 So a lot of people talk about the complications of being in a good relationship. Now I guess from my observation of life and the relationships I've been in that have been good and the one or so that have been really bad, I don't think it's that complicated. But I do think that it's something that maybe takes a little bit of work. Now in this video I want to share what I think my personal observations are about the only two things you really need in a really good relationship to make it work. What's up guys? Alex Hein, author of the book Master of the Day. Now I've included the first link below as for a free journaling worksheet and a journaling email series that will help you figure out how to plot the path forward in your life. So you can check it out the first link right there in the description. So the way I see relationships is that you just have two things. You have yourself and you have another person. So the first piece here is the things and the factors that affect you and how you show up in your own life because how you show up in your own life is just going to be exactly how you show up in another relationship. So the three things here that I've observed are MRE. The first is the mirror effect. The second is the reactivity effect. And the third is being an evolved person. So let's talk about these now. So the most obvious thing is that the quality of your relationship mirrors the quality of your own life now. So if you're a strongly dysfunctional person who can't hold down a job, who's unhappy during the day, who can't go to the gym and stay fit, who has all these things going on, your relationship is just going to mirror that. It can't possibly get better than the way your life already is, if that makes sense. So the thing is, if you're already doing a great job of being healthy, happy, financially well off, fun, relaxed, you're well rested, that's just going to carry into your relationship. And if not, then it won't. So those things you need to work on right now. The second thing is reactivity. I see a lot of couples fighting and they fight about things that other couples don't fight about. Now I think part of that is just because you're two different people fusing together and their lives are getting meshed. But also, if you're a reactive person before being in a relationship, like if you can't take negative feedback or little arguments make you agitated or stressed or little things bother you, you're going to be a difficult person to date. And so the second thing is figuring out all those sources of trauma or sensitivity or reactivity and working on those things. Because again, that just gets worse with another human. And building off of this is just the general concept of being an evolved person. Now, the way I think about that simply is, number one, how often are you reactive to life? Are you overly sensitive? Do you blame? Are you a victim? Are you complaining? All these traits that make your life difficult will just still be there with another person. The only difference is you're more likely to probably lie about them because you don't want to lose that person by having them see these traits that maybe you aren't so proud of. So the first box is always, what's going on in your life? Have you done the work in your life, the work with a capital W? Because if you haven't, it's just going to be that much harder with another person. Even if you meet your dream person, if you're broke and always stressing about money, you're unhealthy, unhappy, you're just not that fulfilled, your life is boring. You're putting a lot on that person to be your savior in your life. And that by itself is an unfair stress. They're not there to save you. They're not there to complete you. They're there to be another whole, equal person that meets a whole, equal person. And you guys are like two supernovas coming together. 10 times more awesome than someone trying to fix or save one another from their pain. So obviously the second part, besides you being a functional human being, continuing to be one in a relationship, is that was personal integration. This is other integration about the person you choose, because I think you can choose the wrong person who will make your life an absolute living hell. So what are those traits that I think everyone needs to look out for? The first thing is really choosing someone who they themselves are working on their personal growth. Because again, there are so many relationships I see where the person, the people are getting into these fights with each other. And what they really need and request is that the other person improves this trait. They want them to get fit. They want them to take their career more seriously. They want them to have some initiative, be a leader. They want them to be more affectionate. And what I see is that people are often unwilling to grow. And it's very unlikely that you, if you're already growth oriented in your personal life, that you will not be growth oriented in your relationship life. So what I see is people choose people that are not growth oriented. And you know that they aren't because you look at their life. And their life's maybe not that fulfilling, not that glamorous, not that interesting. They don't like their own life. And so they haven't done a lot of that self growth work for themselves. So unless you're like the best thing that ever happened to them, which is only going to be short lived anyway, they're not going to change that much for you if at all. That's really, really scary if there's things you don't like now. So the first thing to look for I think is someone who's also on their sole path, doing the work to get better, figure out their trauma, figure out their issues, figure out their flaws and frustrations, and they're working on themselves. Because when you date them, they're also going to be willing to work on themselves. The second thing I would say to look for is equal commitment or shared commitment. It's really common that you find someone at quote unquote the wrong time where they're not available to be the XYZ person that you're hoping they can be. And the commitment can come for a lot of reasons. Maybe they're not that committed because they're just not that into you or you're not that into them. And maybe they're not that committed because they have a barrier to their commitment. A lesser known barrier is that besides the person really not being that into you is that people have deep psychological issues. People have psychological issues, childhood issues, trauma, stuff like that that prevents them from actually being able to emotionally in an emotionally healthy way commit to you and stay committed without games, without drama, without insanity arising. And so if you find that there's a barrier to that commitment to them acting like a functioning human being, that might be something worth thinking about. And maybe you wonder if you want to be in this relationship. The last thing I would say that's important is shared character slash values. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got on choosing a marriage partner, specifically a long term person, is that it's from the book called The Sacred Search. So it's actually by a religious guy, I think he's a pastor. And he said, think about the woman or the man that you want, 10 years from now, when all the butterflies are gone, and you have kids and you're stressed, think about the character you want of that person. All right, and then date that person now. So who's the person you want to be around all day long if you're not having sex with them? Who's the person that does what they say? Who's reliable, who has a solid character, who conducts themselves? Well, that's a big question, right? So if you basically remove sex from the equation, you remove most of the attraction. What is the character you want to be around? Choose that. All right, guys, I hope that helps give you some insight. This is the intro to our mastery of love, quote unquote. This new playlist we're putting together here for the other quadrants of life that we haven't really talked about that much on the channel, but are super important. Now, before you go, you can click the first link below for a free journaling worksheet to help you reinvent your life and plot the next steps going forward. And you can check out my last related videos on this right over here and here.