So, how do you improve communication within your relationship?
Hi, Cody Butler here, marriage coach and founder of Better Marriage. Today, I want to talk to you about how to improve communication within your marriage. Now, this is critical because communication is going to be the determining factor 99% of the time whether you have an absolutely great, fantastic, ever-growing marriage or whether you have a really bad, struggling marriage which leads to divorce. Communication really comes down to it, and when I talk to couples in counseling sessions and coaching sessions, communication 99% of the time is the number one thing that they’re struggling with. They’re not communicating effectively, they’re not hearing each other, and they’re not getting hurt. I’m going to share with you some stuff today about how you can communicate better and what the problems with communication that we’re having are and how to fix those.
If you’re interested in communication, stay to the end because I’m going to share with you how to get access to my workshop and how to improve communication, how to stop fighting, and how to increase the sex and intimacy in your relationship. And I’m going to give you access to that completely for free, and I’m going to tell you how to get access to that in just a minute.
The Problem With Communication:
Here’s the problem with communication and information around communication. There’s a lot of information around communication, right? There are books, there are trainings, there are videos, there are videos like this, and it’s not a secret; it’s not a hidden secret that communication is the key to relationships. So why is it so hard to get communication working properly in your relationship? Well, the problem is not that the information out there is incorrect, not that the books are wrong, or the information is wrong, but for the most part, the information is great information and is absolutely correct. The problem is that it’s incomplete. There are little tiny pieces of information missing that until you get those, the bigger picture isn’t going to start to work.
Now, the way I like to think of it is it’s like a combination lock that you can get all of the tumblers right apart from one, but if you just get 95% right and 1% or 5% wrong, then the lock isn’t going to open. You have to get it 100% right, and the smallest error can cause the entire lock to fail on the entire lock not to open. And it’s exactly the same with communication. You can have 95% of the picture, but if you’re missing a tiny little bit, then you’re not going to get the result you’re looking for. I like to think of it as the small hinges that swing the big doors. I like compressed time frames; I like disproportionate results when I’m working with couples and individuals. I like to get a big result for a small amount of effort. I like to get a big result in a small amount of time, and it’s finding these little things, these little distinctions in philosophy and distinctions in what we’re doing that really make the big difference.
So, the reason that most communication classes and training are not working is that it’s incomplete, and the incomplete part that we’re not getting is that communication, and the most important part of communication, starts with ourselves.
Communication Starts With Yourself:
All of the communication or the vast majority of communication training out there really focuses on how we communicate with our partner, how we speak with our partner, and how we want them to speak to us. But this is really the smaller part of communication, and if you just focus on this, it’s going to fail, it’s not going to get any better.
What’s more important is how we communicate with ourselves. Let me share a little secret – we won’t let anybody talk to us any worse than we talk to ourselves. We train people on how to communicate with us based on how we communicate with ourselves, also known as self-talk. This is absolutely critical. What are you saying to yourself? How are you talking to yourself? What are you saying about your marriage or partner to yourself?
If you constantly say things like “I’m not worthy” or variations of it, your communication will convey to others that you’re not worthy, and they will honor that. Conversely, if you change your self-talk to “I am worthy, I deserve a great marriage, relationship, happiness, and fulfillment,” your partner will find it difficult not to communicate well with you and honor you.
Therefore, to improve communication with your partner, you need to first communicate with yourself in that manner. Stop talking down about yourself, your partner, or the situation. Monitor your self-talk, and speak to your partner the way you would want them to talk to you. We need to start with ourselves, change our internal dialogue, and everything else in the outside world will change too.
What’s more important is how we communicate with ourselves. How we talk to ourselves is critical. Let me share a little secret: we won’t let anybody talk to us any worse than we talk to ourselves. We train people how to communicate with us based on how we communicate with ourselves. This is known as self-talk. Therefore, it’s crucial to pay attention to how we talk to ourselves.
What are you saying to yourself about your marriage or your partner? If you constantly tell yourself, “I’m not worthy,” or variations of that, your communication will communicate to others that you’re not worthy. People will honor that and treat you accordingly.
On the other hand, if you change your self-talk and constantly say, “I am worthy, important, and deserve a great marriage and relationship,” people will see and treat you accordingly. If you communicate well with yourself, it’ll be easier for your partner to communicate with you. It’s incongruent to tell your partner that you deserve great communication but communicate poorly with yourself.
There is an incongruity here. There is something going on, and it’s not going to work. However, you want your partner or spouse to communicate with you. You have to first communicate with yourself in that way, and you’ve got to stop talking down. You have to stop talking down about yourself, your partner, and the situation.
If we monitor our self-talk and what’s going on in our head, we’re probably not saying nice things about our partner most of the time, and we’re probably not saying nice things about ourselves most of the time. Let’s bring this out into the physical world. If we spoke to our partner the way we thought about them, how would we expect them to react to us? If we spoke to strangers how we speak about ourselves to ourselves, how would we expect them to react to us?
This is really critical because, as I said, we train people how to communicate with us based on how we communicate with ourselves. We’ve got to start communicating with ourselves first. We’ve got to take action on ourselves. If we want to see communication change with the outside world, we want to see that then we have to first change our internal dialogue. We have to first change how we communicate with ourselves.
When you start changing the story that you tell yourself about your partner, when you start changing the dialogue and the story that you tell yourself about yourself, then you’re going to see your relationship change. You’re going to see everything else change. When you start thinking about things differently, you start speaking about things internally differently, everything in the outside world is going to start to change as well.
So that’s it for me. That is the piece of information that is missing in communication. We need to start at home. We need to start communicating with ourselves better, and I promise you, try this out for a week, try this out for two weeks, and you will see a radical transformation, not just in your marriage and relationship but in your happiness, in your health, in your overall well-being. This is the key to living a happy life. This is the key to living a satisfied life.
If you like these videos, please subscribe to the channel, leave a comment below, let me know what you think are the keys to great communication, and give us a like. Share this video on social media and check out the links in the description. In the description, I’ve got some great free trainings for you, and you can grab our communication class on how to have better communication, how to end the fighting right now, and how to increase the sex and intimacy in your relationship. Link in the description. Go ahead and grab that completely free, and I go into this topic in a lot more detail there. You’ll understand why you fight and how to stop. You’ll understand why the communication is poor and how to improve it. I’ll go over all of that in their class.
That’s it from me. God bless you.
