 When I think back on my life, I often think about the best times and the worst times and what were the common factors that led to life being great or led to life really sucking. And I've come down to really one word and the word is people. So often the best times my life have had the best people in my life. Even if I lived in an ugly, terrible city, a place I didn't like or a job I didn't like, if I was with great people, then it was usually a good time. And in the same vein, you can live in the most incredible city in the world with the best opportunities. And yet, if you're with terrible people, it often will suck. So in this video, I thought I would share one thing I've realized on why I think relationships fail or they work out. What's up, you guys? Alex Hine. Now, before we jump in, there's a free journaling worksheet right below this video that can help you figure out how to get your life together and plan out an awesome, incredible life. So check it out right below this video. So the skill I'm working on this year really is, I guess what you might call, maybe interpersonal skills or emotional intelligence. And the reason for that is that honestly, I find working with people and sometimes dealing with people to be very difficult. I don't know if you've ever had that experience of you worked for a boss or you worked for someone and you think you're doing a good job and you don't really like the person you're working for. And you can feel that you're not getting the promotion or the gigs or the things you think you deserve because that friction between the two of you is really not working in your favor. But because they're the boss, they get the final say in where you go and how far you go up this ladder in your career. Sometimes it's not even your boss, it's just somebody that you work with. They're trying to get in the spotlight, they're being a suck up, they're throwing you under the bus. And if I'm being honest, a lot of the reason that I've always been self-employed in the last five or six years is because I find working with people difficult. I'm a difficult person. I find interpersonal relationships to be pretty tough, especially in work, where some people want to do the best possible and some want to do as little as possible to keep their job. You know, it's a lot like a saver dating a spender. You have the person that wants to save all their money and invest it or be safe and secure or good for retirement and you have someone else that wants to live for them now and you find it impossible to reconcile those two differences. And one thing I've learned is that when it comes to social relationships and romantic relationships, there's this kind of effect where one plus one equals 10. So if you're with someone and you're killing it in your life holistically, internally, externally, and you date someone that's doing well internally and doing well externally, the level of synergy is just off the charts. It's not one plus one equals two, it's one plus one equals 10. It's a really happy, fun person meets a really happy, fun person doing well in their life. And life is really good. But realistically, we are not all our own 10s internally. I'm just not even externally, just internally how we feel about ourselves. And most people we date are not also 10s. So sometimes it is one plus one equals two. Sometimes it's negative 10 plus a zero. Sometimes it's negative five plus a three. And so you have these averages that are somewhere in between or sometimes averages that are in the negative. And I find that that is very realistic for many of us because we're all working on our own things and other people are working on their own things. And so what I've learned when it comes to relationships is that first of all, like math, we bring our own number to the ratio. Let's just say 10 out of 10 is the best case. Well, let's just say right now, holistically, internally and externally I'm a five. And I meet a girl and holistically, internally, externally, she's a six or she's a two at this moment. The next year could be a seven or an eight. Same with me. Two years ago, maybe I was a nine and now right now I'm feeling like a three. We meet and I bring a three, she brings a seven, you get 10, you divide that by two, we get a five, right? And so I think it is helpful to conceptualize where I am as an average level of my consciousness and self-growth and where that person is, whether it's work or it's love, where she is and that resonance and that growth and that state of consciousness. So it helps me to conceptualize that I bring probably more than half to the table and she brings probably more than half to the table. If we think of it like that, then it's clear that there are two people that can introduce a lot of X factors in our life. So how I'm really approaching this, not only in dating, but also in friendships is one, I'm really trying to, you know me, perpetually work on self-growth. I mean, I have this whole channel dedicated to growth. Growth is not always fun, not always easy. Sometimes we go backwards for a couple of years and it sucks and then we have to go back to neutral. It can take years to get even just back to its stable neutral point and then you can grow again. But the point being that we bring more than half to that equation. It's useful to think of that. It's more than half of my fault if it's terrible or if it's good. And so there's always something for me to work on. And one of the main ways I'm keeping track of that is really keeping a kind of a reactivity or a trigger journal for lack of a better word where anytime I notice something making me react unconsciously and tracking what that is. What is that psychological wound there that is kind of unresolved? Because otherwise why would it bother me so much, right? If it's making me unconscious, there's something that's painful there that I haven't dealt with. But I think the big thing to take away from this is just that of course, I should always be working on myself, right? Because if I bring a higher state of consciousness and self-growth and I feel better, anything less than that is a lot less likely to bother me, right? It's like if you have a really negative person at work who's underperforming and another really negative person underperforming, there are perfect pity party and nothing's gonna get done. The business is gonna be net worse. And if you have someone who's really high performing and really positive internally and someone who's really low performing and negative, it's gonna average out to be a little bit better because this person's positivity is gonna offset that negativity and maybe this person comes in negative but that person's positivity softens that a little bit and raises it. So it's helpful I think to always be working on the self, which is kind of one of my core messages here, right? Deliberate living and never ending improvement. And on the other side, understanding that, yeah, one person that's a two in terms of consciousness and emotional state and output in life is gonna bring down the average a lot. And so understanding that there's a dynamic between human beings, I can only work on myself as much as possible and the rest is up to the other person. So I think in terms of relationships, whether it is interpersonal or romantic, that kind of dynamic balance is always gonna be there. And what we control obviously is how much we work on ourselves and our own inner state. And then the rest is some degree of luck and circumstance, but I think if you remember that, you can make the best of the situation. All right guys, so before you go, I have that free journaling worksheet below. If you wanna plan out how to have an awesome life and a few simple journaling exercises there that can help you. And otherwise, I'll catch you on these other videos over here.