Cloe Madanes - Relationship Breakthrough: How to Create Outstanding Relationships in Every Area of Your Life

A ny time two people meet, a third world is formed that is like no other world. Together you create a different universe thats unlike any youve ever known. Appreciating and cherishing that world is what allows you to transform your life and your relationships.

Love has a spiritual quality that most of us only touch on a few times in our lives and very few people actually live. When we really love someone, theres a dynamic change that occurs within us: We stop focusing on ourselves. Its what people who strive to connect with God experience when they are in the deepest level of meditation. When you are in love with someone, the first thing that happens is that time disappears. Then you find that you need nothing else because youre getting exactly what you need. The third thing is that you disappear. It is not about you anymore. And thats when you experience your greatest joy.

But pretty soon, things change. You begin creating expectations about how your relationship should be. You try to bend this wild, unexplored spiritual territory to your will, trying to force it to fit your own expectations and requirements, instead of simply growing along with it. You start creating rules and measuring whether the love youre receiving is enough or not. In other words, it becomes all about you. And thats when love starts to die.

This has nothing to do with how long youve been together; it has to do with a pattern. Once youve developed a Belief System, you find a way to fulfill it. This happens not just in our most intimate relationships but also with our children, our friends, people at work. When you are connecting with others, you have a model for how they should be. If they dont match your model, you start questioning everything. Have I lied to myself? Have they said they love me but they dont? Are my expectations too high? Am I not beautiful enough? Successful enough? Smart enough? Am I not enough? These are the deep, internal questions that most people dont want to answer or answer too quickly and easily just to get closure.

What makes people so sad and depressed about their relationships is their learned helplessness. They dont know how to win. They start to winthey get so much juice and joy out of the love they receivebut then they begin to believe it doesnt last. Its not that it doesnt last. Its that they dont understand the dynamics of what creates that chemistry and keeps it alive.

For 3 decades I have been obsessed with answering the question whatmakes people do what they do? Why is it that so many of us say we want to serve, to love, to help somebody, we want a relationship, but every day we do either something that keeps us from moving forward or something that actually moves us in the opposite direction?

Ive worked with millions of people in 100 different countries, helping them figure out who they really are, what they want their life to really represent, and where the meaning is for them. How do we learn from the life challenges we face and then master them? How do we end up on the other side, where we dont just protect our life, our identity, or our ego, but transcend what stops and limits us?

Heres your choice: Give up, live in fear, be pissed off at everybody else, run for cover, and live in anxietyor do whats necessary to develop the muscle to live your life at the richest level youve ever dreamed of, in a place you never would have gotten to if these challenges had not shown up. The quality of your life comes down to one question: How deep are you willing to go?

All happiness comes from one word, progress. We grow or we die. There is no other choice, and lifes problems and our relationships give us the biggest challenges to grow. Because nowhere else does our deepest fear show up: that we are not enough. To feel like we are worthless is to feel like we are dead psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. I see this fear in action every day.

At my live seminars and workshops, I interact constantly with audience memberspeople who are suicidal, suffering from lifelong depression, facing a divorce or bankruptcy, people who have lost their children or spouses, or have been traumatized by rape or sexual abuse. In each case, Im on the spot in the laboratory of life. As a practical psychologist, Ive learned how to mobilize instantly and figure out whats really going on, whats stopping someone, what he or she needs, and how to create a shift.

Out of necessity Ive had to find the triggers and tools that shift peoples perception of what things mean and what they can do. Ive developed techniques that can change not only their emotions and psychology, but also what actions they take to reshape their lives. And these arent temporary changesthey last. Weve done 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year follow-ups on these people. This doesnt mean theyll never face another challenge, but they never go back to that place where suicide is the only option.

Over the last 10 years, Ive not only applied these cutting-edge techniques to transform the relationships in my own life but also had the privilege of sharing them with thousands of therapeutic professionals and coaches who are hungry for more, not only for their clients but for themselves as well. If youre going to transform someone elses inner gamethe way they run their blueprint, which is their operating system, or shift their world viewdo it on yourself first.

But Im the kind of guy whos always looking to learn more, to make what I do for people more effective. So for years Id been looking for someone I could learn from, toosomeone whose work shows a new level of mastery in relationship dynamics. Frankly, after reading book after book, I had given up hope of finding any innovative, practical strategies that really made a measurable difference in peoples lives. There were lots of empirical theories, but nothing was systematic and focused on core dynamics.