What captions would you add to this image? Mine would read, "How dare you?" "But I didn't do it!" The story is literally written in their faces and postures.

So, what is an emotion? (This is an area of scientific debate and I’m not going to jump into the fray on that one.) For most of us, emotions are the meaningful physical experiences we have in response to situations, positive or negative.

I understand why, when facing the complexity of modern challenges, including our rapidly degrading climate, political unrest, migration, it would seem appealing to have a “strongman” to tell us what to do. But that is not wise. Strongmen have no vested interest in the lives of the average person. They have the wealth to get the best the world has to offer, and the power to ensure that wealth stays in their hands and with their family (no trickle-down nonsense needed).

A monkey, a lizard and a human go into a bar. The human is a cheap drunk, and is soon slumped over on the bar, semi-conscious. After a few more drinks, the monkey gets into a fight with another monkey who insulted him, calling him stupid trash, and yelling that he wasn’t good enough to set foot in this bar. Just as the other monkey was about to strangle our monkey, the lizard got activated and smashed the attacking monkey over the head with a bottle, knocking the other monkey out cold. The police soon arrived and arrested the human. Say what?

Most of us haven’t learned how to tell our truth in a loving and connecting way, especially if we’re not happy about something our parter is doing or may do. Yet, this skill would save many relationships. Learning how to be honest in a caring way that honors both person’s needs and feelings is a skill, but not one you were taught in school or necessarily had modeled in your family of origin. This skill is an example of a “two-self system” skill. Most of us have only learned how to navigate a “one-self system.”

Intention is thinking about doing something. It is my intention to go to the grocery store. Intent is the leap. Intent is when you get in the car and go to the grocery store. Intention is thinking, "I want to lose weight this year." Intent is tying your shoes to your front door handle so you have no choice but to put them on and head to the gym in the morning.

In the many years I've worked with couples, I've come to realize that most people are not equipped for the demands of modern marriage. While the biggest complaint is, "we don't communicate", there are a few fundamental underlying problems that communication alone won't solve. I designed this course to address those foundational issues, as well as provide the key communication skills most couples need to improve their connection and satisfaction with their relationship.

Often our ideas get in the way of effective actions or behavior, particularly in relationships where we gradually automate each other based on our expectations and memories, rather than being fully present with each other. Part of the reason for creating the Essential Skills for Couples was to connect useful concepts with practical action and skills to boost your relationship satisfaction and mastery.

Habits exist in our bodies, not just our minds. We can’t think or will our way to change; we literally have to change the body, right down to growing new connections between neurons in our brain and body. One small change practiced over and over is much more likely to snowball into transformation than a big dramatic effort that isn’t repeated often enough for the body (including the brain) to master, and automate, the new pattern.

Although we think of relationships as separate from politics, modern relationships are more democratic. No longer do we have the rigid gender-based roles and rules that defined couples’ relationships in the past. Without these external structures, we need to be able to collaborate, negotiate, and communicate more skillfully than was necessary in the past.

Close intimate relationships require a great deal of give and take, compromise, and kindness both towards yourself and the other person. When those behaviors fade, the relationship is in peril. I like to tell my clients that relationships are like a potted plant (sounds strange but bear with me). That plant is sitting between you. If only half of the plant gets watered, it will not receive enough water and die. Care and attention to the other person is what fuels a relationship. You give to get.

Partners in a couple are like the proverbial blind men and the elephant. One may have a grip on the tail of reality, the other a leg. They argue over their view of a reality that is larger than either can see. The more they argue, the more the brain automates their arguments, and their negative story of the other person becomes “real”. The generosity, interest, and curiosity that may have launched the relationship becomes lost in a battle for control.

Ever get in an argument with yourself? Maybe between the part of you that wants to eat that piece of chocolate cake, and the part that knows it’s not so good for you? It may seem like there are two of you, mind and tastebuds discussing that inviting treat, but that’s an illusion.

What makes someone a master at what they do? A star basketball player or top gymnast? A so-called "super shrink" who is effective at helping people change? Even someone who is a really good friend? What enables someone to continue to develop and to excel at what they do? When we founded the Human Systems Institute in 1999, we were seeking to foster excellence in facilitating systemic constellations, so this question has interested me for a long time.

Many years ago when I was working in corporate America, I came across the idea of continuous improvement. I met this idea in the form of the Japanese total quality control paradigm. The idea of continuous improvement by attending to and improving the small details that added up to mastery stuck with me.

There is a common saying, “one thing led to another, and then before we knew it…” something big has changed. One of the common cognitive errors we humans make is that we project the present onto the future. It’s hard for us to imagine beyond what we know. Modern history is rife with disruptive inventions like the automobile that overturned entire ways of life. Currently the threat is that Artificial Intelligence will be one of those world-turning inventions. (So far, it's just me writing these articles, not a computer based AI.)

To quote the title of a Taylor Swift song, have you ever been in a situation that felt, well, delicate? You may have had an idea where you wanted to go, but any movement felt precarious, as if all your efforts to that point might come tumbling down?

STORY

I once worked with a venture capitalist whose company had bought a machine parts company that struggled in the 2008 banking crisis. The relationship between the VC, his team, and the original founders and owners of the company had deteriorated to the point that it looked like the company might fail. He was frustrated and angry with the founders, who were hurt and feeling as misunderstood as he was. I set up a constellation for him and it gradually became clear that the most valuable thing the company owned was the deep love and understanding the founders had for their customers,and the customers response to them.

Role-based, rule-bound frameworks that held social relationships together are shifting like dry sand on a windy beach in the forces of modern life. Without these external frameworks to organize our relationships, we are required to develop a set of social skills to manage these peer-to-peer relationships, skills that many of us were never taught nor have seen modeled well.

Power has different dimensions. We can talk about physical power, the strength or skill one person or group of persons can exert on another. Power can also take the form of command of necessary resources for physical survival. Withholding clean water, for instance, is a form of power over others. Power can be shared through consensus or collaborative processes or used to dominate others.

Perception is tricky. We think we live in the same world, that what appears in our mind is the same as what appears to others. This is not so. Many couples have fought their way into court arguing over whose perception was correct. This is foolish. As researcher Anil Seth explains here, our brains are always selecting certain details, omitting others, and constructing our experience of “reality” moment by moment. There is no “absolute” reality. All of our experience as humans is subjective.

When we’re having a conversation with someone, there is a cognitive exchange, the words or content being discussed. And there is another exchange: soma with soma - the experience that is created between us out of our interaction. Meaning-making (also important) happens later when the mind re-views experience and tries to predict what will happen next. The experience in the moment, the resonance, the sense of “feeling felt’ by another living soma, of being “in synch” is vital to our well-being. Yet surprisingly, this is increasingly harder to come by in our modern world.

We learn about ourselves and the world through our interactions with people and objects in our daily environment. Over time we build up an understanding or body map of the world and can predict largely how the objects in our world behave. Happily, many of the objects in our world don’t change much. Once we learn their characteristics and placements, we don’t have to expend much more energy tending to them. For instance, we learn that the chair in our living room aren’t likely to jump up and run around the room when we aren’t looking, so our brain can automate the placement of the chair and not really pay much more attention to that chair. Unless someone moves it a little when we aren’t there, then we can stub a toe.