop complaining about what you don't have it's a very simple thing but it changes the energy because when you complain you triggered the brain into its defensive mechanisms so now you've got two defenses going but when you ask for something then the brain goes into

his creative mode well what is that is it possible maybe I could do that so zero negativity is we say and and I think we finally got to the point where we're dogmatic is that if you want a good relationship you have to give up negativity but it doesn't mean you have to give up your frustrations it means you have to say them uh this way yes embedded in the frustration is a wish figure out what the wish is and the behavior that would give you the satisfaction of what you want and ask for that

behavior and don't go through you did this to me you did that to me and you know do all the frustrating things because that that negative energy triggers the brain's defenses so now I'm not sure I want to do anything for you but if you come and say hey uh you know what I would love next time we're talking is would you look me straight in the eye and tell me that I am a beautiful woman and now we can do anything but when we're not safe we can do only one thing protect ourselves so

I remember one of the other things you've taught me about zer negativity is like okay well how do I identify something that's negative it's something that your partner or whoever you're in a relationship with considers a put down something that makes them feel unsafe you know and I feel like we it's so normalized in most relationships about these little snide remarks or an eye roll or a huff or you know it might not even be a word but it might be a posturing or some type of physical reaction that can make the other person feel

um devalued yes and so I love that you also taught about the fact you were like okay we're going to do zero negativity and you got out a calendar and just started to mark it in a very simple way where you either got an ex if you couldn't go the full day right without having one of us felt any negativity going to bed yep and then you got a nice check mark right if you went through the day and if I remember the story correctly it was when you started to stack those zero negativity days

you noticed a real shift in the quality of your connection with each other Y and decided to finish that story not to get a divorce because we were on our way to the divorce court when we created that exercise yeah and so we would say zero negativity saved our marriage yeah twice and what happens when I would put it I would say Harville I had x mark guess what I got the next day from Harville in the afternoon flowers you wanted to do something you know make sure I didn't feel that way the next day

so it turns out to be very simple you generate what you put into the world back to yourself yeah and we the I've gotten I'm sort of a novice in Quantum field Theory and the quantum field Theory people who are very serious about reality say that what you put into we are in a field and meaning we're all energy and this energy is in a field and what you put into that field comes back to you in the field because you're in the field so it's like if you pollute your the water that your your

swimming pool you're in you swim in your pollution so you want a clean swimming pool don't pollute it because you get what you give yeah and and that's that's um there's many things that are so simple Yes easy to State uh whatever you do to others will be done to you is a fact yes so I think that zero negativity for me what I'm really excited about is extending that Beyond romantic relationships and I think it's so critical and can be such a GameChanger in teams and in companies you know I've run my small business

for 23 years and just we're human beings right and complaint or this is wrong or this isn't working or so and so did this or ey rolling at that it's just what we humans do if we don't know any better and I think the notion of having like a zero negativity workplace where that's what you're championing and that's what we're co-creating just feels so exciting from a creative standpoint from a productivity standpoint from a human relations you know as a boss and as a CEO um I employ lots of people and we're really excited and

we love our work and one of the most challenging aspects I think for most CE um and most leaders can be people challenges you know and people who you adore and you respect and they're so talented and when there are interpersonal Dynamics or politics within a company and it can just take everyone down drain their energy take you off track from a productive standpoint or from a mission so I just think zero negativity it's like I'm actually excited to talk to my team about this we're actually pretty good with this we're a pretty healthy crew

but there's always room for growth there's always room further connection and further respect absolutely our organization is now we have a new CEO Quantum connections and uh the CEO and the other some of the other people have developed a connecting at work program for businesses or corporations because what we were told is CEOs come to their office and another staff person has resigned and they just don't like working yeah you know everyone the CEO liked that person but the environment didn't make the coworker relaxed and feel good yes and so everything we've said uh talking

to you the last 40 minutes is in the connecting at work program there's a PowerPoint slides and it just teaches uh what everyone wants is to be seen heard and valued yeah those three things and we call it the net net connecting score that people at the end of the day how did how well did you feel in your business that day yeah at work and the thing that what you're talking about about this environment when it's zero negative that means it's safe and you can Thrive and evolve only in a safe environment in an

unsafe environment you can grow but you grow in your defenses how do you protect yourself and how do you survive here so very different use of energy from what can I find and discover and build here and the research on companies that build safe environments is they have an 86% employee retention rate and the biggest cost to a company is employee turnover and companies that don't have a safe environment have an 86% um replacement rate so they are constantly spending money to retrain people which is so cost they have to do is change their the

quality of their culture yes from danger to safety then people want to be there and they'll do their best yeah but if if it's not safe there they may need to be there even want to be there but they can't do their best because they have to keep watching y another concept and another skill that you teach in this book and in your work and it really shifted a paradigm for me was affirmations oh um this was a huge moment in the workshop um let's talk about what role affirmations play in improving our relationships and

how we can practice affirming each other our friends our co-workers what is that look like yeah there's U one exercise that we uh many years ago taught people to do was called appreciation but that was based and and it's great you want to do appreciation so thank you for bringing me the cup of coffee or whatever so appreciation is um I got something and I appreciate it an affirmation is a totally different concept I sort of wish the words were less similar so that it could be clearer but in an affirmation you affirm the innate

value of another person partner or employee or whoever independent of any thing they have done for you uh What You Do We rise above transactions and utilities into unconditionality because you are here because the universe put you here you're not here for me if you decide to give me a cup of coffee that's something I can be grateful for and say I appreciate that but your being is yours and my uh responsibility is to be sure that I honor your being as in as as intrinsically valuable and not functionally valuable and when couples move into

that that you don't belong to me and you don't have to do stuff um and and I'm going to appreciate you then into you know I'm just going to have to live with the fact that the universe created you and I need to be respectful of that and affirm you affirm your being you're beautiful I didn't do anything for that God you are intelligent and we have couples at workshops walk around each other and sort of yell at each other um you are so smart you are so gracious your hair is so beautiful and your

smile is so great and I love your white teeth and you know has nothing to do with their benefit it's the fact that that's who that person is and we have seen couples move from not quite making it in a workshop to and this is at the end of the workshop to actually crossing over when they affirmed each other and unconditional acceptance of the other as valuable independent of anything you do for me Harville labels this and you did it then the positive flooding exercise yes the positive at the end just one one spouse member

sits down and the other is going to do something they've never done before which just walk around the spouse member spouse member just listening and just I appreciate this you you do this you you flood them with appreciations and we're all Mir and then they take turns they switch it's really moving and it's uh that was I think one of the things that I love so much about your Workshop Josh and I were commenting cuz we're going to come back cuz I always love Refreshers and it's nice to just step away from the daytoday from

the laundry from the mail from the social this that and the other thing which are all lovely and just focus on our relationship and just focus on reconnection and a regrounding in the skills but I remember I did not expect to cry yeah at the word like I was like I know we're going to learn some skills and relationships are emotional but him and I boohoo like in the best way it was the most oh it was gorgeous because there such deep levels of seeing and listening and affirming and all of these things that were

under the surface of we so love each other but it's under the surface we usually at those workshops have 50 to 125 couples in the room and as you know uh Harville has the couples in a u shape and we're on a little stage with the PowerPoint slides and um long story short a couple came in at the very beginning and sat very near and they did not speak in the whole workshop and I kept wondering because we have Q&A after the different exercises I thought well theyve they're just happy and you know I'm glad

they're here like you said you want to come back and just relax they don't have any problems well at the end we have couples anything you want to say before you leave and different people say how they felt about this man raised his hand first time took his wife we said yes he went to the middle of the room he said I want this uh Auditorium of couples to know this was our last chance here are our divorce papers and he said I came here with my biggest enemy I'm leaving with my best friend took

his wife and went and of course everyone just cheered came here with my biggest enemy leaving with my best friend that is what the dialogue process could do we didn't do anything we just taught them dialogue yeah yeah it's it's so beautiful and this was another concept that I had never heard of before and was introduced uh through the workshop was this idea and you talk about it here the space between so we now see the space between is the way into the self rather than starting with the self and then coming out here which

you couldn't get anything done much as you start changing this so now I have this great memory of Helen or I have a great memory of you and so then the brain is predictive once I get a new wonderful memory I'm going to anticipate that memory being repeated the next time I see you but if I get a bad memory I'm going to anticipate the bad memory is going to be repeated so you do two things in order to to make your life really wonderful create absolutely wonderful memories and then your brain will predict so

if I give Helen a great memory when I see her next time she's probably going to hug me or smile at me or at least she's not going to frown she might be preoccupied but it won't be negative if I give her a bad memory I walk in there's going to be a shell around her so you decide what kind of world do you want to live in you create it by your own intentional behaviors so I decide what kind of memories I want Helen to have of me and then I give her those memories

with my behavior I love that and I love this notion I have an image in my mind about the space between you know I I like to clean and I like to keep things tidy and so I love imagining into that space and keeping it really keeping it clean keeping it open noticing if it's like oh I'm I may have gotten a little messy what can I do to repair or to freshen that energy up again and and get some clear lines of connection there I I love that um you know you guys have been

doing your work for decades and have helped and supported and transformed millions of lives now I feel like the vision and this doesn't just happen but this book feels like a real flag in the sand for the expansion of the vision and the goals for your work we figure in 2015 if we have 2.5 billion people practicing dialogue we will have and we've labeled that we we will have then the next stage in human civilization uh dialogue didn't exist on the planet until 100 years ago up until then monologue that is I talk you talk

I talk you talk was the only way human beings talked listening dialogue brought in uh was Martin Uber came up with the concept but he didn't have an operational he did he didn't say here's how to do it he said here's the concept and what Helen and I did U actually without referring to him I didn't really realize when we started to work that we were somehow pulled into that same energy as Martin bber but we operationalized it this is what dialogue looks like it's a fundamental structural new way to talk that makes systemic changes

rather than symptomatic changes and that's what excites us and keeps us going in our riple age when we really rather be sitting on the beach somewhere drinking we're elderly we're getting there we've been married 40 years but we're young at heart and we have you know we have too much to do to do anything other than what we're doing and U and you're you now you are a part of that yes U you're getting conduit of the word happily yeah very gratefully thank you so much for this beautiful new book for everyone listening how to

talk with anyone about anything grab it you will refer to it again and again and again and if you're anything like me you will underline and highlight so much of it I adore you both you are both wonderful thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and for everyone listening and watching uh until next time stay on your game and keep going for your Big Dreams because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have thanks so much we'll see you next time