The KEY to All Successful Relationships | Stephan Speaks EP 400

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11What should be the key things people are looking for in any partner to thrive and maintain a relationship long term in today's society? The first thing that came to mind is connection. I am a firm believer that you can't have an amazing relationship at least long term without connection. A lot of people get by on that initial hype, all right, that initial excitement. Oh, they're so wonderful, their resume is so great, blah, blah, blah. Okay, that's cool, but that's not going to sustain you. Is there something deeper there? Can you two truly be yourselves with each other? Open up, share your inner thoughts, you know, be emotionally naked with this person.

0:51If you can and you still enjoy their presence, enjoy speaking to them, you feel good when they're around you. Okay, we got something we can work with here. Even if everything's not in perfect alignment, we have the foundation to now grow the relationship. but without that, it's just fluff. Is connection something that's created or is it just, does it only happen between certain people? It only happens between certain people. Really? It's either there or it's not. You cannot keep connection. And you should know it in the first few minutes or is it maybe it takes... I won't say you'll know it in the first few minutes.

1:23I think it can vary. I think it depends on how spiritually in tuned you are or how emotionally grounded you are. If you're in a very emotionally healthy place, I do think you're going to recognize it very quickly, all right? But a lot of times, you pick up on it, but you're scared to embrace it. You're still rationalizing what's going on here. And we've been programmed to believe it all takes time. So, when we see this experience where two people are, it's like this, they click, and they're feeling these intense feelings right away, everyone else is saying, slow down, this can't be real, or you know, you're jumping the gun.

2:00In reality, no. because in most situations, the first date, people know. People know like there's potential here or there's not or this one could be the one or they're not. But we rationalize why we should entertain this and move further, give it a chance, waste our time and then we find ourselves stuck in situations we don't belong in. And now we try to make it work because we've invested so much and we don't want to now admit that we were wrong or we wasted our time. we're lonely. Various reasons cause us to hang on to situations we don't belong in. But we knew from the beginning. Like when I speak to people who are divorced and I ask them, When did you know?

2:43When did you know? Yeah. A lot of people like my wedding day are like, I knew when I was walking down the aisle. You're like, why did you get married? Exactly. I hate when people answer that way. I'm like, why would you get married? And even way before then. Forget. The marriage day might have been when reality truly hit but they allowed themselves to see it. but then at that point, what are you going to do? Yeah, you got to fall through. Your family's there and you don't want to be embarrassed. Exactly. But again, the reality is that person saw it way before. But again, they rationalized past it then and now they found themselves in this more difficult position and they can't do anything about it.

3:16And then they get a divorce a year or two later. 10 years, 25 years later. I know, listen, I know one couple who were married for 25 years. After they got divorced, everyone was against it because on the outside looking in they looked like this great couple, all right. But they were miserable, all right, behind closed doors. Well, the wife let me read a letter that the husband wrote her before they got married. No way. I read this letter and the first thing I say is why did you ever get married? It was clear as day in this letter that you guys should not have taken that step. It was a clear disconnect between the two and once I started to learn the real story, you saw that they did not have that deep connection.

3:57They were two people who did not fit together. And what they lacked is what's the other thing I was going to bring up as far as what people need is balance, all right. I think too many times we're fixated on equality and not enough on balance. What's the difference? The difference is this, equality is almost like, all right, LeBron and Dwyane Wade join together. They both are alpha males of their team, they're both superstars, they both can shoot. There's some level of equality there. but you know what, they could not win a championship until one decided who's going to be the main person here.

4:31It wasn't about equality, it was about balance. It was about complementing each other, learning how to work together. It's not about they have to be able to do everything we do, we got to be able to do everything they do. It's about can we complement each other? Can we balance each other? Can I have the strengths where you have the weaknesses, all right? And in a way that doesn't conflict and I believe the conflict part is when you don't have a connection, they will conflict. when there is a connection that's when you're going to find balance because now when there's a connection we embrace our differences communicate better you can say this is what you're really good at why don't you do more of these things and let me do these things exactly and we can find a way to make it a whole unit wow that's how we create amazing relationships balance to me is the greatest key balance and connection you have those two things you win

5:30Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

6:24Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.