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There is much similarity between this talk by Tony Robbins that I took the post title from and my earlier posting on Steve’s 10 Steps. Priya Sher has summed up Robbins’ the main points well, there are three quotes that I’d like to add:
If you’re not doing it, then you don’t know it – you understand it.
A good aphorism on the well-known difference between pure theory and practical experience.
Discipline never works long-term. Never
I’ve actually read this somewhere else recently, but can’t remember where. The basic was that discipline is a misnomer, what we actually want is motivation – or what Robbins calles the vision. A reason to go forward because you believe that going forward will make your situation better than it is currently.
If you want to change your relationship, the #1 thing you have to do is master your own emotions. If you don’t do that, forget it. There’s no hope.
This is where Tony Robbins and Steve meet the most clearly. Taking responsibility is key to positive change. More importantly, in relationships one of the things you encounter again and again when you read the literature is that it is important to retain responsibility for your emotions. Your partner does not hurt you (well, unless he beats you, we’re talking emotionally here) – his actions cause reactions in your mind and those reaction feel painful to you. Sometimes these reactions are warranted, but sometimes they are not. And even if they are, they are still your emotional reactions. Thinking too much in immediate cause turns you into an automaton.
Nasty-Nasty Interactions
But when you are trapped in the negativity spiral, it is hard to leave it. One trap we often fall into in relationships is to expect the other to leave first. In The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples, Gottman writes extensively about what he calls the nasty-nasty interaction. What Robbins – and less specific to relationships Steve also – do here is one way to break the circle, by telling people that they are responsible for their “nasty” part of that interaction and asking them to change themselves instead of expecting change from their partner. There is much material in Gottman’s book that goes links with Robbins, including “emotional override” – the added difficulty that couples where both partners see things worse than they are tend to remain stuck in nasty-nasty interactions. What Robbins calls “master your own emotions” or “emotional leadership” is what Gottman would call getting out of negative emotional override, which in turn opens the possibility for changing the interaction from nasty-nasty to neutral-neutral or even nice-nice.
Here are two further articles that write about two specific approaches that can help.
Resisting Temptation
The article Tips to Resist Temptation contains advise on how to stop those nasty habits. Whether it’s eating too much chocolate or not yelling at your lover, you will find many links to Robbins and Steve. Apparently, there are more details in the book You Are Not Your Brain: The 4-Step Solution for Changing Bad Habits, Ending Unhealthy Thinking, and Taking Control of Your Life, but I’ve not read that book yet, so no recommendation.
Blocking Negative Thoughts
The article Blocking Thoughts is more about emotional management than external reactions. Especially in relationships, one common problem that leads to emotional override and then nasty-nasty interactions are those nagging negative thoughts we keep circling around and around. There is a purpose to this function of the brain, as dwelling on a problem is a good approach to find a solution – if the problem has a solution. But for problems that do not have solutions, it is harmful to your emotional state, so having the ability to stop those negativity is a good thing to have.
The key advise here is that you should not suppress negative thoughts. Forcing yourself to not think about something only pushes it into the subconscious where it will wreak even more havoc. Robbinson also hints at this in his aside on positive thinking. Rather, the approach that has been empirically verified to work is straight out of mindful meditation: Remind yourself that you don’t need to think this thought and let it peacefully pass.
In NLP, we have a simple method to illustrate the vital difference between these two approaches: Do not think about a white elephant! The way the brain works is that in order to comprehend that sentence, it has to pull up an image of an elephant, colour it white, and then do something it doesn’t really understand how to do, namely not think about this picture it just put together on request. Suppressing a thought is essentially the same as repeating that sentence over and over in your mind – making your mind come up with this image over and over. Anything the brain does repeatedly means the neural pathways get strengthened. Good luck forgetting that thought.
The approach in this article, or in mindful meditation is rather different. Instead of suppressing the thought forcefully, you acknowledge it (“oh look, I just thought about a white elephant”) and then you do something the brain understands – you remove importance (“other things are more interesting”) and move on to something else. You don’t force the thought away, you simply leave it there. You don’t try to move the thought away, you move your attention away.
