How can we share honestly with love? Ask yourself that always when you're going to share something, how can you share it with love? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Also, is that love is what changes someone's life and heart. There's a beautiful quote by Russell Barkley where he said that the people who need the most
love often ask for it in the most unloving way. Hey, everyone, welcome back to Our Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world, and I just want to start off by saying welcome to all of our listeners who've always been with us, and welcome to all of our new listeners. I am blown away by just how many incredible new listeners we've had in the last seven to ten days, and I want to thank you all for joining me on this journey. I really hope that on Purpose is
serving you. I really hope and believe that on Purpose is trying to help you get to the next level in your life. And I am just so grateful that you're taking the time to be present here with me. Every single week, we have new episodes on Monday and Friday. We have hundreds of episode in our library with some phenomenal guests and themes and topics that I truly believe will be powerful even this year. And of course you're here right now. Thank you for tuning in, Thank you
for being here, Thank you for leaving reviews. They mean so much to podcasters, And when I read your reviews, I feel so humbled, I feel so grateful, and I feel so touched, And it, truly, truly is phenomenal to see the love that you all have for this show. So today I want to dive straight in because we all know when we think about the question what defines the quality of our life, the number one answer is relationships. The studies say it, the science says it, the spiritual
text say it. Relationships are what creates quality, meaning in our life. And when you ask yourself the question, well, what makes a good relationship, the answer is people say love, people say trust, and truly it's communication. Communication is the heartbeat of a relationship, and relationships are the heartbeat of our lives. What makes a good life good relationships? What
makes good relationships good communication? So today's episode is dedicated to the communication mistakes and mishaps in our life and how to improve them. Now I'm going to get really specific, really dialed in. We're going to look at some fascinating research as while in this space, and I want to make sure that you take an opportunity to journal, make notes, take screenshots, whatever it is that works for you. So let's dive straight in. When we think about mistakes we
make in our communication, in our relationships. Maybe some of the mistakes you make you don't even know you're making. And I'm going to be sharing a lot of mistakes today that you may not even be aware are mistakes, and we're really not aware of the consequences or the damaging effects of that kind of language and communication. Now, there are other mistakes we make where I know you're already thinking, Jay, how do you know? Why do you know?
I know exactly what I'm doing wrong. I'm already aware, but I'm struggling to make the shift. I'm struggling to actually figure this out. And we're going to dive into both of those today. So here's the first mistake we make. When our partner is sharing their pain, we choose to complain. Don't complain when they're sharing their pain. Their moment of vulnerability should be received with empathy, not with your complaint. If your partner is complaining about their pain and what
they're experiencing. That is not your opportunity and your moment to share what you're struggling with. Let's say your partner comes home from work and you come home from work at the same time, and they say to you, I had a really tough day to day. That is not the time to say I had a really tough day too. That is not the time to say I've had a tough week. That is not the time to say, tell me about it. I feel the same every week. That is not the time to say, yeah, I need to
tell you about this. That's the time to say, tell me more, what's going on? How are you feeling? Do you want to talk about it? Those simple switches creates space. We think that our pain connected to their pain creates space. Actually, when we meet their pain with our pain, we remove space. We remove the sanctity and the sacredness of what's about to happen in this vulnerable, intimate, connected moment with someone
we love. When we're able to accept that they want to share their pain, let's meet this with compassion, with empathy, with openness, Let's ask them about it. You actually develop your relationship. Now, why do we do this? Why do we choose to complain when someone else shares their pain. The first thing is we've been suppressing it. We've been keeping it locked inside because we didn't want to bother someone. We want it to be a people pleased that. We
didn't want to weigh someone down. So we've been holding it all in and now as soon as someone's open up, we open up too. So we're opening up not because someone hasn't allowed us to open up, but because we haven't allowed ourselves to open up. So the moment you spot that psychologically someone else has given themselves permission to be vulnerable and open, you finally give yourself permission. The only issue is you're giving yourself permission at a time
when their pain needs to be a priority. So that's one of the reasons why we do it. Another reason why we do it is because we want to be seen, We want to be heard. We want to feel like we can get some empathy and sympathy too. We want to feel like we can get some love and understanding too. We feel, well, if they want some love and understanding right now, I need some too. I'm struggling, I'm carrying all this weight, I'm dealing with all this going on
right now and they don't even know. But again, our sharing in that moment doesn't get the response we want because what the other person now feels is they don't really want to listen to me, or if they're really loving and caring, they then shift it on to us and we forget about them. Take a moment to say, tell me more, do you want to talk about it, how's it going, what's up? Walk through it? And then ask them, hey, how actually wanted to tell you about
my day? Two? When's the best time? When you've just helped someone through something, it's an instinctual response to say, all right, well, let's talk about me now or let's focus on me now, and that kind of ping pong pain reflection doesn't really solve the problem because that person is still processing and digesting what you've just shared and what you've learned together, and now asking them to focus on you distracts them from their pain. Don't complain when
they're sharing their pain. It's a big mistake we make in our relationships and something we can easily solve. We just have to resist the urge of being validated in that moment and in that time, knowing that we'll actually be better validated if we postpone the sharing of how we feel. Mistake number two. A lot of people are scared to say they need distance or space from their partner. Raise your hands right now if you enjoy alone time
or your own friend time away from your partner. I am guessing that nearly every person who's listening right now is raising their hands. Even if you're walking a dog, or you're editing, or you're cooking food, as long as you're not driving, Please do not do this. If your dramming everyone else raise your hand, and all of us have raised your hands. We all enjoy alone time, we all enjoy our time in solitude. But here's what we do wrong. We say to our partner or I just
need space this weekend. Oh you know what, I just need some time out. When we say that, most people hear that and they take it personally. They think you want space from them. They think you want distance from them, And really, what you're saying is I want space for myself right like, when I say I want space, I'm not saying I want space from anyone else. That may
be part of it. But what I'm really saying is I want space for myself to do some reading, to do some journaling, to dive into some meditation, to do some work, whatever it may be. Communicate why you need space and what you are using it for. If you simply say what you want but not why you want it or how you're going to use it, that what
can be massively misinterpreted. So many people in relationships are struggling because they tell their partner what they want, but not why they want it or how they're going to use it. If you say to your partner, I just want time now, you may be saying, well, Jay, your partner should just understand. Sure, great if they do. But the majority of us love an explanation. The majority of
us would love some clarity. And actually, if we don't provide clarity, we let the other person populate the open space. And when someone populates with their imagination and their fatigue, right, imagination, fatigue are a terrible recipe. Like those are bad ingredients when they go together. If you're tired and exhausted and you let your imagination loose, chances are you're going to come to a pretty scary realization or a pretty scary takeaway.
And that's why a lot of people, when they're tired and their imagination runs wild and they hear the words I need space, they go, oh, they bored me. Oh they don't want to be around me. Oh, maybe I'm not interesting enough. And self doubt is such a big thing that we all deal with that we can't just expect our partners to be fully secure, confident human beings.
If you expect your partner to be a fully evolved, mature, emotionally intelligent, confident human being, we're kidding ourselves because the truth is we are not that either. So don't expect that completion and perfection from your partner and fill in the gaps for them. Help answer some of those questions, help color it in a little bit by providing a
little bit of clarity. What do you lose? Sure it affects your ego, Sure it affects your desire that we should just understand each other, We should be able to read each other's minds. But why do we want to do that? Why not help them out? Why not give really clear direction as to what we're going to do? Now with this point, I also want to make the principle clear that it is healthy to spend time apart.
Study show that healthy relationships follow the seventy thirty rule, So the most harmonious relationships spend about seventy percent of their time together and thirty percent of their time apart. Now, this has been really difficult during the pandemic because we've all been around each other more than ever. But as things begin to open up, it's really healthy to think, well, how can we spend seventy percent of our time? Now, this doesn't just apply to work. I believe it applies
to our evenings and our weekends as well. And making sure that your partner gets away for a weekend with their friends or on their own, and making sure you get away on your own or with your friends is a really healthy commitment to make once a year, make sure your partner has time to go away with their friends, and make sure you have time to go away with your friends. Now you may say, well, Jay, where does
the time come for that? Even if it's three days, even if it's just a weekend, even if it's just a day, it's so healthy to take that time apart for each other, for yourself, for your children, for every single person. If involved in this relationship, and I think we're so scared that spending time apart actually will pull us apart. But spending time apart can actually pull you
closer together and brings you back to this really beautiful connection. Now, the next mistake we make in our relationships is we use what I call unsafe or unhealthy language. Language that pertains to things ending, language that pertains to things being over, language that borderline's threatening. Any language that puts the relationship into question, or puts your connection into question, or makes broad, overarching statements that are not factually correct can be really
damaging in a relationship. Things like, well, I guess it's over, Then, well I guess you're over me. Well, it seems like you don't care at all anymore. That's not really true, is it right? That's not really true. Does someone not care anymore at all? You may feel that way, but is that reality. We need to look at what's real as different from how we feel. You may feel that someone doesn't care anymore, but investigate that feeling a bit
deeper yourself before you communicate it. One of the biggest mistakes we make is we communicate our feelings without investigating them or without being curious about them. If we get curious and investigate, Okay, well, I feel like they don't care about me anymore at all. Let me investigate that. Okay, that's not true. Last week, when they brought me dinner,
they ordered dinner, I could tell they cared about me. Okay, you know what this morning, actually, they they asked me if I know if I wanted to sleep in a little more. Okay, So let me investigate it. Okay. So when do I feel that way? Okay? Well, when they come home late from work, that's when I feel that way. Okay, when they don't clean up after dinner, that's when I feel that way. So it's not that they don't care at all, it's that there are times of the day
when I feel they don't care. What don't they care about? I feel like they don't care about my time. Okay. So it's not that they don't care at all. It's that there are certain times that I don't feel they care about my time. Now, when you communicate to them, you say, hey, there are a couple of times a day where I feel you don't care about my time.
But I also want to acknowledge there are times this week that you've made me feel so loved, You've made me feel so appreciated, But I wanted to understand why you do certain things and how that makes me feel at those times. Notice how you are communicating and having a completely different conversation. Now, this is, without a doubt, one of the biggest issues in relationships, because what we're doing is we do none of the thinking and expect
our partner to do all the thinking. So we just want to feel and we want our partners to think and feel. We don't want to do any thinking, we don't want to do any reflecting, we don't want to do any introspecting, and we go and dump all of it onto them and we expect them to think, feel, reflect and introspect in that moment. Now, when you go to that person and say, hey, I don't feel you care at all, the first thing that comes to their mind is, but I I just brought you coffee this morning.
And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but no, but that's not what I mean. And they're like, but what do you mean? Like I would have done it for you last week, Like you know, I was looking out for you. I knew you're working hard and you're like, yea, yeah, but not that that's not what I mean. So then they're saying, well, give me an example, and now you
go into something when they're already on the defensive. You're on the offensive and trying to prove a point, and now you get lost in an argument that no one wants to be in. Don't use unsafe, threatening, or unhealthy language in your relationship. It will truly create so many dents and so many blemishes, and so many cuts and
wounds that they're really hard to repair and heal. Don't put your partner in a position where you're not noticing the good as well as noticing the challenges, and recognize that when you share the challenges, make sure you also share the positives and the powerful things that they do, because otherwise someone feels underappreciated, someone feels completely unlooked at or overlooked. I want to share with you the biggest news of the year. How many of you want to meditate?
I can see your heads nodding, I can see you raising your hands. I can see you saying, yesterday, I really want to learn to meditate. How many of you would like to learn to meditate? With me? Every single day. Now, I already know what the answer is because I know how many men messages DMS reviews notes that I get saying Jay, I'd love to meditate with you. Last year, we took meditation to Instagram and I meditated for around forty days live and twenty million of you tuned in.
Now I am taking that same focus, that same presence to Calm. I've partnered up with Calm to release a new series called The Daily J where you can meditate with me every single day for seven minutes to make it a real habit. I would love for you to come and join me and take part in building a really powerful meditation practice. And guess what, We're going to do it together? Head over right now Atcalm dot com forward slash J to get forty percent off a premium membership.
That's Calm dot com Forward slash J. Point number four is honesty plus love. Honesty plus love has to be the way it works. I've been reading this great book called The Culture Code, and there's a brilliant example of it of the San Antonio Spurs coach Popovich. Now, I didn't know who this individual was because I'm not as familiar with basketball in the history in basketball as I am with football or soccer, but this really stuck out to me and I wanted to share this with you.
This is from the book called The Culture Code, and when they interviewed his assistant coach, he said, a lot of coaches can yell or be nice, but what Pop does is different. Says assistant coach Chip England. He delivers two things over and over. He'll tell you the truth and then he'll love you to death. And I think when we bring these two things together, when we unify this approach in our language with our partners, it transforms everything because what we do is one or the other.
We either love them to death but inside where we're not happy with what they're doing, or we're honest with them, but then we don't share that love, that attention, that absorption. And so I think that's really important for us to think about, is how can we share honestly with love? Ask yourself that always when you're gonna share something, how can you share it with love? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Also, is that love is what
changes someone's life and heart. There's a beautiful quote by Russell Barkley where he said that the people who need the most love often ask for it in the most unloving ways. Let that blow your mind for a moment. He said that the people who need the most love often ask for it in the most unloving ways. When you see someone acting out of arrogance, when you see someone acting out of cockiness, when you see someone acting out of bravado or insecurity or vanity, or pressure or stress,
what they're really seeking is love. So if you meet their ego with more ego, what does it do? It just compounds the ego. If you meet their pain with more pain, what does it do Just it increases the pain. If you meet their arrogance or their insecurity with more insecurity, it just doubles insecurity. But if you meet their insecurity, their vanity, their ego, their pain with love and honesty, you've just given them what they're actually asking for without
even knowing they're asking for it. Love is undefeatable. And you may say, well, that person doesn't deserve love. They're not acting in a way where they deserve love. Now. Of course, as a caveat, I always recommend if someone is being physically, mentally, psychologically, verbally abusive, this does not apply, and I would recommend getting professional help to take care of that situation. But in our arguments of the day to day, we have to realize that ultimately everyone is
simply seeking love. Now point number five, if you're going to tell them how you want them to improve, you have to tell them and communicate that you believe they can. One of the biggest mistakes we make when we're giving feedback or sharing things that we want our partner to work on or improve on, we put them down. We say you never do this, you always do this. You know, well, look at so and So's partner. They don't do stuff like this, and none of it is actually building confidence
or making them feel they can do it. Now, this study researchers discovered, and this was also from the book The Culture Code that I Loved, researchers discovered that one particular form of feedback boosted student effort and performance so immensely that they deemed it magical feedback. Students who received it chose to revise their papers far more often than students who did not, and their performance improved significantly. The
feedback was not complicated. In fact, it consisted of one simple phrase, Now before I share that one simple phrase with you. Think about this. Students are beginning given feedback on their papers, and this one simple phrase is making them perform better. Can you guess what it is? This is what it is. Listen to this. I'm giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them. That's it, the author
says in Culture Code, Daniel Coyle just nineteen words. None of these words contain any information on how to improve. Yet they are powerful because they deliver a burst of belonging cues. Actually, when you look more closely at the sentence, it contains three separate cues, says Daniel Coyle. Number one, you are part of this group. Number two, this group is special. We have high standards here. Number three, I believe you can reach those standards. He says, Here is
a safe place to give effort. Notice how when we give feed back to our partners, we don't say this is a safe stay. We said, well, this is what I want, this is what I need. That's just the way it is. What does that sound like? It sounds like an ultimatum. And guess what, Well, I don't think you can. I mean you never do, you never have. I keep telling you this. Look at that language and
what it creates. It creates an unsafe environment for someone to change, for someone to grow, for someone to build, for someone to heal. Tell them you believe they can. When you say something, you say, hey, I really want a powerful relationship with you, and I know that we can figure this out together. What do you think about this? How different is that too? You know you just never change. I just don't know where this is going to go.
I have no idea. We say that thinking that's going to get a response from them, right, We all say that hoping that someone hears them goes, oh my gosh, I need to save this relationship. I have to sort myself out. And actually they hear that and they go oh. They feel demoralized, they feel dejected. They feel there's nothing I can do. There's nothing I can do to solve this. Then they don't try because it feels unreachable and unattainable.
I'm going to share with you one last principle, which has stop trying to get their respect indirectly tell them you need it, put your ego aside, and tell them your love language. Gary Chapman talks about the five love, languages, quality time, acts of service, gifts, words of affirmation, and touch. Put your ego aside and tell them you need words of affirmation. Put your ego aside and tell them you want more quality time. We're so scared to ask for what we actually want that we try and get it
through indirect means. For example, we start saying, oh my gosh, I did so much today. I did this and this and this and this, And what we're really saying is, please tell me that you know I work hard. Please tell me that you validate me. Please tell me that you recognize me. What we want is words of affirmation, but we don't ask for words of affirmation. We real off a list of what we've been doing and they say, hey,
that's great. That sounds like you've got a lot done today, And then we walk away going, well, are they not gonna tell me how great I am. Oh, it's the other way around, where what we're really wanting is quality time, and we say, oh, you know what, we just haven't had any time together recently. Oh you know what, Oh gosh, I just saw them. They just spent like a whole weekend together, and they've been having so much fun. It's amazing,
isn't it. How we are so scared to tell people what we want and we're really hoping they'll figure it out, but it's so confusing for that individual. They don't know what to do with it. Stop trying to get people's respect indirectly. Put your ego aside and tell them respect what you need and want. Respect what you need and want, and share it openly with your partner. Don't hide it from them. Thank you so much for listening to today. I am so grateful for the amazing community we're building
here on on Purpose. I cannot wait to start doing live events and being with you in person. Giving you all big hugs. Please share what you're learning from this episode, pass it on, recommend an episode, and dive deep. We're just getting started. Thanks everyone, have an amazing week and look out for the next episode.