EP 58 - Build Relationship Fitness by fighting your mind?

EP 58 - Build Relationship Fitness by fighting your mind

So, this week I’m talking about how the laziness of the brain, 😋 or rather the never-ending pursuit to figure out ways to conserve effort and make everything as possible a routine and stuff it down into our subconscious, can be detrimental 🤕 to our life and especially to our loving relationship. 🥺

This is why I say you’ve got to constantly be aware of and fight 👊💪 against getting comfortable and routine. Because our brain is constantly working to make as much as possible in its experience as routine as possible.

Curious? Take a listen as I delve into all the ins and outs of what my brain is coming up with on this subject!

Oh, and this week I’ve included the transcript down at the bottom. Let me know if this is something you want me to keep doing. 😜

Remember, you only one conversation away from leveling up your relationship! 😍

Tom

#RelationshipWarrior

#RelationshipWarriorNation

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Full Transcript

(00:01):

One of the things that I've, as I'm really getting more and more into self-help kind of stuff. And just, how can I... You gotta help yourself right before you can help your relationship. You can kind of do it in tandem, but one of the books that I think I've mentioned this before, that I've been listening to The Untethered Soul again, and just a mind-blowing book. If you haven't gone out there and got it, I definitely recommend that audio. I mean, you're sitting in your car for 20 minutes, half an hour to an hour. Some of you folks and some of you poor bastards in LA, maybe two hours. I mean, that with the greatest love and affection, you know, spend time and listening to stuff to better yourself. Don't listen to mindless, not mindless songs, I mean these people writing songs from the heart, but the songs are not going to improve your life and what kind of message. And I'm going off tangent here, but what kind of message do you want in your head thoughts going on in your head? Anguish about love, anger, wishing for love that'll never come, happily ever after that doesn't exist, or listening to the material, whether it's self-help or marriage books, or relationship books, to figure this shit out and give you ideas, give you inspiration. You know, so tonight's episode is on how relationship fitness can come from finding your mind. What?... Fighting your mind??

(01:36):

So the thing about the mind as I'm studying self-help and that kind of thing, why, why do you, why do we procrastinate? Why do we get lazy with our things? And, you know, the brain is one of the biggest hogs of resources in our body. I mean, you got this supercomputer up there, just working all the time. 7/24, 365, always working, always working, you know, at night, you know, it's important to get a good night's sleep because your brain actually washes its self, It washes all the toxins and all that kind of stuff. But your brain has this thing called the amygdala and that's part of it. And that is the fight or flight. And now, you know, scientists talking about the freeze, right? There's a time to fight. There's a time to get the hell out of there and there's time to be still and let the danger pass.

(02:37):

But another good thing or thing I should say that the brain does is it really works hard at conserving energy. And one of the ways that it does that it takes. So when you're first learning something, it takes a lot of brainpower, right? When you're learning to ride a bike, I mean, you're focused, you're white-knuckled on the handlebars when you're learning how to drive your white-knuckled on the steering wheel and your brain is spinning a lot of energy and you can even be really tired. It's like, it's kind of weird, but you know when I go see like a, an actual conflict, me, my boys, we like to go see action flicks in those kind of things. And you walk out of these things and I just really get into it. And it's like ahh I’m white-knuckled on the seat and just like, I'm tense, I'm relaxed.

(03:31):

But at the end of that, I'm just exhausted. I'm tired. Cause just like an hour and a half, two and a half hours of tenseness, same thing with your brain. When you're learning things, new, your brain works really, really hard to figure things out. How can I make this quicker? How can I streamline this; At least that's how my brain works. How can I streamline this? How can I make it easier and think about it when you're first learning to drive and you're driving to work, you're figuring out the quickest way, the most efficient way, the safest way, in some cities, to how to get there. And then at some point, you're driving to work and it's like, oh crap, I'm already at work. You're driving from home. And you're just lost in your day. You're not really thinking about what you're doing. You kind of notice if some jerk cuts in front of you or, you know, you're like they're swaying lane, cause they're texting like an idiot.

(04:27):

You're meant to go to the store on the way home. Cause you know, somebody had asked you to pick up an onion for dinner or you knew that you had to get a new bottle of vitamins. And next thing you know, you're pulling up your driveway and you're like ah-shit... I needed to go to the store. What happened? Well, your brain was on autopilot there. Same thing with relationships. And so your mind wants to always take the easy way road. Why? Your brain always wants to take the easy road. It's always working to conserve energy. How can I streamline this? How can I make this easier? It's trying to make things simpler. And these, these are, these are in death nails in the coffin of your relationship is trying to make things routine, right? Which equals boring, but it's trying to get on cruise mode, autopilot.

(05:28):

Why? Because your brain demands and needs a lot of energy. But when it comes to relationships, you got to, you gotta resist. Another thing I didn't throw up there is you got to resist getting comfortable in your relationship. The minute, the second that you start feeling comfortable and think you can just coast and not work as hard, not work every day, not do the little things. Like, ah, you know, I have put it off till tomorrow. It'll be okay, next thing you know, tonight's your anniversary and you haven't planned shit. You haven't bought a card you haven't gotten a gif and you're like, yep, good enough. It doesn't really speak from your heart. You get a gift that isn't personal. You get a gift that isn't.

(06:24):

So you gotta, you got to fight against easy, simple routine cruise control. You gotta fight against that. How do you do that? Well, simple little things that you can do. Like just you know, when I was interviewing Mallory and drew, Schlabach, love that the last name you know, just, I mean they're a young couple and a few kids but just so much wisdom coming out of their, their interview on the relationship fitness podcast and episode 11, 12, somewhere on her head out there, you find it. But just a lot of great wisdom from such a young couple it's not that they're babies, right, but they've been married several years, but compared to me. You know, they're a young couple and one of the great tips that they talked about was every single day, they make a point to spend five minutes talking, just them two and it often ends up being more time, but just interacting, you know, just talking about not just, well, how was your day is fine.

(07:33):

Okay. How was your day? Meh, it was, it was okay... And you know, talk about the challenges that you're having a lively talk about the challenges you're having with Jacob because he's being a little, you know, a little Susie is just really being needy, you know, and how, how can I help with that? And those kinds of things offer up like Hey honey, how can I help you out with that? What can I do? How can I make your day easier for that? You know, this thing that you're going through or even just to listen about their day, just to just gotta stay on top of the little things. And it means so, so much the bucket is not full until you're filling it with the little things you got the rocks, you got the boulders, you got the rocks, you got the sand, you got the water. All those things is what it takes to fill the bucket.

(08:24):

You gotta do all of them. You gotta do the big things. You got to do the medium things and you got to do the little things. You just can't get around with it. And the little things really solidify everything. Without the little things. And you know, I was writing and I think I did the video last night, right? Talking about how, if you're not love is not enough. If you're not doing it, if you're not, you don't have the supporting cast, right? If you don't, here's a little fingers, right? All these little fingers of supporting cast to help strengthen love, to cradle the love, right, low fades. Love withers. You got to have the soul, you got to have the water. You got to have the sunshine. You got to have the right environment for the flower to grow for the fruit to blossom, flower to blossom.

(09:14):

I just crack myself up inside that I screwed up, but we'll roll with it. So fight against the comfy fight against the easy fight against the procrastination. Continue to implement, learn, implement, learn, implement, learn, implement new ways of keeping that connection together. Do that, and you continue to build relationship fitness and fight against the comfy, fight against the brain. When it's wanting to be lazy. When it's wanting to be comfortable, when is wanting to be easy and set things into a routine, date nights should not be routine. And you know, if you think that helps you, or if you think this could help, you know, these are gonna help somebody else send somebody, send them this way, send them to this channel and get some inspiration. You get some ideas and, you know, let me know your comment below about what you have to continually fight against the keeps, you know, keeps you lackadaisical with your relationship. And with that, remember to go out there and be loving time patient, and generous every day and build relationship because your kid's relationships, your grandkid's relationships, your relationship will thank you for it.