Relationship Coach Blog

Are you a person of extremes? Someone who either goes all out working on something or else doesn’t work on it at all?   Although going all out may seem like a way to make a lot of improvement fast, it only works for things that can be done quickly.  Building or rebuilding a relationship cannot be done quickly.

For long term goals, like having a wonderful relationship, what is needed is consistent and gradual progress.  Just as with a savings account, we can let investment in our relationship grow over time.  At first, we won’t see much progress at all, but as we continue to contribute to our relationships they grow very rich.  In this way, we can develop relationships that others can only dream of.  Get rich quick schemes and get a great relationship quick schemes are like empty boxes of chocolates.

To improve our relationships (or any long term ability), do not think about starting over from scratch.  What you are doing now is working to some extent, or else you would not have a relationship at all.  The challenge is to identify the things that are working while changing the things that are not–one at a time.  Working on many new things all at once will set you up to fail.  If you were doing home improvement, you would only work on one room at a time-right?

Professional athletes train hard every day, but 95% of their training is routine and at their normal pace. If they are training for 3 hours, they are not going full out for 3 hours.  That would physically and emotionally exhaust them to the point that they could not continue.  Their training would use them up and burn them out.  If they didn’t push themselves at all, though, they would simply maintain their current condition and not improve their performance.  To improve, they spend about 5% of their training time working at a harder than normal pace.  That means that they train harder than usual for only 3 minutes of every hour (5% of 60 minutes are 3 minutes).   In my coaching practice, I ask clients to work on their relationships for 15 minutes per day, in addition to what they usually do.  That is the equivalent of 5 hours of professional training per day (5 x 3min/hour).

For example, if you are currently practicing reflective listening with your partner in order to improve communication, how long should you actually do reflective listening in your daily conversation?  The answer-five percent more than you normally do.  So, if you normally talk 30 minutes a day with your partner and don’t do any reflective listening, then start to do 1 ½ minutes of reflective listening (5%  of 30 minutes are 1.5 minutes).

Identifying the things that are most important to work on is a large part of coaching, just as it is with athletic coaching.  You will also receive the training you need to make sure that those 15 minutes a day really count for something.  Having a coach also keeps you on track long enough to see the benefits of your work.