177: Valentine's Day Special - The 3 Pillars Of A Great Relationship

This is episode 177,

Valentine's Day Special.

The three pillars to a great relationship.

My name is Tudor Alexander and this is the Dance of Life podcast.

Every week my goal is to inspire you to take action towards what you love,

Live a transformed life,

And enjoy the journey there.

Are you ready?

Let's go!

What's up,

What's up everybody?

Welcome to the show.

My name is Tudor Alexander and I am your host for the Dance of Life podcast.

Today we're talking about love.

Happy Valentine's Day to you and yours if you're single,

If you're celebrating singles awareness day,

You're cuddling with yourself,

That's totally fine too.

It doesn't really matter because we're gonna talk about some core principles with love today.

Really important stuff.

But first,

A quote to get us grounded.

Love does not consist in gazing at each other,

But in looking outward together in the same direction.

That's by Antoine de Saint-Exuberry.

It's one of my favorite quotes on love and relationships in general because it helps you visualize something very important.

Love is not about being attached and obsessed and objectifying one another,

And looking at each other,

Gazing at each other,

Wanting and obsessing over each other.

It is about looking outward.

True love is about looking outward together in the same direction.

What that means to me is true love is really when two people are able to support one another in the pursuit of their own path,

To be able to have that one vision in common,

The thing that lights both of you up,

To have that common outcome,

That common path that you're both walking towards.

That is so important and so much more accurate to me of what true love is about than what any one person can do or fulfill for you.

Today we're talking about the three pillars of a great relationship.

Basically,

What are some of the three most important things that we can do to bring us back to that idea of walking on the same path towards a common outcome rather than getting caught up in the codependent cycles that we tend to fall into when we're gazing at each other,

When we're obsessed with the other person,

What they're doing,

What they're not doing for us,

All these kinds of important things.

I'm going to share with you some simple but really powerful tools.

I've talked about these before and they're outlined in my book,

The Gratitude Map.

It's a free book.

Shameless plug here.

If you want to go check it out,

Thegratitudemap.

Com,

You get a free book,

Free mini course.

Go check it out because it'll be worth the re,

Especially if you're in a relationship.

In the book,

There's a lot of science of gratitude that I quote some studies on,

The impact of gratitude on relationships and on love specifically in romantic relationships.

So if you're in a relationship,

If you want to get into one,

It's a great idea to be able to practice gratitude and to not get caught up in what the other person's not doing for you and all these kind of things because at the end of the day,

As you'll soon learn,

I hope you'll learn,

Is that gratitude is the fundamental base.

It's the seed for everything else in a great relationship and that's what these three pillars are going to be about.

So super excited to jump into this stuff with you.

It's one of the most powerful things I can share with you on relationships.

So it's one,

You'll see it if you look back at my iTunes history for this show.

I've talked about this several times.

It cannot be understated.

So important what I'm about to share with you guys.

I was super excited to jump into this with you.

If you like this kind of stuff,

Make sure you subscribe.

If there's anybody in your life,

Maybe your other half that you want to share this with,

Make sure you share that with them too.

Tag me on Facebook or Instagram with what you learn or take a picture and use the hashtag hella grateful.

That's what I use with the gratitude map.

So tag me with what you learn or use the hashtag hella grateful and do a selfie with you and yours.

That would be pretty fun.

My Instagram handle is at tutoralexanderofficial and with that,

Without further ado,

Let's jump into the three pillars of a great relationship.

Here we go.

All right.

All right.

So whether you're single,

You're dating,

You're in a long term relationship,

Any kind of relationship,

The great part about this is that it doesn't necessarily have to do with romantic relationships.

It's really any kind of relationship in my eyes is strong and powerful and creative and manifesting and abundant when we can employ these three pillars.

It's three pillars of a great relationship period.

So jot these down,

Make sure you're taking notes.

Again,

I'm going to shamelessly plug my book,

The gratitude map.

It's super easy to read.

It's got a lot of great illustrations in there,

But all this stuff is broken down in a lot more detail as well as with the free mini course you get,

There's a little instruction around this kind of stuff.

So make sure you check that out if you really want to dive deeper into this.

The first point I want to share with you guys is that these pillars,

They're not,

You know,

The visual of three pillars standing up parallel to one another is a little bit inaccurate.

I use the word pillars because,

You know,

It's something that we relate to as strong and,

You know,

The three pillars of X,

Y,

Z.

But really this is more like a foundation in the sense that these are layers and they're horizontal,

One on top of the other.

And why I say that is because they're in an order with each other.

It's not like they're vertical and each one can happen whenever it needs to happen.

They're horizontal and in the sense that there's a layer that comes first,

There's a layer that comes second,

And there's a layer that comes third.

So that's really important.

So that's the first conceptual foundation to keep in mind.

The second point that I want to make is about something called the virtuous cycle.

So what is a virtuous cycle?

Well,

In general,

What's a cycle?

It's something that moves around in a circle like the year,

That's a cycle.

The phases of the moon,

Your laundry,

That's a cycle.

Everything moves in cycles in nature.

And cycles are ruled by the principle of duality,

Meaning two things that are opposites.

They're moving in proportion in relation to one another to create movement through time.

Through time and space,

That's what creates that cycle,

That spiral dynamics,

Right?

That's pretty much everywhere you look in nature.

So that's a fundamental idea of realities,

That things move in cycles.

But when it comes to things that we don't see,

Like knowledge,

Action,

Gratitude,

Generosity,

All these things that are a little more,

You know,

Without shape,

They're ambiguous and amorphous,

Those things also work in cycles.

So there's a cycle between certain things.

So,

For example,

Let's go back to knowledge and action.

So if you can imagine on a whiteboard,

And again,

All this stuff is laid out in some of the video tutorials that come with the book,

But if you can just imagine,

Close your eyes or draw it out if you want in a notebook,

You've got the word knowledge,

And then you draw an arrow that's like a half of a circle from the top of knowledge all the way flowing to the right,

Like you're drawing a half of a circle with an arrow,

And then it ends in action.

And then you draw another arrow from the bottom of the word action,

Looping back up into the word knowledge.

So it basically looks kind of like a cycle between knowledge and action.

This is a very simple example of a cycle in the sense that knowledge leads to action and action leads to knowledge.

So they're related as a pair.

So,

For example,

When you learn something new,

You can take new action.

When you take the new action,

You get feedback and you learn more,

And then it leads to more action.

So this is called a virtuous cycle in the sense that it propagates itself,

Right?

So if there's no obstacles,

Assuming it's just straight up,

Every time that you take action,

You're learning something,

And every time that you're learning something,

You take action,

It tends to move forward.

That's just the way things go.

Everything,

If you look at nature,

Constantly grows and manifests and moves forward.

But also,

You know,

There's obstacles in the way,

Right?

So there's things that can come into play to make this cycle go the other way,

To derail,

To become vicious.

So there's a vicious cycle,

And that's where we get the word,

The term vicious cycle and virtuous cycle.

They're related.

One is productive,

And one is unproductive and tends to derail.

So,

For example,

With this current example of knowledge and action,

If we assume that basically when you learn something new,

You take action on it,

Well,

A lot of times that's not true,

And there's a reason for that,

Because what gets in the way between knowledge and actions is limiting belief.

Some sort of limiting belief is preventing you,

Even though you know something,

Oh,

I know I shouldn't eat cookies,

But X,

Y,

Z,

You keep eating them,

Right?

So there's some limiting belief in there that is preventing you from taking the action that you know is right.

That is kind of a simplistic example,

But you can look at any point in your life when you learn something new,

If there's no obstruction,

It will lead to more action.

If it's not leading to more action,

That means there's something internally that you haven't worked out,

There's some sort of limiting belief that's preventing that knowledge from being expressed.

The other way around is what gets in between action and learning,

You know,

Creating more knowledge from the things that you do?

Well,

Awareness,

Right?

Mindfulness.

Because you can act all day,

But if you're not learning,

If you're not doing it mindfully,

And you're not learning from your mistakes,

If you're not being resourceful,

If you're not paying attention,

If you're not employing your awareness,

Then it just becomes mindless action.

So it doesn't lead to more knowledge,

And therefore new actions,

There's no virtuous spiral upward,

It just keeps spinning around and around and around,

And then you get tired and it unravels,

You know,

You're just mindless,

And it doesn't go anywhere.

So I hope that makes sense,

But basically that's how these cycles work.

So in a nutshell,

Again,

We go into a lot deeper dive in the book and some of the accompanying materials with it,

My goal is just to kind of introduce you to this idea,

But basically the idea is very simple.

You have two things that work in pairs,

And without any obstructions,

They will move forward,

Virtuous cycle.

If there's things in the way,

They're not gonna be virtuous,

It'll be a vicious cycle,

Meaning it keeps getting worse and worse and worse.

Well,

When it comes to the three pillars of a great relationship,

I told you that they were more like layers,

Right?

So the layer at the bottom is gratitude,

That is the number one thing,

That's why I said it's so important,

Because at the end of the day,

If you cannot fill your cup,

If you can't fill your glass up with what you appreciate about,

Not necessarily about the other person,

That's a farther step ahead.

I'm talking about just what do you appreciate about yourself,

About today,

About your daily life,

About the things that you receive,

About the people in your life,

Is your ability to be thankful,

To tune in,

To be mindful,

Do you have those skills and do you employ them on a daily basis?

If you can do that,

That's the first layer,

The first layer of the cake,

Or in this case,

The first pillar,

But again,

We're looking at it horizontally.

And what happens when you can do that?

What happens when you can create that sense of gratitude within yourself?

Well,

Gratitude and generosity go hand in hand.

They are the two pairs that create this virtuous cycle.

So when your glass is filled up,

When you're feeling,

Gosh,

You know,

I'm so alive with the life I have,

I'm so thankful that I have what I have,

I'm so grateful for the beauty around me,

I'm so fortunate for the support that I have in life,

The finances that I've been given,

The opportunity,

The things that I've learned,

The safety that I've had,

Whatever it is,

You know,

When you're full,

When your heart is full,

It naturally pours out.

So what does that mean?

That means you naturally tend to be more friendly,

More outgoing,

More generous,

More giving,

More courageous,

Right?

When you're in scarcity mode and you're complaining and you're worrying about what you're not getting,

What you lost,

When you're in regret,

When you're in anger,

When all these different negative suction type of emotions,

When those are in your heart,

It's very difficult to be generous.

In fact,

You really can't be.

They go hand in hand.

So that's why gratitude and generosity are actually like two sides of the same coin and they form the two first pillars of any great relationship.

So why is that?

Because when you employ gratitude and generosity,

Without any blockages,

Gratitude leads to generosity,

And then generosity leads back into gratitude.

When you're generous,

When you act courageously,

When you put yourself 100% in something,

When you give,

When you create value for others,

It always,

Always,

Always gives you so much more in return.

It gives you things to be grateful for.

It keeps you excited.

It gives you things to look forward to.

So it's a cycle.

And that's how people create abundance in their life.

That's how people create happiness,

Joy,

Fulfillment,

Financial success.

Everything comes from this virtuous cycle of gratitude and generosity.

It's like a little battery.

So the goal,

As I see it,

In any good relationship,

Whether it's romantic or otherwise,

Business partnership doesn't matter.

The goal is to be able to create this little virtuous cycle within yourself,

Within yourselves,

Actually,

Plural.

So both people need to employ this and both people need to create this cycle of generosity and gratitude within themselves to be able to charge up and spiral up that energy and keep it moving forward.

Because what tends to happen,

Right,

Is we keep it to ourselves.

We shy away.

We don't share how we're feeling.

We don't communicate.

We complain.

We get internal.

We make excuses.

All these obstacles,

Right?

There's plenty of them.

I had a whole special series on them and the book will introduce you to a wide variety of them.

But it doesn't matter.

There's some obstacles,

Right,

That prevent that cycle from working the way it's supposed to.

And if you let that happen,

It starts to turn vicious.

It starts to derail.

And if both people don't have discipline and a practice of creating this virtuous cycle within themselves,

It is very easy for things to derail and to find a thousand reasons why it's not working,

Why it's somebody else's fault,

Why you're not happy,

Why you should leave,

You should find something else,

Someone else,

Whatever,

Doesn't matter.

There's always a reason to quit.

In anything you do,

There's always a reason to quit.

So the key is you have to be your own chaperone.

You have to be in charge of creating that little battery.

That's the first two pillars.

Because the third pillar is the cherry on the proverbial ice cream sundae.

The third pillar is service,

Meaning service to others.

Gratitude,

Generosity,

And service to others.

So what does that mean?

And why is that the third pillar?

Why is it in an order like that?

These days we are obsessed with getting our own needs met.

What do I get?

You know,

You got to treat me this certain way.

I'm looking for somebody that's going to treat me like this and do this for me.

We want to be serviced before giving generosity and appreciation outward.

So we put expectations of how we should be treated.

And don't get me wrong,

It's important you should have expectations in the sense of what you're going to tolerate and what you're not going to tolerate from other people.

But there's a fine line between that healthy tolerance and wanting other people to do things for you before you show any affection,

Before you show any gratitude or generosity.

So there's a fine line between that.

And the problem is that most of the time it's on the other side where people are waiting.

We are waiting for others to meet our needs before we will do anything else,

Before we will open up.

And this creates codependence.

It creates misery.

It creates all sorts of expectations and miscommunications and gray areas and games and all the stuff that you and I are all too familiar with in relationships,

Not just romantic relationships.

This happens at business partnerships,

In employee-employer relationships,

All kinds of relationships,

Because we skip the step.

The step that we skipped is the gratitude,

Generosity,

Virtuous cycle,

That little battery.

If you don't have that battery,

Then you are unable to create good relationships with other people,

Period.

Anybody,

It doesn't matter whether it's romantic or not.

If you don't have that battery within yourself to be grateful,

To be generous,

And to keep your own cycle moving forward,

Then you're going to have a hard time being fulfilled in other relationships,

Or even being fulfilled on your own.

So this is very important.

Those two are the keys.

But the third pillar,

Once those are in place and your glass is full and you can be generous in the way that you naturally come out,

Then we have enough energy to pay attention,

To do that special something for someone else,

To look and see what is their love language,

What is their horoscope say,

What are their preferences,

What is their particular need,

Even the agreements that we form in our relationships.

All these higher-level order things,

They require you to have a full battery for you to serve somebody.

You know,

Serving each other in a relationship is a very special thing.

It's a very beautiful thing and it's what makes especially romantic relationships,

Any kind of relationship,

But especially romantic relationships,

What makes them that extra special is when somebody knows exactly what you want and serves you for it,

Even though maybe that's not the way that they would naturally express love.

But in order to do that,

That requires a lot of energy.

It's not easy.

If you're pissed off,

If your day at work really sucked,

If you're low on energy and you're not healthy,

All these higher-level things go out the window immediately.

So that's why it's important to go back to those first two pillars and create your own battery,

Your own virtuous cycle.

Fill that glass up through a practice of gratitude and then once your battery is full,

It's much easier to serve another person and to serve each other,

To be in service of one another.

So rather than looking and skipping to that third step and looking for service and how somebody can serve us,

We first have to create our own energy and then we can serve other people.

So,

You know,

In the end,

It's all a practice,

Guys.

Like I said,

These tools are pretty simple,

But their power lies in your ability to practice them over and over again.

That's why I created that book.

That's why we have the Daily Gratitude Practice Facebook group.

That's why,

You know,

There's all these free resources for you to check out.

Again,

In the book,

There's a ton of science of gratitude,

Articles that I reviewed and researched about how huge gratitude is for relationships and sense of vulnerability and communication,

Authenticity,

Having the sense that people are loved and they have a real relationship.

Gratitude is at the heart of that.

They actually have done studies on this very interesting stuff.

I don't personally need science to validate the benefits of gratitude,

But it's certainly very interesting.

And if you could take one thing away,

Just remember that virtuous cycle,

Because at the end of the day,

Two people,

Even if they don't get their preferences,

You're always going to be mismatched on preferences.

You're always going to have different love languages.

You're always going to be different in certain ways.

And if that's the only thing that you have,

If serving each other is the only thing that you know how to do,

As soon as life gets difficult,

You're not going to have the batteries and the juice to withstand,

You know,

Life's challenges.

And it's going to be suddenly seeming like they're not,

They don't care about you.

They don't care about each other.

You're not,

You know,

Fulfilling the needs and expectations and you get into the,

All this dramatic crap that we,

It's so,

So common.

It's so common.

So rather than doing that,

Don't skip steps.

Go to the beginning.

Start with gratitude.

Start with generosity.

And then when you have that practice solidified,

Go to service and service each other and listen to each other.

Be mindful,

Enjoy,

Because that's what life is all about.

So I hope this has inspired you to take up a gratitude practice.

You know,

If you,

Like I said,

Again,

Shameless plug,

But look,

It's going to change your life.

Check out the book,

Get it with your significant other.

I would love to know what you're hella grateful for after the experience.

Use the hashtag hella grateful.

Let me know.

I hope you've enjoyed these three pillars of a great relationship.

It's simple stuff,

But at the end of the day,

It's going to empower you to live a more meaningful and beautiful and robust relationship.

I truly mean that I hope you have a beautiful Valentine's day wherever and whoever you happen to be.

And that's a wrap for today's episode,

Guys.

Remember that no matter where you find yourself today,

Single or not at the heart of your relationships,

That all of them is gratitude.

My goal for this episode was to inspire you to live a life filled with appreciation and generosity,

Because that's how you'll truly attract love into your life.

That's how you're going to grow it.

That's how you're going to maintain it is through these practices.

You got some amazing and free tools available to you.

Again,

Shameless plug.

Check out the book,

Gratitude map dot com.

Feel free to join the daily gratitude practice Facebook group.

It's free every day.

There's some little gratitude challenge,

An opportunity for you to tune into this practice and to include it into your life so that you can cultivate love,

Abundance,

Love for yourself.

Love for your passion,

For your own path,

For your friends,

For your own life.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode.

As always,

Don't forget to share it with one person in your life that needs to hear this message.

Maybe if it's your significant other.

Maybe it's a friend.

Maybe it's a family member.

Let me know what your biggest takeaway from today's episode is by tagging me at two to Alexandra official with what you're hella grateful for.

That's hashtag H e l l a g r a t e f u l bonus points.

If you throw me a selfie with your significant other,

That'd be totally awesome.

Don't forget today's quote.

If you can remember one thing,

Remember this quote because I absolutely love it.

Love does not consist in gazing at each other,

But in looking outward together in the same direction.

It's Antoine de Saint Exupéry.

Too often we look for love to be this dramatic experience like in a soap opera or Disney fairy tale.

But,

You know,

Instead it's often found in the common pursuit of something that inspires both of you.

I wish you a wonderful Valentine's Day or singles Awareness Day,

Whatever happens before you.

Thank you so much for listening.

Have an awesome,

Exciting,

Fun,

Romantic,

Beautiful,

Slow,

Mindful day and tune in next Friday for 10 powerful reminders.

When you're feeling burned out,

We're going to look at some really useful reminders,

Powerful mindset hacks to help you.

I don't want to say push,

But make it help you make it through an episode of burnout in your life.

So if you're feeling burned out,

It's going to be a great episode for you.

So make sure you stay tuned.

And remember,

Life is a dance.

So go out there and dance it.

Well.

For more episodes and weekly content,

Stay connected at dance of life dot com.