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What is Tony Robbins’ relationship advice? How can this advice help you to maintain a healthy relationship?
Tony Robbins is known for his advice on a wide range of subjects, including romantic relationships. Following Tony Robbins’ relationship advice can help you to maintain a positive, long-lasting relationship, where both partners feel appreciated and understood. Master your relationship to better understand your partner and improve your well-being.
Discover Tony Robbins’ relationship advice below.
Tony Robbins: Relationship Advice
In this article, you’ll learn how to master your relationship, because relationships are not only essential to your well-being, but they are also powerful forces in influencing your beliefs, values, and character. Furthermore, you’ll enjoy the successful and empowered life you’re creating even more if you have someone to share it with.
We’ll explain how to maintain a healthy relationship, and then you’ll have a chance to put that knowledge to use with an assignment.
7 Steps to Healthy Relationships
Below you’ll find Tony Robbins’ relationship advice, with seven steps to maintaining a healthy, long-lasting relationship:
Step 1: Communicate Your Rules
Minimize conflict in your relationship by discovering the other person’s values and rules. As we discussed in Part 2, any time you’re upset with someone, it’s because you feel that they have broken your rules—even if you never articulated those rules. So, take time to share your rules and to find out about your partner’s rules, and agree to both make an effort to meet each other’s rules.
Everyone has their own rules, and no one’s rules are more or less correct than someone else’s; they’re all arbitrary. Still, we expect others to live by our rules, even if we never articulated or they never explicitly agreed to those rules. In fact, every time we get upset with someone, the root of our agitation is that we feel that person broke one of our rules.
For example, imagine that you have a rule that people who care about each other show their interest by asking the other person questions about herself. Now imagine that your friend has a conflicting rule that people who care about each other don’t prod for personal information, but rather share information about themselves unsolicited so that the other person feels free to do the same. If neither of you articulate your rule but expect the other person to abide by it, you’ll both end up extremely upset and questioning the quality of your relationship; you’ll be waiting for your friend to ask you questions and your friend will be waiting for you to open up.
In order to avoid such conflicts, it’s critical to your relationships—both personal and professional—that you:
- Become aware of your rules, especially those that directly impact your relationships (such as rules that govern how people show love and respect).
- Clearly communicate your rules to the other person.
- Be willing to listen to and follow some of the other person’s rules, as well.
Step 2: Understand Your Partner’s Rules
You’ll have stronger relationships when you understand people’s rules, because you’ll be able to predict and interpret their behavior and to make them happy by fulfilling their rules. Still, you probably won’t be able to prevent all conflict, so follow these steps next time you get upset with someone:
- Stop and remember that you’re upset because of your rules, not because of the other person’s behavior. Ask yourself whether you value your relationship or your rules more.
- Remind yourself that, although your rules are important to you, they are arbitrary. Everyone’s rules are different.
- Let the other person know that you’re upset.
- Explain the rule they broke, and ask what their rule is for the situation. Try to distinguish between threshold rules and personal standards, so that you both especially avoid breaking each other’s musts.
- Find a way to satisfy both your rules.
Even when you know someone else’s rules, you can still run into challenges when you, or other people, have sub-rules and exceptions to your rules. For example, you may have a rule that if someone is listening attentively, then they should respond to what you’re saying—unless you’re talking about something serious or sensitive, then they should listen silently.
Be aware of your sub-rules so that you can communicate them to others, and make an effort to learn about their sub-rules so that you can avoid violating them. Uncommunicated sub-rules can create issues in a relationship when both people think they’re clear on the rules and then one of them violates the fine print without realizing.
Step 3: Focus on Giving
Focus on what you can give in your relationship, not what you can gain from it. Many people mistakenly enter into relationships in hopes that they will find the missing key to their happiness. However, this approach hurts the relationship along with your chances of finding happiness within it.
Step 4: Don’t Let Problems Fester
Address problems in your relationship early, before they grow into larger issues. The most powerful antidote to problems is early, frequent communication. Explain your rules, use Transformational Vocabulary, and interrupt your pattern when you get into arguments that devolve into senseless bickering.
If you don’t address problems when they’re small, they can evolve into harmful patterns as they go through these four stages:
- Resistance: It’s common to reach a point in your relationship when you feel bothered by something that your partner says or does. At this stage, it’s critical to let your partner know how you’re feeling in order to prevent your feelings from graduating to the next stage.
- Resentment: If you haven’t addressed your feelings of resistance, they compound and turn into resentment, which causes you to feel angry with your partner for the things they say or do. Resentment impedes intimacy by creating an emotional barrier that only grows unless you address it.
- Rejection: If you allow your resentment to build, you soon start looking for ways to reject your partner. You find opportunities to attack your partner and you think that everything they do is annoying. At this point, you begin to separate yourself physically as well as emotionally.
- Repression: To cope with the pain of your disintegrating relationship, you eventually repress your feelings and disconnect. Although this eliminates your pain, it also kills the passion and love in your relationship. At this point, your partner essentially becomes your roommate.
Step 5 Prioritize Your Relationship
Make your relationship one of your top priorities. Relationships require consistent effort to remain healthy, and they suffer if they’re neglected for too long. Don’t allow your relationship to run on autopilot while you attend to the pressures of daily life.
Step 6: Focus on Your Relationship’s Future, Not Its End
Focus each day on improving your relationship, and avoid dwelling on your fear that the relationship could one day end. If you focus on the relationship’s potential demise, you’ll unconsciously move in that direction by adopting self-sabotaging behaviors. Furthermore, never threaten to leave unless you’re truly considering breaking up. Raising the threat of leaving puts both your and your partner’s focus on a potential breakup rather than a resolution.
Step 7: Consistently Reinforce Your Positive Emotions
Reinforce your feelings of love, intimacy, attraction, and appreciation for your partner every day. Remind yourself of the reasons you’re with this person. Ask yourself how you got so lucky to share your life with this person. To maintain your spark and prevent stagnation, constantly look for ways to surprise and share special moments with your partner.
Tony Robbins: Relationships Exercise
Abiding by Tony Robbins’ relationship advice will help you maintain a healthy relationship, and today’s exercise kickstarts and supports those efforts:
- Talk to your partner about what each of you values most in a relationship, and share each of your rules for those values.
- Make an effort to follow your partner’s rules.
- Commit to prioritizing the health of your relationship over winning arguments. Remember this especially when you get caught up in the heat of an argument and you feel the urge to prove that you’re right and your partner’s wrong. When you catch yourself doing this, disrupt your pattern, stop the discussion, and resume it after you’ve cooled off.
- Brainstorm with your partner to come up with a pattern disruption that you’ll both use when you either or both of you become really upset. Use something strange or funny so that, when you deploy it in the middle of an argument, it will make you smile and ease the tension, even if just for a moment.
- When you notice yourself feeling resistance toward your partner, immediately communicate your feelings. Use Transformational Vocabulary to ease the intensity of your feelings.
- Prioritize regular date nights every one to two weeks, and take turns planning imaginative, romantic dates.
- Share at least one three-minute kiss each day.
Follow Tony Robbins’ relationship advice to understand your partner better and improve your well-being.
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Here's what you'll find in our full Awaken the Giant Within summary :
- How to make transformational changes to your life through small adjustments
- How you create your destiny every time you start a sentence with “I am…”
- Strategies to take control of your thoughts and emotions
