Transcripts
1. Welcome and introduction : Welcome to this
course on building personal and professional
relationships. My name is Alex endinik and
I'll be your instructor. In this video, I'll tell you a little bit about what to
expect from the course, a little bit about
my background, and we'll start right away. Well, this course is
designed to be taken another one day
and actually begin improving your
relationship through the ideas of this course
the very same day, perhaps, the very
same hour as you're taking this course
because every lecture has actionable things you can do and apply to how you communicate and manage
your own relationships. So this is meant to be
incredibly useful and practical. In fact, I use these
techniques in my own life, personal life and work, and they work tremendously. So we're going to talk about are healthy mindsets
for appreciating the right things in
the relationships, not having self sabotage and allowing the relationship
to fully blossom. I'm also going to
show you how to feel and share gratitude
in the right way that makes other people do more of what you need and how
to reciprocate that. We're going to talk
about empathy, compassion, emotional intelligence
in your relationship, and especially how to manage arguments and conflicts when
they happen and they happen. Well, how do you do it in a way that makes your
relationship resilient? Meaning you come out
of the argument or disagreement stronger
on the other end. Yes, you might run into
a bump in the road, but can you become
stronger together? I'm going to give
you the strategies, practical research based
strategies that work. And by the end of this
course, of course, you will have many tools
that you can immediately apply to your professional
or personal relationship. So welcome to this
course. Let's begin.
2. Self awareness food for thought from a Neil Young song: I want to start this
course on building stronger relationships
by giving you some food for thought that
comes from one of the greatest poets and singer songwriters of
the previous century, Neil Young from his
song Heart of Gold. You may be familiar
with this song. If you're not, I'll have the
link to the YouTube video of this song in the description in the resources of this video so you can go and
listen to the song. It's an iconic classic song. It's a very poetic song, and the main lyric of this song that we're
going to talk about is, I've been searching
for a heart of gold, and I'm getting old. And many people
think, Hmm, yeah, I've been searching for someone else who has a heart of gold, and I'm getting old,
and it's so sad. Why am I not finding somebody
with a heart of gold? But the true meaning of this song is and the
wisdom of this song, and Neil Young wrote it at
a relatively young age, which really is impressive. The wisdom of this song
is that he means that he's been searching for
heart of gold in himself. To give to somebody else. So a lot of relationships is about fostering
that heart of gold, the capacity within
you to give more, and then you'll be able to take. That is how most relationships
work at a healthy level. You give more or as much as
you take instead of thinking, How can I get more?
What's in it for me? Why am I not getting
the right relationship? Whether it's at work, or
whether it's in personal life? This song can be the
theme of the scores. I've been searching for a
heart of gold in myself. The outlook is
always inside first. Find, how can I be better? And when we are better, our relationships
miraculously become better, as well, because
we're able to give more on many more levels. So with that idea, that self awareness is the foundation for
great relationships that we're going to
have in our life. Now with that idea, let's begin this course.
3. Mindsets For Appreciating your relationships: I want to offer you some
mindsets to help you make the most out of your relationships
and be happy with them. And in the West, at least, we hear this phrase a lot. I'm not going to
settle for whatever. People want perfection
and ideal relationships. Otherwise, there's this,
I'm not going to settle, and they end up not settling, but also not finding what they need for a long time or ever. There's no guarantee
that you're ever going to find perfection. So to counter the
idea of perfection, let's explore some
gray area and nuance because life is lived in the
nuance, in the gray areas. It's very rare that things
are so black and white. Nuance is where we live
for the most part, and relationships are
mostly imperfect. I've never known a perfect relationship
that's great all the time. In relationships, there is a lot of good and there's
a lot of bad. And to have the good, you have to accept
some of the bad. Because if you don't
accept some of the bad, you'll
never get the good. And it's the truth of life.
I didn't invent this. It's just how things are, and we have some options. We can appreciate the
good or focus on the bad. Let's look at
focusing on the bad. You feel the worst
about things, your job, your relationships,
your anything when you dwell on how bad it is. So if you have this
negative mindset, oh, I don't like when my co worker says this or I don't like when my boss keeps me after hours or talks to me for a long time after meetings
or goes on and on. And if that's your focal
point of what you don't like, that will get enlarged
in your mind, and you will really
not like that, and that will snowball and
spiral out of control, and you really won't like that, and that relationship
will become bad partially because
you're making it that way. Starting with mindsets.
But if you look at the same person who
does these things, which let's call them
irritants or not ideal things, we're going to separate
that from, you know, you have your lines in
the sand, deal breakers. They're not deal
breakers necessarily to just annoyances
that you don't like, but they're not deal breakers. Now, if you have a lot
of new annoyances, but there are also
some positives like your boss maybe is
annoying in some way, but also they're not firing you. They're giving you
a job, by the way. They're also maybe not the
greatest boss in the world, but kind of helping you with your career and moving forward. And you're kind of
learning some things. Well, okay. These aren't perfect,
but they're good. And, of course, there's
all these slogans. Well, the good is the
enemy of the great. And yes, yes, there is, and you want great, but you
can't always have that. So when you can have that
you can look for it. But while you're looking for it, you can always make a better
out of a current situation. You can make your
current situation better and ultimately
close to ideal. That's my point. You don't have to look too
much externally. You can make the current
better. Here's how. Take all the annoyances
of your boss, of your boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, whoever you have, and look at what are the good
things they're giving you. People have a lot of value. Some people are tidy. Some people are organized.
Some people are creative. Some people are
just good natured. Some people you can learn from. They do different
things than you. And if you just look
at it, like, Oh, they're different
in a way I don't like. I kind of like myself. I kind of like what I like and I like what I
like, and that's it. So close minded as opposed
to if you were open to this world that this person can share with you because
everyone is different, then you'd be like, Wow, there's a world of things I
can learn from this person. Maybe they're more athletic and I can be more
athletic with them. Maybe they know history,
and I can learn about that. Maybe they know movies
and maybe they know art or maybe they know
science, whatever. But if you see the
value of the good and focus on the
good that they have, which they do and not
dwell on the negative, this is such a strong key to your own internal happiness
with your relationship, how you pursue the details
of that relationship, what you allow to have more
weight versus less weight, what you truly appreciate about them and how much you allow
yourself to appreciate. This is your internal work. The person has no idea this whole internal
conversation is even going on. But I'll give you some
examples from cultures, like in the United States
and Western culture, there's more and more of
a culture for perfection. But in Eastern cultures, happiness is being happy with what you being content with what you have is happiness. And wanting more is actually what's going
to make you unhappy, that constant drive
of not having enough. Sometimes it's exciting to
have a drive and ambition. There's a good
part to it, but it also has a negative
part of, like, Okay, then definitionally,
you're not so satisfied with where you
are now, but you could be. And you can balance the two. You can be satisfied
with where you are now, but keep improving,
okay? Keep improving. Don't lose your ambitions, but be satisfied with
where you are now. And I want to finish
this lecture with this idea from Kirk Vanigud. There's a meme going around online. I'm not sure
if you've seen it. It's from a book, but I didn't
honestly read the book, but I saw the meme, but I
thought it was brilliant. So he was at this party
with millionaires. And she was talking
to this friend, Kurt Winegod if
you're not familiar, is a very brilliant author. And he was this party
with millionaires. And she was talking to a friend, and I don't remember the exact phrasing,
but he said something. You know what? They're
Millionaires and billionaires. But I have something
that they don't have. And his friend was like, Well, what do you have that these millionaires and
Brilliants don't have? And he said, I have
what they don't have. I have enough. And that was just
brilliant, right? Because you don't need so much more and so much
perfection when you can have enough and when you
can appreciate what you have, you're happy. That's enough. Of course, in the Western culture,
people will always say, but what about ambition? So, of course, have
your ambitions, but don't forget to appreciate what you have so that
you have enough.
4. How to know what to give : A relationship, you
have to give a lot. But in this video,
we're going to talk about how do you
know what to give? Because the first
impulse we have is to give what we would like, you know, the golden
rule, do unto others as you would
like to done to you. Yes, the golden rule is so true, but it has a flaw, in this case, because it uses what's
called projecting. We project our
values onto others. If work life balance
is important for us, we might assume it's
important for others. But if you ask ten
different people, what's important for you, they'll give you 100
different answers or at least ten
different answers. So you don't want to project what's important for
you onto others, even though as humans, we have so much in common. Some things are shared, like meaningful relationships,
important to everybody. Financial and physical health, important to everybody,
to some degree, mental health, important to
everybody to some degree. But what's most important? What do people want the most? We can't really project because that's an
assumption and guessing. So we have to ask in
intelligent ways. The smartest thing
to do is to ask unique open ended questions
over a period of time. When you meet somebody,
the first questions people ask usually in
a Western setting are, what do you do?
Where are you from? Where did you grow up?
These basic questions. They tell you a lot, but
they're also kind of canned questions and everybody has the canned answer,
basic answers. You don't really
get a lot, really. So you want to ask more meaningful and
open ended questions. Like, let's say,
people tell you, Oh, I'm from such
and such place. And let's say they say
they're from Brazil. Projecting might be, Oh,
from Brazil, you know, I know, Brazilian people
like soccer, right? So this is kind of
projecting because maybe I like soccer also and I
want to talk about soccer. And it's also a stereotype
because maybe people from Brazil not everybody from
Brazil likes soccer. There's plenty of
people who don't like soccer who like science
or arts or poetry. When you do the stereotype and projecting of
your own ideas, okay, you will be wrong a lot. But you might avoid
that and you might ask a more open
ended question like, how was your childhood
growing up there? And they will tell
you, I played a lot of soccer or went to an art school, and right away, you'll be on the right path
because if they say, I went to art school,
you might ask, What kind of art do you
find most meaningful and which kind of art has impacted you the
most in your life? And are you still able to practice or use it
in your daily life? Now, they'll tell you
a lot in their answer. And from that, you
can extrapolate. This is where you use
active listening, not just listening for the purpose of trying to
hear what you want to hear, but listening to truly
think about what people are telling you and understand what they
are trying to tell you. And sometimes reading between the lines because
they don't always say what they mean because you can't always
say what you mean. Sometimes you have
to know people for a very long time to
truly express yourself. But active listening is the act of truly thinking about what
people are telling you. So that you can
understand what they're saying at a deeper level
with more insight. And, of course, that leads us
to empathy and compassion. Empathy is understanding people. You can have multiple
levels of empathy. There's cognitive empathy, understanding what people think, and emotional empathy,
understanding how people feel. Now, you're never going
to feel what people feel. There's different
levels of intensity of empathy in adult world, we usually don't reach incredibly intense
empathy where you actually feel everything
the other person feels. There's research
on, like, mother, child, mother, infant empathy. This is different because
they usually tune each other's emotions,
mother and infant. But for adults, it's
a little different. So we couple cognitive and emotional empathy
as far as we can get, and we want to turn
that into compassion. Compassion is Was empathy
is just understanding, compassion is the desire
to actually help. And so when you combine,
asking great questions, thinking about the answers, using active listening
and truly trying to think about it in
the conversation, after the conversation,
coming back in the next conversation
and talking about it more and
listening more, and truly being empathetic
and compassionate, this now is where
you start to gain the true insight of what
that other person needs. Remember, in the beginning of
this video, we started out. Don't project or assume because you're going
to make errors. Now, with open ended questions, listening, doing the work of being empathetic,
compassionate, then you are far in a far better place to give that other person
exactly what they need. So you actually don't
have to give a lot, but have to give in a
meaningful way that resonates. Imagine if somebody
is going through life and they just have some need, that need that's constantly
unmet, unmet, unmet. And imagine if you
listened enough and you know what did something
to meet that need, they would be so grateful, so grateful because most
of us go through life, and we think to ourselves, well, you have this inkling
in our minds, but it's just I'm just not
finding the right people, just not finding
the right settings. And here comes
somebody comes along, listens to you and delivers exactly the
thing that you need. Wow. That's special. That's really special. You know, getting exactly the
right birthday gift or something, you know, it feels those moments feel special or just when somebody does something you
didn't expect, but it's something
that you're like, Wow, this is really what I was hoping and thinking
all this time. Wow, you know? People
appreciate you for that so much because it's all
genuine at that level, and it really strengthens
that relationship. And when people say, you have to give a lot in relationships, sometimes you have
to give not so much, but the right thing
which will mean a lot. Not a lot of effort. A lot
of meaning. Give meaning.
5. Gratitude: I want to share some
insights about how to show gratitude in a way that actually is going to help whoever you have
the relationship with do more of what you need. So when we think of
gratitude in the mainstream, we may be sometimes
think of gratitude like, I appreciate what I have, but this is not the gratitude that we're going to
talk about here. The gratitude that
we're going to talk about here is the kind
of gratitude that people and scientists have done a lot of
research on lately. And what they found
is that we don't actually feel that
much gratitude when we say, I feel gratitude. It's like a kind of
a slight practice in futility because you don't make yourself
any different. Where gratitude is
really felt is if someone does something
good for you and you tell them that thing you did really helped me
with whatever I needed. Like, if they helped
you just something simple like carry
your groceries, and you tell them, Oh, I was so tired and it was just just the right
time to help me. Thank you so much.
That really helped. So that tiny, tiny act of helping carry the groceries,
which is easy to do, without that statement
of showing gratitude, that person who
carried the groceries, they don't really know, like, was the other person
thankful they not thankful. But when you express to them, that was really
helpful, thank you. That made a difference for me. They'll feel really
good about it, and they will be
more likely to do it next time without being
prompted or asked. And this taps into
the dopamine system. We're not going to get
too much into it now, but dopamine in your body is
the it's a reward chemical. You have a built
up an increase of dopamine when you're
anticipating a reward. And the reward for a
person here is the thank you that their work
had a good result. They get a release
of dopamine in anticipation and when they get told that their
work was good, as opposed to no feedback
or negative feedback. So when anyone you have a relationship with at
work or in private life, when they do something
good that you like, you tell them exactly that
in beautiful language. It doesn't have to be
Shakespeare, beautiful language, but you express to them
exactly what they did and what impact it had on you to make your life better
in whatever way. When they understand it, they'll do more of
that thing you liked. And if you leave it
discussed, they won't know. And so their dopamine
will be kind of at the same baseline level or maybe a slight drop because
maybe they'll anticipate, Oh, I just did some good things, but they get no feedback on it, and they're like, Well,
maybe it wasn't so good. Maybe that person
didn't appreciate it. And then they don't do it again because next time
there is not as much of an anticipation
related to dopamine buildup. And this is why the way
you really show gratitude is whatever is a nice thing that the other person
does that you like, that you want more of,
you tell them exactly about it and how
much that helped. They'll be very, very happy
to do it next time for you, but also for themselves because their own dopamine
levels will go up, and that actually feels
good for that person. So that's how you get
people to do what you need. And actually feeling
good about it, as well, and of course,
you should use vice versa. This should be a two way street. But this is how gratitude really works and how to
use it in a good way, in a relationship to
make the overall feeling of the relationship much better and everybody doing things that the
other person likes.
6. Managing relationships through disagreement: Now let's talk about how to manage conflict and disagreement in relationships that actually strengthens
your relationships, meaning it makes them resilient. You come out better
on the other side. So conflicts and
disagreements will happen. What you don't want to do is get too wrapped up
in the exact moment. You have to understand
that how the person feels about the conflict has to do with how they are
feeling in the moment. So if you're scream they're going to feel bad
about it, right? If you're elevating your voice, that's going to evoke
negative emotions in them subconsciously. So you don't want to
raise your voice. You want to stay calm,
and you want to think about why is this
conflict happening? What is the other person needs? The first and foremost
thing you think about is what is the other
person's value system? What is really
important for them? And you try to work from that. You try to use
active listening to really ask what's wrong? When they tell you, sometimes
they tell you what's wrong, but sometimes there's
an underlying issue, and you want to ask open ended questions to
understand them better. This is opposite of, you know, you probably have seen
or maybe you've been in disagreements or arguments where it's kind of a shouting match, and both sides have a point, and they just keep
repeating the same point, and they kind of go in circles and just repeating
the same point. This is where you don't
listen and don't develop a fuller understanding of what the other person is trying
to say or what they need. So in our case, what I would suggest is
to use empathy, meaning, try to understand what they're
going through emotionally, try to understand
what they're going through cognitively,
what they need. And since you know
this person already, you're not just arguing after the first
time meeting them. You have some
relationship with them. You understand
their value system and what's important for them, and you find common ground maybe you both have very
strong common ground, which probably is the basis of some parts of your relationship
in the first place. But maybe just have
different ideas for how to achieve some goal. Maybe one person sees one path, another sees another path,
you can't agree on the path. But instead of arguing
about the path, what you want to do
is get aligned on, Hey, we have the same goal. I want the same thing. Let's figure out
how to get there. Why don't you like path A? Oh, because for me, it was going to be
easier, but I see how for you it was going
to be a lot harder. Maybe how can I make
it easier for you. Is there any burden I
can take off of you? And you want to
show understanding. This is where you use the
concept of acknowledging. Acknowledging is basically
if a person tells you, Hey, I'm going
through this issue. I'm having this challenge. I'm having this emotion. You don't just tell them whatever you
want to say or, like, you know, and what about me or I'm also going
through challenges. You don't do that because that sort of disregards whatever
they just shared with you, which is personally
meaningful to them. Instead of jumping
to your topics, which there will be a time
to do that, but not yet. You want to do this step of acknowledging whatever the
other person tells you, after you ask them open ended questions
about their situation. After you listen, after you think about what they told you, you acknowledge, like,
Oh, I understand. This path that I suggested was going to
be really hard for you. I get it. I wouldn't want to do it either if I
was in your shoes. I totally understand, and I appreciate how much of
a challenge it would be. So let's work together to
maybe figure out a better way. So you see work together to
figure out a better way. But after you acknowledge
their challenge, that acknowledgment goes an incredibly long way
because without it, the other person feels
not listened to, you may be listening, but
they don't know that. So the acknowledging lets
them know you listened. Makes them feel respected and
make them because of that, feel good about the interaction. And then when they feel good
about their interaction, this is where they're
going to be more likely to accept your points of view and your arguments because your points and your arguments, you think, Oh, they're logical. But people actually are very emotional and most decisions
are emotionally driven. And emotion being there's two kinds of emotions
you want to be aware of. There's the emotion like, sad, happy, excited in the
moment, those emotions. But what you really want to be aware is the other
kind of emotion where how do they feel
about you in the moment? If they feel good about
you in the moment, if they feel good about the
relationship in the moment, you respect them, you
acknowledge them. If they feel good,
then whatever you tell them is in the context of
them feeling good about you, trusting you more
in that moment, trusting the relationship
more in that moment, and they'll be more
accepting of your point, regardless of how
logical they are. Equally logical
points are accepted more when the other person feels better about the
relationship and you. This is key. If you've ever been in an argument or a debate and you're saying things
that are logical and they're just not getting home, the other person is
just not getting them. And you think, Well,
why, how could it be? I made all the logical points. That's where you want
to think about is, how are they feeling
at the moment? Are they feeling pressured? Are they feel they are not respected or not heard
or not listened to, or their opinion is
not so valuable. If they feel bad, you can very often tell by
people's facial expressions, if the facial expression
is skeptical or closed or negative,
this is a tell. Hey, they're feeling bad
about the interaction. They're not going to be into
what you're going to say, no matter how brilliant it is the things are you're saying. So first, forget your points. First, work on bringing back the feel good elements
of the interaction. Listen more, show understanding, show appreciation,
make compliments, get on the same page, find points of commonality, all of these things
until you see, Okay, I'm bringing back
the feel good, okay? Without feeling good,
don't make any points. Don't make any arguments. They're all going to be
interpreted negatively. The other person is going
to be mistrusting of them. Like, you're going to say, I
want the same thing as you, and the other person is
going to they're just trying to be sneaky
and they're just trying to say the right things. I know they're not telling
me the truth, right? So whatever you're saying,
even if it's true, if they're not feeling
good about it, they're not going to accept it. They're gonna be skeptical. But if they're
feeling good about it and they were on the same page, they'll be much more
likely to take your words for what they are at face value and trust
you and go with it. This is what you want to do. You want to first
manage the let's make the term feel goodness in
the entire interaction. By asking open ended
questions, listening, acknowledging, making
the other person feel heard and respected. And only when you see that there's a positive feel
in the interaction, this is and you see that the other person is
open to your ideas, this is where you
make your point. That's when they're
going to resonate. Without that, actually going to drive if the other
person doesn't feel good, you're actually going to drive
them towards stubbornness. And the more you argue
while feeling bad, and while having a negative
aura in the conversation, the more you argue and debate, the more stubborn you'll
make the other person feel. So it's not really about
the logical argument, it's how they feel first and
then the logical argument. So definitely try to
manage conflicts that way because when you feel good
about interaction, agree, find common ground,
find commonality, find a way to work together. This is where you come out
of arguments with agreements and have your relationship
be stronger moving forward.
Alex Genadinik
