By Gay Hendricks
If you’ve been trying to change your relationship and it hasn’t happened, you’ve probably taken some or all of these approaches:
You’ve been looking for answers – that missing key or that magic formula that will finally reveal what you need.
Yet here you are, and the change you so fervently want eludes you.
Let me tell you why: You’ve been looking for answers in the wrong places.
You might think, “Who the heck does this guy think he is to be telling me what my problem is?”
Well, let me tell you a bit more about who I am.
I’m a guy who graduated with a Ph.D. from Stanford where I spent years searching for the answer to one question:
“How can we bring about lasting change in ourselves?”
This question had propelled me into counseling psychology and had sent me to hundreds of lectures, thousands of books and journals, and dozens of professors, gurus, and sages.
But here’s the remarkable thing: when I graduated, I was at a crisis point. I was about to start my professional career as a professor at the University of Colorado where I would be training OTHER therapists.
And I still didn’t have an answer to my original question!
Sure, I knew a bunch of facts and theories, but I knew nothing that resonated in my own heart and mind.
Talk about a humbling moment. But what came right after was much more important, because as soon as I realized I really knew nothing, I was able to find the answers within the one place I hadn’t looked – the source of wisdom within myself.
And once that happened, everything fell into place. I created the change I wanted in my life: from having the fulfilling career I really wanted to meeting Katie and creating our phenomenal marriage.
All the advice you’ve heard from friends and family – and all your attempts to create change in your relationship – mean nothing if you don’t know why you’re experiencing your relationship problems in the first place.
And these problems almost always start with something inside you that you just haven’t tapped into.
The bigger problem is that as long as you keep doing what you’ve been doing, and looking for answers where you’ve been looking, you’ll remain blind to this inner compass.
You’ll keep having the same debilitating fights with your partner over and over again. You’ll wonder why you seem to have been signaled out to be unhappy in love. And if you’re single, you’ll despair that you’ll ever find the right mate.
When you subscribe to receive our free relationship advice newslette (below), you’ll learn how to identify and address the root causes beneath the pain you’ve been experiencing so you can finally experience genuine, lasting love. You’ll learn:
I wouldn’t be here today – with a career and a relationship that thrill me – if I had kept looking for answers “out there.”
When you start searching “in here” – when you genuinely ask yourself how you might be contributing to the problem you’re experiencing – you’ll finally discover the solutions that have long eluded you.