I spend most of my time teaching very bright people how to understand their relationship and their partner’s behaviours and words.
One of the things they learn is that knowledge isn’t power.
Taking action based on that critical knowledge is where the real power sits.
I remember speaking with a celebrity client of mine, I was sharing the problems he was creating and as I pointed them out he kept saying “I know”.
After about five of these “I knows!” I stopped and asked him “if you know” why do you think you keep doing the reverse and forgetting what you say you know?
Knowing isn’t power – taking action based on what you know is where the value sits.
The problem so many people suffer from is that they are bright and they think, their knowledge and wisdom in other areas of their life are transferable into their relationship.
I promise you that being amazing in your career (as one example) doesn’t naturally make you an amazing partner.
In fact, I know many business people who have amazing business philosophies that have made them hugely successful yet they choose not to adopt these philosophies in their married life.
For some reason, they swap what works into catastrophic bevaiours in their marriage.
One businessman came and complained to me for 15 minutes about his wife.
So I said to him, if your business wasn’t working who would you blame your customers or would you blame yourself?
He said, “myself of course.”
I then said, “I’m curious, why have you changed an important philosophy and proven successful model to put the blame on the very person you can’t control, you would never do this with your customers?”
“The only person you can really control is you.”
“If you add value to a customer they will be happy and want to stay, why would a wife be any different?”
“You know if you want anything in life to work well then you know the success you want only happens when you become better.”
He nodded.
“So help me understand why you would change philosophies that work?”
He stopped me “okay, I get it, what do I need to understand differently? How do we start?”
You see if a marriage isn’t working it’s far too easy and takes zero intelligence to blame and judge. This is an easy low-level way to put the responsibility onto your partner.
The real courage sits in taking responsibility for being able to learn how to bring new thinking and behaviours to see what impact you can make on your marriage.
Most people know they can trigger their partner into bad behaviours, all they have to learn is how they can trigger them into ones both people would enjoy.
To achieve this new thinking will be required and I have never met anyone that knows how to achieve this naturally.
Success comes from learning what you can’t currently see, so why continue the suffering, now discover the choices you can’t currently see?