Strengthen Your Relationships: Tips from eHarmony's Co-Creator (#125)

In honor of Valentine's Day I went deep into the vault -- we're over 100 episodes deep now! -- to feature one of our resident love experts Les Parrott. He'll give us practical tips to love (and live!) more inspired. This episode originally aired in June 2017. Les is a co-creator of the match-making software behind eHarmony, psychologist, professor, author, husband, and father. He’s shared his expertise with Oprah, Barbara Walters, and Tom Brokaw and today he shares it with us.  Are you ready to improve, maintain and ignite all of your relationships to live more inspired? SHOW NOTES: Fight Night – the event Les and Leslie (his wife) host where couples talk about their conflict and how to leverage it to bring them closer together. Saving Your Marriage before It Starts is their most popular book. We aren’t entitled and don’t always get what we feel we deserve – so we must learn how to adjust to the things beyond our control. Have you faced marriage myths with honesty? Ex: This person should make me whole. We’re set up for heartache; nobody can complete us. The most important thing you’ll do for your relationships is what you do for yourself. If you try to build intimacy with someone before you have done the work of getting whole on your own, your relationship will become an attempt to complete yourself. Your relationships can only be as healthy as you are. A few things you can do to become a little more whole: Embrace your significance. Can feel deep down that you have a purpose on this planet? Unswerving authenticity. Are you following your path regardless of what anyone says? Self-giving love. Realizing others needs are different than yours. There are three kinds of fights: Bad fights – tear us apart / rip away the fabric of our relationships Dumb fights – have no purpose / are silly Good fights – bring us closer together Don’t avoid conflict, turn the fight into a good fight. You make them “bad” or “good” by the choices you make / context within the fight. Empathy is a single skill that will change your relationship the most. Conflicts dissipate when you see the conflict from their side and they see it from yours. Try to accurately see the world from their perspective. Empathy has two components, your head, and heart. Sympathize with your heart, analyze with your head. We typically do one well, recognize which one you struggle with and make yourself do it, too. Take Les’s Deep Love Assessment: Partners answer a series of questions separately and instantly get a private, custom roadmap for lifelong love. LES PARROTT’S LIVE INSPIRED 7 1. What is the best book you’ve ever read? Either Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman or Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. 2. Tomorrow you discover your wealthy uncle shockingly dies at the age of 103; leaving you millions. What would you do? I’d establish, on college campuses, centers for healthy relationships to give education to a whole new generation. We’d see divorce rate drop dramatically – and when you lower the divorce rate, it positively impacts rates of education, wealth, etc. 3. Your house is on fire, all living things and people are out. You have the opportunity to run in and grab one item. What would it be? My laptop. 4. You are sitting on a bench overlooking a gorgeous beach. You have the opportunity to have a long conversation with anyone living or dead. Who would it be? My wife Leslie, she loves the beach. I love that she loves the beach and we’ve had some of our greatest talks there. 5. What is the best advice you’ve ever received? Master the capacity to adjust to things beyond your control. Life is unfair.  6. Looking back, what advice would you give yourself at age 20? Relax. Slow down a bit. It’s going to be okay. 7. It’s been said that all great people can have their lives summed up in one sentence. How do you want yours to read? A man who loved his family with all his heart. ***  If you enjoyed today’s episode: Subscribe, rate & review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. See you here next Thursday! Live Inspired with John daily on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram + get his Monday Motivation email.