Nate Bagley has insider info on how to create mind-blowing love.
Ever wonder what separates the couples with the most amazing love from the rest of the world?
Have you ever asked yourself what it takes to create mind-blowing, passionate, connected, lasting love?
I’ve been asking that question for years. I’ve searched out and interviewed hundreds of couples who claim to have epic love just to get answers to these questions.
The stories I’ve heard on this journey are incredible.
They’ve changed my life.
Here are a few tips most people have never tried that can help you create the type of relationship most people only dream of.
Exchange Your Complaints for Requests
One of the quickest ways to really harm your relationship is to be a complainer.
Complaining is so easy!
When we complain we feel justified, superior, and right.
And when we complain, we leave our partner feeling wrong, inadequate, and disempowered.
One of my favorite rules in the amazing book, The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work
by Terry Real, is “You have no right to complain about not getting what you never asked for.”
Asking for the things you want requires you to be vulnerable and own your desires. And as the vulnerability legend, Brené Brown says, “There can be no intimacy without vulnerability.”
This owning of your desire gives your partner the opportunity to do something for you that will make you happy.
It provides your partner with the opportunity to take action, whereas the only action your partner can take when you complain is to apologize.
A request empowers your partner to be giving and generous whereas a complaint is disempowering, and, as Terry Real says, “A disempowered partner is seldom generous.”
Make a Fuss
A few years ago I read an incredible story on a blog called The Sneeze.
Steve came home from work one day to find his wife sitting at the computer.
“Hello,” he said.
She barely grunted back.
“Ok, we’re gonna try this again.” He replied.
So he walked out of the house, and then came back in and yelled, “Honey, I’m home!”
His wife came running across the apartment yelling, “Stevie’s home! Stevie’s home!”
They loved the experience so much that they turned it into a daily ritual.
The person who is home first must make a small fuss when the other person gets there.
It’s like having a puppy that’s always excited to see you… only the puppy is the human you love most in the world.
It’s amazing how quickly your day can change when you know there is someone at home who is excited to see you, regardless of what’s going on in your lives.
If you want to inject your relationship with an unfiltered shot of happiness, try this for one week and notice the difference it makes.
The Gratitude Game
Gratitude is rocket fuel for love!
Have you ever heard the saying, “Your perception is your reality?”
It’s such a powerful lesson. How you experience your life is totally dependent on whether or not you perceive the things that are going on as good or bad, right or wrong, opportunities or punishments.
When you practice gratitude, you are flexing your positivity muscle. You are experiencing your life through the perceptive lens of happy, good, rewarding, and right.
As my friend Maggie Reyes says, “The more you notice and appreciate things and experiences you are grateful for, the more of those good things and experiences show up your life.”
And just like most skills, you get better at seeing the things to be grateful for, and expressing gratitude for them, with practice.
My friends, Christian and Sarina play a gratitude game every night to flex their gratitude muscles. When they climb in bed together, they lay next to each other and list the things in their lives and in the day they’re grateful for.
Their gratitude game sometimes has them laughing and celebrating together, and sometimes it leaves them in tears for the goodness life has to offer them.
Some days finding something to be grateful for is a challenge. But when you put in the effort on those days, and dig deep to find your gratitude, you realize that even the worst of days cannot overshadow the awesomeness in life.
Gratitude really is a practice… one that can transform your life. How can you build it into a daily ritual for your relationship?
Get to know Nate on The Loveumentary
Photo: FlickrCC/Hollie Chandler