The Rachel Cruze Show - 4 Keys to Having Great Relationships

Episode Date: March 11, 2019

Today’s episode is a conversation Dr. Henry Cloud and I had backstage at The Smart Conference, where he taught me the four keys to having healthy relationships. This is something I hear again and again that people want in their lives! Maybe for you that means to put up some boundaries so that others stop taking advantage of you. Maybe you need to let go of perfectionism. Whatever your situation looks like, this episode will give you the truth we all need. Resources (everything mentioned in this episode): Get a personal Boundaries mentor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Rachel Cruz, and I'm so excited about this episode. So the fun thing about podcasts is I have this little recorder, so I get to take it on the go with me when I travel or if I meet someone fun, I have this recorder, so I get to bring it out and be like, hey, you have a quick conversation with me. So that is what happened with Dr. Henry Cloud. If you do not know who he is, you need to look them up, you guys. He is brilliant in all things, counseling and psychology. And he's just, he's so, so great and so intriguing to talk to. at a conference together. And I was like, hey, Henry, can we, like, chat about boundaries and about life and I can record it? He was like, yeah, sure. So it was really fun. And I'm glad you guys

get to kind of eavesdrop in my conversation with Dr. Henry Cloud. So you're brilliant. You're really, and I'm not saying this just because I'm sitting with you, but you're legitimately, like, number one, one of my favorite people. Like, I enjoy Henry Cloud, you and your wife and your kids. Like, just I love you guys. I really do. And you're one of the smartest and wisest. Well, you should get out more. No. Some of our conversations we've had in the past, because we've known each other for years,

you're just a very balanced person. But your probably best-selling book, right, is boundaries. You know, these boundary problems don't go away because we're all human. So each generation, you know, kind of discovers it, the next wave of whoever. Okay, so as a psychologist who's been doing it that long, like what are things you're seeing?

What's advice you can give just to become healthier in general? Well, you know, you know, You know, we're designed in a certain way. Like, if you take a house, you know, a house is designed. An architect knows a design for a specific purpose. And so there's, you know, every house is different, but they all have some basic components. And human beings are like that.

So the first, if you want to be healthy, I'll give you just four simple things. It's like building a house. What do you do first? You lay the foundation. You try to build a house. It doesn't have a foundation. Well, the foundation of all health in each. Any form or fashion is connection.

This is why when a baby is born, you don't teach them algebra. What's a baby's job, the first year of life, is to establish the ability to connect with other people and bond and have that secure attachment. And that's the foundation. You know, if you take kids that don't have secure attachment, later on they have behavior problems. And then we've got to go back in and get them connected. So why is that? Like, I hear that. But like, what's, like, how does that build?

Like, how does that create behavior problems six years down the road? Well, number one, it provides a fuel. I mean, you know, we come into life. Batteries not included, and we draw life from outside of ourselves. And so an isolated person, just like an isolated baby, is a depressed person. And so when you're trying to run through life with no fuel, then it's not going to work. The second thing is, this is amazing. you take infants that aren't attached, they're not bonded, and a little later on when they start, looks like they're growing, well, you know, their body weights are lower, their brain sizes are different.

The physical aspects themselves didn't grow, but also the neurological wiring in their brain did not grow if you feed them and water them and you don't love them. And adults are like that too. So how do you thrive? Well, the first thing is the foundation. Now, the second thing that you always put on the house is what? Walls. No, before the walls. What do you got to put the walls on?

Studs. Studs, the frame. I've obviously not an architect. Well, you are. You know, you have healthy kids. I hope. You put the frame up. Frame, okay.

So what does the frame do? The frame establishes the boundaries and the structure of that. house. Okay? Now, that does a couple of things, these boundaries. It lets you know what's inside the house and what's outside the house. All right, a person is like that. See, if we have good boundaries, we learn to differentiate between what's my problem and what's your problem, what's my feeling and what's your feeling. We don't over-identify and get over, you know, lost in other people's issues, we're able to stay separate and help our neighbor because our house doesn't catch on fire every time theirs does.

And so when you're teaching a kid's structure, that's why in the second year of life, a toddler, what's the biggest deal? Well, they're already attached. What do they want to do? They want to get separate. And you want them to get separate. You want them to learn to have independence apart from the person they're dependent on. And that's where we ultimately get interdependence.

But if you don't have freedom from other people, so you can develop the most important thing in human behavior is something called self-control. So if somebody doesn't have good boundaries, then they don't have self-control. What do you do with a toddler that's screaming? You put them in time out until they can calm down. You say, use your words. Come on, you can do this. And they're learning to modulate their own emotions and impulses and say no to themselves. they're also learned to receive no from others.

So if you're an adult, let's just start there. If you're connected and you have good relationships, how good are your boundaries? Do you have the ability to run your own house, meaning your own life, your own personhood? Or do other people, can they just walk through that door and dump the trash or paint the house any color they want or tell you what to think

or try to make you responsible for their dirty kitchen? Those are boundaries. So do you find majority of people have good boundaries and majority of people don't? Well, humans don't, right? They have to be built. Okay. So if you, let's go back to that toddler.

You know, you're there, right? Oh, yeah, Amelia's three. She's three. So you're right out of that phase of where she had to learn her boundaries. She had to learn to receive no. She also had to learn to say no to herself. Now, you did that with good parenting, but a lot of people do grow up. up in scenarios where they don't have good structure provided for them. So what are the two problems

you see in them? They can't say no to themselves, their own impulses, their own desires, and they can't say no to others a lot of times, so they get in controlling abusive relationships, and they can't receive the no of others. See, this boundary saying, we've got to be able to receive, give and receive no without the loss of love. And I feel like some people just take it like, I feel like in general, they can live life so personally, right? Like everything's just so personal. Everything's personal.

Yeah, and it's like someone says, no, oh, they just take it so personally. And you're like, it's going to be okay. Calm down, breathe, and realize, you know, you live in a neighborhood. It's not all about you. Yes. But if we don't have good boundaries, no where we in and somebody else begins, then we're going to take it personally. The other part is taking it personally.

And that's the framing part, right? That's the framing part. Or it might be the next issue. Okay. So the next issue, you know, once a kid, you know, they get attached. And think of yourself as a kid, right? Because we're still growing up inside all the time. So once we're connected, we've got a good support system around us,

and we can need them and they help us. And then we also have good boundaries. What does a toddler do next? Well, then they run out there, and they're starting to learn that's good and that's bad, right? And they learn, I did that well. I didn't do that well. They get on the bicycle. What do they do?

They got a vision. They got an ideal. They got a goal. They fall off and hurt themselves. So here's the problem. We live in a world where we can imagine what's perfect, but we're always somewhere not hitting the bar every time and having to fail. And we get hurt. And other people fail us.

So now we're talking about the third component of health. And that is, do I have the capacity to love you and see you as often? awesome. And when you hurt me, do I have the tools to process that hurt without losing the love? So now we're talking about forgiveness or something bad happens in life. Do I have the capacity for grief? Psychologists call that healthy bereavement. And if we can't grieve, we hold on and we get stuck in grief. We get depressed. You can't get over losses. Do I have the resilience to get back up when I fall down? or do I take that as something as interpreting it about, oh, I'm bad? I fail so I'm bad.

See, people that continue to struggle, they see every event in interpreting as meaning something about them, that I'm good or bad. Good or bad does not come from how we do. Good or bad comes from whether we're loved or not. And people will not understand that and try to. That's a truth bomb right there, Henry. It just as is it is. Right? Yeah. And a lone self is a bad self.

Well, it's right there in the Garden of Eden. Okay, when Adam and Eve were created, what did God tell them they were never supposed to know? Remember what the tree was? They weren't supposed to eat. What was the forbidden fruit? The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, okay? You're not supposed to be judging your life, Adam. You're supposed to be living it.

judgment was reserved. He was the one that's, and he said, I don't ever want you to know this. Not only know it cognitively, but that word there means to experience it. I don't want you to ever even experience the dark side, right? Yeah. But they didn't have to because they were loved.

And in that safety of love, it's like your kid when they feel loved. They just go out and express themselves and they fall down and they laugh and they go do it again and all that. Well, what happened? Well, we traded in love. for being the judge of what's good and evil. So what do you see now? You see people that are, because they don't have love in their lives, they walk around with a fig leaf covering their shame

because they don't feel good enough, and then they go try to achieve enough to make them feel good enough. It'll never work. You've got to feel love. Then you can go learn. You see failure as learning. You don't see it as I'm good or bad. You forget good or bad when you're loved.

So when you're loved, and are you talking more on a spiritual sense, like you know your identity in God and you have a relationship, or is it loved by a spouse? Is it loved by a parent? We have, remember, and this is where a lot of people miss, this creation is an incarnational creation, meaning that's a theological word. But God was a spirit, and he created us humans with flesh, and we have this interesting dichotomy of we are spiritual and we have human relationships.

When Adam was in the garden by himself, he said it's not good for him to be alone. Okay. So if you read the New Testament, you know, it says that if we say we love God, we can't see it. And we can't love people around whom we can see. Then we're screwed up. That's in the Greek, I think it's just. But no, we're made for both. And people that try to meet their God needs with humans, that will fail.

People that try to meet their human needs with God, that will fail. And that's why Jesus said the greatest two commandments are to love God and love others. So you've got to have both. Yep, I love that. But now we're in this whole thing about good and bad. And you've got to teach people sometimes if you're ever going to be healthy. What do you do with imperfection in yourself and others? I remember one time the slate said, well, well, you know, I'm a perfectionist, and I think I have high standards.

I'm a perfectionist. I think being a perfectionist is a good thing. That's why I've achieved so much. I said, I said, you're a perfectionist? And she said, yeah. I said, well, then you're psychotic. And she said, what are you talking about? I said, I'm a psychologist.

I'm telling you, you're psychotic if you're a perfectionist. And she says, what do you mean? I said, well, what's the difference? The definition of psychotic. She said, well, that's somebody is crazy. I said, exactly. Because you are imperfect and you live in an imperfect world. A perfectionist is somebody that has not a goal of perfection, but they have a demand for perfection.

And anytime that demand, they demand perfect, what happens when you don't, somebody is demanding something and you don't reach it? Well, the outcome is anger or shame or guilt or some bad feeling. If you have a goal and you don't reach it, then the outcome, and you're not being judged by it, then the outcome is motivation and curiosity to learn. It's good. And you don't reach that goal, then, you know, you learn. But you're not, when the greatest quarterbacks in the world throwing interception, what do they do?

They don't go, oh, I'm bad. Why did I ever think? I could never be a crime. My mother was right or my father was. No, they know they're going to throw them, and they go back to the huddle, and they fix the play, and they score the next time. Yeah, yeah, that's good. And then the fourth thing, if you want to be healthy, is you've got to resolve the problem of authority. This is the roof.

This is the roof. Who's your roof? There you go. Who's the, yeah, it's good. So that's good, that's good, Rachel. Well, I'm going back to your house now. You're an architect. You put the roof on the house.

Yeah. Authority. This is a touchy subject these days. It is a touchy subject these days. I feel like people do not like authority. People don't like authority. Okay. So talk about that.

Okay. So I love this verse in the Bible. It says, in Galatians 4, it says, when we were children, we were under guardians and managers until the date set forth by the father. In other words, there would be a bar mitzvah or a batmitsvah, where your parents, whom you were under their authority, they say, now you're an adult, now you are the guardian and manager of your life. Okay?

Now, what's supposed to happen when somebody becomes an adult is now the only ultimate authority, or the only authority over them is God, but they still have authority over them. And then what they do is they go join other equal adults in contractual relationships, for example. I come to work for you. I made an adult decision with another adult that you are going to be my boss. and I'm going to submit to your authority in this role. Therefore, when you tell me, do this, don't do that, it's not personal. We're equal adults, and I've agreed to submit to you.

So I don't have a beef with it. People have authority conflicts. They're basically children inside, still trying to find freedom from the parent. A boss is turned into a parent, or the government's turned into a parent, or, you know, whatever it is. And if you cannot submit to authority, you will never be a high achiever. Every CEO has a board, every one of them. That's why they don't let people run companies without boards that they have to submit to. We were not designed to be our ultimate authority.

But if we don't resolve that and you don't feel equal to other adults, you're going to walk around feeling inferior, you're going to walk around feeling judged, you're going to look to everybody for approval. Is this good, Mommy? is this good even though you're 47 years old. We've got to reach adulthood. And another interesting thing about this is authority. The word means expertise.

So what does it mean ultimately to have authority in our lives? It means to become an expert in living. And if you're an expert in living, you don't have to go ask somebody to make sandwich for you. You can take what you're an expert at and go trade it with somebody else, and together you accomplish great things. And so when you say,

how can people be healthy? Get connected, have good boundaries. Learn to deal with failure and yourself and others in a good way and grow up, being an adult. You know, ultimately adulthood or becoming healthy adults is kind of, you know, reaching maturity, is resolving these developmental issues. And they come back throughout cycles in life. Okay, so I, Winston and I, we have a great counselor who we love that we go to marriage counseling for us. What do you think about because if you're listening to this podcast I mean like there's two or three things and they're like okay I could totally work on that more

like what do people do like start reading good books go to counseling like what are ways for people to take these kind of steps what does it go to counseling mean find the counselor that you trust that you have a connection with and see them unpack some things maybe from childhood of what wounds that you were kind of talking about of what's affected them as adults now

current issues and problems I don't know just finding that person that like you can, like, have rapport with and communication with, and they can help direct you. Right. Would you say? Yes or no? Absolutely. But a lot of people limit that word just to go in to see a shrink.

See, we all – the word therapy means heal. There's not a human walking the face of the earth. It doesn't need some healing. Yeah. It doesn't need some growth. It doesn't need to mature. So all of us should be seeking the best input from outside of ourselves all the time throughout life that we can get. The greatest performers in life.

You know, what does – what's a great quarterback do? You know, on Monday, what do they do? They go sit in the film room and they review their performance and they got their coaches in there. And they look at – look how you did that. Now, why did you make this decision? Think about it this way. And sometimes they're undoing old tapes that they got from previous coaches in those sessions. So you're looking at what you brought to the party, you know, in your history.

Yeah. So we ought to be, you know, we've got to have friends, counselors, our every, I would hate to do marriage without being in a couple's support group. Yeah. Come on. And people are out there trying to do that. Yeah. So that's back to the foundation. Yep.

So now here's kind of the deal. What I said was you need, you know, you need some good support and you need some good intelligence outside of yourselves. Sometimes we have wise people around us that can offer that to what we need. Sometimes people have something in life that the issues they're dealing with are larger than the wisdom that they're finding naturally at Denny's or in the cubicle. next to them or with their in-laws or whatever it is. So what do we do when we're not, when our normal methods of finding something aren't working? The answer is always we have to add more

structure to the process. Okay, so the word structure means to build. So if I'm doing through the counseling of my life and I'm talking to my friends, I'm talking to whoever, and that's not doing it, I need to add a little more structure to this process. I need to go somewhere where somebody's got a little more wisdom in what I'm dealing with. You know, if I had PTSD, I don't know any of my friends who would know how to help that, but somebody does, and I don't have to go into an office. Somebody's got that intelligence. Yeah, yeah.

It's not rocket science. If we're not finding what we need in the circles we're in, then you go find it a little higher-level circles in terms of that problem. So good. You got a legal problem, you know. Get a lawyer. Yeah. You can try legal zoom. But if that doesn't do it, you go talk to a lawyer.

Yep, that's right. Oh, that's so good, Henry. Thank you so much. Seriously, just wholesome. And I'm going to tell you something. A bunch of you out there have kids. Yep. Right?

And you're worrying about how do I raise up my kids to know what to do in these different areas of life? And I have kids, and I've heard Rachel talk about kids and money and raising them right. and you should listen to her. It's like reverse promotion for voting me on my own podcast. Thanks, Henry. No, I'm dead serious. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you, though. Thank you. Such a great. I've quoted your first line that you opened up with. And it comes up on the big screen. First thing kids need to learn. Money comes from blank. And the audience is trying to guess, you know, Christmas cards, grandma.

Money comes from work. Work, work. And they got to learn that early. So you do a great job. Oh, I appreciate you. all you do. Speaking of boundaries, can I share something with some people about where they can find some boundaries

out? That's what I was about to ask. Can you all find you and all that? Go to boundaries. Me. Okay. It's a program that I have that, you know, it's, I think it's like $9 a month or something. I become your boundaries coach.

Oh, wow. And throughout the month and you can set your boundaries goals and you learn tips. And, you know, skip one run to start. or whatever it is. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's totally worth it. If you don't think so, you can cancel it. But go to Boundaries.com. And I'll coach you and all this stuff. I love it. Okay, thanks, Henry. Everyone, check out all he's doing. And you guys make sure to watch for a new episode of the podcast launching next week. And you guys make sure to hit that subscribe button if you've not yet. And you can leave a review if the spirit leads, totally fine. But really,

this is always a fun, a fun time to hang out with you. So I really am thankful that you Listen and remember to take control of your money and create a life you love.