LASTING LOVE

THE FIVE SECRETS OF GROWING A VITAL, CONSCIOUS RELATIONSHIP

GAY HENDRICKS, PH.D. KATHLYN HENDRICKS, PH.D.

2003

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Your New Path to Harmony and Vitality Chapter One Five Secrets of Lasting Love Chapter Two The First Secret: A New Kind of Commitment Sets You On The Path Chapter Three The Second Secret: A New Way To Be With Your Emotions Chapter Four The Third Secret: The No-Blame Relationship and How To Create It Chapter Five The Fourth Secret: A New Way To Express Your Creativity Chapter Six The Fifth Secret: Tandem Acts of Kindness Appendix 1: In-Depth Couples Interview: The Five Secrets At Work Appendix 2: TEN POWERFUL ACTIVITIES FROM OUR SEMINARS

INTRODUCTION Your New Path to Harmony and Vitality What is the most important thing in your life? You might say food if you havent eaten yet today. If youve had your breakfast, though, youll probably agree with us that the most important thing in life is the feeling of love inside you and around you. If you feel the flow of love in your life, you have a springboard to miracles under your feet with every step. If you dont feel the flow of love, you can be a billionaire and feel like a pauper. Without love, you can be a movie star and not be able to look at your face in the mirror. We know this at first hand, because several thousand couples have come through our office door over the past twenty years. All of them were seeking to restore the flow of love in their lives. A few of them were billionaires and movie stars youd recognize, but all of them had problems youd recognize. They are the same problems weve faced in our own marriage. They are exactly the same problems that you and everyone else will face in a committed relationship. On the surface, the problems revolve around specific issues: How can you end blame and criticism? How can you stop arguing about money? How can you keep passion and romance alive over time? How can you agree on how to parent the kids? Beneath those specific issues are big questions that everyone must answer: How can you thrive in a long-term relationship as a creative individual and as an intimate partner? How can you use the inevitable challenges of long-term relationship as

a springboard to greater closeness and creative vitality? How can you ignite passion and vitalityand keep it glowing forever? These were the questions we had to answer in our own marriage, and they were the questions that inspired much of our work in the decade after CONSCIOUS LOVING was published. From 1990 until now, we have worked with many people in long-term relationships: Two thousand couples in private sessions, groups and seminars. These relationships ranged from 7-52 years in length, with an average length of 12 years. Most were heterosexual (85%); racial and ethnic minorities made up approximately 20% of the couples. We were interested in discovering what saps the vitality from long-term relationships and what can make the vitality surge again. We were especially interested in finding out what people could do to prevent vitality from decreasing in the first place. Here is the essence of what we learned: The Key Discovery: In nine out of ten long-term relationships, vital energy slowly drains away because of problems in five specific areas. Even if the couples surface conflict concerns sex or money, the real source of the problem is usually rooted in one of five issues: Commitment Creative individuation Emotional transparency Sharing responsibility Appreciation If you address these problems with five simple techniques, you can generate passion and harmony, even if those qualities have been absent for years. Here is a brief summary of the five foundation-insights of LASTING

LOVE. The First Insight In nearly every long-term relationship, one partner consistently puts more energy into the relationship than the other partner. Over time, this imbalance causes the initiator to feel tired and unappreciated. The solution is not to focus on getting the other partner to change, but for the initiator to make a commitment to his or her own creativity. In practical terms, the initiator must do something purely for self-expression (not for others) at least one hour per week. More is preferable, but major change starts to happen with at least one hour per week. This act of creative individuation often inspires change in the other partner. Our research discovered that it only takes an hour a week of creative self-expression (journaling, learning an instrument, dance, nature-walks, meditation) to produce more vital energy in the individual and in the relationship. Surprisingly, the other partner begins to shift in positive directions as the initiator devotes more time and energy to individual creative expression. The Second Insight Relationships flourish in an atmosphere of emotional transparency, especially when both people speak clearly about the deeper emotions such as fear, sadness and longing. In the LASTING LOVE program, partners learn how to speak difficult truths in friendly ways. For example, if you speak bluntly to your partner, such as Im gonna get you for flirting with Elmo at the party, you will invariably experience conflict following this type of communication. However, if you use our friendly technique of microscopic truthsuch as When I saw you talking to Elmo I got scaredyou will get a much more friendly response. The first communication contains a threat, Im gonna

get you, and an arguable perception, flirting with Elmo. Even if you could get everybody at the party to agree that your partner was flirting with Elmo, the statement would still trigger conflict. The second communication contains a personal perception, When I saw you, and an unarguable feeling-statement, I got scared. Reliably, this move stops conflict and opens a space for resolution. In fact, our research indicates that once either partner speaks a sentence like this, a resolution usually occurs within ten minutes. A gender difference emerged from our research: Breakthroughs often occur when men speak plainly about fear, sadness and longing, and when women speak plainly about anger. We tailored different strategies to the differing styles of men and women, and these strategies will be described in detail later in the book. The Third Insight Relationships thrive only when partners share responsibility for issues and duties. On a daily basis, vitality grows when each person takes full responsibility for any issue that arises. Vitality surges when both partners stop blaming and start claiming ownership of problems. By contrast, most people try to apportion responsibility by asking the wrong questionWhose problem is it? This question always leads to blame, conflict and power struggles. For example, a conflict about money may recycle for years, but it will only get resolved when each person claims full responsibility. Initiators habitually take more than 100% responsibility for issues that arise. This allows the other partner to get away with taking less than 100% responsibility. It is essential that initiators let go of the burden of extra responsibility, so that a balance can be attained in the relationship. People squander massive amounts of creative energy in relationships when partners point the finger of blame at each other. With the

Responsibility Principle, partners meet on the equal ground of full ownership, thus eliminating the wasted energy of blame and power struggles. The Fourth Insight: Every relationship conflict is rooted in a hidden commitment problem, even if the partners have been nominally committed for decades. If this commitment issue is addressed correctly, it becomes a springboard to a profound breakthrough in harmony and creative energy. Although most of the research on this principle was carried out in marital relationships, we also confirmed it in the business world through our consulting work in approximately eighty companies. As we convey in lectures, the principle applies in the boardroom as well as the bedroom. By analyzing hundreds of conflicts, we discovered that the problem often began with a commitment that didnt get made. In other words, someone (or sometimes all parties) did not fully commit to a significant activity in the partnership. We worked out a simple way to find where the commitment problem was located and a technique for moving through the impasse rapidly. The Fifth Insight Relationship vitality starts to wane in an appreciation gap, and vitality continues to drain away as this gap widens. A specific place and time can be pinpointed where the break first occurred in the ongoing flow of appreciation. Specific techniques can restore the flow of appreciation, and this flow liberates creative energy in the partnership. In the early stages of a relationship, partners speak appreciations to each other frequently. As time passes, they speak fewer appreciations, instead devoting more and more time to solving problems. Problem-solving is often directed outwardly toward children, maintenance of house and

property, and other items that need constant attention. Usually, partners direct problem-solving toward themselves only when conflict occurs. One of our clients said, I knew my marriage was over the day I got off an airplane, expecting a welcoming hug and kiss, and instead was greeted with The upstairs toilet broke again. Fortunately, they were able to become LASTING LOVE again, through balancing their problem-solving with more spoken appreciations. The Benefits If the partners are willing to practice the simple techniques of the program, they get an immediate pay-off in the form of a quantum shift in the level of harmony and creative energy. The heart and soul of the new paradigm is the celebration of essence. Essence is the word we use for the unconditioned, authentic self, the person we truly are beneath all the learned survival-responses of early life. The higher purpose of loverelationships is to bring essence to light, revealing the essential creative self beneath all the personas everyone uses to survive and get recognition. In order for relationships to flourish, the essence of each person must be recognized and brought forth. If we are not willing to reveal who we truly areor if we are not willing for the other person to reveal his or her true selfconflicts will always follow in the aftermath of the decision to stonewall essence. The new paradigm comes with a comprehensive new set of communication tools. LASTING LOVE is a program anyone can use to transform relationships at home and at work. Useful both with adults and children, these new activities produce magical results in relationships, even if only one person employs them. However, when both people understand the principles and practice the activities, they achieve a quantum enhancement of closeness and creative energy.

In Summary A crew from CBS came to do a feature on our work a while back. They followed us around for three days as we worked with couples, talked to each other over dinner and so forth. The reporter (his face would be familiar, but we will preserve his anonymity for reasons that will be clear shortly) did a great job with the interviews and on the ultimate televised feature as well. After the cameras were turned off, he let down his guard and got personal: You two are so upbeat and make it sound so do-able, but is it really? He said hed seen plenty of comfortable couples, but hed seldom met any who got closer and more creative as the years went by. He and his wife had struck a bargainhe would be the star and she would be the support person. Yet, the deal was already proving costlyshe was depressed and he was restless. We could feel the despair he was carrying. Here he was handsome, talented, young, articulateand yet he had already given up and settled for less than what he envisioned his marriage could be. We believe he speaks for millions of people. The evidence is dismal, both from personal observation and from the scientific research. If you look around your family, friendship network and community, you probably cannot find very many people in long-term relationships who are thriving as creative individuals and growing closer as lovers at the same time. The norm in stable long-term relationships tends to be more in the direction of comfort, compromise and, sometimes, truce. Although we were growing up on opposite edges of the country, in Florida and California, we both remember having a similar moment of insight when we were in junior high. For Kathlyn, the awareness came while watching her parents and their friends play a party game in a high state of alcohol-inspired merriment. She saw her parents laughing and talking animatedly, two things she never saw them do in normal life. She thought, If this is as good as it gets for adults, I dont want anything to do with it.

For Gay it came when he was asked to write an essay on something he believed in strongly. He chose the subject, Why I will never get married. He said that hed never seen a person who was both married and lively. The married couples he saw in his family and town all looked bored, pained and tranced-out, as if they were sleep-walking on a rocky road. Through destiny or happy chance, we ended up turning these insights into productive careers rather than cynical bitterness. By holding out for what we really wanted, we also managed to get through the maze of fate to find each other. Ultimately, the guy who vowed never to get married found (and married!) the girl who decided never to grow up. We channeled our energies into discovering ways to get closer and more fully ourselves in the course of a long-term relationship. Now, after twenty-some years and several thousand couples-sessions, weve finally put all the pieces of the program in place. First and foremost, we are our own best customers, as any therapist or relationship expert must be. We did a great deal of research in the laboratory of our own hearts and minds, in order to find out how to keep our own relationship growing bountifully. that it works. LASTING LOVE is our most comprehensive work, and at the same time our simplest. The program rests on the foundation of five solid principles, and is brought to life with five radically simple techniques. We call them radically simple in the spirit of the original Latin word, radix, which means root or core. Although simple, each of the central techniques changes the core dynamics of the relationship whenever they are applied. We want to live in a world where all of us can feel the warm embrace of genuine intimacy instead of settling for the numbing couch-comforts of compromise. We want to live in a world where each of us also gets the Even if we had never shared the LASTING LOVE program with other couples, we would know in our hearts

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chance to contact and express our full creative potential. We bet you want to live in that kind of world, too. From working on ourselves and with our clients, we know that this new world is possible. We also know that it is earned, not inherited or given. It is created by ordinary people with the will and courage to make extraordinary commitments. It is done one step at a time, with persistence and a good map. LASTING LOVE is a map that was created the hard way, by many trials and many errors. We tell our students: If we know anything at all about relationships, its because weve made every mistake ourselves at least once, and worked with it in others at least a dozen times. For us, the road was not always easy, but the rewards are beyond anything we ever imagined. If our map can save people from taking unnecessary detours and hitting speed-bumps at a jarring pace, we will feel doubly rewarded. If it assists you in feeling the incredible vitality weve reveled in over the past two-plus decades, we will feel that our life purpose has been fulfilled.

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CHAPTER ONE FIVE SECRETS OF LASTING LOVE Heres the bottom-line truth we discovered from our decade of work with couples in long-term relationships: People can endure long-term relationships in many ways, but they will only thrive if they do five things. In other words, you can grow older with your partner in many ways, but you will only grow closer and more creative through the steady practice of five actions. We believe these five actions should be taught in every classroom in every school, every day. They most definitely should not be secrets we have to seek after or stumble into by trial and error. Yet they are. Almost none of us begin our love-relationships knowing how to do these simple things, and our relationships are disastrous as a consequence. Lets permanently remove the veil of secrecy that has covered these skills, and begin a new era of intimacy in close relationships. The First Secret If you want a close, vibrant love-relationship, you need to become a master of commitment. So We teach couples how to make real commitments to each other. There is an art to commitment, and almost nobody knows how to practice it. The first art of commitment is to spot and acknowledge the unconscious commitments that drive our misery-making machinery. Imagine the power of Bill Clinton saying, From the evidence, Im slowly beginning to realize that Im committed to philandering, sexual betrayal and lying. I also appear to be committed to getting caught. Im committed to finding out if people will still like me after they find out Im a bad boy. In practical reality, the act of claiming ownership of an unconscious commitment changes a troublesome dynamic in a relationship faster than anything else.

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The second art of commitment is to make commitments you can stand by. Real commitments can only be made about things you have control over. Real commitments are verifiable. If you make a phony commitment, such as I promise to love you forever, you set up an impossible situation by promising an illusion. Nobody can commit to loving someone forever, because some days you wont even wake up feeling loving toward yourself. Love is a mysterypart feeling, part spirit, part mindand mysteries by their very nature are outside our control. A real commitment would be to commit to telling your partner the truth about when youre feeling loving and when youre not. This type of commitment saves relationships while turning on the flow of intimacy and creativity. The LASTING LOVE program offers a specific set of commitments weve researched with several thousand couples. When couples make these commitments, their relationships thrive. The Second Secret If you want a long-term relationship thats both close and creatively vital, youve got to become emotionally transparent. To go all the way to ultimate closeness and full creative expression, you must eliminate all barriers to speaking and hearing the truth about everything. So We teach couples how to listen to the truth about everything from their partners. We teach them how to speak the truth about everything to their partners. Everything means everything: Feelings, deeds, hopes, dreams. We ask them to consider any hesitation about telling or hearing the unvarnished truth to be a symptom of resistance to greater love and creativity. We know this move is radical because it produces huge bursts of creative energy in everyone who tries it. As a practice, it has awesome power. As a concept, it polarizes people quicklyweve seen talk-show audiences erupt in cheers and boos when weve said couples need to tell the

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truth to each other about everything. After twenty-plus years, though, weve still found no exceptions to the truth-rule. The Third Secret If you want a long-term relationship thats both close and creatively vital, you must break the cycle of blame and criticismits an addiction that saps creative energy as surely as drugs or drink. So We invite couples to turn their relationship into a blame-free zone. We teach each partner to take full responsibility for everything that occurs in the relationship, especially if it looks like its the other persons fault. Radical responsibilityand the powerful creative energy it unleashescomes from catching yourself in the midst of saying Why did you do that to me again? and shifting to What am I doing that keeps inviting that behavior? We ask couples to go a strict no-blame diet and stick to it. As a practice, this move liberates awesome energy. In fact, weve seen lifealtering breakthroughs come about when couples simply went one full day without criticizing or blaming each other. As a concept, the idea of giving up blame and criticism is often greeted with derision. Impossible, some say; How boring, say others. We have found that its actually possible, and anything but boring. The couple who is deeply addicted to blame and criticism has usually come to mistake the adrenalized-drama of conflict for the flow of connection. The idea of life without the adrenalin may seem dull and empty at first, much like a lifelong flagellant must feel that first day without the self-administered whip. The Fourth Secret If you want a vibrant long-term relationshipone in which you feel close as a couple and creative as individualsyouve got to do one big thing first. Youve got to take your attention away from fixing the other person and put it on expressing your own creativity. Even an hour a week of focusing on your own creativity will produce results. More will often produce

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miracles. Nothing will sap your vital energy faster than squelching your creativity. Often, couples stifle their individual creativity in order to focus on fixing and changing the other person. Since this seldom produces tangible results quickly, they devote more energy to the other person as a fixerupper and less to individual creativity. When results are not forthcoming, they complain about the other person to third parties. They enter a dangerous cycle of complaint that has addictive propertiesthe more you do it the more things there are to complain about. Ultimately this leads to dissipation of creative energy and inner despair. By contrast, fully creative people dont have time for complaint. Even if youre not fully engaged in creativity (even, as our research indicates, if youre only doing an hour a week of creative expression) you will see quantum enhancement of vitality with every increase in creative selfexpression. The Fifth Secret If you want to create vital, long-lasting love, you must become a master of verbal and non-verbal appreciation. So We teach couples how to appreciate each other spontaneously and frequently. Although this may sound like a simple thing, it most definitely is not. In fact, its the last thing we teach in the program because its the hardest to learn. To utter a clear, heart-felt appreciation to another person is radical partly because its so rare. To receive such an appreciation from another person is equally challenging. Most of us have never seen or heard a rich flow of spoken appreciations in relationships. In fact, many people cannot recall a single instance of clear appreciation in their families of origin. The simple solution is to speak a heartfelt ten-second appreciation to the other person, for no reasons other than to signify a commitment to appreciation and to open the flow of appreciation. In other words, the

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spoken appreciation is not to get a particular result from the other person. In reality, it produces powerful results very quickly, but it is important that the appreciation not be spoken as a manipulation or in expectation of a reward. We teach couples how to say simple and complex appreciations, ranging from I like the way you did your hair today, to Throughout our lives together, I have been repeatedly amazed by how generous you are. Although most couples can learn the art in an hour, they tell us that it takes the better part of a years daily practice to savor its full value. These five actions produce a heartful revolution in any relationships in which theyre practiced. The five actions move people quickly through the stuck places so that they can enjoy the profound beauty of genuine love. We will have a great deal more to show you about these five actions when we explore them in the chapter to come. First, though, lets go a little deeper into what we mean by genuine love. How Genuine Love Differs From Learning-Love and ToxicAttraction First, make a distinction between toxic-attraction and any kind of love. In toxic-attraction, people who fundamentally dont like or respect themselves invite others like them into their lives. They form entanglements in order to have company in their misery. They want fellow-victims to complain to and to complain about. They want others to join them in their path of self-destruction. Based on thirty years of relationship counseling, weve seen that toxic-attraction is the foundation of about 5% of relationships. Fortunately thats only about one out of twenty relationships, but the statistics mean nothing if you are one of those twenty. Make a further distinction between two stages of love. In most longterm relationships, love grows through two stages: Learning-love and genuine love. Most of us proceed slowly through a period of learning-love

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before we reap the harvest of genuine love. Learning-love is about learning those things you need to learn in order to feel genuine love. Learning-love is about repeating lessons until you get them. In learning-love, you pull certain people into your life to learn something only they can teach you. Once you learn that lesson, you enter a deeper relationship with that person or move on to another. The quest is for genuine love, and learning-love is a step along the way. In learning-love, you are trying to get something: Getting the love you think you need, getting approval, getting repeated reminders to be in touch with your feelings, getting reminders to stand up for yourself. Genuine love is not about getting anything. Its about living in a flow of giving and receiving. In learning-love, you struggle over control of space and time: You crave more space or more closeness, you think the other person is too slow or too fast, too full of feelings or too shut off from them. There is either too much or not enough of sex, of money, of intimacy. Genuine love is not about completing yourself. Genuine love is between two equals who know they are complete in themselves. Learninglove is between two people who do not feel whole; each person feels lacking in something. They throw themselves into love in order to learn, and when they have learned to feel whole--when they have discovered that there is no lack that can be filled from outside them--then they may embark upon the journey of genuine love. We know all this at first hand, because weve been there and back. Both of us have had many lessons in the painful school of learning-love. Weve signed up for courses with names youll probably recognize: Trying to save another person from his/her self-destructive tendencies, Trying to critique and improve the other person while overlooking major flaws of our own.

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Trying to get love and approval from someone who was stingy with both. Genuine love is a new paradigm--not about survival, not about getting. Its based on a commitment to celebration and to making a space in which others can celebrate. The lesson of learning-love is simple but maddeningly hard to master. It is this: You are the creator of your life. If you desire more intimacy than the tiny amount youre getting, its because you--for some conscious or unconscious reason--have made up the rule that you can only have a tiny amount of intimacy. If you dont feel you have the space you need to grow, its because you--for some conscious or unconscious reason--have made up the rule that you cant have space to grow. It takes most of us many years to master the lesson of learning-love. In fact, weve seen many intelligent people go to their graves without seeming to experience any genuine love. If it doesnt take you that long, lucky you! It took us many years of work on ourselves before we went to bed and woke up every day feeling fully for our lives. Its an idea with so much power that it scares a lot of people away. The couch-comforts of victimhood offer a much safer place from which to watch life. Of course, the problem with that kind of safety is that you dont get to participate fully in life and love. You miss out on the exhilarating satisfactions of accessing your deep potential and contributing to others. Needless to say, were big advocates for going all the way to realizing your full potential. We dont encourage anyone to settle for okay when magnificence is freely available. Focus on Committing, Creating and Appreciating In order for an intimate relationship to survive past the first few years, couples often get some trial-and-error skill in speaking the truth and taking responsibility. If they dont, the relationship usually falls apart around those

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two issues. The average length of a romantic relationship has decreased over the years, and at present seems to be in the range of four to four-anda-half years. We find that when couples in long-term relationships come to us, they have stumbled their way to some understanding of the importance of truth and responsibility in their relationship. However, commitment, creativity and appreciation are a different matter. Oddly enough, almost no one we work with has a conceptual grasp or a practical fluency with these arts. Theres no reason any of us should be good at them at all. After all, most of us receive no training, formal or informal, in how to make genuine commitments, how to access lifelong creativity, or how to deliver meaningful appreciations. As therapists and seminar leaders for thirty years, we have witnessed hundreds of occasions when a single act of appreciation-expressed simply and from the heart--brought people closer together in a heartbeats time. We have also witnessed the near-miraculous power of a We have seen shift in commitment in opening the gateway to intimacy. creativity. Discovering the secrets to creativity, commitment and appreciation has been the most exciting professional and personal journey of our lives thus far. We are tremendously enthusiastic about sharing the secrets of the arts. The set of skills will equip anyone with a powerful and reliable method for enhancing the flow of connection in any relationship. Although we will focus mainly on love-relationships, the skills also apply to business, friendship, parenting and other areas where the flow of connection is paramount. Active Skills Many people wrongly think that creativity, commitment and appreciation are passive states of being. They incorrectly assume that youre either committed or youre not, youre appreciative or youre not,

people change (and sometimes save) their lives by expressing their

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youre creative or youre not. The good news is quite the opposite: These are active artsskills you can practice from moment to moment. Committing, Creating and Appreciating in Action Here is a brief story of the power of the new paradigm: Were sitting with a man and a woman in our office, trying to help them out of a marital jam so long in the making and so long overlooked that it feels like death hovers in the room with us. Theyve been together fourteen years, and its essentially been fourteen years of struggle. After hearing their story, we ask them to do something radical: We ask them to declare this marriage dead. "If you will declare this marriage dead, we will ask you a question that will bring a new one to life or help you walk away from the death of this one with fewer wounds." They're puzzled, but they go along with us and declare it dead. We pause for a full minute of silence to honor the death of a noble effort that turned awful. When our minute is up, all of us open our eyes. We ask them: "What did you learn from this marriage that you could not have learned any other way?" The question catches them by surprise, and they answer it candidly. In the years since we first asked that question, weve heard people speak their reply in hundreds of different ways. No matter how they word it, people often come down to saying the same two things: 1. "I found out the hard way that Im more committed to my old patterns than I am to loving and being loved." In other words, they gradually put a commitment to an old pattern (criticizing, over-drinking, controlling) ahead of the commitment to the relationship. They didnt know how to make a conscious commitment to the relationship that was bigger than their unconscious commitment to their respective destructive patterns.

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2. "I discovered too late that I didn't get or give enough appreciation, and I waited until too late to do anything about it." In other words, they were unskilled and stingy in the area of appreciation. Next, we ask them another question. Given the demise of this marriage, and given what youve learned from it, are you willing to make a commitment to a new marriage? Are you willing to create a marriage in which you both feel fully appreciated and you make the relationship more important than your old patterns? We ask them to consider the question carefully, in the quiet of their own minds and hearts, then give me a clear yes or no. After thirty seconds or so of silence, they spontaneously open their eyes at the same time. They both nod and say Yes. The air clearsthe energy in the room lightens up as their faces relax. We all sit back in our chairs, knowing theres work to be done but also knowing theres a new possibility that had not existed before. Next, we ask: Would each of you be willing to devote the same amount of energy to expressing your creativity that youve been using to fuel your conflict? Again, theyre caught by surprise. It hasnt occurred to them that the exact same energy thats required to drive conflict can be used to inspire and express creativity. Eventually they agree to turn their conflict-energy into creativity energy, but theyre quick to tell us they dont know how. Nobody does, we say, but once you make the commitment, the exact path always reveals itself. The miracle unfolded over the next two months, and continues to blossom now. They made good on their initial Yes, using the new

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technology of commitment and appreciation we describe later in the book. Within two months they had created something brand-new, and at a fouryear follow-up they said it was unimaginably better than their first marriage. In fact, they said that because they didnt understand commitment and appreciation, the first marriage had been doomed from the beginning. Even though their first marriage had lasted fourteen years and this new one only four years so far, it felt as if the first one had not ever existed. Thats the power of commitment, the first principle of the new paradigm. Now, take a closer look at the appreciation and creativity. Human beings alternate between two ongoing cycles: A cycle of complaint or a cycle of appreciation. The ratio between the twothe amount of time we spend in eachdetermines how happy we are and how much happiness we inspire around us. It also affects how much creativity we express and inspire in others. The cycle of complaint goes as follows: We want or need something from our partner, such as more communication, more understanding, more touch. However, for some reason, often lost in the mists of childhood, were unconsciously committed to not getting those things. So, of course, we dont get what we want... We complain about it and criticize... The situation usually doesnt improve (or if it does, it improves only temporarily before returning to baseline or worse.) We complain and criticize more, which leads to greater awareness of our partners insufficiencies. Armed with more detailed evidence, we escalate our barrage of criticism and complaint. Weve worked with couples who had been recycling the same complaint for decades. Our conclusionwhich at first dawned on us with

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surpriseis that nobody ever gets better by being criticized. Almost everybody who does it, though, is convinced that if they keep it up long enough it will have the proper motivational effect on the other person. The cycle of appreciation goes as follows: We look for things to appreciate about our partners. We discover new ones or notice old ones anew... We speak our appreciations clearly... We see more things to appreciate, which leads to greater awareness of our partners value. Living in a cycle of complaint consumes the very energy needed for creative expression. Living in a cycle of appreciation frees up energy that each person can use for individual and mutual creativity. The Learning-Edge What most of us need to know is this: We have a choice about which cycle to live in. What most of us really need to know is this: How to shift quickly out of the cycle of complaint into the cycle of appreciation. Weve been running a large-scale research survey, via our website, on the subject of appreciation. One of our research associates sent us a note a while back in which she articulates her own reaction to something that happened at a dinner with us. Speaking of appreciation, I remember the first time I ever saw a clear example of it. The three of us were in a restaurant together when we first met. At one point in the conversation Kathlyn said something funny. I vividly remember your turning to her and saying, out loud, casually, as if it was the most natural thing in the world: One of the things I really love and appreciate about you is your fantastic sense of humor. You make my life so much richer because of how you look at the world. I was just feeling grateful for that and wanted you to know it. Kathlyn smiled warmly and thanked you, then you both went back to talking about whatever wed been talking

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about. I sat there perplexed for a moment. Although Id seen strong, stable marriages before, Id never seen this kind of communication. Its not the way most people talk, nor is it really the way most people think, either. Later, I realized that I was waiting for the punchline. I expected you to follow your appreciation with something teasing or funny or even insulting, and when it didnt come, I didnt know quite what to think. My mind was thinking: wait a minuteso youre just going to appreciate her? Out of the blue? For no reason? Without wanting anything in return? I think I learned something brand-new about relationships that day. Embedded in her observation are important insights into a new paradigm of relationship. For example, it surprised her to see one of us appreciate the other out of the blue and for no reason. In other words, she witnessed appreciation for its own sake, with no other agenda running as a sub-text of the communication. In addition, the appreciation was spoken without wanting anything in return. In other words, it was not designed to produce an outcome or result. This latter observation distinguishes the art of appreciating from the related art of praising. There is no question that praise is a useful and important skill--many books are available on how to do it effectively. For example, in the classic book, The One-Minute Manager, authors Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson show how to use praise to reward good performance and shape employees behavior in a positive direction. In Thomas Gordons books on parenteffectiveness and teacher-effectiveness, he presents a methodology for influencing childrens behavior by the power of praise. Thats not what were talking about. The art of appreciating operates in a different paradigm, which may be why there arent many books about how to do it. As we will show later, the paradigm in which appreciation occurs is not linear nor is it intended to produce a specific result. It does not fit within a reward-and-punishment

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schema. You shift into the new paradigm by making a conscious decision, a commitment to base your relationships on an ongoing flow of positive energy. You choose to focus on appreciation for its own sake, not to influence the behavior of the other person. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, the skills of Active-Appreciating and Conscious-Committing actually have a profoundly positive effect on other peoples behavior. Things change for the better the moment either of these skills enters a relationship. Here is an example of appreciation for its own sake, drawn from our own relationship: One morning I (GH) awoke early to do some writing. After an hour or so I took a break to meditate, and during meditation an idea popped into my mind. I wrote THANK YOU! about a dozen times with different-colored ink, then cut the paper into strips with a pair of scissors. Each strip had a Thank you! on it. I put a Thank you! on each step of the stairs Kathlyn would take after she woke up. I was upstairs when I heard her sleepy footsteps approach the stairs. Suddenly I heard a giggle, then another and another as she came up the stairs and encountered each of my different Thank Yous. When she came into the kitchen she was absolutely aglow. Can you think of a better way to start the day? (If so, please let us know so we can try it.) A New Paradigm of Relationship We believe that concepts such as Conscious-Committing and ActiveAppreciating constitute a shift in context that fundamentally alters the way in which people regard intimate relationships. caught Lauras attention that night. Prior Contexts Up until very recently, the context of intimate relationships was clouded by survival fears. Although this is still true for many people, there are millions of people for whom survival is not the main priority when they This new paradigm is what

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wake up each day. Fears about hunger, deprivation and other survival issues shape the nature of relationship. For example, survival-fears make it important to do ones duty by steadfastly inhabiting the roles prescribed by the social and religious authority structure of the time. In times past, less attention was paid to psychological or spiritual fulfillment. Techniques for problem-solving were essentially non-existent. Gay tells an illustrative story: When I was in graduate school, I mentioned to my grandfather that I was in therapy to handle some issues about my self-esteem. He asked me what therapy was, and chuckled as I explained it to him. I asked him how they handled such issues when he was a young man. Issues, hell, he said, We were too busy handling plows. He had run away from home at sixteen to avoid getting trapped in the role of a farmer. As long as he didnt have to handle a plow, he figured hed handled the biggest issue hed ever have to face. He and my grandmother had carved a homestead out of the Florida swamps, where they contended with snakes, alligators and malaria on a regular basis. Things changed as the twentieth century gained momentum. From our parents time up until the present, the context of relationship shifted toward luxury-items such as the fulfillment of potential. Movies, literature and other arts began to celebrate the transcendent possibilities of relationship--symbolized by the graceful dance of Fred and Ginger. The Freudian revolution promised to offer tools for handling problems when missteps caused us to tread on each other painfully. The New Context Its a big shift from survival (handling plows) to fulfillment (handling issues.) In the survival-context, life is lived in waves of things like fear and hunger, with periods of relief from those things. In the fulfillment-context, life is lived in waves of fulfillment and the hunger for more. We believe, however, that the context is about to make an even larger shift, opening

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access to a new force-field. This new force is electric with previously-hidden potential. We believe that relationships in the new millennium will shift toward a focus on appreciation and celebration. The focus will be on the flow of connection. The couples who come to us now want more than traditional problemsolving skills. As people become more sensitive to the flow of energy inside themselves and in their relationships, they are looking beyond traditional therapeutic techniques. They want life-skills they can use by-the-moment to awaken and enhance the flow of connection. The arts of committing and appreciating are the best ways weve found to deepen the flow of connection. A single act of skillful committing or appreciating instantly shifts the relationship into a greater felt-sense of flow. To imagine the kind of context-shift were talking about, think of a magicians tablecloth trick. Picture two fabulous place-settings: Baccarat crystal glasses, Limoges china and your favorite silver. Imagine you and your beloved sitting down to dine amidst the beauty of the table-setting, when suddenly you realize the table cloth is made of...wax paper. Quickly, though, you make a decision to enhance the quality of your life rather than despairing over it. You snap your fingers and a magician appears. With a wink and a smooth flourish, the magician whips the wax paper out from under the place settings without disturbing them. With another magical move, he slides a crisp linen tablecloth under the placesettings, without so much as rattling a teacup. Suddenly the essential beauty of what was there before is enhanced. but everything has changed. Thats not only a context-shift, its a conscious marriage of the power of your intention with your ability to create real magic. Thats the domain of the new paradigm. Practically Speaking Only one thing has changed,

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It only takes a split-second to make a commitment to enhancing your relationships. The moment changes everything, though, because you shift out of earlier contexts such as survival and the search for fulfillment. You enter a new zone, full of new possibilities and based on entirely new questions. In the survival context, relationships exist inside the question, What must we do to survive? Considerable time is spent shoring up defenses against hostile forces and carrying out chores in the rut of routine. There is little time or energy to search for fulfillment. You are watching and listening for threats to your survival. In the fulfillment context, we live inside different questions, such as What must we do to fulfill our potential? and How can we solve the problems which are the barriers to expressing that potential? Considerable attention is paid to the past, where the barriers were presumed to have been been originally erected. Considerable energy is consumed in power struggles about which partner bears responsibility for the barrier. You are watching and listening for how to meet the needs of others and whether your own needs are being met. In the new paradigm we offer in this book, the questions are profoundly different than survival or fulfillment. Your relationships live within questions such as, What commitments do I need to embrace which will allow the relationship to flourish? What do I really admire and love about my partner? How can I best appreciate those qualities and actions? What can I do to make myself more available for appreciation? Although you have good problem-solving techniques at your disposal, you do not focus as much on problems. Instead, you look for whats right in the other person and in the relationship. You embark on a shared quest to

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find each others essential qualities so that they may be skillfully appreciated. You initiate your entry into the new paradigm with a conscious choice. Imagine life as a waiter or waitress, offering you a menu with three choices on it: Living your life in waves of fear. Living your life in waves of fulfillment. Living your life in waves of celebration. If you were going to pick one, what would your choice be? In our relationship seminars, 99% of the participants choose celebration. There seems to be one or two people in every group who cannot imagine life without fear or the quest for fulfillment. Almost everyone else, though, sees that the conscious choice to organize your life around a context of appreciation opens up the greatest number of possibilities. If your life is about appreciation, you can celebrate even the days when your body is occupied by fear or your mind is pre-occupied with a potential you havent fulfilled. Contrasting the Old Paradigms with the New At lunch that day, our young colleague witnessed a communication which was not colored by survival or fulfillment. It came from the new paradigm, one in which there are no expectations embedded in the communications between partners. If you listen closely to the communications of most couples, you will see that some of their utterances may be colored by survival concerns, but a majority of them are surrounded by an aura of fulfillment and the lack thereof. Specifically, communications come with expectations embedded within them--or disappointment and anger that those expectations have not been fulfilled. Nowadays, when one partner says to another, You forgot to get the potatoes at the store, he or she is not likely to be talking about a survival issue. The sub-text of the

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communication might be How could you have forgotten to do something so simple? or If you loved me, you would have remembered the potatoes. S/he may be saying, I dont feel loved and appreciated, and heres further evidence of why I have every right to feel that way. These patterns have a way of hardening into place with time, so that within a few years most couples have developed rigid, predictable styles of communicating. One of our poet-friends came by to visit us after being at a party with many long-married couples. staying too long in an old paradigm. The new paradigm melts the glaze. The new paradigm gives an opportunity to break out of old forms into something new and vibrantly alive. But it doesnt stop there. The new paradigm extends out from partner-interactions to the larger arena of life-as-a-whole. In its broadest application, the new paradigm is about how to live your whole life from a stance of gratitude rather than a stance of scarcity. Its about greeting each moment of life with an open heart rather than a judgmental mind. It asks you to express appreciation for no other reason than your decision to live a grateful life. Rather than waiting for life to bring experiences to you so that you can judge them worthy of appreciation, you initiate the new paradigm by taking a pro-active stance of gratitude toward your life-experience. You walk through life as a philanthropist instead of a supplicant, a producer instead of a consumer. You become the generator instead of a battery. You provide your own energy instead of drawing on the energy of others. The difference is profound and comes with a magnificent surprise. The moment you choose to live life as a producer rather than a consumer of energy, you draw other people into your life who have chosen to live their lives as producers. The relationships you form with them magnifies the energy of everyone, and you She lamented that most of the couples looked like matched pairs of glazed pots. Thats the effect of

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get more juice than you could ever possibly imagined.

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Chapter Two The First Secret: A New Kind of Commitment Opens The Gate All the major problems in relationshipmoney, sex, criticism, disagreements about how to raise kidsare rooted in hidden commitmentproblems. Fix the underlying commitment-problem and the other problem will fix itself. If you are having a problem in a relationship, it is very likely that you can fix it quickest by going to the source, and commitment is usually the source. In short, understand how commitment really works and your relationships will work wonderfully well. The Secret of Commitment Essence is the word we use to describe the most precious part of ourselves. Your essence is who you really are at your soul-depths of yourself. Essence is the part of you that lets you know youre you. When you tune in deep inside, you recognize yourself by the presence of your essence. One of the high purposes of an intimate relationship is to create a space in which the essence of both people can grow to full flower. Heres where commitment enters the picture: Essence can only be revealed in an atmosphere of true commitment. It is rare in relationships for partners to feel the growth of their own essence every day and to see the grow of essence in their partners. The reason its so rare is that few of us understand how true commitment works. The moment we understand it, the light of essence dawns and the flow of deep connection begins. True commitment begins only when we pick one. The art and science of commitment is knowing which person to pick and how to make a wholebeing commitment to that person. The sad fact is that few of us get any training or education in how to make the kinds of commitments that allow relationships to work well. Advertising leads us to believe that its picking

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the ring that makes a difference. Thats ridiculous, of course, but most couples spend more time on that than they do on learning about the art and science of commitment. Weve been together now for over twenty rich and glorious years, but in the first year of relationship we muddled around in circles. We recycled the same arguments, blamed each other for the same things, and then got up and did it all over again the next day. Then we discovered how commitment works, and everything changed. Now its been years since weve even had the slightest argument. Instead of frittering away our energy in hassles, we use our passion to make love, write books together, go on long walks and bike rides, enjoy the rich friendships weve been blessed with. You can do all that, and more, if you learn how commitment actually works. First, ask yourself: Have you ever been given one seconds training (much less one hour or one day) in the art of commitment? If not, welcome to the clubwe never received any, either. Listen closely while we give you the crash course. Actually, call it the anti-crash course, because it may help you avoid more than a few relationship collisions. The Quick Course In Commitment Two commitment-problems are responsible for much of the energydrain in relationships. The first commitment-problem is that one or both partners have not made a full commitment to the relationship itself. We refer to this problem as having one foot out the back door. The typical pattern is that one partner is more deeply committed to the relationship than the other. When conflict arises, the deeply committed partner tries harder to solve the problem and the less committed one withdraws into less participation. If this pattern continues, the partner who tries harder ends up

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occupying the role of Martyr; the less committed partner becomes the Bad Boy or Bad Girl. The second commitment-problem is more pervasive. In fact, almost everybody suffers from it. The problem: All of us have unconscious commitments that interfere with our conscious commitments to the relationship. In the early stage of a relationshipwhen romance reigns and the blood runs hotthese unconscious commitments can often stay hidden from view. As the relationship goes forward, though, the old unconscious commitments work their way to the surface to sabotage our conscious intentions. Understand how this works and you save yourself a great deal of pain and suffering. For example, we worked with a young couple not long ago whose marriage had foundered after two years. Because we were familiar with the power of unconscious commitments, we were able to help them see why they were in trouble and what they needed to do to fix it. Even though he said he was committed to his marriage, he had a stronger unconscious commitment to getting his parents approval. His parents had never liked his choice of mates (and he ultimately realized they probably wouldnt have approved of any mate he chose.) His hidden desire to please his parents kept him at arms distance from the full embrace of his wife. This insight led to a meeting with the couple and his parents, during which a great many long-unsaid feelings were spoken. He finally declared his full commitment to his wife. He also told his parents that while he deeply loved them and wanted their approval, his marriage was more important to him than whether they approved or disapproved of him. Following this emotionally-charged conversation there was a palpable change in everyone in the room, like a massive sigh of relief. Benign after-shocks reverberated through both families over the next few weeks. Much to his surprise, Paul found that his worst fear did not come

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true. He had been afraid his parents would withdraw, sulk and fester with their wounded feelings. The exact opposite happened. They brought a fruit basket to Paul and Janets house a few days after the therapy session. They told Janet that theyd been so afraid of letting go of their only son that they had never given her a chance. Such rapid outcomes are possible only when people are courageous enough to face their unconscious commitments directly. Had Paul resisted and denied his unconscious commitment to getting his parents approval at the expense of his marriage, the process of healing would have slowed to a crawl. How The Process Works The process we have developed for working through commitmentproblems allows the resolution of them to occur in a friendly and timely way. The entire process rests on an unusual principle: Relationship breakdowns are good things, because they bring to the light issues that need to be looked at squarely. Although a relationship breakdown is almost always caused by a hidden commitment problem, the breakdown itself is the perfect opportunity to learn how commitment really works. If the couple is courageous enough to take advantage of the opportunity, the breakdown can serve as a springboard to a new level of intimacy in the relationship. The Wrong Kind of Commitment One commitment-mistake accounts for the majority of relationship pain. In short, people commit to the wrong thing. Usually with the best of intentions, they make commitments they cannot possibly fulfill. Specifically, they commit to outcomes which are beyond their control. Instead, they need to commit to processes, which are always within their control. Two thousand years ago Epictetus wrote a little book called The Art of Living,

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which is considered the first self-help book ever written. His opening line says, The secret of happiness is realizing that some things can be controlled and some cannot. Nowhere is this truth more apparent than in close relationships. To use a familiar example, a traditional wedding vow asks us to make a commitment to love, honor and obey the other person until death do us part. This is a classic example of an outcome-commitment which is doomed to failure from the start. The reason: None of us has any control over whether we will wake up loving and honoring another person tomorrow morning. Feelings by their very nature are beyond our control. Whats within our control is the process of how we deal with our feelings. We can choose to ignore them or pay attention to them. We can choose to speak frankly about them or hide them behind closed lips. We can choose to relax our bodies to welcome them or tighten our muscles to pretend they arent there. than others. A second commitment-mistake accounts for much relationship pain. The second mistake is really a lack of understanding of a profound truth about commitment: All of us, at all times and in every way, are getting exactly what were committed to getting. This discovery is usually troubling when we first see it. However, it can be one of the most liberating insights of your life. Many people come up to us after our seminars to tell us that this particular insight changed their lives more than any other they ever had. Some credit it with saving their lives. As we said earlier, all of us have unconscious commitments that are hidden from our own view and surrounded by a wall of defenses. These hidden commitments sabotage our conscious commitments. Early in our own marriage we discovered that there is a quick and foolproof way to find out what were really committed to: Look unflinchingly at the results were producing. For example, even if we think were committed to spending more Some of these options obviously make for better relationships

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quality time together, a quick look at the results will tell us whether were genuinely committed to it. If were not spending more quality time together, we have to admit that were not actually committed to it. Come into a session with us so you can see how these principles work in the heat of action. As you watch this drama unfold, you may think that it is moving far more quickly and easily than work with troubled relationships often does. To present a clear example of the principles, we chose a transcript in which the work does indeed proceed relatively smoothly. As any experienced therapist knows, however, the snap-finger magic of rapid change is largely in the domain of late-night infomercials, not in the real world of normal office practice. That said, there are ways to speed up the process of change through a deep understanding of commitment. In the following example, watch closely for those moments in which we directly ask for commitments of one sort or another. Based on our experience, we believe these moments to be crucial to increasing the velocity at which couples make changes. Maria and Ed have made the journey from Chicago to Santa Barbara to work with us for two days. (*About ten years ago we shifted our practice from the one-session-per-week model to what we call an intensive-model. We work with people in the form of one-day or two-day intensives, during which we spend all day with the couple or individual. Weve found that the intensive format allows us to accomplish in one or two days what used to take us many months of weekly sessions.) Their main complaints with each other surface within the first few minutes, and they have a familiar ring to them. From Eds perspective, the problem is very simple: Maria is stingy with sex. Maria hears this with a snort of disgust. From her perspective the problem doesnt have anything to do with sex; the problem is emotional distance. Ed rolls his eyestheyve been there before.

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When we were first married we made love every day, he says. Now Im lucky if its every other week. That doesnt work for me. Maria doesnt sympathize at all with Eds sexual frustration. I need more emotional connection with you if Im going to get turned on. You cant go around emotionally detached all day Saturday then suddenly get physical with me at bedtime. When we were first together you seemed interested in me as a person, not just a body. In helping them get out of this familiar rut, our first task is to find out if they are both committed to solving the problem. Although theyve come a long way and paid a considerable fee, we need to hear a clear yes before we can get anything meaningful done. People come to couples-counseling for many reasons other than to make breakthrough discoveries about themselves that will open the flow of more love. Some have hidden agendas. Theyve come not to solve a problem but to prove that the marriage is really hopelessly dead. Others come trying to get us to take sides. They want professional confirmation that the mate really is a jerk. Our way of flushing out those hidden agendas is to ask them blunt questions. Our first blunt question helps us find out if they are genuinely committed to solving the problem: Are you willing to do whatever it takes to resolve these issues so you can feel more love flowing between you? They stare and blink. Ed finally breaks the silence: Were here, arent we? he says, a trace of irritation in his voice. We hear your irritation, we say, but please note that you didnt say Yes or No. I dont get it, he says. Eds a realtor, so we use a real estate metaphor: Lets say you

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ask a couple if they want to buy a house you just showed them. They say, Were here, arent we? Would you consider that the same commitment as a Yes or a signature? He gets the point. Marias a sharp cookieshe already got the point. Still, she cant resist tossing a barb in Eds direction. Thats the Ed I call Mr. Smart-Ass. Noting the clenching of his jaw, we invite them to take a few deep breaths, then ask them our original question again. Are you willing to do whatever it takes to resolve these issues so you can feel more love flowing between you? This time they both say Yes. Thats all we need. It doesnt matter if they have a dozen murky agendaspractically everybody does. It doesnt matter if they have a ton of resistance. All that matters is that they go on record with a clear Yes. Making a clear commitment to do everything possible to solve the problem gives everyone a firm place to stand. Our second blunt question: Would you like to resolve the problem quickly or slowly? They quickly say Quickly. Our third and final blunt question: From past experience, weve found that theres one quick way to solve problems like this. Its very powerful. May we coach you with our most powerful concepts and techniques? Again they say Yes. Now we have three commitments from themthey want to resolve the problem, they want to resolve it quickly, and they want us to use all our powers. Theres a change in the energy in the room. Although were talking about heavy issues, the energy is lighter, more charged. Clear

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commitment has that effectit charges the atmosphere with a kind of benign electricity. All right then, we say. Lets get to work. We ask them to face each other, with about three feet of distance between them. We ask them to make the briefest possible statement about the problem, and to direct the statement to each other, not to us. Im not getting enough sex, Ed says. Im not getting enough emotional connection with you, Maria says. Okay, we say, Now were going to use our most powerful technique to help you solve this problem. Still want us to do that? They say Yes. We say, The best way to find out what youre really committed to is to observe the actual results youre producing. For example, if an alcoholic says hes committed to being sober, the best way to find out if hes really committed to it is to find out if hes had a drink recently. If he said he was committed to being sober but you found out he was still drinking, what would that make him? A hypocrite, Maria says. Ed nods. Maybe, we say, but for sure it would make him a person who was more committed to drinking than to being sober. They nod. So, Ed, we say, Look Maria in the eye and declare your real commitment. Say Im committed to not getting enough sex. WHAT? Eds eyes practically bulge with disbelief. We explain: Youre not getting enough sex, and the results always tell you what youre committed to, so tell her, Maria, Im committed to not getting enough sex. He whips his head from side to side. No, no, noYou dont get

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what Im telling you. Im committed to having plenty of sex. How could I be committed to not getting enough sex? We say, Thats a good question. Lets come back to that later. In the meantime, notice that youre avoiding doing what weve invited you to do. Whats that? he asks, his Mr. Smart-Ass persona back in charge. We invited you to look Maria in the eyes and say, Maria, Im committed to not having enough sex. Even if I dont believe it? he asked. We nod. Just say it. Accent the word not. Maria, Im committed to not having enough sex. Although his face still looks puzzled and doubtful, we note that his breathing shifts to become deeper and easier. Maria, look Ed in the eye and say, Ed, Im committed to not having an emotional connection with you anymore. Its clear that enlightenment has already dawned on Maria. She nods as she says, Ed, Im committed to not having an emotional connection with you anymore. Why? he asks plaintively. Suddenly theres a younger tone in his voice, a kind of innocence hes been covering over with hostility. We say, Lets wonder about that together. Ed, where would you have gotten the idea that you were supposed to live in a marriage where you didnt make love as often as you wanted? Maria, where would you have gotten the idea that you were supposed to be emotionally distance from your husband? Maria has already figured it out; Eds shaking his head in puzzlement. We give him a prompt. Does that remind you of any

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relationships you saw around you growing up? Were there any people you saw frequently who complained about sexual frustration? He barks a sharp, bitter laugh. My parents fought about that constantly. I probably heard my old man bitch about his crappy sex life about five hundred times a year. Maria chimes in with a similar observation. My father and my brothers are all so cool and distant. Good providers, but like theres nobody home inside. So, we reflect back, You learned by osmosis that marriage is supposed to be full of sexual frustration and emotional distance. Looks like it, doesnt it, Ed says. Want to make a commitment to changing that? we ask. They say yes. Maria jumps in. I make a commitment to having a lot of emotional connection in our relationship. Whoa, we say, Slow down a little. We tell them that its important to make commitments to things they have absolute control over. Nobody can control, predict or manage the amount of emotional connection. However, we do have control over whether we open our mouths and speak about an emotion, or whether we listen generously to our partners when they are speaking about feelings. Everyone of us is in control of whether we reach over and touch our mate lovingly on the shoulder. To bring this point to life, we invite Ed to speak a simple sentence to Maria about something hes scared or angry or hurt about. He searchesand searchesand searches for about thirty seconds. Finally he says, When you wont make love to me, I feel

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rejected. Maria doesnt respond. We invite him to communicate from a deeper place inside. Point to where you feel rejected, we say. He points to his chest. Thats where most people feel sadness, we say. Does that feel like an accurate description of what youre feeling? He nods. Tell her, we suggest. I feel sad when you dont want to have sex with me. But you always get angry, Maria says. A lot of men do that, we say. Men are often not very skilled at talking about tender feelings like that, so they often hide them under anger. But they can learn. Ed, tell her again, and this time, Maria, just listen and resonate with what hes saying. I feel sad when you dont want to have sex with me. She nods and breathes easier. Her eyes moisten slightly. It looks like you feel sad, too, we say. Yeah, thats the Ed Ive been missing. Ed and Maria made this initial shift fairly quickly. Not everyone does, of course, and even an easy first breakthrough doesnt guarantee that the second or third will be easy. In fact, subsequent work with Ed and Maria had more than a few one-step-forward-twosteps-back incidents. On many occasions weve seen it take several hours of focused work before people softened their resistance and took responsibility for the negative results they were creating. On one memorable occasion, a deeply-entrenched couple held onto their steadfast zeal to blame the

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other until well into the second day of the two-day intensive. In the bigger picture, about three out of every five couples we work with experience a substantial enhancement of their relationship, with the other two muddling along slowly or dropping out entirely. Remember, too, that the couples we work with often come a long way and make a substantial monetary investment in the process. Earlier in our work, when we were using these same principles in a one-session-per-week format, we found that the velocity of change was considerably slower. The Larger Issues Unsettling philosophical questions are raised by this example and the techniques we employ. These questions go to the heart of how intentionality works and what drives us as human beings. For example: Does this mean that, due to past conditioning, all of us have powerful unconscious commitments which require our partners to become the very things we complain about most bitterly? Based on our experience with three thousand couples, we can answer with a resounding Yes. Based on dozens of experiences in three decades of our own marriage, we can answer with an even more resounding Yes. Heres another example of how this works. A few years ago we saw a couple for only an hour, but due to the power of commitment they were able to turn their relationship completely around in that hour. When they walked in the door they looked like a cartoon version of a mismatched couple. He was shy and introverted, an engineer who worked in the research lab of a computer firm. She was his total opposite, a glad-handing sales manager of a real estate office. Their complaints about each other were true to type. According to him, she was too loud and flirtatious at social events. According to

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her, he was about as charming as a potted plant. We used exactly the same approach we employed in our work with Maria and Ed. We coached him to say to her, Im committed to complaining about your outgoing nature. She said, Im committed to finding fault with your quietness. Next, we used a slightly different question than the ones we employed with Maria and Ed, but it was based on the same principle: We all get what were committed to getting. The question, which we first addressed to him: Given your programming, why would it be inevitable that you would choose a woman whos so outgoing? It took him about two seconds to get the insight: So I could learn how to develop that side of me. He let out a big breath of relief when he said it. We addressed the question to her. Given your early programming, why would it be inevitable that youd draw a quiet guy into your life, then complain about his quietness? She told us that her parents had played out the same dynamic throughout her childhood. Believe it or not, she said, My dads an electrical engineer, too. So, what is the inspired reason you chose a guy like Dave? So I could cultivate my quiet, meditative side. They nailed it. Each of us has certain learning-needs that propel us into our relationships and influence the kind of mate we choose. Most of us then promptly forget that weve chosen our mates for a reason. Instead of embracing them as a learning-ally, we shoulder them as a burdensome improvement project. When they resist our self-improvement scheme for them (and they almost always do) we grow increasingly resentful. We also fail to get the advantage of meeting the learning-need that caused us to pull that particular mate

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into our life in the first place. The Difference Between Philosophy and Reality We should make it very clear that our experience with unconscious intentions is based on helping real couples work out real problems. Its not based on a philosophical principle or some theory were trying to concoct. Based on our clinical experience, we believe that all of us enter our intimate relationships with unconscious intentions, and those hidden intentions eventually over-ride the conscious and noble intentions with which we began the relationship. Does this mean that human beings are responsible for creating all the bad things that happen to them? Our answer is a resounding No. Can human beings claim responsibility for bad things that happen to them and learn a lot about themselves by doing so? Yes, because weve seen hundreds of such examples change hundreds of lives for the better. It all depends on whether you think of responsibility as something you are or as something you do. For us, the only useful way of thinking about responsibility is as something we do. We use an operational definition of responsibility, not a theoretical one: Responsibility is an action you take, not a quality that can be assigned. A judge and jury can assign responsibility to a criminal for an act, but that criminals life will not begin to change until he or she makes a conscious choice to take responsibility. If you go into a prison you will quickly find out how useless it is to assign responsibility to people. Few of the prisoners claim any responsibility for any of the crimes theyve committed. Meaningful responsibility can never be assigned from outside. Even well-meaning, metaphysically-inclined people are woefully

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unclear about the issue of responsibility. Frequently at lectures people will ask questions such as Are people responsible for what happens to them when theyre children? or Do we choose our parents? Some metaphysical systems teach that people reincarnate to learn certain lessons, and choose childhood experiences that facilitate these learnings. To us, that point of view seems absurd. If a drunken father comes home and beats up his 8-year-old, its ridiculous to speculate about whether the 8-year-old is in some way responsible. However, if that same child comes to therapy twenty years later, complaining of a pattern of troubled interactions with male authority figures, he or she can solve the problem quicker by taking full responsibility for perpetuating those situations in his or her life. Similarly, if a person gets a sore throat or a stomach-ache a couple of times a year, its probably not worthwhile for him or her to spend much energy wondering if the illnesses are psychosomatic. However, if that same person sees a patternperhaps the sore throat or stomach-ache tends to occur on mornings when a speech is to be given later that day then it would definitely be worthwhile for the person to take responsibility for creating it. As one of our witty students said, All the best responsibility is taken. Speaking from practical experience as well as from philosophical inclination, we always advocate that each person in a given situation takes 100% responsibility for creating the situation. There is a possibility of meaningful resolution only when everyone does rigorous self-inquiry into how and why he or she might have created the situation. A power struggle flares up the moment one person or the other retreats even to 99% responsibility. If one person identifies

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him/herself as the victim, the other person immediately does so, too. From this place of victimhood, the other person always looks like the perpetrator. Weve seen these Im-a-bigger-victim-than-you-are power struggles go on for decades. Its important not to fall into the trap of seeing a world made up of victims and perpetrators. There is already a booming profession battening on the tendency of people to think of themselves as victims. These professionals can be found under Attorneys in the phone book, and America has a rich supply of them (more than any other country, by a long shot.) Perhaps you saw the movie Fifteen Minutes. The bad guy in the film is a recent immigrant from Russia, here to ply his criminal trade in the New World. He crows that even if hes caught hell get away with his crime, because Here in America nobodys responsible for anything! Lets leave proving victimhood to the lawyers. As real people dealing with the real problems of everyday life, we can take a genuinely empowering new direction. We can choose to see a world of people who are seeking to take full responsibility for their lives. We can choose to operate from a place of radical responsibility: in every moment of life, we get exactly what were committed to getting. From this place of re-claimed power, we can choose conscious new commitments which are unfettered by the past and which make us free to act powerfully in the present. None of us will do this perfectly. Ultimately it is the act of recommitting which has as much to do with the healing process as the original conscious commitment. For example, Ed and Maria committed to speaking clearly about their emotions and listening generously to each other when they spoke. Making that conscious commitment initiated a process of change, but it certainly didnt guarantee it. In

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fact, they violated this fresh new commitment within twenty minutes of making it. She began to talk about something she was sad about, and Eds Mr. Smart-Ass persona took over with a sarcastic comment. So, we asked them to pause, take a few breaths and re-commit. Would you re-commit to speaking about your emotions and listening generously when the others speaking? Ed sighed and looked defeated. This is going to be hard work, he said. Indeed, we said, Hardly anything worthwhile comes easy. But, we said, serving up another real estate metaphor, do you plan to sell the house you live in? What? he asked. Are you planning to sell your own house anytime soon? No, he said. Well, if you dont plan to sell your house, wouldnt it be better to improve it a little each day rather than chip away at the tile or spit on the floor? Even if it took a little work? He got the point.

YOUR ACTION PLAN At the end of each chapter you will find your Action Plan. The Action Plan consists of three elements: Your commitment Your Ongoing Practice Your Ten-Second Technique The commitment is the agreement with yourself and your partner to apply the wisdom in the chapter youve just read. For example, in the

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chapter youve just read on commitment, youll begin to apply the material by making the following commitment: I commit to learning from all my interactions and from the results of my actions. Your Ongoing Practice is the way youll go about applying the material from day to day. (See below for more specifics.) Your Ten-Second Technique is the simplest, most effective technique for applying the wisdom of the chapter. Youre welcome to invent other techniques, of course, but youll find that the Ten-Second Technique will always work when others fail. Its been tested and refined with thousands of people; you can count on it. Now, heres the Action Plan for the material in the commitment chapter youve just completed.

YOUR COMMITMENT: I commit to learning from all my interactions and from the results of my actions. (Say this to yourself to make sure youre in agreement with it inside. Say it to your partner, and listen to him or her say it to you. If your partner isnt an active player in the process of transforming the relationship, you can simply work with the material yourself until s/he gets on board.)

YOUR ONGOING PRACTICE: When you arent feeling good inside, or when something is not going well

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in the relationship, claim that youre committed to the very thing that is not going well. For example, if you and your partner fight a lot, youre committed to fighting. If people leave you, youre committed to being abandoned. What doesnt work is to pretend this isnt happening or to pretend you didnt mean what you said or did. That move makes people crazy. The power move locates you at the root of the problem so you can actually free the energy youve been recycling in your unconscious commitment. Notice the result and name the commitment. Say it out loud several times until you can breathe freely while stating this unconscious commitment. Hmmm, I must be committed to feeling this way. Hmmm, I must be committed to things going this way. In the second part of radical commitment you shape a new conscious commitment based on what you really want. Once youve freed up your attachment to things not going well, you can create a new commitment that can guide your life in a chosen direction. Then you can steer your course by re-committing to this new path when you drift. Make your commitment active by starting the sentence, I commit Here are some examples: Unconscious commitment: Im committed to being criticized. New conscious commitment: I commit to generating curiosity when I receive feedback. Unconscious commitment: Im committed to not being listened to. New conscious commitment: I commit to speaking in a way that generates interest. Unconscious commitment: Im committed to conflict.

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New conscious commitment: I commit to fully appreciating myself and my partner.

YOUR TEN-SECOND TECHNIQUE: When you feel off-track in yourself or your relationship, take a deep breath and acknowledge, This is what Im committed to right now. Then stretch and breathe while literally changing your direction. Move your body in a new direction while saying to yourself, I commit to going in a new, positive direction.

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Chapter Three

The Second Secret: A New Way of Being With Emotions

One moment of emotional transparency can work miracles in a relationship. We know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Not only have we witnessed hundreds of such miracles in our office, were direct beneficiaries in our own marriage. We probably wouldnt be married today, and were sure we wouldnt be writing this book, if it werent for a moment of emotional transparency early in our relationship. We were heading along a path to disaster when a simple miracle occurred that put us on the right track again. More than twenty years later we continue to reap the rewards of this special moment. Gay: One of my most troublesome unconscious patterns was my habit of finding fault and criticizing the woman I was with. My Critic had been a factor in the eventual dissolution of three major relationships and many minor ones. Although I wanted desperately not to have it mess up my growing relationship with Kathlyn, I couldnt seem to stop the habit. By the time I would become aware of a critical comment, the words were already out of my mouth. One of John F. Kennedys friends once asked him why he continued to engage in flagrant sexual infidelities at the expense of getting caught, losing his reputation and even risking his health. JFK replied, I cant help it. Thats how I felt about my critical comments. Kathlyn: Being on the receiving end of Gays criticism was painful, but I couldnt find any way to make it stop, either. Hes brilliant and articulate with words, so that when he would criticize me I would usually feel that I actually was at fault. My father is exactly the same way, and Im convinced I was drawn to Gay originally partly because I needed to work out this issue of being around critical men.

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Gay: One Friday evening Katie was late coming home. Shed told me she was coming home around 7:30, and when she walked in the door at 8:15 I didnt even pause to say hello before I started in on her. The fact that she was carrying two grocery bags didnt even make an impression on me, so intent was I on criticizing her for being late. However, something magical happened that evening which changed our lives permanently. The Emotional Underpinnings of a Pattern Before we tell you about the magic moment, take a moment to understand why patterns like chronic criticism persist. Usually, there is some hidden emotion under the pattern that keeps it in place, even if the person consciously wants to change the pattern. When the concealed feeling comes to the light, the pattern loses its underpinnings and is much easier to change. Emotional awareness and transparency is the drop of solvent that unglues long-stuck patterns. Gay: I got about three sentences into my criticism of Katie for being late. Suddenly I became aware of a sensation in my bodya sensation I realized was always in the background when the urge came over me to criticize someone. I paused in mid-criticism and tuned in to what I was feeling. It was an antsy-queasy-butterfly sensation in my belly. It was fear. Up until that moment of new emotional awareness, I always felt I was justifiably angry when I criticized someone. The problem was simple and obvious: they had done something wrong and therefore I was mad about it. They needed to hear what theyd done wrong so they wouldnt do it again. However, my view of everything changed in that moment when I felt the fear in my belly. I suddenly realized that my pattern of criticism was not driven by anger at all. I was scared. I blurted this out to Katie, and she put down the grocery bags to come and put her arm around me. I tuned in more deeply to the antsy-queasybutterfly sensation. I was scared, but what was I scared about? The answer

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came quickly, with a flood of awareness and memories. I was afraid of losing her. I was afraid of being abandoned, left behind. I spoke all this to Katie, and a puzzled look came over her face. She said she didnt have any intention of going away or leaving me behind. I know, I said, This doesnt have anything to do with you. Ill never forget the look of relief that washed over her face as she realized that all my criticisms had nothing to do with her. We sat down on the spot and talked for over an hour about our respective roles in the pattern. We saw clearly how my urge to criticize her interlocked perfectly with her lifelong feeling that she had done something wrong. By the end of that hour I knew myself better than I ever had. It was a very practical kind of self-knowledge, because it stopped my pattern of criticizing in its tracks. I realized that the pattern was rooted in a fear of being abandoned, based on some real experiences that befell me in my first year of life. I was afraid of being left, so when a woman got close to me Id start criticizing her so she wouldnt get any closer. If I let anybody get really close to me, it would hurt much worse when she eventually left me. Kathlyn: That conversation changed my life. I realized that Id carried around a feeling of being wrong ever since I could remember. No wonder critical men kept showing up in my life! I was a criticism-waiting-to happen! Down underneath my need to be criticized was a feeling of fear that was very similar to what Gay described. We were both afraid of being abandoned. He expressed it through criticizing and I expressed it through feeling wrong. I would try harder to be good and maybe they wouldnt leave me. Emotional Transparency Moments of emotional transparency change lives. Its even better, though, when emotional transparency becomes a daily habit. Then, you can

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live on a steady diet of miracles day in and day out. After powerful moments of emotional awareness in therapy sessions, many couples have remarked that Its so simple! But its only simple when viewed from the present looking backward. We stayed in the grip of the criticism pattern for years before we broke through it. Now, of course, it seems obvious how it all worked, but viewed from within the pattern it was anything but obvious. Ten Seconds To Vitality We have seen hundreds of examples of something we would never have believed unless we had personally witnessed it: Long-dead marriages being brought to life by ten seconds of emotional transparency. When we began working with couples thirty years ago we had no idea of the extent to which people will go to conceal emotions they desperately want to avoid feeling or saying. Many people will sacrifice the relationship itself to avoid sharing an emotional intimacy that would literally take ten seconds to say. There are three main feelings that cause most of the trouble in longterm relationships: Anger, grief and fear. Its never the feelings themselves that are the problemits our unwillingness to confront them in ourselves and talk about them to others. To make it easier, we have developed a simple but comprehensive roadmap which can be taught to any couple in less than an hour. Here is an example of the roadmap at work: A well-known couple visited our office recently to give their marriage one last chance. Their twenty-five-year union now felt like a prison of lead to them. His complaint was that she had changed from the woman he had originally married. Where had the sweet, cooperative woman gone? Where had she turned into a raging crit-aholic? She complained that he was uncommunicative, boring and materialistic. When I met him he didnt

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even watch TV. Now all he can think about is getting a bigger one. However, a few seconds of emotional transparency sent a bolt of vitality through them that they hadnt felt in years. They resisted mightily for an hour or so, using a defensive barrage of interrupting each other, contemptuous sneers and long-winded justifications. Finally, though, their defenses melted when one of them had the courage to reveal a truth that had gone unspoken for too long. The magic sentence was simple: I dont think I love you anymore. Ive been haunted by that feeling for years but I couldnt quite get it out my mouth. Although this admission sounds like a terrible thing to say or to hear, the act of revealing it liberated the speaker to feel an upsurge of love. In fact, within seconds of saying it, he suddenly realized he loved his wife deeply. He also realized that the real issue had nothing to do with her. His courageous revelation opened the door to a wellspring of hidden feelings, desires and aspirations for both of them. At the end of it, though, it was all about creativity. She felt squelched under a load of domestic responsibilities at home while also feeling over-worked in her career. She would leave the office exhausted only to arrive home knowing that she couldnt meet the unnamed expectations of her husband and his parents (who lived next door.) He had his own version of the same issues. He felt that he had sacrificed every ounce of his own creative energy in order to fulfill his family responsibilities. To their great credit, this couple shed the burden of this excess baggage to make a mutual commitment to their individual creativity and to learn a new language of authentic feeling. Working Wonders For Yourself Now, lets find out how you can create these kinds of miracles for yourself. First, well explore exactly what it means to be emotionally transparent and why it produces such miraculous results in close

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relationships. What It Means Emotional transparency is the ability to know your own feelings and to talk about them so that others understand them clearly. At the other end of the continuum is emotional opaquenessyou do not know how you feel and cannot talk about your feelings so that people understand them. In close relationships, much damage is done by emotional opaqueness. Sometimes the damage is done willfully: Some people refuse to look into their feelings or talk about them clearly so that they can punish others. They use their hidden emotions as a weapon. Much of the time, though, people remain opaque simply through lack of information and lack of practice. After all, compared to the amount of time we spend in school on math or science, how much training did any of us get in the art of emotional communication? Suppose you ask your mate, What are you feeling right now? Emotional transparency is the ability to check inside, then say Im afraid or Im angry or Im feeling very close to you right now. Emotional opaqueness is when your mate wont look inside or doesnt know how. Emotional opaqueness is I dont know or Im not feeling anything. Why Emotional Transparency Works Wonders When human beings are breathing, they are also feeling. When human beings are eating, they are also feeling. Awake or asleep, at work or at play, we are all feeling, all the time. In the background of all human experience is the rich play of emotion and sensation. If you compare the logical, thinking part of the brain to the emotional, feeling part, you would see a huge difference. The feeling part is the size of the juicy part of a grapefruitthe thinking part is the size of the rind. We got to this point in evolution by having a lot of feelings. Now, to make our relationships evolve, we absolutely must reveal our emotions to those we care about with the

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lucidity of a sparkling clean window. Like a picture window, the window to our emotions needs to be polished daily as an intimacy discipline. If we can see clearly into our own emotions, we reveal ourselves to ourselves. When we can speak about our emotions clearly to people we care about, we reveal ourselves to them. Herein lies the power of emotional transparency. The act of revealing our feelings to ourselves and others frees the energy that previously was bound up in the effort to keep those feelings hidden. It requires energyliteral physical energyto hide our emotions from ourselves. It requires even more energy to hide them from others. And the truth is: Nobody ever hides anything. People who think theyre hiding their anger reveal it through chronic headaches. People who think theyre hiding their fear reveal it through stomach trouble. The politician who thinks hes hiding his sexual indiscretions gets caught. The mind can lie, but the aching head speaks the truth. The head of state can lie, but the unpaid intern tells a friend who has a tape recorder running. Emotional transparency is simple but its hardly ever easy. To know how we feel is to know whats real, and it is often much more seductive to live in illusion rather than face the simple reality of our feelings. In our work weve had the experience of helping many people learn to talk openly about their feelings to people they care about. Weve often marveled at the lengths to which people will go to hide their true feelings. Why is this? Whats so hard about saying simple things like I felt hurt when you said that or Im afraid youll leave me and Ill be all alone. The answer is that most of us as we grow up attach ourselves to a particular image of ourselves, and this image becomes more important to us than reality. Gay: As a little boy growing up in the John Wayne era of the Fifties, I learned a lot of macho attitudes like Big boys dont cry and No pain, no

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gain. In my neighborhood these attitudes worked pretty well. Acting tough, like nothing bothered you, was the accepted way to be in that part of the world. Along with this studied nonchalance went an attitude of I can handle everything myself. When I was upset about something, I hid it carefully inside. The last thing I would do would be to tell somebody else about how I was feeling. Later on, though, in the real world of close relationships, those attitudes cost me more than I could ever have imagined. In close relationships, I found I needed to let down my defenses and admit the reality of my feelings. It took me years to learn how to drop my defensiveness long enough to admit that I was hurt or that something bothered me. Although its not easy to let people see how we feel, there are ways to make it easier. How To Make It Easier Ideally we would all be taught useful skills like emotional awareness in elementary school, right alongside long division, reading and the state capitals. Most of us werent fortunate enough to go to that kind of elementary school, though, so we have to play catch-up as adults. We have to start exactly where we are, wherever we are. Begin With Commitment The best starting-place weve found is with a commitment to emotional transparency. A commitment wont guarantee that you will always be emotionally transparent with each other, but it will give you a firm place to stand in your quest for LASTING LOVEhip. Try on the following commitment: I commit to knowing all my feelings and speaking truthfully about them to people I care about. If you were meeting with us in our office, we would ask you to face

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your partner and to speak this commitment sincerely to each other. We would ask you to say it several times until you felt the sincerity of your commitment in your body and mind. Its natural to feel various types of resistance come up in yourself when you make this commitment. The most common type of resistance is confusion and ignorance. People say, Id like to commit to that but I dont have the slightest idea how Id make good on it. Dont let the lack of knowhow stop you from making the commitment, though, because a sincere commitment will actually begin to draw to you the tools and skills you need. Without the commitment, you wont turn on the mechanisms that start the flow of awareness within you. Its also natural and normal for one partner to be more committed to emotional transparency than the other. Many people would argue that its a man/woman thing: Men are more resistant to emotional transparency than women. However, weve worked with several hundred same-sex couples, and theres usually one partner more committed than the other to emotional transparency. The Essential Skills Once youre committed to emotional transparency, what do you need to know to make good on your commitment? There are only two skills, both incredibly simple. However, due largely to societal programming, both are incredibly challenging to master. The first skill: Knowing what youre feeling. The second skill: Speaking the simple truth about it. The First Skill of Emotional Transparency From our practical experience, we can tell you that the first skill involves four things: Knowing when youre scared. Knowing when youre angry.

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Knowing when youre sad. Knowing when youve got sexual feelings. Those arent the only four feelings, of course, but they are the four feelings that cause the most trouble when we hide them from ourselves or from people we care about. The Second Skill of Emotional Transparency The second skill is speaking simply about those four feelings to people you care about. Its learning to say simple truths like Im scared and Im angry to people you want to be close to. Its learning to speak the emotional truths of your life in such a way that the people you care for dont have to wonder what youre actually feeling. Focus on talking about your feelings to people you care about. If you dont care about someone, you can speak truthfully about your feelings but its not essential. With people you care about, its absolutely essential that you know your feelings and speak truthfully about them. Emotional honesty brings people closer together. We make a point of saying that these two skills are based on our practical experience. In other words, were not laying out a theory of emotional transparency here. Were highlighting the two skills that real couples have found essential in getting unstuck from vitality-sapping patterns. These are the two skills that bring back passion and creativity to long-term relationships. Barriers The moment you commit to being aware of your feelings and speaking truthfully about them, you come up against powerful societal forces opposed to your commitment. The entire advertising industry is one of the major barriers you face. Manufacturers of many products have a big interest in keeping us in the dark about our emotions. This allows them to play on our emotions to sell us things.

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Watch a few hours of television and youll see what we mean. Youll see good buddies enjoying warm comradeshipmade possible by cold beer. Youll see nerdy guys with beautiful womenin the nerdy guys hot new car. Open a magazine in which cigarettes can be advertised and look at the images used to sell them. The images often say, Light up and youll fit in with the cool peopleyou wont be a loser anymore! Watch how cigarettes are marketed in movies. The actors light up at moments of peak emotional intensity. The message is clear to young movie-goers everywhere: This is the way cool people deal with their emotions. The powerfully persuasive (and powerfully expensive) messages of advertising are aimed directly at our emotions: Buy our products to feel happy and safe. Buy our products to avoid feeling fear, loneliness and the pain of loss. Buy our products to be part of the in-crowd. Religious programming can also be a barrier to emotional awareness. As we write this book, for example, the Roman Catholic Church is in the midst of a huge and costly scandal which on one level is about sexual abuse of children by priests. On a more fundamental level, however, its really about lying. Its about whether people in positions of power lie to protect the interests of the bureaucracy or speak the truth to protect the interests of children. We dont know yet whether children will continue to be sacrificed for the bureaucracys sake or whether the bureaucracy can become flexible enough to accommodate the truth. Advertising and religion are but two of the powerful forces you face when you make a commitment to emotional awareness and transparency. For example, you may find people in your immediate and extended family who do not want you to feel what you feel and speak the truth. Regardless of the barrier, though, your commitment to knowing and speaking the truth about your feelings eventually has to become bigger than the societal forces against it. We all need to become aware of our feelings so that they can

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work for us rather than be used against us. Nowhere is this more true than in close relationships. Barriers To Truth-Telling Weve focused on the barriers to knowing our emotions, but when we commit to speaking truthfully about them we encounter obstacles that are perhaps even tougher to surmount. After all, how many hours of your schooling were devoted to showing you how to speak articulately about your feelings? Unless youre lucky to have gone to an uncommonly progressive school, the answer is zero. Speaking personally, we went all the way to graduate school before the subject was introduced. In addition to sheer ignorance, there are stiff prohibitions against speaking the truth about important matters. Youve probably heard proverbs such as The truth hurts and Some things are better left unsaid. Almost everyone has heard those, but how many of us have heard Truth heals or Dont ever leave anything important unsaid? Getting hit on the head with a mallet probably hurts more if you resist it, but it still hurts if you accept it calmly. Truth is different, because its made only of puffs of air. The truth only hurts when we resist it. Weve been in many rooms when difficult truths have been spoken, even truths like Youve got terminal cancer and Ive been having an affair with your best friend. Whether truth hurts depends entirely on how much resistance we mount against seeing and hearing the reality of it. Weve seen people accept a terminal diagnosis with a sigh of relief. Weve also seen people greet an Im having an affair truth with the same kind of relief, as in Now everything Ive been feeling makes sense. Naturally, weve seen the opposite, too. Weve been with people as they exploded in anger or stormed out of the room when truths have been revealed. It all has to do with how much resistance weve built up to seeing things exactly as they are.

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Does It Matter How Truth Is Delivered? On the surface you might think that whether truth hurts depends on how its delivered. In actual fact, though, it never does. What matters is whether whats being delivered is actually the truth. If I say to you, Youre a jerk, you could rightfully argue that Ive delivered a truth in a hurtful way. In fact, though, I havent delivered the truth at all. Youre a jerk is an opinion or an interpretationits a long way from the truth. The truth can never be argued about. The truth beneath Youre a jerk may be something like I felt hurt when you started dating my ex-spouse. Whatever it is, its always something unarguable. Nothing else counts as truth, and no other kind of truth heals. The Big Pay-Off You become a hero in your own life the moment you commit to knowing your feelings and speaking about them honestly. In your relationships you become the trailblazer rather than the trailer. You become the place where truth is born, not the place where it goes to die. There is an intrinsic satisfaction to taking a stand for truth in a world where its in such short supply. The rewards dont stop there, though. Becoming the source of truth is a reward you can feel and enjoy immediately in your own body. You get an instant surge of vitality each time you acknowledge the truth and speak about it simply. If its a truth youve been carrying for a while, the feeling of releasing it is like suddenly shedding a heavy load youve been carrying on your shoulders. You feel a joyful relief, and you also become aware of the burden youve been carrying. Next time you get the urge to withhold a significant truth, you think twice because you remember the heaviness of it. About Listening How you listen shapes how people talk to you. In the early days of our relationship, before wed learned the importance of conscious listening,

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we often had interchanges like this one: Katie: Im feeling kind of tired and stressed out today. Gay: Why dont you take some time tomorrow and go out into the mountains? Katie: Ummthanks. Ill think about it. Whats wrong with this interchange? On the surface it sounds like Gay made a positive, helpful suggestion. However, its a classic example of what we call a listening filter. At a more extreme level we call them listening shields. A listening-filter hears whats said through the filter of the listeners preferences and prejudices. It doesnt attempt to get inside the speakers experience. Lets go through the interchange again in slow motion. First, Katie says shes tired and stressed out. Gay responds with a suggestion of how she can fix the problem. This particular filter was one of our most popular ones: Listening-to-fix. Not only did he try to fix the problem, he applied a fix that comes from inside his experience. Gay: When Im tired and stressed out, I like to take some alone time to re-charge my batteries. I like spending some time communing with nature, taking a walk in solitude or sometimes simply sitting on a rock by a stream for an hour or two. Katie: I like to re-charge by being around people more than Gay does. For me, having a cup of tea with a friend is incredibly nurturing. There are other listening-filters that we found ourselves using out of habit. Listening-to-find-fault. (How could you be tired and stressed out? You really havent done all that much this week.) Listening-to-rebut. (I dont think youre really tired and stressed outyoure just upset you couldnt go skiing last weekend.) Listening-to-minimize. (You dont look that tired to me.

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Listening-to-compare. (Youre tired and stressed out! What about me?) Conscious Listening On the surface it might sound simple to avoid using your listeningfilters. We found it devilishly hard, thougha skill which required much practice. Since those early days weve taught the skills to thousands of people, and they havent found them easy to learn, either. Its well worth the investment, because its the only way to get to know another person at deeper levels. What Does Conscious Listening Sound Like? Lets run the original interchange again, removing the listening-filters and using the skills of conscious listening. Katie: Im feeling kind of tired and stressed out. Gay: Mmm, I can hear that in your voice. What are you experiencing? Katie: My shoulders are achy and Im running a lot of worry-thoughts through my mind. Gay: Have you noticed if its about something specific or is it more of a general kind of thing? Katie: One thing that keeps running through my mind is how were going to pay for Chris orthodontics and have anything left over for Christmas. Gay: Want to talk about that for a while? Katie: Yes, lets do some brainstormingbut I think Im going to take a hot bath first. Conscious listening comes from an intention to tune in to the speakers experience and draw out from as much as they would like to share. Conscious listening avoids imposing the listeners experience on the speaker unless its asked for. Herein lies the reason its so hard to do. In the heat of

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conflict, none of us feel that our point-of-view is being considered. When stress levels get cranked up, most of us feel that our experience is being slighted or downright ignored. Yet, thats the very moment when few seconds of conscious listening can make great strides toward restoring harmony. Remember, we didnt say it was easy! Without a strong, sincere commitment, though, its practically impossible. The starting place, then, is for both people in the relationship to make a commitment to conscious listening. You can still make progress if only one person is committed, but it makes for slower going. The Farther Reaches of Transparency In our experience, absolute honesty is a powerful force for good in any close relationship. Going further, we believe that complete transparency is the best aphrodisiac ever discovered, as well as the best way to get a good nights sleep. The big pay-off for transparency is the flow of vital energy and the simultaneous feeling harmonious ease. Thats the positive side. On the negative side, dishonesty and opaqueness destroys the flow of intimacy and probably causes more impotence and orgasmic dysfunction than alcohol. If there is any significant truth you havent communicated to your primary partner, you forfeit the right to expect a good relationship with him or her. Most people dont know this simple principle, so when things arent going well in the relationship, they blame the other person as the source of whats wrong. Inside ourselves, though, should be our first place to look: If you dont feel sexually turned on to your partner, or if youre having trouble getting a good nights sleep, youre likely to have hidden a truth that needs to be brought out into the open. Here are the most popular examples of hidden truths: Ive had sexual experiences I havent told you about.

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Ive spent money you dont know about. Ive got __(AIDS, herpes, a secret bank account)____________ and I havent told you about it. Im still angry about _______________. Im still hurt about ________________. Im scared about _________________. I really want ________________ and Im afraid to tell you. Most people tell us they havent been honest with their partner because my partner really doesnt want to hear the truth or because I dont want to hurt her/him. When they get under these superficial reasons, the reason usually turns out to be I havent told the truth because I dont want to face the consequences. Under that, however, is the real reason: I havent told the truth because I fear living at the highest level of creativity and energy, and lying is one way I know to dampen my energy. People tell us that they dread telling the truth because they fear the consequences. In actual fact, though, weve only seen honesty produce positive consequences in the long-run. There is usually a short-term flurry of upset when a person shares a withheld truth, but the ultimate outcome is usually a more stable relationship. The Acid Test Heres the best question weve ever found to assess the health of a relationship: Have I discussed anything significant with a third party that I havent talked directly to my partner about? For example, have you told a friend or a therapist about an infidelity but not told your partner? When we have secrets, we forfeit the right to expect genuine intimacy. Intimacy can only occur in a secret-free relationship. Plus, as every experienced relationship counselor can tell you, the more a person

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complains about a partner, the more secrets the complainer is likely to be harboring. When people keep secrets from their partners, they have to keep finding more and more faults about them. In the twisted thinking of the secret-keeper, the secrets are justified because of the faults and flaws of the other person. Tips On Communicating Significant Withheld Truths Dont do it while you or your partner are driving, operating kitchen equipment or at any other time when an upset could cause physical injury. Dont use liquor or other drugs to loosen yourself up beforehand. This sends the wrong message to your body, that you cant be honest unless youre chemically altered. Our bodies need to know that they can be honest all the time. Dont think it has anything to do with the other person. If youve been thinking the other person isnt safe or doesnt want to hear it, youre missing the point. Its really about you and your fear of living at the highest level of integrity and positive energy. Action Plan The first step of your action plan is a two-pronged commitment. To become emotionally transparent, we all need to make a commitment to showing our feelings, sharing our feelings and hearing the feelings of others. Its a commitment to seeing and saying whats real, combined with a commitment to hearing whats real in the other persons experience. Here are two commitments we ask people to make in the early stages of our work with them. These commitments open the doorway to a world of gentle but powerful changes in a relationship. I commit to letting all my feelings be seen, heard and appreciated. I commit to seeing, hearing and appreciating all the feelings of

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others. You might think it odd to use verbs like seen and seeing in regard to feelings. Most people probably think of feelings as something you talk about with your mouth and hear with your ears. However, over 90% of feelings are communicated through our body-language, and this visible language can be seen before any spoken version of our feelings. In order to hear whats really going on, first you have to listen with your eyes to see whats really going on. A raised eyebrow or a clenched jaw-muscle speaks eloquently about your feelings, usually long before your conscious mind can organize a spoken communication about them. The trick is for both people in a relationship to learn to appreciate that eloquence and turn it into an ally. It might also seem odd to see the word appreciating in the commitment. Most of us, when were stuck, dont feel very appreciative toward our feelings or anybody elses. Here, though, were using appreciate in the sense of being sensitive and aware of A person who appreciates art has cultivated the skill of being sensitive and aware of the subtleties of art. In this spirit, we all need to become sensitive and aware of the subtleties of feeling. Delivering The Message One of the package-delivery companies used to have a slogan that went something like When you absolutely, positively have to get it there on time. Weve spent a lot of time in relationship-coaching sessions with couples over the past thirty years. In those sessions its been incredibly important to deliver emotional communications in ways that produced harmony rather than conflict. Weve developed a way of delivering emotional packages when you absolutely, positively have to get the message understood clearly.

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In emotional communication, simple is good. The simplest, clearest way to talk about your feelings is to begin with what we call a one-breath statement. One-breath statements take only one breath to deliver. In clock-time its only a few seconds, and thats plenty long enough for most important communications. Im angry right now. I still feel hurt and sad. Im scared about giving the speech this afternoon. The second part of your action plan is to get comfortable with delivering one-breath statements about the key feelings that come up in close relationships. The Big Three are anger, fear and sadness. Here are a few examples:

YOUR ACTION PLAN YOUR COMMITMENT: I commit to speaking and listening to you in a way celebrates essence. YOUR ONGOING PRACTICE: Get feedback from your partner at a time when you are both willing to learn. Ask each other, When Im operating on automatic, what is the way in which I most often listen to you? Do your best to simply receive the answer, whether its listening to fix, criticizing, getting analytical, whatever. The following day, release that automatic way of listening by metaphorically taking off those particular earmuffs whenever your partner is speaking to you. Whenever you are listening, consciously practice appreciating what your partner is saying. That is, be sensitively aware of the unique form of

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this communication. Wonder about the feelings embedded in the words and the desires that may lie between the words. Let your listening reflect your sensitive awareness. YOUR TEN-SECOND TECHNIQUE: Whenever you are experiencing a conflict or dis-ease with your partner, make this following move first. Notice any body sensations in your shoulders, chest area or around your navel. Take a deep, relaxed breath and describe those sensations in one one-breath. Eventually you may get sensitive enough to identify the stomach-sensations as fear, the shouldertightening as anger and the chest-constriction as sadness. In the beginning, though, just report the body-sensation, by saying something like My stomach is getting tight right now.

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CHAPTER FOUR The Third Secret: The No-Blame Relationship and How To Create It Can you imagine a close relationship in which neither person criticizes the other? Can you picture how a marriage might operate if blame and criticism simply did not occur? Those questions first circulated through our minds in 1981 just before we were married. As part of our pre-marital preparations, we sat down together for an hour or two every week for about two months prior to our wedding. During those hours we spent a lot of time imagining the kind of relationship we wanted to create. It was then that we had our first glimmers of a No-Blame relationship. At the time it seemed like a distant possibility at best, an Everest hidden in the clouds. We were inspired to take the challenge, though, and were very glad we did. It began, as every heroic task must, with a single step: Commitment. As part of our wedding vows we made a special kind of commitment to each other. We held hands and looked each other in the eyes and made a commitment to ending blame and criticism in our relationship. It took several years of intense focus to make good on our commitment, but eventually we did it. Its been many years now since either one of us has blamed the other for anything, and we havent missed it the slightest bit. We took up the challenge of ending blame and criticism for several reasons. Both of us were familiar with the research studies that show the destructive effects of blame and criticism in close relationships, but thats not the main reason we wanted to create a blame-free zone in our home. The main reason was much more personal: We come from two of the most

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critical families youd ever be likely to meet. Theyre wonderful peoplethey just cant stop criticizing each other. We found ourselves falling into the same pattern of constant criticism in the early days of our relationship. One fine day, however, we caught ourselves in mid-criticism and sat down for a talk. That conversation changed our lives radically. We decided that enough was enough. Without question, our respective families had perfected the art of chronic blame and criticism. There were no further improvements to be made in that particular art form. So, we decided to do everything we could to end the pattern of chronic blame and criticism in our generation of the families. If our children wanted to pick up blame and criticism again, that was their choice but they wouldnt learn it from us. We decided to focus instead on mastering the art of chronic appreciation (to which we will devote a later chapter in the book.) First, though, how did we end blame and criticism? The short answer is: Every time we were conscious enough to catch ourselves uttering a critical or blameful word, we would stop (often in mid-sentence!) and replace it with what we came to call radical responsibility. Radical responsibility is when you claim responsibility for something for no apparent reason, just to make good on your commitment to doing so. Its especially effective when it really looks like its the other persons fault. Radical responsibility is going from How did you manage to remember the mustard and forget to buy the mayonnaise? to I wonder why I didnt get mayonnaise last time I was at the store? Radical responsibility is shifting from saying to one of our teenagers Ive told you three times to clean up that room and its still an awful mess to I need to find a more effective way to get you to clean up your room. Blame is always about You. Radical responsibility brings in the I. The difference is profound. At this point when were giving a public talk a few dozen hands will

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shoot up in the audience with the same question: What if it actually is the other persons fault? Often someone will come up with a complete distortion of what were talking about, something like Are you saying Hitler was the Jews fault? or You mean Im to blame for getting my car stolen? Questions like these illustrate the depths of misunderstanding embedded in the human mind about the simple issue of responsibility. We understand those questions, because we had to clear up the same distortions in our own thinking in order to end blame and criticism in our relationship. The short answers to those questions are that even if something is one persons fault exclusively, the problem will never be resolved until the other person takes responsibility for inviting it into his or her life. And, of course we dont think the Jews caused Hitler or its your fault the guy stole your car. Radical responsibility has nothing to do with blame and fault, and it can never be assigned, only taken voluntarily. It never does any good to assign responsibility to someone else: Youre responsible for stealing my car. The legal and criminal justice systems are based on assigning responsibility and apportioning blame, and we all know how spectacularly those systems dont work. From practical experience with thousands of couples we can tell you this: The only positive results come from one person having the courage to take responsibility voluntarily. When two people in a relationship can do this, they open the gate to a pathway of real magic between them. The LASTING LOVE program restores passion and vitality quickly because it shows you how to end blame and criticism. In the first session we have with a couple, we ask them to make a new commitment to a noblame relationship. Our experience has shown us that chronic blame signals doom for the relationship. It must be interrupted as soon as possible. According to marriage researcher, John Gottman, chronic blame is one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (along with defensiveness, stonewalling

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and contempt) that predicts divorce. On the positive side, though, we can see a visible change in bodylanguage and energy the moment a couple makes the commitment to ending blame. Even before learning the techniques, the act of making the commitment creates a new lightness in their faces. There is a simple reason: Blame consumes the very energy that could be used for creativity. The moment they commit to ending blame, they feel the possibility of a fresh new wave of creativity in themselves. Blame and creativity are closely tied to each other. In a relationship, both partners will engage in blame to the extent that they are not fulfilling their own creative urges. Some people use alcohol or marijuana to distract themselves from the pain of failing to fulfill their creative potential. For other couples, blame is the drug of choice. In our seminars and couples-sessions we have developed and refined a powerful, simple and friendly process for stopping blame. Lets now explore this process, so that you can end the creativity-sapping addiction to blame and criticism in your own life. The Problem The moment a word of blame leaves your mouth, your relationship ends and an entanglement begins. Then, relationship can only be restored by ending blame and entering a zone of shared responsibility. Take a typical blame-statement as an example: You never listen to a word I say! The relationship no longer exists the moment a phrase like this is uttered. In place of the relationship an entanglement has been created. Relationships can only exist between equals. Blame is based on a presumption of inequality. Blame is based on the presumption that there is a Victim and a Villain. The blamer is saying, You are the cause of my problem. The moment blame leaves your mouth you have already decided youre the Victim. You

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have already assigned blame to the Villain. You have pointed the finger and found the target. The problem is that the person on the other end of the pointed finger doesnt feel like the Villain. Your Blamee never cheerfully agrees, You know, youre right. Upon reflection, its clear to me that I am actually responsible for all your pain. Never once in thirty-plus years as psychotherapists have we ever heard anyone say anything remotely like that. What the Blamee always does instead is to make a mad dash for the Victim position. You then have two people fighting for the Victim position, each thinking the other is the Villain. Its like a dog chasing its own tail. It produces a lot of heat and burns up a lot of energy, but it doesnt produce any positive results. The fuel consumed by the race for the Victim position is the very fuel of creativity. Therein lies the addictive power of blame. Blame is used in relationships as a drug to avoid the pain of not expressing creative potential. Blame is a powerful addiction. The act of blaming another person triggers a burst of adrenalin. In its extreme form, this is the fuel for oldfashioned customs like stoning and lynching. In smaller doses, it keeps couples occupied so that they wont have to face the truly scary process of tapping into and expressing their creativity. From the positive view, though, the fact that the couple is addicted to blame also means that they both have a wellspring of creativity trying to push through the paved-over surface of the relationship. If blame can be ended and the wellspring tapped, there are no upper limits to how much new creative juice can pour through the relationship. The big problem is the addictive power of blame and criticism. Notice the sensations in your body next time youre blaming or criticizing someone. If you tune in sensitively youll probably notice an edgy feeling of excitement

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and anger combined with considerable muscle tension. At a more extreme level you may notice a feeling of glee, especially if you sense youre winning the power struggle at the moment. This very feelinga stew of excitement, anger, tension and gleeis the heroin and cocaine of intimate relationships. In our early attempts to end blame and criticism in our relationship, we came to have a grudging respect for just how powerful that addictive substance is. If youre not convinced that blame and criticism are addictive, try going a full day without either one. Most people whove tried this experiment tell us they didnt manage to go even an hour before some sort of zinger left their mouths. What drives this addiction? In programs that treat addictions such as alcohol and drugs, counselors often say that when you stop the addiction you have to face the feelings that you originally started drinking or taking drugs to avoid facing. Thats what happened to us when we stopped criticizing and blaming. As we began to get control over our tendency to blame and criticize, we noticed a fear that kept coming up over and over. To understand this fear, first look at the tendency to blame and criticize yourself. Many of us cant go a minute, let alone an hour or a day, without critical self-talk buzzing through our minds like a squadron of mosquitoes. These nagging thoughts even go on in our sleep. How many times during the day and night do we hear thoughts like: --Why did I have to go and do.? --Was it a mistake to? --I wish I hadnt --Why didnt I? --Shouldnt I have? Psychologists estimate that the average person cranks out 50,000 thoughts a day. No telling how many of them have a critical edge to them,

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but some days it feels like the mosquito-thoughts are in the majority. Critical thoughts are all based on a fear: That without them we wouldnt improve, grow and change. That same fear drives the criticism and blame we aim at others. We fear that without our criticism and blame, other people wont improve, grow and change. We have high goals for ourselves and our loved ones, and we fear that without a constant barrage of criticism and blame we would all languish in mud-puddles of sloth. Blame is driven by another fear. We aim chronic blame at loved ones because were afraid they wont take responsibility for their lives. We know intuitively that unless they seize control of their inner steering wheel, theyll not only wander aimlessly along lifes freeway, theyll bash disastrously into the lives of others. This is not only the cruel joke of blame, its also the answer to why it never works. When we blame another person we are trying to get them to take responsibility for something theyve been avoiding owning. However, the very act of blame disowns responsibility. Using blame to get someone to take responsibility defeats its own purpose. We become like a nudist walking down the street, wearing a signboard advertising a clothing store. Its going to a tough sellnot only are we a poor model for the behavior we wish to encourage, we also lack the essential moral authority. We found to our great delight that we did just fine without criticism or blame. In fact, growth and change came effortlessly as we let go of our habit of criticizing. Far from dissolving into puddles of sloth, we found ourselves excited about life and growth and creativity. Without the wasted energy of blame and criticism, we had more creative juice to spend as we chose. The process didnt happen overnight. It took us a few years to get to the point where we could go days and weeks without blame and criticism. Each tiny improvement along the way brought immediate rewards in the

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form of more harmony and creative energy. We found that slow, steady efforts to drop blame and criticism brought slow, steady growth in good feeling between us. What if one of us had a beef with the other? What if there was some irritating behavior one of us wanted the other to change? We dealt with those kinds of things all the timewe just didnt use blame and criticism to deal with them. Dropping blame and criticism doesnt mean you have to overlook anything, in the Pollyanna-ish sense. We found that it was not only possible but relatively easy to bring something to the others attention in a way that wasnt blameful or critical. In the Action Plan at the end of this chapter well share the technique of just how to do this. Does all of what weve described sound like a possibility in your life? Whether it sounds possible or a far-fetched dream, theres only one way to find out if its real. Begin as we did, with a sincere commitment to end blame and criticism in your close relationships. Weve shown several thousand couples how to take this courageous step, and not one of them has ever told us it wasnt worth it. YOUR ACTION PLAN YOUR COMMITMENT: I commit to generating wonder rather than blame in all my interactions. YOUR ONGOING PRACTICE: This practice creates a blame-free zone in which appreciation and wonder flourish. Let yourself use your whole body to practice these skills to make use of your organic body wisdom. Take a recurring issue in your relationship and think about it for a moment. Heres the important act--notice your body posture as you think

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about this issue. For example, you may be slumped, or your jaw may lock up. Now do something that may seem counterproductive exaggerate your posture for a moment to feel how the posture supports blame. As you play with exaggerating, you may be amazed to discover that its impossible to blame unless your body posture (and more shallow breath) frames that attitude physically. The radical responsibility move springs from shifting your body attitude. Then your thinking naturally changes too. So, after exaggerating your recurring issue posture, make a radical change in your posture. Focus especially on opening your posture in some way. As you do that, take some relaxed, belly breaths that create a sense of flow in your body. When you have changed your posture and are breathing more freely, select one question from the following list and wonder about it through five connected breaths. Whats familiar about my feelings, actions and responses with this issue? What are my body sensations as I think of this issue? What can I learn from this whole issue, and what simple action step can I take that applies my learning? If this issue were totally resolved, what would I be doing with all that energy? YOUR TEN-SECOND TECHNIQUE: (this one should have a picture) This technique generates wonder in which new possibilities emerge and problems can be resolved with ease. First, create a pleasurable hmmm tone that lasts through your entire out breath. Explore different pitches and different places in your chest and throat to create the best feeling hum. Then, while humming, use your arm to make a big circling gesture to your

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heart as if you were tracing the outside of a wheel. Circle and hum two or three times while wondering: What can I learn from this?

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CHAPTER FIVE The Fourth Secret: A New Kind of Creativity Creativity is vital to long-term relationships. Without the flow of creativity nurturing the lifeblood of the relationship, the energy level of both people ebbs away over time. Remarkably, though, even a tiny movement toward enhanced creativity can pump new life into long-term relationships. You owe it to yourself to understand how creativity works in relationships and what it can do for you. Heres what creativity looks like in a LASTING LOVE relationship: Both people are committed to exploring their own individual creative paths. At the same time, each person is committed to supporting the other partners full creative expression. You are devoted to your own creative flourishing and the simultaneous flourishing of your partners creativity. You dont waste your time and burn up your creative energy in repetitive power struggles. You re-channel the energy you used to waste in power struggles into deeper creative exploration. You communicate in ways that produce harmony and passion, so that the relationship itself becomes an ongoing catalyst for the full expression of both partners creativity. If that kind of relationship seems magical and impossible from where you are now, youre in good company. We were a long way from there, too, when we caught the first glimmer of possibility. We learned, though, that its just a matter of practicing a few essential skills over time. Its done by taking easy, small steps that are simultaneously great leaps. The First Thing To Know Heres the first thing everybody needs to know about creativity: If both people in a relationship are not acting on their creative commitment to themselves, they will create relationship conflict to distract themselves from the creative potential thats languishing inside them. Your

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energy level will drop if you are not being true to your own creative urges. Eventually you will feel dull and dissatisfied. Thats only part of the problem, though. The bigger problem is that when people feel dull and dissatisfied, they tend to blame the relationship for the problem. They think the relationship is the source of the boredom and dissatisfaction, rather than the lax inner commitment to creativity. Then, each person tries to get the partner to change so that the boredom will be replaced by liveliness. These dramas are only resolved when each person takes responsibility for finding the source of creativity inside themselves. The partnership flourishes as each person takes steps toward expressing that creativity. Creativity Is Infinite The biggest barrier we run up against in counseling couples about their creativity is simply this: People dont think theyre creative. They have defined creativity too narrowlythey dont think its within their power to be creative. They associate creativity only with traditional artistic expressions such as painting, dance and music. If youve fallen into this trap, its urgent to understand that creativity has an infinity of expressions. The art of resolving the creativity problems in relationship lies in each persons discovery of his or her own tools. For one person it can mean ten minutes of spontaneous wild dance every day. For another person it is a cup of tea and a half-hour of solitude for meditation. Creativity: What It Is Our definition of creativity comes from practical experience in helping couples revitalize their relationships. In other words, we base our definition of creativity purely on what has worked to bring passion and productivity back into long-term relationships. This experience brought us to a very different understanding: Creativity is anything that takes you out of the zone of the known into the zone of wonder. In order to bring vitality to relationships, people need to spend a little time, preferably every day, in a

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state of wonder and invention. Whatever it takes to do that is your best form of creativity. By this definition, practically anything can be creative. Making soup is just as creative an activity as writing a novel, as long as it contains a teaspoon of invention and a dash of wonder. Even if youve made the same soup every day for thirty years, you can turn it into a creative experience with a moment of wonder: Hmmm, I wonder how it would be if I added a sprig or two of basil? Wonder and invention are sure cures for boredom and dissatisfaction. Staying within the zone of the known drains energy and saps satisfaction. The Power of Creativity Creativity has awesome power. If we nurture our creativity it can literally save our lives; if we squelch it we lose the vital wellspring that makes us feel really alive. One thing weve learned from our own lives, as well as from working with other couples, is that one of the greatest sources of pain in the world is unfulfilled creative potential. On the positive side, though, it only takes a small opening to creativity for it to produce a major rebirth in the vitality of a relationship. A Major Realization Wed like to go into more depth about a point we touched on earlier. If you understand it, you can save a great deal of stress and agony in relationships. When people arent expressing their own creative potential, they focus blame on the relationship. Another way to say it: When you find yourself complaining about your relationship, the problem youre complaining about is usually not the real problem. The real problem is that you arent opening up to your own personal creativity. Of the three thousand or so couples weve worked with, about 2990 of them didnt understand this point. We didnt understand it, either, when we first got together. We had to figure it out the hard way, because its not something

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we were ever taught in school. Not even in our masters and doctoral work! We think its so important it ought to be part of the curriculum from kindergarten on up. Were not saying that people are hallucinating the relationship problems theyre complaining about. Usually, when a person points a finger at something in the relationship thats going wrong, the finger is aimed at something realits just aimed at that reality prematurely. For example, if you blame your spouse for sabotaging the relationship by drinking too much alcohol, chances are there is some reality to your complaint. However, the first place to deal with the problem is by opening up more to your own creativity, rather than aiming more criticism at the spouse. Theres even a foolproof acid test weve developed through our work with couples. Heres how to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the real problem is your unexpressed creativity: If youve complained about something three or more times and it hasnt changed, you can be sure the problem needs to be addressed inside yourself. The first task is to stop complaining and address the problem by focusing on your own creativity. If youre in touch with your creativity, you will complain about something and it will change. If youre out of touch with your creativity, you will keep complaining about things and they wont ever change. The complaining has become a distraction to keep your attention away from the real issue: Unexpressed creative potential. Lets use a real-life example to explore the principle in depth. Heres the principle again: If there is an ongoing complaint or series of complaints in a relationship, look first to the creative potential thats not being expressed. When people dont open up to their creative impulses, they take it out on the relationship. We worked with a couple who had been together fifteen years, and

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married for the past ten of those years. In our first session with them she said that her major complaint was that hes never here. What she meant was that he spent a lot of time at work, and even when he was at home his mind seemed somewhere else. His complaint was that she was relentlessly critical. He spent a lot of time at work, he said, because the moment he came through the front door of their house she started criticizing him for one thing and another. He said, Even when Im here she criticizes me for not being here. It was a classic set of complaints, well-worn into the fabric of their relationship like a set of deep grooves across the living room floor. Theyd obviously been through the complaints many times, and wed heard hundreds of couples say something very similar. Its a human tendency to think that ones complaints are unique. Its an even more powerful human tendency to think ones complaints are real and valid. It came as a surprise to this couple when we told them that wed heard many other couples voice the same general complaint. However, they got more than surprised when we asked them if theyd be willing to get to the real source of those complaints within themselves. They got mad. At us. She: Are you trying to tell me he doesnt spend too much time thinking about work? He: So you think Im making it up that she criticizes me all the time? We invited them to take a deep breath and love themselves for getting defensive. We told them that getting defensive is a perfectly good thingit lets us know were on the right track. One of the first things good therapists learn in their training is the Law of Defensive Reactions: When you or your client gets defensive, you know youve uncovered something crucial. When you see a classic defensive reaction (think of Bill Clinton

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wagging a finger and saying he didnt have sex with that woman,) you know theres something just under the surface that the person is desperately trying to hide. It also means theres something just under the surface that the person desperately wants to reveal. The war between wanting to hide it and wanting to reveal it produces the defensive reaction. In this case they were both trying to hide their deep dissatisfaction with their own creative potential. Each of them had sold themselves out in the creativity department, and they couldnt stand facing squarely that they had done so. So, they took their anger out on the relationship by blaming the other person. To avoid facing the inner despair of unexpressed creativity, they focused on the faults and flaws of the other person. Each of them was convinced that if only the other person would change, life would be much better. To make matters worse, all their friends agreed. His friends agreed that it was all her fault; her friends were unanimous in blaming him for the unhappiness in the marriage. This issue points to a difficult barrier that makes personal change even more challenging than it already is. Not only do we lock into the habit of complaining about the other person, we get our friends to agree that those complaints are real and justified. We bolster our perception of reality by getting our friends to vote for its validity. Thats how this particular couple had entrenched themselves in a cycle of complaint that had drained the energy from their once-vibrant marriage. Just beneath the surface, however, is where the real issues and ultimate salvation of the relationship can be found. Some wise person once said, Youre never upset for the reason you think you are, and this couple was a living example of the truth of the proverb. When they had the courage to dive beneath the surface of their complaints, they brought the vitality back to their relationship in a remarkably short period of time. The real problem was in the zone of creativity, and it had started when

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their first child was born. When they were first married, she was a successful attorney and he was rising quickly through the executive ranks in a software corporation. They got married and began a family right away. At this point she put work on the back burner. In fact, she quit her job to stay at home with the two children they eventually had. Now, though, the children were in school most of the day. She hungered to get back into the world of work. She mentioned that she had started to write an article for a law journal while she was pregnant with her first child. Now, her second child was in kindergarten and she had yet to finish writing the article. As we worked with her, it became clear that she was angry and envious of his passion for his career. Inside, she felt she had lost any chance she ever had of career success. So naturally, when he came in the door full of workday buzz, her anger and jealousy kicked in and she turned, as she put it, into a bitching machine. Under the surface he was angry at her for being able to stay home. After twenty years of pushing to get ahead at work, he had secretly built up a backload of envy for a life without push. He found himself fantasizing about chucking his career and taking the family to live on a sheep ranch in the outback of Australia. His other big complaint was that she was boring. According to him, she had put her all energy into supporting him and raising kids, and had neglected the process of keeping her mind alive. He wanted a co-creative partner, not just a support-partner. Getting Them To Change Making the commitment to change is the hardest part of any changeprocess. It took the better part of three one-hour sessions with them to get to the point at which they both could say honestly, Yes, I commit to making the changes necessary to re-vitalize our relationship. A sludgy sense of

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inertia settles around people when they have been stuck for a long time, so that the very idea of making a change seems too daunting a task. In addition, both of them had various degrees of resistance to tapping their own creative wellspring. Their resistance took the familiar shape and form wed seen in hundreds of other couples. Barriers to Creativity She summed up the first barrier very succinctly, I dont know what creativity is, but whatever it is, Im not. She had always thought of herself as a do-er and the tortoise instead of the hare, but she had never felt an authentic connection with her inner creative source. Both of them shared a second barrier: I cant be creative as an individual and be in a close relationship, too. Religious programming played a role for him in this barrier. He had been brought up in a family where several members were nuns and priests. In his mind he had made a division between spiritual growth and marriage: You couldnt be married and also be committed deeply to your own spiritual development. This barrier presents an obstacle for many people. There are plenty of examples of people who turned their backs on intimacy in order to open up a pipeline to their creative genius. Thoreau didnt take Mrs. Thoreau to Walden Pond with him (not that he had a Mrs., anyway.) Albert Einstein managed to write an entire autobiography without remembering to mention his first wife and their children. Few role models show us that its possible to embrace our own creative genius and an intimate relationship at the same time. Time was a third barrier, as it is for many people. Most people simply dont think they have enough time to express their creative genius and get all their real-world responsibilities handled. We faced this issue ourselves early in our relationship. The resolution of it gave us a huge growth spurt in our individual creativity as well as the flow of love between us.

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It wasnt easy, though. When we got together, Gay took on the role of the creative one, while Katie fell into the role of the supportive one. One problem was that we were both good at our respective roles. The bigger problem was that both of us had out-grown those roles but didnt know quite how to get out of them. Katie: Id been brought up to be Moms Helper in a family with two brothers and a father who needed a lot of maintenance. One of my earliest memories is of my mother showing me how to operate the buttons on the washing machine. In adult life, Id fallen into the role of being the good woman behind the great man, and although I was unconsciously chafing to break out into the spotlight myself, I felt restricted by the pull of my old helper role. Gay: I was already well-known by the time I met Katie, due to the success of some of my early books. It was very easy for me to occupy the role of the star in my relationship with Katie, because she was so incredibly good at handling all the domestic and social responsibilities I didnt like. Katie: One of the big breakthroughs came when Gay pointed out to me how I organized my time. One day I was complaining to him that I had to do all the dishes and put in a load of wash before I could sit down to work on my doctoral dissertation. I think I was also slipping in a jab at him for sitting there happily typing away on his new book while I was occupied with drudgery. He said, You know, you dont actually have to do the dishes first. You could put your creative activities as a higher priority than your chores. Katie: Although it sounds so simple and obvious, it was like a light bulb turning on in my mind. Suddenly I saw how Id imposed an unnecessary rule on myself: Do the chores before you do anything you want to do yourself. I realized I could easily put my creativity first. Gay then

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threw in the clincher by saying, Why dont you try it out? While youre working on your dissertation Ill take a break from my writing and do the dishes and laundry. Gay: I realized that I knew a lot about being the creative one in a relationship, but I didnt know anything about being in relationship with a woman who was expressing her own creativity to the maximum. Was it even possible? Who would do the dishes? Katie: I put myself on a strict creativity first program. I got up every day and did my creative work before I handled any domestic chores, even the ones I really liked such as cooking. It was tough. Practically every day I felt the pull of my old programming telling me to do the dirty work first. It took a lot of discipline for several months to get myself in the habit of putting my creative activities first. The remarkable discovery for both of us was that all the domestic stuff got done just fine. We still washed the dishes, did the laundry and paid the billswe just did it all after we finished the creative work. It probably took us less time since the chores were being done by two happy people. Weve worked with many couples who faced another barrier: If I open up to my creativity, it will take me away from the relationship. This barrier is based on the split many of us feel between love and creativity. Most of us have seen examples of the lone genius who must withdraw from life and love in order to express his or her gifts. This type of programming leaves us with the impression that we will need to renounce the world of home and family to go wherever our genius takes us. We fear we must sacrifice the comforts of home to soar to our creative heights, and this fear clips our creative wings. We sacrifice our creativity and stay home, but instead of enjoying its comforts we chafe at the cage its now become. In this barrier is embedded another fear: If I open up to my creativity even a little bit, Ill shake up the roles and comfort level of the relationship.

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An extreme example: One couple we worked with complained that the other person controlled their every move. Even if I go down to the grocery store for a half hour, hes on the cell phone to me reminding me to get something hes already told me to get three times! On the spot we hatched a radical therapy technique: A solo walk around the block. We asked them to take a fifteen-minute walk, each choosing his or her own creative path. Just go for a walk by yourself, paying no attention to where the other person chooses to go. Then come back in fifteen minutes and tell us what happened. The fifteen minutes of being left to their own creative devices proved to be a revelation for both of them. When they returned they were brighteyed and full of energy, but the journey had been anything but easy. Along the way they encountered in miniature just about every barrier weve described so far. He told us he spent the first five minutes of the walk obsessing about where she was. Then he started wondering if she would still love him if he truly started doing things on his own without her. Meanwhile, his wife was running her version of the drama. I actually started feeling nauseous in my stomach about halfway up the block. I had to look back over my shoulder to make sure he was doing it right. The wave of fear I felt in my stomach really shook me up. How could something so simple as going for a walk around the block by myself make me scared? I realized that Id been thinking for ten years that he was the control-freak in the family, but I had to face the factsIm just as big a control freak as he is. Their control struggles were all based on fear. In their own individual ways, they were scared that would lose the relationship. Theres another barrier that any of us must face when we open up to if they opened up to their creativity they

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our creativity: What if we actually express our creative potential fully and it fails? That fear probably causes many of us to keep our creative urges thoroughly squelched. ignored. Many people create an artificial barrier by thinking that their creativity must be hitched to commercial success. In their minds, creativity must produce results in the marketplace in order to be considered a success. Some even set an impossibly high bar to jump over to get to their creativity. They think, Ive got to do it perfectly or not at all. Inevitably this way of thinking leads to despair: Since few of us are Mozart, why bother to try to express our creativity? However, this way of thinking misses the main point of creative expression: Its the flow of creativity itself thats important, not the commercial result. Most creativity doesnt generate cash or gloryit generates a feeling of inner satisfaction and aliveness. When youre in the darkness at night, waiting to go to sleep, that feeling of satisfaction is what really matters. In those quiet moments when were alone with ourselves, were not counting cash or headlineswere tuning in to whether weve kept our inner creative fires glowing brightly that day. Whats important in tapping your creativity is the courageous action of putting yourself in situations where you dont know whats coming next. Creativity takes us into a zone in which were actively engaged in wondering and learning something new in each moment. Your Genius Ultimately a LASTING LOVE relationship is about the liberation of your inner genius. Most of us dont realize it, but were harboring a genius inside us. Our inner genius wants very much to be expressed. If you will liberate your genius and give it a voice, before you know it youll be feeling more vibrant energy than you ever imagined. Your close relationships will directly Our unconscious mind thinks, Better to live a dull life with hidden potential than express that potential and be laughed at or

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benefit from your decision to open up to your genius. How do you liberate your inner genius? First, think of every person as having four zones: Genius Excellence Competence Incompetence Lets start with incompetence, because its easy to think of things were not good at. In our zone of incompetence are all those things that almost anyone can do better than we can. For example, one of us (GH) is pathetically incompetent at mechanical devices of all kinds. Put a screwdriver in his hand and he becomes dangerous to any mechanical object he touches. Kathlyn, on the other hand, is excellent at fixing mechanical things. She comes from a family in which Dad and her two brothers are engineers. The ability to fix things is part of the family tradition. You can find out your areas of incompetence by asking what you spend time doing that your partner and friends can all do better and with greater ease. In our zone of competence are the things we can do fairly well, but others can do them just as well. You may be competent at doing the laundry or balancing your checkbook, but its likely that someone else could do it about as well. In your zone of excellence are those things you can do better than most people. You might be an excellent golfer or an excellent cook. The results give you the feedback that other people look up to your abilities in that area. Yourgenius zone contains your gifts and unique abilities. You know youre in your zone of genius when youre doing things you love. You lose your sense of time when youre in your genius zone, and you can do it for hours without getting tired. If you work in an organization, your genius is that skill or quality nobody else brings to the table. If it were missing, the

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organization would miss it. Most people dont realize that excellence can bog them down and become a trap. You might have learned to do something better than most of the people around you and have been rewarded for that skill. Kathlyn, for example, can organize just about anything better than most Chief Executive Officers of major companies. She has been paid well to organize and gotten lots of attention for her organizing skills. However, ordering, sorting and compiling does not make Kathyns heart sing, nor is it unique. Only expressing your genius makes time disappear and vibrance infuse everything.Our experience in working with couples has shown us that people spend far too much time in their zones of incompetence and competence, and far too little time in their zones of excellence and genius. They get bogged down in doing a lot of things others could do as well or better, so that they squander the time and energy they could be spending on things in their zones of excellence and genius. We all need to face ourselves squarely and ask: How much time do we spend in our zone of genius? An even bolder question is: How much time do we waste in our zones of incompetence and competence? Many people dont even surface these questions because they get bogged down in the common problems that inhibit genius. See if any of these issues are familiar: 1. You havent identified your genius. 2. You dont prioritize your time and energy so your genius gets fed. 3. You get entranced by complaining about your incompetence and feel victimized by it. 4. You keep trying without success to become competent at something that has resided in your incompetent zone for some time. 5. You dont know how to delegate. 6. You dont know how to say no.

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Numbers 3-6 are what we call dramas of competence and incompetence. They are very popular because they keep people from surfacing fears of the unknown and fears of success. You can engage others fairly easily in aint it awful conversations that confirm your worst visions of yourself and your possibilities. Its much more uncommon to find people avidly discussing their unique contributions and the activities they love. We recommend dealing with your incompetent and competent area with two moves. First, see if this area can be delegated. Its actually possible that your area of incompetence is someone elses genius. Heres an example of the costs of not delegating, and the freedom of placing attention on genius and excellence. Pete, a friend of ours, told us about spending thirteen hours one Saturday installing and de-bugging a new printer. He told us about it in detail because we had recommended that particular printer to him. Four of those hours were spent on hold waiting to speak to the technical support staff about problems that came up during the installation. The experience was maddeningly frustrating, and based on our discussion of the four zones, its easy to see why. He took on a project that was, at best, in his zone of competence. These choices can be costly in dollars and in eating up the energy that could be spent in more creative activities. When Pete is doing his consulting work, where hes in his zones of excellence and genius, he bills his time at $250 an hour. In purely financial terms, he spent the equivalent of $3250 on installing the printer. By contrast, because we know were inept at such things, we hired an expert for $65 an hour to install ours. He had the printer and a few other items installed within four hours. He left happily with his check for $260, and we were left with our sanity intact. Pete was still upset about his experience several days later, so the toll on his creative energy probably cost him a few more thousands of dollars. The second and third radical moves in your incompetent and

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competent areas are related. Can you avoid this incompetent skill by seeing it coming and getting out of the way? For example, when people begin a conversation with Gay about anything mechanical, he cheerfully admits his incompetence and starts talking about something he feels passion about. Can you get rid of this area altogether so you never have to discuss it again? For example, in a couples course about a year ago, a woman realized that she despised doing laundry, She had struggled with the chore out of a sense of duty for many years, but still managed to mix up the whites and shrink her husbands favorite shirts. They had a truthful conversation in front of the group in which the husband then confessed that he really liked to do laundry and considered himself quite a connoisseur of the laundry world. He hadnt stepped in or spoken up out of fear of being labeled by his macho friends. They made an agreement that henceforth in their marriage, she would not even have to consider the laundry. He agreed to let himself fully enjoy the tangible pleasures of clean, folded clothes and linens. We checked with them recently and found that the wife had quite happily not done laundry for over twelve months, and the husband continued to find this activity a centering aesthetic expression. Here was the pleasant surprise. She had used her liberated energy to start a whole new skin care business based on her genius skill of nurturing that provided work for both of them and financial and creative abundance. Here are some questions that can assist you in evoking genius: What is my genius, and how can I bring it forth so that it really serves me and others in the world at the same time? What is it I need to do to enable me to live in my genius most of the time? How can I live in my genius in my closest relationships? How can I enjoy and express my genius all of the time? Am I willing to prosper by acting from my genius all the time?

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YOUR ACTION PLAN

YOUR COMMITMENT: I commit to the full experience and expression of my creativity, and I commit to supporting my partners full creativity. YOUR ONGOING PRACTICE: Take 5-10 minutes a day for your own creative practice. Make this time your creative calisthenics workout. Youll be developing your creative muscles with practice. The nature of this practice stretches your beliefs about what you can do, what your limitations and possibilities are, and how creative you can be. Its important for this time to be non-useful. It is not intended to produce a product or anything that anyone else could judge as useful or valuable. It is intended to bring you directly into your creative flow. Schedule this time in whatever method you use, a palm pilot or wall calendar. Most people find that if they put their creativity first, that is, make it their first daily priority, the rest of the day flows with greater joy. If you wait until youve completed your work, your household responsibilities, our child care, etc., the wellspring dries up. You may be surprised to find out how little real time renews and develops your genuine creativity if you do it first. What could you use to practice your creativity? Here are some possibilities. You could use art materials to make collages or finger painting. You might put on your favorite music and let your body move. You could combine making unusual sounds and using your non-dominant hand to

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write. Go into the kitchen and make something using ingredients that never go together. Open a journal and write down whatever words pop into your mind. Choose something you love to experience that you dont usually find time for during the busy day. Notice that we are not suggesting: start your symphony, write that poem, or complete the novel. The creative practice is just that: practice. You are learning to listen to your own creative voice and to cultivate its expression. YOUR TEN-SECOND TECHNIQUE: Catch yourself in a routine in your relationship. For example, notice if you always walk on one side of your partner. If so, walk on the other side for a week or two. If one of you usually initiates sex, have the other one do the initiating for a while. If one of you is the talker, change roles for a week. Whatever the routine, change it. Find some new action or decision in the moment.

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CHAPTER SIX THE FIFTH SECRET: TANDEM ACTS OF KINDNESS:

During the past twenty years weve had the pleasure of helping many couples learn how to appreciate each other more skillfully. Through this experience weve gained deep respect for the power of appreciation to change lives. Although appreciation is a simple process, most of us are so rusty that its often a challenge even for couples who are committed to learning. Once they get the hang of it, though, they find it to be an essential part of their relationship. A Courageous Choice When you make the commitment to learn the skill of appreciating, youre making a choice thats not only powerfulits courageous to the point of being radical. When you choose to live your life from a space of appreciation you break free of a repetitive rut that most of humanity lives in. Heres what we mean: If you look and listen as you go through your day, youll soon realize that all of us live in one of two ongoing cycles: A cycle of appreciation or a cycle of entitlement and complaint. As an experiment to confirm this for yourself, stop and listen for a few minutes to the conversations around you in a busy place such as a coffee shop or airport newsstand. Weve done this many times, and the conversations never fail to be mainly about the subject of relationships. If you listen to the tone of those conversations, you can hear that they are coming out of appreciation or out of entitlement and complaint. The cycle of entitlement and complaint goes like this:

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We want something from our partner, such as more communication, more understanding, more touch, more freedom. Not only do we want it we feel entitled to it. Inevitably our partner fails to give us what we want, so... We complain about it and criticize our partner for his or her faults and failures, then... The situation improves temporarily or it doesnt. Even if it improves, eventually we start feeling were not getting what were entitled to, so We complain and criticize more. Thats the cycle of entitlement and complaint. How many people do you know who live in this cycle? It seems to be a very popular way to pass the time. In fact, if you turn on a soap opera in the afternoon youll see the cycle of entitlement and complaint in full swing. The plots of soap operas are basically endless cycles of entitlement and complaint, punctuated every ten minutes with a pitch for pain relievers, stomach remedies and anti-depressants. Clever advertisers have discovered that even watching cycles of entitlement and complaint make people nauseous, moody and wracked with pain. The cycle of appreciation is radically different, and goes like this: We make a commitment to living in a cycle of appreciation. As we go through the day we look for things to appreciate about our partner, and We discover new things to appreciate, or we notice old ones anew, so... We speak our appreciations clearly, and this causes us to... See more things to appreciate. The Secret What most of us dont know is this: We have a choice about which cycle to live in. What most of us really need to know is how to get out of the cycle of complaint and into the cycle of appreciation.

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First, Be Easy On Yourself Please dont beat yourself up if youve been living in a cycle of complaint. Theres really no good reason why any of us should be good at appreciating. Appreciation is an art and a science, but hardly anyone has had any training in either. At our seminars, we often begin our exploration of appreciation by asking the participants to do a quick-check on themselves. You can do it right now. Think of someone you love. Now think of something you really appreciate about that person. Get a picture or feeling of something that person does that you really appreciate. Now ask yourself: How long has it been since I spoke that appreciation sincerely and clearly to him or her? Has it been a while? If so, youre in good company. Even the goodhearted, open-minded people who come to relationship seminars discover to their surprise that theyve been extremely stingy with speaking their appreciation to the people they love. The good news is that the art of appreciation can be learned quickly. The even better news is that when you bring that art home to the real world of your close relationships, miracles will start to appear before your very eyes. Why Learn The Art of Appreciation? Here are some of the reasons wed like you to get as excited about appreciation as we are. First, the act of appreciating another person literally works wonders: Its the fastest way weve ever seen of opening a flow of connection in a relationship. When that flow opens, all sorts of amazing transformations start to happen in the relationship. For example, appreciation has a remarkable power to solve problems. It changes the things you dont like about your partner faster than criticism, threats, sarcasm, rewards or any

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other popular motivational tools couples use on each other. Weve seen dozens of amazing examples of how appreciation changes behavior. A case in point: One of our clients often criticized her husband for leaving his stuff lying around. She had been criticizing him for this behavior throughout their twelve-year marriage, with no effect whatsoever on the problem behavior. He still left his stuff lying around. We asked her to declare her criticizing-project a failure and hang it up. In its place, we asked her to try a new program. To make matters more interesting, we asked her to change her program without telling him what she was doing. The new program: She made an agreement with us to stop criticizing him altogether for a week. Instead, she agreed to put her energy into speaking appreciations to him. We asked her to speak one appreciation the first day, two the second day, and so on. On the fourth day, something magical happened: He straightened up the area around his side of the bed. (Remember: He knew nothing about the experiment she was conducting.) By the end of the week he was reliably picking up things he had previously left lying around. Will this work for you? Conduct your own experiment and find out. The woman in the example initially was convinced it would never work in a million years. Our experience has taught us otherwise. Appreciation is also a powerful healer. People enjoy better health and less illness in relationships where theres a vital flow of appreciation. The act of appreciating creates beauty: People get more beautiful the more theyre appreciated. Your partner will get a more beautiful glow as you become more skilled at appreciating him or her. Appreciation has a way of looping back on itself in positive ways. The more you appreciate others, the more you appreciate yourself. Then, this deeper appreciation for yourself will give you a heightened ability to appreciate others.

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Appreciation is a priceless gift you can give to your partner any time, any place, for any reason. It costs nothing and it can mean infinitely more than a mansion and rubies. Appreciation is a mood-shifter. Appreciation will get you out of a low mood or a relationship conflict quickly, no matter how long youve been stuck or trapped. Even if it didnt produce any tangible results, appreciation would still be valuable because it feels so good. The body-feeling of gratitude is a delicious sensation to enjoy inside yourself. Appreciation is an ideal way to fill the time during periods of transition or indecision. For example, you may be trying to decide whether to leave a relationship or stay in it. If you have no immediate plans to leave, its wise to spend your time appreciating yourself and your partner. For example, if you were thinking of buying a new car, you could still take care of the one you have until you make your decision about the future. The same is true for relationships. Our Discovery When we first turned the microscope on our own relationship we found that we were stingy with verbal appreciation. As we became more sensitive to appreciation and the lack of it, we saw that stinginess of appreciation is not just in romantic relationships. Weve observed it in sessions of marital therapy, family therapy and corporate coaching. Indeed, the art of appreciating is so unfamiliar and poorly understood that most people do not think of it as something which can be learned. In actual practice it can be learned relatively quickly--in our seminars it takes the average group less than four hours to move from hopelessly klutzy to life-changingly skillful. Our most significant discovery is that particular kinds of spoken appreciation make rapid, positive changes happen in relationships. We have found other types of appreciation to be useful, but there is nothing weve found which compares to the specific techniques of verbal appreciation well

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illustrate later. What Is Appreciation? First, lets change the noun into a verb. While appreciation is a good thing, its really the act of appreciating that produces miracles of intimacy. Heres what we mean when we talk about appreciating: First, appreciating is the act of becoming sensitively aware of a person or thing. To appreciate is to become conscious of details and nuances, according to the dictionary. For example, one who appreciates art is attuned to the nuances which distinguish a drawing by Leonardo from one by Caravaggio. Wed like you to make a heartfelt commitment to becoming sensitively aware of yourself and your mate (or anyone with whom you desire closeness.) This commitment will help you begin to master the art of tuning in more closely to detail and nuance. Second, appreciating is the act of focusing on the positive aspects of a person or object. An example: You single out a positive aspect of your partner and communicate it directly, as in I appreciate the way you helped Noah with his homework last night. In troubled relationships there is approximately a 1:1 ratio of negative to positive interactions, whereas in healthy relationships there is a ratio of greater than 5:1 (positive to negative.) Appreciating changes the ratio immediately toward the positive. Third, appreciating is the act of adding value. If you care for a house, for example, it will appreciate in value. Most of us want our relationships to grow in value, but few of us know the active ways to make it happen from moment to moment. Appreciating gives you a map and a powerful set of techniques for adding value in every moment. A Point of Clarification We want to emphasize that appreciating is not a form of Pollyanna-ish positive thinking employed to ignore, deny or skip over any problems in a relationship. In fact, relationships only thrive when you acknowledge

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whatever emerges--even the unwelcome, the unexpected and the highly irritating. Relationships thrive when you handle emerging issues in a straightforward fashion, and then make a conscious choice to shift into appreciation. If youre cringing in the dental chair, gripped by the fear of the whining drill, we dont believe you should chant I really, really appreciate this in your mind to distract yourself. Instead, acknowledge the fear, the irritation and the noise. Give those unpleasant elements a moment of clear attention, then switch to appreciating the positive aspects of the moment as soon as you can. You might appreciate the skill of your dentist, for In example, as well as the comparison with dentistry a hundred years ago. IN THIS DENTAL CHAIR RIGHT NOW!switches on the appreciationmachinery organically, provided youre committed to appreciation in general. The Power of Appreciation We would like to give an example of appreciation in action. from one of our relationship seminars: A man and woman stand with us in front of several hundred people. It is the final afternoon of the three-day workshop, and were beginning the module in which we teach men and women the strategies of appreciation. This long-married couple has volunteered for a ten-minute demonstration of one of our foundation techniques for expressing verbal appreciation. First, we ask him to express an appreciation to her without any coaching by us. He stumbles a little, then speaks a rambling sentence to her: Um, something I like...well, hmmm, I think you wear really nice clothes. Yeah, you always look great when we go out. When he comes to a halt she gives him a slight smile of encouragement. Other than that, her expression doesnt change. Its clear that his appreciation did nothing to move her, and Its drawn

actual practice, the act of acknowledging the current realityI HATE BEING

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the audience murmurs and shifts uncomfortably as if in sympathy with her. Next, we ask him a key question: Would you be willing to make a commitment to learning how to appreciate your wife fully, so that your appreciate makes a real positive difference for both of you? He says yes, and immediately his wifes eyes open wide with astonishment. Next, while she watches with growing interest, we give him several tips and perhaps two minutes of coaching on how to express the same appreciation in a different way. We show him a particular way weve found that resonates very well with women--using more detail and direct reports of body-sensation. Now we invite him to try again, using the new art-form hes just learned. He does so, speaking a similar appreciation in a very different language. He says: Thinking of you in that green velvet dress you wore Friday night, I feel a big rush of warmth here in my chest. Although the actual sentence he speaks is hardly ten seconds in length, it has a completely different effect from his first try. This time her breath catches and she bursts into tears. She reaches over and takes his hand, nodding to him through her tears, the color of her face a flushed pink. The attention of the audience is rapt--a pin-drop silence hushes the room, as if the audience knows as one the sacred nature of this moment. This is the power of appreciating. Although weve seen it hundreds of times all over the world, it always moves us to see its magic work again. The Fundamental Rationale Giving a simple, heartfelt appreciation to another person is the quickest way to enhance the flow of positive energy in any relationship. Genuine appreciation, no matter how profound or how simple, always brings about an immediate shift in the quality of a relationship. There is nothing more powerful than the clear communication of appreciation. Many times we have been moved to tears by a therapy breakthrough caused by the

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sudden emergence of a spoken appreciation. One moment the energy in the room will be muddled, frozen or chaotic. Then someone speaks a simple appreciation. Suddenly the flow of positive feeling connects everyone and takes us all to a new level of harmony. We have made the same discovery through countless experiments in the sacred laboratory of our own marriage. For people in long-term relationships, appreciating is an especially valuable skill to master. It is an art-form of limitless possibility. No matter how richly intimate our relationship has become over the years, we always find new ways of enhancing our skill in appreciating each other. By so doing we add quantum dimensions to the value of our relationship each year it matures. The same is true for people in new relationships. If single or divorced people can meet and resonate with each other accompanied by sincere notes of genuine appreciation, they can bring the music of the relationship to life more quickly. Beginning The Art of Appreciating The art of appreciating rests on a few simple principles and practices which have extraordinary power to move people. Heres what it looks like in action, drawn from an interaction we had just before this was written. Kathlyn, who loves to cook, had made us a big tossed salad for lunch. Gay: Thank you for making such a splendid lunch. I appreciate especially your taking the time to make my favorite salad dressing. (For the record, its a light, creamy dressing made with a lot of chives and garlic.) Kathlyn: Wasnt that good? The chives came right out of the planter box in the back yard. Gay: It was fantastic. Appreciation never gets any more complicated than that, even if youre appreciating a symphony instead of a salad. The essence of the art of

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appreciation is in its simplicity and sincerity. Although our interchange was completely spontaneous and unrehearsed, it was based on a conscious choice we made over twenty years ago. In the early days of our relationship we decided to re-write many of the scripts wed witnessed in our childhoods. In reviewing the thousands of interactions wed witnessed, meals cooked, buttons sewed, school plays attended, we couldnt remember very many instances in which anyone had simply and sincerely appreciated another person. We decided to change all that. We made a decision to base our relationship on the ongoing flow of spoken appreciation. First, we set ourselves the assignment of giving one appreciation an hour to each other whenever we were in each others presence. It took us months to get to the point at which we were reliably getting our assignment done each day. Eventually, though, appreciating each other out loud became effortless, just part of the flow of everyday life. Appreciating Is An Action You Take Appreciating is an active art which can be learned. You can begin to practice the art anywhere, in any relationship, regardless of the degree of intimacy. Most people live in an impoverished flow of appreciation, both given and received. With practice and a simple map, nearly anyone can move from poverty to abundance in a remarkably short period of time. When appreciating becomes abundant, a new degree of closeness emerges, bringing with it the ability to know the other persons thoughts telepathically and resonate with his or her emotions. There are very specific evolutionary reasons why men and women have difficulty giving and receiving appreciation. The reasons are radically different for men than for women. Our experience has been that when men and women understand those reasons, they are able to increase their ability to give and receive appreciation by a remarkable degree.

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There are also profound gender differences in how women and men like to be appreciated. These differences point to clear actions men and women can take to appreciate each other effectively. If you know those differences, you can make quantum enhancements in your ability to enjoy a flow of positive energy with others. Here is an example of a gender difference, based on our experiences of teaching the skills of appreciating to many men and women. In styles of communication, men tend to be digital and women tend to be analogic. To understand this difference, think of a digital watch and an old-fashioned analog watch. The digital watch clicks from one second to another in chunks; the analog watch flows from one second to another with the second-hand constantly in motion. Men and women operate like that, too. In short, men communicate in chunks and women communicate in flow. Why is this? The reason is rooted in the different roles men and women have had over the past hundred thousand years. The word civilization literally means living in cities. In terms of evolution, our civilized phase of the last few thousand years is a wink of the eye compared to the hundreds of thousands of years of the hunter-gatherer stage. During this period the human mind took the basic shape it still has today. In this period, men spent considerable time grouped in small bands in pursuit of animals. They learned to engage in long periods of silent observation. When they spoke, it was with terse, goal-directed utterances. They spent hours in silence--waiting, stalking, crouching, sneaking. This workingenvironment tended to favor stillness punctuated only with quick bits of goal-directed conversation leading to action. The evolutionary remnants of this pattern may be viewed in its most expensive and elaborate form on any Sunday during football season. A small band pursues a quarry, opposed by forces equally committed to going home victorious with the pigskin.

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Digital bits of terse speech--Hut-one, hut-two, hut-three--hurl them into action. All this is punctuated by grunts and cheered on by throngs of onlookers who are hungry to share the victory. In the hunter-gatherer era, women occupied a vitally different role, which led to a vital but different communication style. Back home at camp, it was to the evolutionary advantage of women to keep up a steady flow of active communication. An ongoing symphony of communication certainly helped to pass the hours, but more importantly, it frightened predators away from them and the children. This rich flow of communication also favored the development of subtler emotional nuances than men developed through their chunky style of communicating. The communication style of women became more than a means of spurring people into action. It was about keeping the flow of connection going. The Difference Makes a Difference Practically speaking, this difference makes a huge difference in how you appreciate a woman or man effectively. If you are a man, you will find it works best to speak your appreciation in a flowing manner with detailed references to subtler shades of the emotional palette. A brief digital chunk such as you look great or you smell good or Lets have sex does not often register positively with a woman. It works much better to say something more flowing and subtle, such as When I see the way your eyes match your scarf, I get that same warm feeling as twenty years ago when I first saw how beautiful your eyes are. If you are a woman, you can take advantage of the digital wiring of men by speaking shorter appreciations. You look great or You turn me on is the type of phrase that registers much more powerfully with men than with women. If you try to give a lengthy, detailed appreciation to a man, you will often be rewarded with glazed-over eyes. Men and women both place different values on the types of

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appreciation. For some men and many women, appreciation by touch is paramount. A caress or a hug means more than any spoken appreciation. For others, the spoken word is the preferred channel. Still others only feel richly appreciated through what we call gifts of assistance. A gift of assistance is when you discover that your mate has done a surprise load of laundry or taken your car for an oil change. Everybody needs to learn how to give and receive verbal appreciation. No matter whether youre a man, a woman or a child, you can always benefit from the skill of spoken appreciation. The good news is that its actually a very simple skill which can be learned fairly quickly, given the proper coaching. However, few of us have had any training in it and are therefore so grossly out of practice that we often fear taking the initial steps. Even the most rudimentary training in how to speak appreciations to others can have powerful, immediate benefits. We have taught the art of appreciating to thousands of people in seminars, and can attest that even resistant learners are able to pick up the art in a few hours. In an earlier (and considerably hungrier) stage of our careers we even took on the heroic task of a contract with the U.S. Army to teach relationship skills to a large number of their officers. Eventually, even the stiffest of the colonels and generals were delivering and receiving world-class appreciations (although the process of getting them to that point made us feel that every penny of our fee had been earned.) As we mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, the act of appreciating people causes them to let go of negative patterns of behavior much faster than criticizing them for those same behavior patterns. Specifically, skillfully appreciating an intimate partner decreases the things they do that bother you. We have data on over 400 cases in which a troublesome pattern of behavior (which had been resistant to criticism sometimes for decades) changed quickly when a rich flow of appreciation

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was initiated. The Relationship Pyramid Relationships are based on a pyramid of paradigms. At the bottom of the pyramid, the majority of relationships are based on a survival-paradigm. In that part of the world in which over a billion people live on a dollar a day, partners are focused on carrying out specific roles such as provider and protector and nurturer. If you dont stay within your role, your physical survival is at stake. In the middle level of the pyramid, a smaller number of people are fortunate to have relationships based on a fulfillment-paradigm. Partners are focused less on survival and more on fulfilling career goals, self-esteem goals, expression-of-potential goals. In the fulfillment paradigm, considerable energy is also directed toward solving problems and handling issues which emerge as the barriers to each partners fulfillment. At this level, couples can make great use of counseling and relationship seminars. If you think back to the very beginnings of your life, you can see that all of us rely on relationship for survival. From the moment of conception to For the first nine well after birth we cant survive without the other person.

months of life, our mothers are the biological matrix which holds us. For a long while after birth, other people hold the power over our survival. Our original relationships are imprinted on every breath we take, so its natural for us to carry the survival-programming of early life into our relationships as adults. The survival-thrust of relationship goes on for years, with the rules being very simple: Do whatever it takes to survive. In our adult relationships, though, we raise the bar, re-make the rules and change the game. We enter a new world, one which has not been in existence for very long. We turn our relationships into a quest for learning and fulfillment. We yearn to feel whole inside, and we know that

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relationships are the key to that wholeness. Here, a crucial thinking-error is often made: We think the other person is there to complete our lack of wholeness. If we feel an inner lack of wholeness, we look to other people to make us feel whole. In reality, our partners are there not to make us whole. Its up to us to make ourselves whole, just as its up to others to make themselves whole. Then, two whole people can enjoy a dance of intimacy as free spirits who are playing together out of choice. is bound to the other. At the top of the pyramid, a smaller number of relationships are discovering an exciting new paradigm. They are basing their relationships on a gratitude-paradigm in which the focus is not on problem-solving or fulfillment but on the art of appreciating. Partners are focused on the moment-by-moment celebration of the other person. In the gratitudeparadigm you also must survive and seek fulfillment, but your primary focus is on the art of appreciating. This new paradigm gives a spiritual dimension to appreciation. This dimension takes the art of appreciation beyond the practical value of enjoying more loving relationships. Learning how to give and receive appreciation is the same holy task as the larger process of opening to the flow of connection with the divine nature of the universe itself. To appreciate another person effectively, you must resonate with his or her essence--the core nature of that person at the most fundamental level of being. To receive an appreciation from another person you must undergo a benign ego-surrender and let yourself be touched on that same level of essence. Viewed from this perspective, the art of appreciating becomes a valid path for healing the breaches dividing us from ourselves, others and the universe. The alternative is not so graceful-more like one of those three-legged races where one of each partners legs

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The art of appreciation is best thought of as a practical daily spiritual practice. Its a spiritual practice that has immediate, observable results. People grow more beautiful through our appreciation of them. Many people do not realize that the act of appreciating enhances the value of the object of appreciation. They are in the grip of an upside-down thinking-error: They are waiting for the object to become more valuable before they begin to appreciate it. In the real world of human relationships, it works the other way around. You enhance the value of the other person by appreciating him or her. Each of us can choose, at any moment, to initiate the act of appreciating from within ourselves. This act results in an enhanced flow of appreciation in the relationship, which comes back around to make the initiator feel more appreciated. Here is a beautiful example of the spiritual practice of appreciation in action: My husband gave me the best gift I ever received. Even though wed been married many years when he gave it to me, and even though it cost no money whatsoever, it resonates through my life every day. The gift was a question. One day he asked me if he could have a half-hour of my time to do something special. Of course I said yes, and he led me to my favorite sitting-place by a window overlooking a park outside our apartment. Then, he brought in a pot of a Japanese green tea I like, and set up cups for us on a little table. After all this was arranged, he left and returned bearing an embroidered pillow with a little piece of paper of it, rolled up like a scroll. He ceremoniously placed the cushion before me and indicated I should open the scroll. Inside, in his own hand, hed written, How do you most like to be appreciated? What are some specific ways I can show you, every minute or every hour or every day, how much I appreciate you? I burst into tears, and he held my hand while I cried. This was so

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surprising and touching to me, especially considering his background. I dont think his father ever said Thank you to his mother during the entire time I knew them, so to receive this question from my husband meant to me that he had really broken free of his past. When I recovered, I did my best to tell him some things I thought of. I said Tell me simple things as you feel them or notice them. Tell me you liked something I made you for dinner, and tell me very specifically what you liked about it. Or when you tell me Im beautiful, which you often do, tell me more specifically what makes you think so. Give me details, details, details--I love details! He asked if he could try one right then and get my feedback. He closed his eyes and thought for a moment, then said, The soup you made last night? Im still thinking about how deliciously it was spiced. It had some little touch of something in it. I felt so nourished by it afterward. I felt another tear run down my cheek, recalling that at the last moment Id added a pinch of marjoram to the soup because I had a feeling it was something his body would enjoy and find nurturing. His mother kept an herb garden and often added little touches of fresh herbs to the food she made. I hadnt mentioned the marjoram and I doubt if he could have named the herb, anyway--but the moment he expressed the appreciation I knew that he had felt it. His body knew. Telempathy We coined a new word, telempathy, made from telepathy and empathy. Telempathy is a mysterious form of communication in which one heart and mind communicates with no spoken words to another heart and mind across time and space. Weve experienced it ourselves on a number of occasions, and have collected stories from other couples who have experienced telempathy. For us, the discovery of telempathy came originally as a happy surprise. Some years ago we came to a resolution about a money issue

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that had been troubling us. Each of us had been criticizing the other for spending too much money. The more we found fault with the other, the more faults we found. No matter how much we criticized, our money supply never seem to increase. After months of struggle, we finally broke through to a new realization. We saw that we both of us had inherited impoverished money scripts from the past. We decided to stop finding fault with the other person and put our energy into letting go of our old scripts and forming new ideas of how abundant we could be. Everything changed overnight--it was if a breath of fresh air entered our relationship. But then the real magic happened. We were enjoying a period of greater closeness than we had since the issue had emerged. One Sunday morning we spontaneously began to express a number of simple appreciations to each other, such as I really appreciate how you listen to Chris--Ive really learned from watching how you do that. The act of appreciating each other brought us even closer. Sunday was a day on which Kathlyn often made something special for brunch. Gay tells the story: Kathlyn asked me if Id like one of my usual favorites like waffles or pancakes. I tuned in to my body and realized I wanted something lighter, so thats what I told her. She went off into the kitchen and looked through recipe books for a little while. She returned and said Im going to try something new. Suddenly a voice in my mind--not my voice nor Kathlyns--said popovers. I blurted out, popovers, and Kathlyns jaw dropped in astonishment. How did you know that? she asked. I said, I dont know...I just knew. The experience was all the more strange because I had no clear idea of what a popover actually was. Id heard the word before and may have tasted them at some point in my life, but just how those popovers popped over into my mind Ill never know.

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We didnt think much more about the experience until a few days later when something similar happened, then another and another. We first thought there was something different about the way we had resolved the money argument. Perhaps wed done something new that had opened up a level of resonance in us in which psychic events were more likely to occur. Later it occurred to us that it may have been the expressing of appreciations to each other that turned on the flow of connection. A subsequent experience seemed to confirm the appreciation theory. It happened on a quiet Sunday afternoon in Colorado. Gay: I was on the floor, doing some gentle yoga-stretches and deep-breathing activities, when I started thinking about my teenage daughter, Amanda, who was away at school in Maine. We hadnt been communicating very well, either in person or on the phone, with both of us being quick to snap at each other. I had chalked it up to typical teenage obnoxiousness--in other words, I had been giving her all the responsibility for the problem. Suddenly the idea occurred to me that I might have something to do with the problem. First, I had a good humble chuckle at how long it had taken me--even after many years as a psychotherapist--to hatch this Psych 101 insight. Then, I took ownership of the problem and the anger, giving one hundred percent of it to me and one hundred percent to her. Because two people were involved there was two hundred percent at stake; however, Id been giving her the whole two hundred. As I did this I was flooded with a series of insights about how I was transferring anger to her that didnt belong to her at all. Some of her actions reminded me so much of her mother that I was unconsciously dumping old anger onto my daughter that was left over from fifteen years before--things Id apparently never dealt with from the early days of my marriage. I felt a smile break out on my face as a feeling of relief spread through my body. I had a clear, joyful moment of seeing and appreciating my daughter for being who she was as an individual, free of

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distortions caused by my old anger-colored perceptions of her. At that very moment the phone rang--it was my daughter, calling from Maine. Without even saying hello she said, Whats up? She told me shed been studying when suddenly she got the feeling she had to call Dad. I told her about all my feelings and insights of the past few minutes, and she followed by sharing some issues of her own that had been getting in the way. The gates opened and a flow of fresh good feeling surged through our relationship. These sorts of events started happening with greater frequency. Ultimately we came to a much more comprehensive conclusion: We are all a great deal more telepathic and empathic than we probably imagine. In fact, telepathy and empathy, the deep resonance of the mind and heart, are our natural states of consciousness. We receive this level of resonance free, as our birthright. Later, the stresses of life produce noise which obscures our natural telepathy and empathy. We turn off our natural tel-empathy in order to survive in the often confusing and frequently hostile world of growing up. It is often too painful to know the thoughts and feel the feelings of those around us in childhood. So we allow those subtle powers to recede into the background, camouflaged by the noise of social chatter, lifes routine busy-ness and the compelling images beamed at us by advertising and the media. Here is a beautiful example of telempathy, written by the gifted author Thom Elkjer, which made us both weep when we first read it. It appears in an anthology of travellers tales called The Road Within, and is reprinted here by permission of the author: ...I was in Barcelona, thousands of miles away from the small town in California where my wife was probably sleeping. We had moved away from the city a few weeks earlier, to recover from twin blows: first a miscarriage, then cancer. It appeared now we would never have children of our own. I also sensed a growing gulf between us,

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which no amount of loving words of physical tenderness seemed to bridge. It was hard to be away from her, but I had to admit, a relief... {On the subway back to the hotel he saw}...an open-faced, curious child in soft, little-girl colors. She was three or four years old, steady on her feet except when she was looking up, as she was now, at me. Her mother struggled with a clutch of parcels and shopping bags. I smiled at her briefly but she was too harried to return it. Instead, she spoke sharply to her daughter to stay close. I had been preparing to pat the girls pig-tailed head, but I slipped my hand back into my pocket. ...We passed Grecia and St. Gervasi stations...and all the while I was thinking, this is the child I want. She merrily explored the train without getting in others way, she kissed her mother impulsively (the only time I saw the woman smile), and chatted amiably with someone, perhaps a cat or dog, that only she could see. Once she looked up at me and smiled. A delightful child. After the doors of the car closed at Muntaner station, the woman began to gather her parcels and make sure her daughter had her mittens. I realized they were getting off a Bonanova, a station before me, and thought briefly about getting off with them. I didnt really intend to steal the girl, but I wasnt prepared to lose her so soon, either. Then I remembered my wife, back home in bed. I didnt want to miss her before she left for work. I had to get back to the hotel to make the call. The train stopped and the doors opened. The woman quickly zipped up her daughters coat and took her hand to walk her off the train. But as they came to the open doorway, just next to me, the little girl pulled her hand free so she could prove to her mother that she could step across the gap herself. Her mother say no and snatched at the girls hand. Instead she got the sleeve of her daughters coat, just as the girl began to step out of the train.

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Looking down, I saw her hands disappear into the sleeves of her coat as her mother pulled it upward. The girls foot did not reach the platform. The bell rang to announce that the doors were about to close....I realized that the little girl was sliding out her coat, through the gap, and down into the tracks beneath the departing train. Her mother dropped her parcels and yanked harder on the pink hooded jacket, but it was too late for that. I was already on the floor of the car, thrusting my arm down through the gap, aiming for the area beneath the girls coat. I felt skin, grabbed hard, and managed to get hold of the girls wrist. She was so light it took just one long pull to bring her out from beneath the train and into the air. The woman snatched her daughter from my one-handed grip the instant before the door closed. Now I was on the train, the mother and daughter on the platform. The train pulled away. Looking back, I saw the woman convulsively clutching her daughter to her chest and stroking her hair... My heart was still beating high in my chest when I got to my room at the hotel...I had gotten the girl in my hand all right, but only for a second or two. I would not take her home. She would not knit my marriage back together. Hot tears welled up and spilled out of my eyes. I was wiping them away when the phone rang. I mumbled a greeting. Oh, thank God, my wife moaned, and then she was crying, too. I pulled myself together and asked her what was wrong. She told me she had just woken from a terrifying dream in which I was trapped by my coat beneath the wheels of a train that was about to leave the station. A little girl had pushed me off that platform and I was lying there, unable to get up. She had woken herself so she would not see me die. At that point she began to cry all over again. I was too stunned to reply. Instead I forced myself to listen. She was apologizing for pushing me away after the miscarriage and her cancer. She was so afraid I would leave

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her, she said, that she was unconsciously trying to get it over with. But now she knew she didnt want me to leave. She wanted me to come home. When I could speak, I told her what had happened to me in the train. Now it was her turn to be speechless. For a long time we were silent...When we began speaking again it was to promise I would come home soon, that she would be waiting, and that we would begin again. ...Five years after that day in Barcelona, I can still see that girl in my minds eye. Shes eight or nine now, her hair is longer, and she looks more like her mother. I see her running toward me...her arms swept behind her as if they are wings and she is flying high over Cataluna. Indeed she has been mine since the day I met her, the day I learned there is no separation in love, no distance in the human heart. Our experience has shown us that Thom is right: There is no such thing as distance. We are all deeply connected to those we love at all times. However, the trials of life and the problems of love shift us out of the state of consciousness in which we can feel the essential flow of connection. When we become locked into the problem-level, we tend to forget about the connection-level where telempathy resides. Einstein pointed out that it is not possible to solve a problem in the same state of consciousness in which the problem was created. We need ways to shift to out of the state of consciousness where trials and problems reside, ways of coming back home to the rich flow of organic connection that is our natural birthright. Appreciating is the best way weve found. Practicing The Art In the art of appreciation, simple is good. The best appreciations usually take less than ten seconds. A simple touch on the arm of one you love can communicate more richness than a bushel of pearls and diamonds. Well give you our favorite tips on how to appreciate, based on what has proved most effective in our seminars and private sessions.

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How To Speak Your Appreciations In our work we focus on spoken appreciations. Although other types of appreciations such as touch and presents have their place, its the act of giving each other verbal appreciation that really makes a difference in intimate relationships. Spoken appreciations need to be fresh, clear and from the heart. By fresh we mean that they need to be based on immediate sensory experience. By clear we mean that the appreciation is easy for the receiver to understand. (By the way, the tips we give you here are based on what has worked best with real couples. They are not based on a theory of appreciation were trying to promote.) In our seminars we teach an easy way to make sure your appreciations are simple: Keep them to one out-breath. We find that your appreciation is much more likely to be received if you can say it in one breath. One breath is plenty if your appreciation is clear and from the heart. Heres an example: Him: I really appreciate how good that spicy perfume youre wearing today smells on you. Her: I appreciate how you can be strong and gentle at the same time. Tips and Hints On How To Appreciate Men and Women One tip wed like to give mainly to men: Careful not to express appreciation only when you want sex. Men have a bad reputation for only getting tender when they want to getwell, intimate. Weve probably heard several hundred women say something like He only says I love you and hugs me if he wants to go to bed. Be sure to express appreciations at various times of the day and nightnot just when youre looking for a particular outcome. A hint for giving appreciations to men: Express shorter appreciations. As we mentioned earlier, men have a long history of one-syllable

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communications that are charged with meaning. Their eyes light up when their partners say things to them like You look great and Mmmm, youre sexy today. Their eyes glaze over when they hear things like I was just thinking of that time on the beach in Malibu when you had that grey cardigan sweater on and you looked so handsome. Women enjoy being appreciated with rich nuance and plenty of detail. A communication like You smell goodlets go to bed can really move a man. However, it might inspire a woman to move out! Instead, say Theres a place on your neck that smells heavenlyhere, Ill show you exactly where. I wish you could smell it yourself, but Ill try to describe it Both men and women enjoy being appreciated through gifts of assistance, but women seem particularly to thrive on them. If you want to appreciate a woman, be sure to look for little things you could do to make their lives easier and better. If in doubt about what you might offer as a gift of assistance, just ask. Id like to do something that makes your life better and easier. Could you think of something I could do today to express my appreciation for you? Get in the habit of asking questions like that and your relationship will blossom. Weve kept a running tally of the kinds of complaints men and women have about each other. Women often complain that men are uncommunicative, out of touch with feelings, messy and more concerned with sex than emotional intimacy. Men complain that women are critical, stingy with sex, hormonally moody and too demanding about emotional intimacy. Both genders complain that the other is obsessed with being right and doesnt listen. Since this debate doesnt seem to be producing any positive results, we suggest that couples simply drop it. Instead, put your attention on appreciating rather than trying to improve the other person through criticism and complaint.

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Instead of complaining about mens tendency to be uncommunicative, lets appreciate the good side of that tendency: I appreciate you for the way you teach me the value of silence. Instead of complaining about a womans emotionality or hormonal shifts, appreciate her by saying, I appreciate you for jolting me out of my rigid, overly-logical way of thinking. Instead of trying to improve a man by criticizing his need to be right, appreciate him for his steadfast loyalty for his point-of-view. Rather than complaining to a woman for keeping you waiting while she dresses for a party, appreciate her for her attention to details and her concern for aesthetics. What To Appreciate Once you open the gateway to appreciating, youll find many new and wonderful things to notice and celebrate. Here are some of the best ones weve found in the couples weve worked with. Essence-Qualities. Tune in to your partners singular gifts, unique strengths and creative aspects. For example, Gay said to Kathlyn not long ago, I really appreciate how sensitive you are to the needs and feelings of people around you. This is an essence-quality of hers: If it were missing she wouldnt be who she is. All of us have areas of uniqueness, most of which go uncelebrated throughout our lives. It only takes a few seconds to tune in to the singular, special qualities of your partner and a few seconds more to say an appreciative word about those qualities. Those few seconds, though, can erase a huge number of relationship problems. Helpful actions. Think for a moment about someone you love. What are some of the things he or she does that makes life better for you or others? Most of us get roundly and frequently criticized for the unhelpful actions we take, but are not so well-celebrated for the times we perform

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useful or helpful acts. Lets change all that by putting our attention on the positive. Qualities of body and mind. What do you appreciate about your partners looks? Whats striking about the way his or her mind works? Does he or she dress a certain way that appeals to you. Does he or she think a certain way that you appreciate? Qualities of body and mind are rich sources of things to appreciate. Daily reliabilities and initiatives. Most of us have things we do regularly that people rely on. Most of us initiate certain things without having to be reminded of it. For example, around our house Gay handles the daily trek out to the trash bins while Kathlyn takes care of the flowers. Week in and week out, our house is full of beautiful flowers and never full of trash. Until recently, though, we were so in the rut of that routine that we didnt think to appreciate the other person for what they did so reliably. Since then weve been more careful to notice and say things like, Thank you for making the house look and smell so good by taking care of the flowers. Accomplishments and opportunities. Think for a moment of how you and your loved ones show up in the world. What have been your accomplishments, both large and small? Most people are quite skilled at singling out the failures and missed opportunities of ourselves and others. So, we probably dont need much more practice in that area. However, most of us do need practice in singling out the accomplishments of ourselves and others, as well as the opportunities weve provided for each other. Relationship and spiritual connections. Tune in to your partners relationships with others. Also, tune in to his or her relationship to the cosmos, to the earth, to the spiritual elements of life. Are there things about those relationships that you admire and have learned from? If so, be sure to speak about those things clearly and often. Learning opportunities. Most of us have learned things of great value

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from our partnersthings we otherwise might never have learned. Sometimes, though, those learnings were accompanied by pain, so that we fail to appreciate the person for bringing us those learnings. Take a moment now and then to think back through the ups and downs of your relationship. What were some of the most powerful learnings youve received from that relationship? Step aside from the pain of those events for a moment and ask yourself: What did I learn that I seemingly was not able to learn until that moment? Express those learnings in the form of appreciations to your partner.

YOUR ACTION PLAN COMMITMENT: I commit to a quantum positive shift in giving and receiving appreciation. YOUR ONGOING PRACTICE: Imagine your partner as an evolving work of art. Picture or feel yourself walking into one of the finest museums in the world and finding your partner featured in the lobby, light streaming through the skylight to reveal some new aspect that you hadnt noticed before. Take a moment to be sensitively aware of your partners unfolding essence and to appreciate them for being in your life. YOUR TEN-SECOND TECHNIQUE: First, change your body position in some way that allows you to see a new aspect of your partner. For example, soften your eyes, move to the side

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or back or your partner, or open your posture. Then, express your appreciation in one out breath by completing the following sentence: I appreciate you for ____________. Examples: I appreciate you for remembering to call from work and check in. I appreciate you for the loving way you parent the boys. I appreciate you for taking to time to dress creatively. I appreciate you for listening to my feelings without trying to fix me. Listener, your job is to complete this sentence: I hear that you appreciate me for _____________. Practicing this sentence gives you a chance to really receive the appreciation and to listen free of interpretations or deflections.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE MONTHS MENU OF APPRECIATION Living your life from an intention to appreciate is a new and somewhat strange idea for many people. Many of us have lived our lives in a context of criticism and judgment, so that suddenly switching to a context of appreciation feels like setting off on a journey with no map. For this reason wed like to offer you a map for the journeya months menu of appreciations to get you started on the right path. A MONTHS MENU OF APPRECIATION The sentences that appear in bold are appreciations that the Giver expresses verbally. Youll also find some types of appreciation activities that are non-verbal. If your Receiver is open to suggestions, ask him/her take two full, relaxed breaths after receiving an appreciation and say a simple thank you. Day One: Well begin by opening the flow of appreciation and generating appreciation for your partners being or essence, apart from anything s/he does. Giver, some time during the day, make eye contact with your partner and say: I appreciate you for being in my life. Receiver, practice taking two full, relaxed breaths and saying thank you.

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Day Two: One unique quality you have that I appreciate is ___________. (their warmth, the quality of their laugh, their commitment to excellence, etc.) Day Three: I appreciate your skill in ____________. (e.g., carpentry, writing, weaving, singing) Day Four: I appreciate your body and especially your ___________. (calves, belly, breasts, butt) Day Five: One aspect of your voice I really appreciate is ___________. (e.g., tone, resonance, melody, warmth). Day Six: I appreciate the way youve helped me to grow by __________. (e.g., telling the truth even about difficult things, sharing feelings at a deep level, shifting out of conflicts easily).

Day Seven: Something that I really appreciate that you do without drawing any attention to it is ___________. (putting the toilet seat down, emptying the trash, putting the clean clothes away, checking the kids homework)

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Day Eight: Today, appreciate something about your partners essence verbally to another person. One thing I really appreciate about _______ is __________. (e.g., sensitivity, expressiveness, sense of humor) Day Nine: Put a card under your partners pillow, filling in the following sentence. Im falling in love with your _________ all over again. Day Ten: One thing you do I appreciate, that Ive sometimes taken for granted, is ________. (e.g., having doors opened for you, finding your favorite foods in ample supply in the refrigerator) Day Eleven: Something about the way you see the world that I appreciate is _________. (e.g., they really like bright color, enjoy plants, see the potential in people) Day Twelve: I appreciate the value you place on __________. (e.g., staying connected with friends, keeping your space uncluttered, putting creativity first in your day) Day Thirteen: Make and hang a banner to greet your partner coming home that completes

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the following sentence: I appreciate the way you create beauty in our lives by _______. (planting bulbs, choosing utensils that feel good, recycling) Day Fourteen: This is an opportunity to appreciate something about your partner that s/he has a hard time appreciating, such as a body part, an old habit, a belief about his or her potential or worth. I appreciate your _______ and am creating the space for you to appreciate it too. (e.g.,thighs, productivity, belief that youre not good enough) Day Fifteen: Today take five or ten minutes to sit back to back with your partner and lean against each other as you feel the movement of your breath through your backs. With each out-breath, send appreciation telepathically to your partner for just being. Day Sixteen: One thing I appreciate about your mind is ___________. (e.g., how quickly you solve problems, your grasp of the details that usually escape me, your pipeline to the big picture) Day Seventeen: I appreciate that your creativity has generated __________. (e.g., the worlds best split pea soup, a new set of bookcases for the boys, opportunities for us to work with new companies) Day Eighteen:

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Send a singing telegram (or inscribed balloon message) that completes the following sentence: I appreciate how much youve taught me about __________. (e.g., loving, the power of integrity, how to play, the value of telling the truth) Day Nineteen: Today youll focus on the rear view of your partner as s/he moves around and appreciate something that s/he cant usually see. As I watch your back Im appreciating ________. (e.g., the way your hair waves at the nape of your neck, your butt, the line of the back of your knees). Day Twenty: One thing I really appreciate about your sexuality is ________. (e.g., how readily your get an erection, the sensitivity of your touch, the way you dress that shows off your curves) Day Twenty-One: Sit with your partner and exchange these phrases two or three times. Appreciate an essence quality of your partner, something that first attracted you. I (your name), appreciate you (his or her name) for ________. I hear that you (his or her name) appreciate me (your name) for ______. E.G.: I, Katie, appreciate you, Gay, for your vast vision of possibility. I hear that you, Katie, appreciate me, Gay, for my vast vision of possibility.

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Day Twenty-Two: In your interactions with others, I really appreciate the way you _______. (e.g., listen closely, draw out what people really want, are so patient) Day Twenty-Three: One of your spiritual qualities that I really appreciate is _______. (e.g., your ability to be still inside, your lovingkindness, your curiosity about life) Day Twenty-Four: Let yourself focus today on seeing new things about your partner to appreciate. One way to do this is literally to look at your partner in new ways, such as relaxing your eyes in your head, looking around your partners body rather than directly at them, or holding your body in different positions to watch your partner. Sometime during the day, give your partner a verbal appreciation that has emerged from your new perspective. One new thing Im noticing to appreciate about you is ______. (e.g., the shimmer of your hair, the solidness of your walk, the way light seems to surround you) Day Twenty-Five: I appreciate all your feelings, your anger, your sadness, your fear, your sexual feelings, and your joy. Day Twenty-Six: One way in which youve grown that I appreciate is _________. (e.g., listening to my feelings, making time to relax and take care of yourself, learning to speak Spanish)

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Day Twenty-Seven: Spend a few minutes interviewing your partner today about the ways he or she likes to be appreciated most. Consciously give a customized appreciation before the end of the day. (e.g., appreciation with a special touch or with eye contact, appreciating your partner in the presence of other people) Day Twenty-Eight: Spend some time today appreciating yourself. Give some sensitive awareness especially to aspects of yourself that in the past youve had trouble appreciating. Some time during the day, tell your partner one thing you appreciated. Today, I generated appreciation for my ______. (e.g., baldness, my poor memory, my control tendencies) Day Twenty-Nine: Several times today, think of your partner and send a benign flow of attention in his/her direction. Day Thirty: Im grateful to know you. Day Thirty-One: Im willing to have our relationship grow in value effortlessly.

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APPENDIX 1 IN-DEPTH COUPLES INTERVIEW: THE FIVE SECRETS AT WORK

Here is an interview Kathlyn conducted with a couple with whom she had worked on several occasions. Because the couple lives in Europe, Kathlyn only saw them once or twice a year when she went to Europe for lectures and seminars. We chose this interview because it shows what is possible when two people practice the principles in LASTING LOVE over time.
Kathlyn: If you were to sum up everything thats happened over the past three years into one sentence, what would it be? Max: Everything is possible if you make a commitment. Kay: You have no idea how fast you can make miracles happen, even if you start out with great pain. Kathlyn: Tell us how it all started. Kay: I had decided that I was going to break up with Max. The pain was too great. We had been separated for two years, and things had been bad for so long that I did not feel I could stand it anymore. Max: One day I had a big realization, that I finally was ready to make a commitment for the first time in my life. I wrote a long letter to Kay about my commitment and I was so excited! Kay: And I wrote back and said, Dear Max: No. That was my

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entire letter. Max: When I got the letter I was confused, but then I said to myself, I am committed to the relationship. How she feels is outside my control. But for me, I am totally committed. I just went on living my life, feeling my commitment. I committed myself to learning everything I could about relationships. That is when I came to your seminar. I then realized exactly what kind of relationship I had always wanted: Honest, integrity, both people working on their own creativity. Kay: At first I thought all of his commitments were just words I could not believe him. Then, I saw Max doing all these things to learn about relationships. Finally one day he said he wanted to ask me the key question, the hard question. He looked me in the eye and asked, Is there any love left in your heart for me? At first I could not answer it, then after a few days he asked me again. I said No. I actually turned and started to walk away. He then said, Do you think we have really tried as hard as we possibly can? He then told me about actions he was taking: Quitting his job, moving closer to me, finally making a total commitment to me. That was the starting point for me. At that moment I began to consider again whether I wanted to make such a commitment to him. Then he said, I really want to share my life with you. I want you. There was something about those wordsthey rang true for me. Max: I had taken action to support my commitment. I quit my job and applied for another one near where Kay lived. I did not have

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the job yet, but I needed to make that action step. I believe this made Kay very curious. She saw me step off into the unknown, no job, no home. Only to be close to her. Kay: Now it becomes very magical. After I saw these actions I too became committed. Two weeks after that, Max received message that his elderly uncle wanted to see him. Max: He lived in a beautiful villa in the region where Kay lived and worked. I had no idea what he wanted to talk to me about, but when I visited him, he asked me if I wanted his villa so he could enter a nursing home. All he wanted was my promise that I would take care of it well. I was stunned. Two weeks before I had given up my home to move to a new place. And now I was being given a villa of a wealthy man! Now all I needed was a job. Kay: We had many discussions, and finally decided to renovate the first floor of the villa and turn it into offices where we could work together (they are both physicians.) Max: Now I have my home and my job. All I need is to convince her to marry me. So I took her to our favorite restaurant. I took her hands and said, I would like to marry you. She cried but did not say Yes or No. I was confused. Kay: I wanted to say Yes but I also felt much anger come up

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inside me about money issues and other things we had not worked out. I needed to speak honestly about those things, and when I did, suddenly my whole body said from deep inside, Yes. I then told Max that I would marry him. Kathlyn: Kay, it sounds like you needed to be emotionally transparent about your anger before you could discover whether you really wanted to marry Max. Kay: Yes, and perhaps you remember that in my first session with you, Kathlyn, I said that one of my biggest fears was being angry. Now, I have learned to just let myself be angry if Im angry. Its not a fear anymore. Max: Something else has happened that seems very big. A while back I made a decision that my first priority would become my relationship with Kay, not my work. Always I had been committed to work first, relationships later if I had time. Since I made that decision everything has changed in a way I would never have suspected. Our income has gone up and up, even though we are working less. Suddenly theres more time for everything! At the same time I started an appreciation project with Kay. I didnt tell her what I was doing, though. I began saying one or two very clear appreciations every day, like I appreciate you for making breakfast or Thank you for getting up this morning and walking the dog.

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Kay: At first I could not understand what he was doing. Who is this crazy guy? Kathlyn: And did you begin doing the same thing after a while? Kay: It was a long time, maybe six months, but suddenly one day I found myself saying the same kinds of appreciations to Max. This shows Maxs genius at work: His persistence. Without it we would not be married, we would not have the baby, we would not have this magnificent life.

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APPENDIX 2 TEN POWERFUL ACTIVITIES FROM OUR SEMINARS

1. THE YES BREATH 2. RENEW YOUR COMMITMENT 3. UTILIZING THE POWER OF COMMITMENT 4. COMMUNICATING CLEARLY ABOUT EMOTIONS 5. BLAME TALK VS. CONSCIOUS HEART TALK 6. THE BLAME ELIMINATOR PROCESS 7. THE ART OF THE TOSS 8. MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR UPPER LIMITS PATTERNS

9. DISCOVERING AND EXPRESSING YOUR CREATIVE GENIUS

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10.

APPRECIATION EXPLORATION

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LASTING LOVE DAY TO DAY In this section you can learn to put Lasting Love to work in your daily interactions. Each of these activities has been tested, reformulated and re-tested in the kitchen of our own relationship. We have refined the instructions as well as with the thousands of students, professionals and couples who have shared their journeys with us. So we know that these activities can create practical magic for you and your partners ifif you do them. Some activities include journal writing, some are primarily interactive, while others can be done individually as well as with a partner. We recommend a playful and generous attitude with yourself and your partner as you embark on the journey of whole-body learning. Consider it a new language, let yourself be awkward and progress in fits and starts. Please put off giving yourself a grade for several months while you experiment and increase your lasting love vocabulary.

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1. THE YES BREATH One shift in your bodymind can get you unstuck faster than anything else we know. We call this move the Yes Breath because this way of breathing harmonizes your bodys physical yes response, nodding, with your emotions and thoughts. You can use the Yes Breath to solve problems, rekindle intimacy with loved ones and open a whole-body yes to more creativity and aliveness. The Yes Breath also solves the central human dilemma: how can I increase my ability to give and receive more love and appreciation? In our seminars we call this The One Problem, and when people start looking at their individual problems as an upper limit to their current capacity for love, they see the power of having a skill that simultaneously takes the brakes off and opens possibilities. The directions follow.

The Basic Yes Breath

Sit comfortably upright. If you are sitting on a chair, come forward so you have space for your back to move without touching the chair. Some people enjoy learning the Yes Breath sitting on large balls. Take a moment to find the bones at the bottom of your pelvis, the sitbones, and to center yourself on them. You might rock back and forth over them to find the centered place. Most people also find it very helpful to have their legs comfortably apart from each other rather than tightly held together. A comfortable distance gives you a
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solid base on which to easily learn the Yes Breath. Gently arch and flatten the small of the back, rolling forward and back on the sit-bones. Imagine that your pelvis holds a shallow bowl of water, and as you roll forward the water gently sloshes over the front of the bowl. As you roll backward, the water spills over the back rim. The Yes Breath is designed to work best in your comfort zone. If you experience any discomfort, use that as a signal that you are working too hard. Rather than struggling with life and your relationships, the Yes Breath can teach you how to open ease and flow. When you have found an easy, slow rhythm for arching and flattening your lower back, begin to include the rest of your spine and head. When you roll forward over the sit-bones and arch your back, look up slightly, just above the horizon. When you roll backward flattening your back, let your head look down, rounding your whole torso. Stay in your comfort zone and let the movement be very gentle and easy. Next, add your breathing to the movement. Breathing in and out through your nostrils, notice that the arching of your back invites your in-breath. The rounding of your back gently expels your outbreath like an accordion. Go ahead and cooperate with the Yes Breath, letting the arching draw a deep breath into your belly, and the rounding release your out-breath. Let the top of the in-breath roll right over into the out-breath in a connected way. If you feel like pausing, let your pause come at the bottom of the out-breath. Practice this complete yes Breath for a minute or two.

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Now take a moment to rest and notice any shifts in your level of vitality and ease in your body.

Enhancing the Yes Breath

You may practice just the basic Yes Breath and experience more ease and harmony in you and in your partnerships. If you want to enhance the practice, the following variations can be added. While doing the fundamental Yes Breath, alternate between folding your arms over your chest as far as you like, as if embracing and bringing someone close to you, then opening your arms as wide as you like, as if letting the person go. Embrace as you round and breathe out, and release as you arch and breathe in easily and deeply. You can also think of breathing in and opening to your full experience as you open your arms out, and breathing out while embracing yourself in this moment. Continue with this practice for a minute or so. Then, gently reach upward as far as you can comfortably on one side and then the other, as if reaching to pick a delicious fruit just out of range. Harmonize this movement with the Yes Breath by gently arching and reaching, then rounding and releasing. Imagine reaching for your full potential, while enjoying the process of reaching for it. Stay in your comfort zone while giving yourself a full stretch with each reach. Reach so that you can feel it down the side of your body into your hip joint. Take several rounds of reaching and releasing to find an easeful dance between movement and breath.
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Rest for a moment. Next, reach and stretch across your body with one arm, then come back to center. Then reach and stretch across with the other arm. Gently arch with your in breath and reach, round and gather with your out breath. Reach out in a slightly different direction each time, always crossing the mid-line of your body then coming back to center before reaching across with the other arm. Rest and notice any shifts in your vitality. Now, have dessert. Create new connections by playing with moving your joints. Move each of your joints pleasurably in a new way each time. Invent new ways of moving your ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, wrists and neck for the next minute or two. Let your movements surprise you. If you find yourself repeating a movement, invent something new. Move two or three joints simultaneously in new ways, as if they were playing a game with each other.

Application of the Yes Breath

1.

Think of a recurring relationship problem, something that has repeated three or more times. Remember it vividly and then notice the level of vitality in your body. Then do the Yes Breath until you experience an increase in ease and flow in your body. Continuing with the Yes Breath, bring the issue into your mind again. Breathe and consider the problem at the same time, noticing what happens.
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2.

If you and your partner get stuck in a discussion, bring creative joint play into your interaction. That is, continue talking while moving your joints in new and pleasurable ways. Most people find this combination gets them unstuck very quickly.

3.

Practice several minutes of Yes Breath before having sex to enhance your connection and pleasure. Continue the Yes Breath if you want to experience the most intimacy.

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2. RENEW YOUR COMMITMENT Exploration: Read through the following commitments and check the one that you would like to incorporate more deeply into your life and relationships right now. ___ I commit to knowing myself authentically and completely. I commit to regarding every interaction as a learning opportunity. I commit to letting go of any of my defensive postures that inhibit rapid learning. ___ I commit to expressing myself authentically, and to being an opening in which others can express themselves authentically. ___ I commit to the masterful practice of integrity, including acknowledging all key feelings, expressing the unarguable truth and keeping my agreements. ___ I commit to taking full responsibility for my feelings and the circumstances of my life, and to being a catalyst for others taking full responsibility. Specifically, I take complete responsibility for my physical, emotional and psycho-spiritual wellbeing. ___ I commit to the full embrace and expression of my creativity, and

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to being a catalyst for the full expression of others creativity. ___ I commit to living in wonder. ___ I commit to living in essence while acting impeccably in the world. ___ I commit to ease and flow in all aspects of my life. Say the sentence you chose out loud while moving your wrists and elbows playfully until you feel in harmony with the chosen commitment in your bodymind. Then take a few relaxed, easy breaths.

Action Step: Write this commitment on each page of your personal daily schedule for the next week.

Question for Reflection:

What am I doing in the gap between the opportunity to

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commit and committing?

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3. UTILIZING THE POWER OF COMMITMENT

The fastest way to reclaim your power is naming and claiming an unconscious commitment. For example, based on the result Tom can see, being 50 pounds overweight, hes committed to being overweight. By naming the commitment consciously, you reclaim the power from the old pattern and break free to make new choices and take new actions 1. Identify an area of relationship conflict or a relationship issue that has recycled in your life. 2. Study the issue to identify the result you are currently creating. Complete the following sentence: The result Im producing is _________. Examples: ______ working hard and not seeing my family ______ worrying about money ______ fighting about chores ______ getting criticized a lot 3. The result youre producing will reveal your unconscious commitment. Complete this sentence with your phrase and say it out loud until you experience resonance with the sentence.

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 Today is ______ and Im committed to ____________. Example: Today is Friday and Im committed to worrying about money. 4. Repeat this phrase with any part of the Yes Breath until you create a shift into more whole-body harmony and vitality. Note that at first you might stop breathing, forget the sentence, or experience all kinds of body sensations. Let yourself gently come back to the breath and let the breath iron out these glitches so you can reclaim the creativity glued to this unconscious commitment. 5. Now create a conscious commitment that expresses what you really want with this area of your life. First, complete this sentence several times on paper and/or out loud: What I REALLY want is __________. Then, complete the following sentence with what you really want and say it out loud until you experience whole-body harmony with your new conscious commitment. You may be surprised to find you have more hiccups with this step than with stating your unconscious commitment. You are creating a new future, so give your whole body time to shift in a friendly way. I commit to ___________.

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Examples: I commit to seeing you as my ally. I commit to having plenty of money to do whatever I want and need to do. I commit to creating an easy balance between work and home.

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4. COMMUNICATING CLEARLY ABOUT EMOTIONS

The following communication activity can be done alone or with your partner. Either way, it is valuable practice for the lifelong skill of communicating your emotions clearly 1. Think of a recent relationship issue, or a conflict that has recurred. For the next two minutes, write in an unedited way about your thoughts, feelings and perceptions of this issue. (If you get stuck, switch to your non-dominant hand, and dont worry if the words are legible or grammatically correct). ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________

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________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ ____________________________________ 2. Now take a moment to focus your awareness on your specific body sensations. Refer to the body map and the checklist to help clarify your current experience. Check the sensations that feel closest to your body sensations.

Checklist: Back of neck, across shoulders, jaw:

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___ Tight ___ Bunched ___ Cord-like ___ Compressed

___ Twisted ___ Dense ___ Clenched ___ Blocky

___ Pulling ___ Hot ___ Steely ___ Poking

Across high chest and upper throat: ___ Heavy ___ Closed in ___ Pressing ___ Constricted ___ Congested ___ Achy ___ Pulling down ___ Lumpy ___ Searing

Around the navel area: ___ racy, queasy ___ nauseous ___ thick ___ fluttering ___ held in ___ touch-tender ___ butterflies ___ buzzy ___ zig-zaggy

3. See if you have placed more checks in the across the shoulders/neck area, upper chest area, or navel area. Condense your issue into a short phrase (e.g., the trash, having kids, enough sex). If you chose the shoulders/neck area, fill in the following sentence with your phrase: I feel angry about ___________________________________. If you chose the upper chest area, fill in the following sentence with your phrase: I feel sad about _____________________________________.

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If you chose the navel area, fill in the following sentence with your phrase: I feel scared about __________________________________. 4. Say your complete sentence out loud three-four times emphasizing different words each time. (Note: if you are exploring this activity with a partner, exchange saying your sentences out loud. If you are doing this activity solo, say your sentence out loud to practice whole-body learning.) 5. Say your complete sentence out loud several times trying on different voice pitches and tones. 6. Say your complete sentence out loud several times breathing toward that feeling zone of the body and making gentle movement in the feeling zone, your shoulders, upper chest or stomach. 7. Take a moment to love yourself for feeling the way you do. Say to yourself or out loud: Today is _____ and I feel _____. Think of someone or something you love without question or condition and give yourself that same love for feeling the emotion you feel. Remember, letting yourself feel creates more flow and ease in you and in your relationships. Feeling any feeling opens the faucet to them all.

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5. BLAME TALK VS. CONSCIOUS HEART TALK

This activity is designed to do with a partner. The partner can be a friend or colleague, or your romantic partner. The first page of this activity has sentences in two columns. The left-hand column contains typical blame statements that we have heard from couples in coaching sessions. The right hand column gives examples of Conscious Heart talk, sentences that contain no blame and open intimacy.

You're not listening to me.

I wonder how I can

communicate effectively.

You're not understanding what Im saying.

I commit to communicating clearly.

You always criticize me.

I commit to seeing you as my ally.

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You don't do what you say you're going to do.

I want to find out how we can keep our agreements with each other.

I'm mad at you for leaving the toilet seat up/down... the toothpaste cap off. . . your clothes all over the floor.

I'm mad and what I'm focusing my anger on is these piles of clothes. It may be about something else I dont know

about yet.

Why are they doing this to me? How am I setting it up so this is happening?

How could he or she have treated me like that?

What do I need to learn from this?

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Why were you flirting all night at the party?

I got scared when I saw you talking in the corner.

You never talk to me about feelings.

I must be withholding some your

feelings from you. I notice Im focusing on your withholding.

You're spending too much money.

I'm feeling scared looking at these

bills. Im wondering how to generate enough money to pay for the things we buy.

You never touch me unless you want sex.

Im feeling hungry for more touch. I want to find a way for

us to have more non-sexual touch.

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First, each of you separately chooses your favorite blame sentence from the left-hand column. Take turns saying your sentence (they can be different sentences) out loud four or five times, emphasizing different words verbally and with your body. Pause and take a few breaths, noticing the racing sensations up the front of your body. We call this glee, the gotcha! experience that comes from drama and adrenaline. This is the only pay-off for engaging in the power struggle of whos right. So appreciate it, this is as good as it gets. Now, shift to the right-hand sentence directly opposite your chosen blame statement. Please use exactly the words on the page to speak to your partner. Say your sentence while moving your shoulder joints in some new ways youve never tried before. Repeat the sentence again, moving your fingers in some new ways. On the next repetition play with your voice, making creating different tones as if you were becoming different instruments in an orchestra. Keep sharing your right column sentence with each other until you experience a shift into more ease and flow. You can repeat this cycle with another sentence or two before tackling the next page. The blank lines are for you to write down in the left-hand column the blame

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sentences you hear or use. The blank lines on the right are for you to create Conscious Heart sentences of your own. Feel free to use the right-hand column of Conscious Heart Talk to jump-start your creative thinking. ___________ __________________ ___________ __________________ ___________ __________________ ___________ __________________ ___________ __________________ ___________ ___________________

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6. THE BLAME ELIMINATOR PROCESS INTRODUCTION

This process is the simplest, most user-friendly way we know to release the past and step into a future that you consciously choose. The process allows you to organically shift from blame to wonder by liberating the creative energy tied up in old complaints so that you can choose a new future. The power of using whole-body learning shifts places where you are stuck very quickly. We have also found that this process can be used with family and friends successfully over the phone. If you share this with another person, be sure to have them engage their whole body in the learning process. THE BLAME ELIMINATOR PROCESS:

1. Think of a repeating relationship issue that you havent been able to resolve. Stand in a room where you have some open floor space and complain out loud about this issue or problem for one whole minute. Use lots of gestures and emphasis with your voice and exaggerate your complaint dramatically. (We suggest exaggerating whats wrong first to release the energy bound up in trying to conceal or minimize the complaint. Weve found that after people say, No!

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emphatically, they feel much more free to find the organic Yes!) 2. Now, visually pick a place in the room that represents 100% responsibility for you. For example, this could be a square on the floor, or a pillow you step onto. When you are ready, physically take a step into 100% responsibility. All the Blame Eliminator steps are taken from within this area of100% responsibility. Note: If you find yourself wanting to complain again, step out of your 100% responsibility area and complain loudly some more. When you are ready, step back into 100% responsibility and continue the process. 3. From within 100% responsibility, let your body tell you which direction is the past. Turn and face the past directly. Then complete this sentence out loud four or five times with whatever first comes to your mind: From the past, this issue reminds me of ________________________________________. Note: If you say the sentence and no thought occurs to you, pause, take a breath and say the sentence again. After two or three repetitions, what we call priming the pump, something generally

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occurs to finish the sentence.

4. Then physically stand in the present in your 100% responsibility area. Complete this sentence four-five times with whatever first comes to your mind: I keep this issue going by ______________. 5. Next, let your body tell you which direction is the future. Let yourself start walking or moving into the future. Keep moving into the future (think of taking your 100% responsibility area with you), as you complete this sentence four-five times out loud with whatever first comes to your mind: I can create what I really want by ___________. 6. Take a moment to write down your phrases or sentences from step 5, I can create what I really want by __________. Take the item that appeals to you most and explore one measurable action step you can take that will lead you toward what you really want. For example, you may have generated the phrase, I can appreciate my partner more. Great idea, not measurable. The intention behind this very important step is to give your nervous system a new, conscious experience that you will know youve completed. So, the important questions are: a. What: __________________________________ b. By When: _______________________________ Example: With I can appreciate my partner more, here are

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possible completions. What: I will deliver five new appreciations to my partner each day for the next week. By When: Starting tomorrow morning

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7. THE ART OF THE TOSS

Our students and colleagues have told us that learning the art of the toss in their relationships has produced more creativity than any other tool. One friend told us that when she first began practicing this simple art, she was very skeptical about its usefulness. She persisted for a few days and was astonished to find how much fun she and her partner were having in solving problems and working on projects together. She recently told us that she keeps discovering more areas in which to apply what she now considers one of her top tools. Allow yourself to have as much fun as you can with this tool. The Basic Toss Creativity stops in most relationships because somebody drops the ball in conversation. Wonder and synergy also stall when the ball isnt tossed in the first place, but is hooked, slammed or dunked with an I Win! attitude. The Art of the Toss crafts an intimate game and keeps it going, two benefits that accelerate co-creativity. Toss Your Communications Designate a practice time of five-ten minutes when you want to develop more skill in tossing. The speaker chooses any topic of

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conversation. The listener practices tossing. Speaker, do your best to speak in one out breath sentences, then wait for the toss. Listener, select from the following verbal tosses after each communication from the Speaker. Give each speaker equal time. Its fine to start with two minutes each. Verbal Tosses: Tell me more about that. What interested you most about that? Hmmm.I wonder how you experienced that. Then what happened? Im curious to hear more. I heard you say (summarize the gist of what you heard with an attitude of curiosity). It sounds like you felt (excited, sad, scared, anxious, mad, etc.) Example: Speaker: I had a rough time at work today. Listener: Tell me more about that. Speaker: Well, the meeting didnt go at all like I planned, and Jim interrupted me right out of gate and acted like the idea was his.

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Listener: It sounds like you felt mad. Speaker: You bet, and I was also kind of stunnedI thought we were teaming on this one. Listener: Then what happened? Notice what is not happening in this exchange. The listener is not trying to interpret, fix or analyze what the speaker is saying. The listener is practicing the art of the toss, an art that cultivates curiosity and deeper intimacy.

The Problem-Solving Toss Stand facing your partner. Designate the first Leader. You both will toss in this activity. Leader, think of an unresolved issue, something youd like to clear up. Let you face take on an exaggerated expression of the way you experience this issue right now, such as a scowl or pursed lips or Home Alone face. Now toss this facial expression to your partner. Think of the expression like a mask that you can actually toss.

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 Partner, catch and try on this exaggerated expression on your face for a moment. Then make some change in the facial expression and toss it back to the leader. Leader, receive and try on the expression, then make some change in it and toss it back. Toss and change several times until the leader experiences a shift in the issue. (The shift could be a lightening up of loosening of the grip of the problem, a solution, or a sense of curiosity rather than stuck). Variations: You can extend the toss to include whole-body gestures and postures that you toss back and forth. Explorers have reported generating more fun and creativity when they use a whole-body toss. Then shift leaders and repeat the activity. Each of you can toss body sensations or tension from one part of your body to another until the stress loosens up. Remember, the quickest way to change your mind is to change your body.

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The Creative Toss Sometime when you are working on a project or want to generate some new ideas, use this movement activity. One of you think of the project and use your hands to sculpt the air in front of you into a shape that matches your experience of it right now. Then toss the shape to your partner. Partner, reshape the sculpture and toss it back. Make a few tosses, then add a word to the toss each time. Continue to toss and sculpt a few times until you reach a satisfying completion.

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8. MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR UPPER LIMITS PATTERNS

Exploration: Ask yourself, What has happened when things are going well in my close relationships? Is there anything familiar that you do or experience that diminishes your good feeling or the harmony in your relationships. Wonder about the ways in which you ride the positive energy rollercoaster on over the top into a slide, funk or conflict.

Make a list of your top five favorite upper limits behaviors: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Sample list: Worry thoughts, especially anticipating how things are going to go wrong in the future Broken agreements, such as agreeing to give appreciations three
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times this week and forgetting Hurrying Criticism of my partner or myself Bumping into things and dropping stuff Interrupting Then take a few moments to breathe easily and gently into your relaxed belly with the Yes Breath, then say these sentences out loud 4-5 times each: I am willing to make friends with my upper limits problem. I commit to learning from my upper limits behaviors in a friendly way. Action Step: Next to each item from your upper limits list, create an action/practice that you can shift to when you notice the upper limits problem. Examples: Worry thoughts, especially anticipating ACTION: Notice the body sensations that arise when I worry, and take 2-3 Yes Breaths into that part of my body Breaking agreements with my partner

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ACTION: Telling the truth about the broken agreement, feeling my feelings and listening to my partners feelings, making a new agreement Hurrying ACTION: Breathe toward the body sensations of hurry-up where I experience it most strongly in my body Criticizing my partner ACTION: Deliver five appreciation expressions on the spot Bumping into things and dropping stuff ACTION: Get a massage, go dancing, take a beach walk, or take a bath Interrupting ACTION: Acknowledge the interruption, make a new commitment to listen with the Art of Tossing Question for Reflection:

How can I give and receive more love and positive energy every day?

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9. DISCOVERING AND EXPRESSING YOUR CREATIVE GENIUS

Exploration: Genius: a great natural ability; a great original creative ability; a strong disposition or inclination. Step One: Begin this exploration with the whole pleasurable breathing and stretching until you feel greater ease and flow in your body. Then fill in or complete the sentences, pausing to re-connect with the relaxed breathing between each sentence. When Im ___________________________, it doesnt seem like work at all. (e.g. teaching something Ive learned to others) Ever since I was a child, Ive loved to ________________________ ______________________________________________________. (e.g., make up stories) In my work I get the best results when Im ____________________ ______________________________________________________.

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(e.g. moving around and not sitting in one place) My close friends and associates tell me that one of the most unique capabilities I have is ______________________________________ ______________________________________________________. (e.g., the ability to think on my feet) When Im working, time seems to just disappear when Im ____________________________________________________. (e.g., collaborating with one or two other people)

Step Two: Take your phrases from step one and list them separately below: ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________

Construct a unique introduction of yourself combining the most

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interesting phrases from what you just wrote. Play with combinations of phrases and words until you condense them into a one out-breath phrase:

e.g. Hi, Im Katie, and I love to feel through to the heart and inspire creative play. (I introduced myself to a producer at a Hollywood party this way and had the most animated conversation I can remember at a social event.) Action Step: Each day for one week, use this phrase out loud to at least one different person in a public setting (talking to your pet only counts for one day).

Question for reflection:

Am I willing to commit to the full expression of my creativity?

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10. APPRECIATION EXPLORATION

Use this inner journey to expand your ability to appreciate yourself and your partner. We suggest doing this activity while you are comfortably seated with eyes closed. You can record the instructions to listen to or read them to each other. Consider yourself as an evolving work of art(pause for a Yes Breath or two)Imagine walking into a brand-new museum and finding yourself featured in the foyer under a large skylightGive yourself the same kind of sensitive attention you would give to a priceless work of art What kind of masterpiece are you? Are you more like a kinetic sculpture or a large oil painting? Are you a song or a performance art piece with constantly changing features? Are you more like an illuminated manuscript with golden edges? Are you a series of photographs across the entire entrance? Let yourself acknowledge and appreciate your unique brilliance in the world, a form like no other. Take a few slow, relaxed breaths to embrace your uniqueness. See if you would be willing to release any further attempts to take yourself on as an improvement project. Just as you wouldnt think of going into the Lourve Museum in Paris and improving one of the Rubens paintings, let go of any further struggles with improving yourselfAnd take yourself on for the rest of your life as an appreciation project. Take some gentle belly breaths as you get

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deeply willing to turn your whole attention to appreciating yourself. Be sensitively aware of your body sensations right nowBring sensitive attention to any feelings arisingGive some appreciation to the thoughts moving through your mind Now release your partner as your personal improvement project. Take a final scan through all your attempts to change and fix your partner. Hold all those attempts in one of your hands as if holding an old lunch pail. Take a breath and open your hand, releasing the past. Take a few relaxed, easy breaths as you now take on your partner as an appreciation project. Let your whole body expand to the new task of appreciating your partner Think of one aspect of your partner that expresses their essence, who he or she is at the core Give your sensitive awareness to this quality, embracing it and breathing to acknowledge your partners essence. See if you would be willing to make appreciating your fall-back position with yourself and your partner. When all else falls away, appreciating remains. Breathe and expand in appreciation.

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