What's on Your Bookshelf?
“What’s On Your Bookshelf” is a personal and professional growth podcast exploring the intersections of passion, potential, and purpose - featuring multi-certified coach and leadership development consultant Denise R. Russo alongside Andy Hughes, Scott Miller, and Samantha Powell.
What's on Your Bookshelf?
80 - The Happiness Project - February
Have you ever wondered why the atmosphere of your marriage can set the tone for your entire life? We're Denise Russo and Samantha Powell, and in this heartfelt episode of "What's on Your Bookshelf," we explore February's theme of love from "The Happiness Project." Join us as we discuss the profound influence that marital satisfaction and the dynamics of love have on overall happiness, especially after having children. We dive into key resolutions like quitting nagging, not expecting praise, fighting right, and giving proofs of love to strengthen our relationships.
Expressing appreciation and gratitude is more than just a nice gesture—it's a cornerstone of healthy relationships. Drawing insights from John Maxwell's "Everyone Communicates, Few Connect," and referencing "Solve for Happy" and "Atomic Habits," we underline the power of small gestures like the six-second hug to enhance relationships. Listen in as we share a humorous family anecdote about the importance of finding internal motivation and satisfaction in our actions, particularly in maintaining strong bonds with loved ones, including teenage children.
Communication is key to building healthy relationships, and we delve into John Gottman's research on the six-second kiss and how fewer unpleasant experiences contribute more to relationship satisfaction due to human negativity bias. We explore different conflict styles and the importance of managing conflicts with humor and affection. Lastly, we discuss integrating work into life, rather than seeking a work-life balance, and how personal happiness, especially within marriage, can significantly impact professional success. Join us for an engaging conversation on love, happiness, and the interconnectedness of our personal and professional lives.
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Welcome to what's on your Bookshelf, with your hosts Denise Russo and Samantha Powell.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome back. It's another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is a life and leadership podcast where we're doing our best to live out loud the pages of the books on our shelves. We're teaching lessons from the things that we're learning, but we're also exploring that together with you. And, if you're new to this series, we're going through a book called the Happiness Project, which is based on 12 lessons, or 12 months, to be able to go through some really simple little projects and exercises to elevate your happiness. My name is Denise Russo. I'm here today with my friend, sam Powell, and we're in the second month or the second chapter of the book, and this one is February. So, of course, it's all about love. So I love being here with you, sam. How are you doing today?
Speaker 1:I'm doing well, I'm doing well. You know, I'm a big romance novel aficionado and I read hundreds of them every year, and so, february being all about love, I loved this chapter, just listening to her journey and some of what she was working on and how that affected her relationship with her husband, and I'm excited to talk through this one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too. I thought there were some interesting things that will make you think. Like the very first sentence of this chapter, friends says, one alarming fact jumps out from the research about happiness and marriage Marital satisfaction drops substantially after the first child arrives. And so I read that and I thought, oh, did that happen when I had Olivia, because she was my first baby, and then Vincent being the second, and I don't know that it dropped. I think it just maybe changed a little bit because you introduced different elements. But you know, as you go through your journey of love with loved ones, it doesn't have to just be the person that is perhaps your significant other. The title of this chapter says remember love, and so what that got me thinking about is at what time in your experience do you forget what it is?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah and um. I loved I think it's on the second page of this book. She says the atmosphere of my marriage set the weather for my whole life and I loved that. Right, and even if you're somebody who's not married but you like, think about what's the relationship in your life? Right, who's that person? That accountability, the partner, the spouse, whatever it is that really sets the weather for your whole life and I think that changes, right, as you go through different stages of life, like who that person is. But as you reach adulthood and a lot of people do end up partnering up with someone or someone's, then that really does.
Speaker 1:But I thought that that was such an interesting thing and so when she was thinking about happiness, she was thinking about the fact that this is this relationship sets so much in this day in, day out with you and you kind of forget to, I don't know, like, look at them in the way that maybe you first did when you first met them or, you know, when you decided to, you know, spend your life with that person. But again, she sets all these chapters up with resolutions, right, what are her four to five resolutions for each month under the umbrella of the topic. So for this one it's quit nagging. Don't expect praise or appreciation. Fight right. No dumping. Give proofs of love and I loved those and I want to know we're going to talk about them. But when you read that list, what did you think?
Speaker 2:I think that when I first read the list I thought these are kind of common sense, maybe just not commonly applied. And it's about being intentional, of catching yourself, maybe in the moments, because when I started to think about the first one, about the quit nagging piece, this got me really thinking about, I don't know, the book. Is it five or six, probably five love languages? You know the book, I'm talking about it's purple cover and I thought to myself at the same time about disc and human behavior and how we apply that at work.
Speaker 2:And when I started to read this part of the chapter, I thought to myself when someone is being considered the nag, let's say that person is expressing themselves because there's something they either want to have, be or do that's different than what they have, are or are doing in that moment, but it's coming across to the other person in some sort of dissonant way.
Speaker 2:And how much better would our relationships be, whether they're love relationships or work relationships, if we could really understand the place in which someone is coming from, because she talks about how, in that part of the chapter, that you can't change anyone but yourself, and if you could change one thing about yourself which would be elevating your wisdom or your knowledge around the behavioral patterns or the thought processes of other people. Maybe you would reframe when someone is talking with you, and so that's kind of what I thought about for that first part, which is, is the person really nagging? And I know that I've experienced it, probably on both sides of that coin, right being the person that is appearing to be the nag and someone that's being nagged upon, if that's the way to say it and now it really got me to think about have I really done my best to understand the viewpoint of the person listening?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that too, like when you think about what is the source of that nagging type behavior, that, oh, I need you to do this, did you do this? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like what is that? You know it's you have to look inward about, like, what is that coming from in you? What is the stasis that you want changed, like you said, right, like you want something different than the current reality and this is your way to like, try to leverage that and to push that, but it's, it's very ineffective. I mean, there's tons of research on it. People don't respond. Well, nobody likes being nagged at, and especially not in a partnership. Right, Like you and I should be equals here. And you're acting like the boss of me or like my mother nagging at me, right, like telling me what to do, and there's so much.
Speaker 1:I think, like, when I think about nagging and when I think about you know, anytime that I engage in that behavior, there's this question and I feel like I've done a lot of this over the last probably year and a half of my life, of a lot of self-reflection, a lot of self-work and it's why am I doing that? Is this important? Right, like, if I want the dishes, if I want the dishwasher unloaded, why don't I just do it? Or if it's bothering me that I systemically am the person always unloading the dishwasher, why don't I have a conversation about it? Right, like, why don't we just lean into it instead of this constant day in, day out? It's like taking that purposeful step back and, like you said, this stuff isn't crazy. This list she has is an insane. It's.
Speaker 1:It's pretty common sense, but it's that we get so caught up in our day to day, we get so caught up in our life that it's like you just expect somebody to come to the same, especially someone you spend your life with, to come to the same conclusions you did, with the same perspective you did, and be like, why aren't you doing this? Of course this needs done. Of course we have to go. You know, get this. You know, like, here's this reminder, here's this thing and, I think, really understanding why am I feeling this way?
Speaker 1:Right, like, exploring, like sitting with those emotions, what's that feeling that's causing you to do this behavior and what? What should I do about it? To fix it in a broader sense, right, do I just do it myself? Do I have a conversation. Do we make some changes to the system in our house or in our lives, you know, to avoid this problem or whatever, right, but like, I think that when you're finding yourself in those spaces, you got to go into that self reflection mode of like why on earth is this bothering me enough to where I'm nagging somebody to do?
Speaker 2:it. It kind of gets me to think about. There's this great book John Maxwell has called everyone communicates, few connect. But this is like the preamble to that, which is are you even communicating at all? And so it's kind of like a good segue to the next part, which is don't expect praise or appreciation. And I'm kind of laughing around this one because recently. So I'm over 50. My brother is over 50. So you can imagine my parents are almost 80. In fact, in the recording of this today's my dad's 80th birthday.
Speaker 2:Okay, so when I read this part of the chapter, I started to laugh, because my mom recently broke her hip and so she's unable to do some of the things that she, for at least 57 years of being married to my dad, has done right.
Speaker 2:So my dad said something recently and my brother and I were at my parents' house like I've been doing the dishwasher for the last six weeks and I've been feeding the dog for the last six weeks, and we started laughing because we were like do you want a trophy? And we started laughing because we were like, do you want a trophy? Because mom did it for the rest of the 56 years and 40 some odd weeks before she broke her hip, and so when we were laughing about it, he was kind of getting mad that we were laughing, because he's like you don't appreciate it, you don't appreciate what I'm doing. And we were like, okay, this chapter says don't expect praise or appreciation. And yet shouldn't we maybe, in terms of love, still give the praise and appreciation to the one that we love? Maybe you don't expect it, but shouldn't you give it?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think so and I think this is about changing that perspective. And I really identified with this because she was like I wanted the gold star stuck to my homework, right. And I'm like, yep, that is me, I want that gold star sticker. This is great. I don't care that I'm almost 40 and what.
Speaker 1:I still want the gold star on my little chores chart right, like that makes me feel good. But I think this is about, like, her perspective changing of, like she was doing this stuff. But one of her motivators was to get the appreciation. But you can't force other people to appreciate you, so you've got to change the perspective about why am I doing this Like, I'm doing this for me, I'm giving myself right. I empty the dishwasher and empty the sink because I feel better when, yeah, the sink is like, nobody else seems to care, maybe, right, like, but I do and so this is for me, this isn't for anybody else.
Speaker 1:And really changing some of that and saying, like my expectation and I think like what I thought about was um, solve for happy in this right. Like, change your expectations and your happiness will, you know, will really follow right, if I don't expect praise and I know that my motivation is because I want this thing right, I'm doing this because I think this is the right way to live. I want you know this space to be this. Then I don't have negative feelings when I don't get the gold star right. I gave myself the gold stars. It to have negative feelings when I don't get the gold star. Right, I gave myself the gold stars. It's great. So I think it's a lot of that perspective changing here.
Speaker 1:But I think you're absolutely right that, like you also get what you give a lot of times in life, right. And so if you want appreciation, be appreciative, right. Like you know, express that, find that moment for gratitude. And we know from the how of happiness that expressing gratitude is one of the ways to be happier. And it's not receiving gratitude, it's expressing gratitude, it's put it out there in the world. It'll come back around and I think she found this as she went on this journey. She would do something. Her husband knows she's on this journey and it's her own personal journey. He was her guinea pig. She called him in this a few times. Naturally, she just found some of that coming back at her, right. But again, like she, the expectation was she wasn't doing the task for that thing. Right, the perspective, the reasoning behind a change. But I think you're absolutely right, you can't lose sight of the fact that you still want to give gratitude. You want to show gratitude, you want to give appreciation, because we all love the gold stars.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, I love that you mentioned solve for happy. So I'll throw in atomic habits, because where you taught us this piece about? You know, act as if you're the person you want to become. That part of the book, this is the same thing. If you want to be known as a person that receives praise and affection, then you should also be the person that gives praise and affection without a quid pro quo. And so one of the pieces in this chapter that I loved comes right after this, where she talks about something called the six second hug, and it got me thinking about my son, Vincent.
Speaker 2:So you know, kids get annoyed with their parents, and especially teenage kids, and especially teenage kids. I can share that. There have been times where he's annoyed with me because I probably am a nagging mom like pick up your steps, pick up the steps, pick up the stuff on the steps. Why haven't you picked up the stuff on the set? I look at it like why do I have to ask more than one time, Right? So?
Speaker 2:And I try to do above and beyond over appreciating him when he does do it, but I thought about a time when he was just super mad at me and it was silly.
Speaker 2:It was like a silly reason and I said Come on, you need to give me a hug right now. And he didn't want to and he kind of gave me this one of these hugs, like you know, not really wanting to hug, or flapped his arms on me and I said, Nope, give me a hug. And it was the first time when I read this book and I made him hug me for the six seconds. And so if you haven't read the book yet, what she says is that there is some research that the minimum time necessary to promote the flow of oxytocin and serotonin, which are mood boosting chemicals that promote bonding, is about six seconds for tension to pass. And sure enough, when I did this exercise with my son and I forced him to hug me for six whole seconds and after the third second you could feel him trying to resist, but after six seconds he loosened up and we kind of laughed off whatever the silly thing was we were having an argument about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of really good research around that too. It's funny. I just watched a TikTok last week. I follow the Gottman Institute.
Speaker 1:So John Gottman, the psychologist who is like if you're looking for a marriage, a book on marriage, like pick up all his stuff, like that's, those are the books that you really really should should look out there, based on a lot of good research but he was talking about that they suggest a six second kiss between you know romantic partners, and it's the same reason. It's neat it takes that long for you to release that oxytocin to. You know, get that feel good feeling. And I was, like I was thinking about that. I was like my husband and I are affectionate people but he's really good at that longer hug, right, that, like you know, like I'll give a quick hug and then walk back to you know the next activity I'm doing or whatever, right, like I'm a fly by affection person, cause I'm always like what's the next thing, what's the next thing? But he like he'll hug me and then hold on and so it makes me take that moment and it's that it's in that six second timeframe where you settle into it, right, and it's that, like you can feel the tension leaves somebody's body.
Speaker 1:But they say the same thing with like kissing. They say like, don't give your spouse a kiss on, like a peck on the lips, it's lean into it for six seconds, because that gives you enough time to release that oxytocin, give you those feel good feelings, but also kind of give you that, you know, that relationship there of hey, like let's, you know, spend a second, like let's turn towards each other. And you know in this moment, but yeah, so this one. So I love that part of this, this book too. But the next section was fight right, because not everything is perfect, right, you're not gonna have kisses and hugs, right?
Speaker 2:not all kisses, but you learn the lessons along the way. And so this piece of the chapter talks really around how it's less important to have many pleasant experiences than it is to just have fewer unpleasant experiences. And she goes on to say that people have a negativity bias, so our reactions to bad events are faster, stronger and stickier than our reactions to good events. And so she does talk around. How do you? How do you separate yourself, almost maybe looking objectively at an argument from outside of it, because there's always two sides to a coin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And she, I love that. She said, you know, since, since Jamie, jamie's, her husband's name, since Jamie and I were going to fight, because we all fight I wanted to be able to have fights that were more fun, where we could joke around and be affectionate even while we were disagreeing, right, and it's that releasing those feelings you're having that like emotional anger upset, and being able to just say like we are clearly on two different sides of what's going on here, but still being able to be like a little bit jovial about it, right, and fighting in a way that isn't this, you know, attack on the other person or doesn't come from that like nagging negative space of like and and it's just a little more lighthearted, but still tackling the topics right, because you're going to disagree, you're going to have a fight, you're going to have different perspectives on things. So, fighting in a way that you know she calls fighting right, right, fighting in a way that is building you up with each other rather than tearing each other down and away from each other.
Speaker 2:I think this points back to what we said a little bit ago about disc and understanding a person's style. So, for example, you may have ever heard, maybe funny jokes or stories about imagine if you are a person who has a really feisty, animated background, like maybe you're Latin or you're Italian, or you're somebody with like a lot of energy and passion, and then you're married to someone who's very passive or that doesn't like to argue, and so maybe the idea is you would say something like I just need to fight it out, like I would say that that's probably me, like I like to be able to just get it out, get it over with and then move on. In fact, my family growing up was always like that. We'd have an argument and a few minutes later we'd hug, kiss, make up and everything was like gone and done and over with, but we had to get it out.
Speaker 2:But but Quinn is different, and so Quinn is very much like doesn't want to argue, doesn't want to be around any kind of discord at all, and so what this was talking about in the end of this piece of the chapter was just around the differences in people, and so I think if you could get to know your loved one or your coworker, even what is their style? Because if you're going to have a disagreement meaning it is a discord of an agreement, meaning there's a distinct difference in opinion of something how do you each both need to get through that thing so that the end result isn't just a compromise but it's something that's going to make both people feel better than wherever it was you started from. And I think what makes that hard is this next piece, which is about dumping. Like, if you're not fighting right, what are you dumping on that other person? And so what did you think about this part of the chapter on dumping?
Speaker 1:I laughed at the beginning because, uh, she said there's like a conversation with her husband. She's like anyone who looks at our bookshelves right now is gonna think our marriage is in trouble. And she's like, why that? And then he lists all the titles of the books that she's reading, right, and um, she's, but it's great material, like it's so fascinating. He's like, sure, but nobody reads this stuff unless they're having problems.
Speaker 1:I giggled at that and I love and it made me. It was a weird little tangent my brain, but it made me think of, like coaching versus therapy. Right, like we go into therapy usually to heal a part of ourself. Right, like we're having issues and so we go seek out help to figure out how to like deal with those issues. But coaching is more it's on the positive side of psychology, which is more like I'm not, we're not having any problems.
Speaker 1:I wanting to get better, right, I want to be better than I am. I want to, you know, accomplish certain goals. I want to be happier. I want to be better than I am. I want to, you know, accomplish certain goals. I want to be happier. I want you know those types of things. So I giggled because I was like this is the conversation that like actually is the difference between therapy and, like coaching. It was a weird little tangent in my head, but I giggled at the conversation because I'm like sometimes I have books on my shelf too that like somebody would look at it they'd be like, oh my gosh, what gosh, what are you going through? And it's like, no, I'm just fascinated by the topic. Super interesting.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that is kind of funny to think about, because we do recommend a lot of different books and I know yesterday you and I were talking off microphone about some books that we want to talk about next year and I actually thought that same thing that you just said, because I have a lot of books about cleaning my house yep, and it's like.
Speaker 1:It's not that your house is a mess, it's that you want it to be better, right, like you want it to be in a you know place. That's different and it's a topic that's really interesting to you and it's you know. But I so I giggled about that at the first part of this. But I loved the, the, the thought process of dumping and she talks about. Like you you can think like. When I first read the you know, no dumping. It was like laying all your emotional burdens on somebody and doing whatever. Like that's the first thing that went into my head. But she really talked about sometimes it's just like she was talking about her work, right, like she would sometimes just dump all of her thoughts about what she was working on and what she was doing and expecting her spouse to be the person who helped her. Like just work through that. Right. Like, get all those insecurities out of the way. Do whatever.
Speaker 1:The change in, especially like American culture over the last 100 years of you know this move towards our you know, insular, little, tiny family units, right, like the you know your, your immediate family, instead of like the big extended families like in other cultures. You have those sorts of things, right. And it made me think about our support structures and how a lot of times now, like I said, especially in the US, like we're looking to our spouse, to our partner, to be the end all be all of everything. Right, Like I can dump every single thing, I'm thinking, every dream, every idea, every random thought at you and I want you to meet my energy on it. But this was sort of this more like, no, you need other people. Like you know, like my husband isn't the person for this. Right Like I need a writing buddy who I talk that part through, because my husband has no interest in writing. Right Like, that's not his thing, it's not right his, you know his thought process.
Speaker 1:And I thought that was interesting because I was expecting this to be more of an exploration of, like I'm just telling you about my crappy day, going through everything and blah, blah, blah. But it was more of like kind of coming around to you need a broader support system than just that person and you can't expect one person to be the person you just dump all of this on. It's why we should have multiple friends. It's why we should have, you know, family members that we can you know like this is my friend to go to for this, because we connect on this level. This is my family member. I talked about this because we connect on that level and having all those different people to do that lightens the burden on your partnership, your marriage, but also just I don't know gives you more sense of a community, which we know increases happiness and things like that. So I thought this one was really interesting and it took like an interesting exploration turn for me that I wasn't expecting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so too, and I think that you make a really great point about the relational part, because she says in here about when she was thinking about her own happiness and how it was affecting Jamie and her other relationships. She was thinking about the things like we've ever heard of happy wife, happy life, or if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. And yet those are like these passive statements of well, despite my own happiness, if so-and-so is happy, well then I guess that's good as it gets, and it shouldn't be. It should be that it's about this holistic happiness of everyone together. And so I love how she ended this part where she says more tolerant of frustration than unhappy people are, while unhappy people are often withdrawn, defensive, antagonistic and self-absorbed. And then she gives a quote by Oscar Wilde, who said one is not always happy when one is good, but one is always good when one is happy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and I love that thought process. It reminds me of the like old adage of like you can't fill from an empty cup. Like, if you want a happy life like you, you have to set the tone for that right in your relationships, in your space, because you being happy will bring other people along in the journey. I was just thinking about this the other day actually, I don't know what sparked it in my mind, it was probably two days ago where I was just thinking that like I set so much of the tone, the emotional tone, for my family I don't know why, like I don't know what that is right, it's just like one of those wanderings that I'm like you know, probably will spend a lot more time thinking about. But you know, and I thought about you know that is and she calls it a tremendous responsibility right, with a happy wife, happy life. If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy, those things right.
Speaker 1:She was like it's such a responsibility and I thought, you know, I was just thinking about how I, I my emotional state, what I do set so much of the tone in my own family, in my marriage, in, you know, in my relationships and things like that, and it's like, oh, what if I can set a good tone most of the time, right, not all the time, because that's not possible, but, like, if I'm focused on my own happiness, if I'm focused on what it would mean to have, you know, emotional intelligence and, you know, have all these things, then I can really make a big difference in my world right and in the world around that. And I, you know I think that was an interesting place she came to in all of this because until the like, no dumping, right, like, don't, you know, dump all your problems on other people. But it's also like, if you can be happy, that spills over into other people as well. And so it's like, I don't know, that's like it's a, like, a really amazing superpower we all have if we embrace it.
Speaker 2:I think so too, and the way she says that you do it is through these things she calls the proofs of love, which are sort of like the little imprints, the footprints, the fingerprints, the prints that you leave on other people. And so this part got me to think about Sam, that we have the obligation and the opportunity. On what kind of marks are we leaving on other people? Are they proofs of love or are they the absence of love? And so one of the things that she says is that, through going through this process for this month, which is her February happiness project, that she was intentionally looking at ways to show love better. And so she found that by doing something as simple as telling her husband every time she stopped talking to him on the phone I love you that that was a way to leave that little imprint.
Speaker 2:In fact, years and years ago there was this movie called Gloria the original. There was a remake years later, but in this original the story was there was this cop named Gloria and I won't give all the spoilers so that you could go check out the movie but she basically gets connected to this little boy who saw his family taken away from him, and so she has to take care of him, to go, find somewhere to take him to be safe. And through the course of the movie she hates kids. But through the course of the movie, as you can imagine, the plot turns and she falls in love with the kid, etc. So at the very end of the movie I must have only been in elementary school at the oldest At the end of the movie the little boy says to the person that was playing the character of Gloria I love you to death, gloria. And that stuck with me.
Speaker 2:My brother and my mom, we watched that movie together as a young family, and so we started saying that to my mom whenever we would hang up the phone with her in our more adult years I love you to death, gloria. We sign all of our birthday cards to her that way, we sign all of our Christmas cards to her that way, we sign all of our emails to her that way. And so one year my mom went and she actually got a tattoo on her arm with an infinity symbol, and inside the infinity symbol was spelled the acronym for I love you to death, gloria, which is how we sign our letters to my mom. And that was, like to me, the greatest proof of love was that we had this experience together that has transcended all this time, and that it became a way where we express our love.
Speaker 2:Now she had to come to terms in the book. With what ways was she going to express love throughout the month of February? So you don't have to go so far as to get a tattoo to go so far as to get a tattoo. But if there's little things that you can do, that maybe take you a little bit above and beyond what you normally would do to leave a footprint, a fingerprint, a heart print on someone else to show that proof of your love. It's it's not about you going through life feeling like you're right about everything. It's about feeling good about the things that you know are right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly, I loved this. She has this line towards the end of this chapter that says Jamie, who's her husband, said Jamie is my fate, he is my soulmate, he pervades my whole existence. So, of course, I often ignore him. And I laughed out loud because I was like, oh my gosh, like, yes, right, like I mean, I felt this way with my own husband, like my husband, like he's my life, he pervades my entire existence.
Speaker 1:I think about him non-stop, but because of the relationships that we're the closest with that are there all the time, you do take them for granted, often right through the course of the day.
Speaker 1:And so this you know this section about you know, giving proofs of love is taking the time to show those people that you're doing it.
Speaker 1:And it made me think, right, like my husband, I'm this year will be married 13 years and I still feel like I'm learning how to love him the way he, that, the way that touches him the most, right.
Speaker 1:And I, like I think about this like with the love languages and things like this it's I often think about, like giving proofs of love, you can do things that don't hit somebody's heart, right, like, hey, I do this for you, but like that might be how I show love, but it might not be how the person receives love. And so I think, in getting to know somebody and I think it's like what you were saying about like disc right, about like you know, behavior assessments, about really getting to understand somebody I think that it comes through in these like acts of love for people as well, of what kind of acts really resonate with the person you want to receive. The act of love right, like is it, you know? And if you look at like the love languages and things like that, right, they talk about like you know, words of affirmation or physical touch or things like that.
Speaker 1:And in reality, we are all a mix of all of those things, but I think that when you're trying to really hit to the heart of somebody, when you're really trying to show that appreciation through you know, through these, these actions, the thing you've got to think about is who? How does this person receive love? What are the things that are most meaningful to them? Right, is it those?
Speaker 1:Hey, I noticed that you did this and that in itself is like right, they felt noticed, they felt appreciated in that moment. Or hey, like, let me rub your shoulder real quick. Like that makes you feel like connected, and things like that. So, you know, when I thought about this a lot, I laughed at her line of like. Of course, we often ignore our, the person who pervades our whole existence, because we just get caught up in the life, but often, I think we miss to the opportunities to really connect with that person in a way that is deeply, that deeply resonates with them. And it's kind of goes back to what you're saying earlier, like you've got to know the person, you've got to understand them in order to really do it, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're making a really good point is that it's in order to grow, you have to know, and if you don't take the time to know the person, you're not going to grow with the person. And you can actually go through your life with someone and maybe not really know them if you don't really invest the time to truly get to know what are the things that make them feel certain ways, think certain ways, do certain things. And so I think that for the close of this chapter is she tried to say that she was looking for the formula for her, and it's no different than saying that we all have a different prescription or a different recipe or a different formula for what's best for our own relationships. But ignoring these things definitely will result in you not having longevity in your most loving relationships. And so she closes it out really by saying that when you think about happiness in marriage, you may have an almost irresistible impulse to focus on your spouse and to emphasize how he or she should change in order to boost your happiness, but the fact is you cannot change anyone but yourself.
Speaker 2:So if you're someone listening to this episode and you're challenged by a relationship that you have and for me again, this can be about marriage, but it could also be about your kids. It could also be about your parents. It could also really be about your co workers. There's two great books I think we mentioned, maybe in the last episode or so, which is love plus work and love works. It doesn't mean that you have to love your co workers in that way, but it's still about the expression of giving yourself away to someone and not expecting something back in return. And so when she ended on this note about you can't change anyone but yourself. I just want to encourage anybody listening to this episode that if there's something you don't like about what you have, you have a choice you can stay not liking it, or you can change something about yourself, but you can't change the other person. Maybe the point to end on that is to say you may not be able to change them, but you can communicate and connect with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I like that right, and it's through that understanding that you're talking about. Right through that really getting to know somebody and trying to meet them where they are and focusing on what you control and what you do and how you show up in the world changes the whole thing, because you're really powerful in that space. That her marriage was the weather for everything. The atmosphere of her marriage set the weather for her whole life, and so the atmosphere of your happiness, I think, can set the weather for all of the happiness around you.
Speaker 2:Super important for where we're headed next week, because if you're not happy at home, it bleeds into your work, and probably vice versa. I often talk about how there's no such thing as work-life balance. You have life and work is part of it. So next week, for March, we're going to be talking about aiming higher at work, so I hope you got value out of our time together today. Friends, sam, I always love being here with you. Talking about love was also very lovely, and so, on behalf of my friend, sam Powell, my name is Denise Russo. Thanks for joining us, friends, on this episode of what's on your Bookshelf.