The Instant Fight Fix -Erase Tension with Natural Patterns of Healing Language

Every time Sabrina and Josh had a fight, it was always the same. She'd bring up an issue.

Something that was bothering her.

Something they needed to talk about.

But the instant she opened her mouth, it was like a wall would slam down between them because Josh would immediately get defensive.

He would accuse her of criticizing him. He'd say she was blaming him for everything. Complain that she was always saying he couldn't do anything right.

And maybe she should take a look in the mirror.

Sabrina tried really hard.

She didn't react. She forced herself to stay calm. She did her best to bring the conversation back to the topic at hand.

But Josh's negativity always seemed to escalate. He would either become cold or quiet, until he would turn his back on her and walk out the door.

"I don't know what to do!" Sabrina sobbed. "I can't talk to him about anything. He won't listen. Our relationship is falling apart, and there's nothing I can do."

Have you ever felt that way?

When we fall in love, we'll do anything to make it work.

We'll try anything. We'll do anything. We believe in our love. It's worth every bit of hard work and sacrifice.

So it's terrifying when you realize that, despite your best efforts, things are falling apart.

It's not working out. He's no longer as loving. He barely responds to your messages. That's when your fights begin to take on an ominous tone.

Could this fight be your last?

Or maybe he has already pulled away. Now he's just your ex.

By the way, if you'd like laser-targeted advice about getting your ex to pursue you again, you should join the hundreds of other women who are students of the Relationship Rewrite Method, which you can learn about here.

One of the Greatest Dangers to Your Relationship

Usually, when we think about what puts relationships at risk...

We think of threats that come from outside the relationship, like the threat of other women catching his interest.

But one of the greatest dangers to relationships comes from within, from the most unlikely place:

Your memories.

Your memories color your relationship in so many ways. They provide a rich source of discussion and a link to your common past.

Your memories make you a couple. They give you an identity, unique from all others.

And that would be wonderful, if those memories were always positive...

But they're not.

You remember the hurt as much as the joy (if not more).

Painful memories change how you view each other.

They change how you interact and what you expect. They cast a shadow on the good times. They feed doubt and fear.

No wonder the early days of a relationship are so good.

When a couple first gets together, all they've got are positive memories.

When they think about each other, that's what they remember.

All the fun.

All the joy.

But the longer they're together, the more bad things happen.

Not because they're bad people, or because of bad luck. Not because they're not right for each other. But rather because no two human beings can be in perfect harmony all the time.

Those bad memories build up, tainting the positive ones.

Memories of fights interfere with memories of togetherness. Memories of disappointment dilute memories of pleasure.

Finally, the couple reaches a point when their feelings about each other are a mixed bag. There's some good, but there's also plenty of bad, too.

That's a dangerous space to be in.

The longer you're together, the more things will happen that you just can't forget.

Things that color how you think about your partner.

Things that irrevocably shift how much you'll allow yourself to trust him, depend on him, or need him.

You may long for the days when it was all so easy, when nothing bad ever happened, when it was all rainbows and blue skies ahead.

But those days are gone. You can't un-know what you now know.

No wonder so many relationships break down.

They can't cope with the weight of all the memories.

Why Relationships Break Down

Psychologist and relationship expert, Dr. John Gottman has done a great deal of research on why relationships break down.

He developed the "magic relationship ratio."

If you're not having at least 5 positive interactions for every negative interaction, your relationship will struggle.

Considering what we've just learned about memory, Gottman's ratio makes sense.

When you think about your partner and find you can only come up with a lot of unpleasant memories, your emotional bond is bound to suffer. You're going to struggle as a couple.

In contrast, a flood of positive memories can easily outweigh the occasional negative one.

But that magic 5:1 ratio isn't easy to achieve.

Think about your relationship right now. Do you think you have at least 5 times more positive interactions than negative ones?

If the answer is no, you're not alone.

The more you fight, the easier it is to fight.

It's easier to lose yourself in a downward spiral of negativity than to feed an upward spiral of positivity.

Life is full of things to get upset about. You may think that you'll stop fighting so much when life gets easier, but that's not true.

Negativity becomes a habit you can't break free from.

Dr. Gottman says the #1 thing couples fight about is NOT what you'd think. It's not problems like money or housework or sex.

It's absolutely nothing.

Couples will fight over nothing, because they're failing to connect emotionally.

It's that failure to connect which turns anything and everything into a potential fight.

Like what to have for dinner. Where the remote control went. Who is right and who is wrong.

The more you fight, the more fighting starts to feel natural. You'd be surprised if you didn't fight.

And even if there's nothing to fight about today, you're still angry about what you fought about yesterday or last week or last year.

It's hard to undo that kind of damage.

All those painful memories of anger, mistrust, and betrayal crowd out the beautiful memories, thanks to the brain's negativity bias.

(By the way, there is a solution. We're getting to that soon!)

The Negativity Bias

Your brain assigns more weight to painful experiences than positive ones.

Like the one time you got food poisoning from shellfish, rather than all those times you enjoyed it without complaint.

Or that one tasteless comment your partner made about your appearance, long after his 10 glowing compliments had been forgotten.

The negativity bias wins out in struggling relationships, where couples start to assume the worst intentions.

Instead of giving each other the benefit of the doubt, they assume the other person is actively trying to make their life difficult. They attribute malicious motives to innocent behaviors.

Soon, they start to associate each other with feelings of disappointment, anger, and resentment. They blame each other for their unhappiness. They only stay in the relationship out of stubborn pride.

That's what the breakdown of a relationship looks like, and it's not pretty.

How I Discovered a Secret "RESET Button"

As a professional relationship coach, I (James) have tried lots of things to get couples to reconcile after a relationship falls apart.

It sounds like glamorous work, but the truth is, it can be painful when one partner is working a lot harder than the other. Very often, nothing works.

Because one partner isn't really trying to make things work.

But about ten years ago, I began to study under some true masters of influence. And I noticed something that I could apply in my relationship coaching.

It was this concept that "emotions run the show."

I began to experiment with ignoring much of the classical advice about improving communication, getting people on the same page, and stuff like that.

And instead, I looked past all of that in search of ways to influence
emotions directly.

My mission was to trigger thirst. Thirst for emotional desires to be quenched.

Here's why.

If I could get the stubborn partner to be really thirsty for reconciliation and emotional intimacy, everything else seemed to fall into place as if by magic.

While that led to some success, it wasn't until later that I refined my methods by adding one more crucial component.

I call it the "movie trailer method," because it taps into the images a person plays in his or her mind about the future of the relationship.

I discovered that the things we want are tied to mini mental movie trailers we play in our minds about what's coming next. So I began to look for ways to tweak those mental movies.

I wanted to make the relationship look really enticing and that worked even better than I had hoped.

If you can get someone to want something bad enough, they let go of all their logical objections and just go for it.

Suddenly, the guy who refused to offer forgiveness, does so willingly and with tears in his eyes. And the couple who wouldn't stop bringing up an old fight no longer finds it relevant to the future of their relationship.

It worked so well! It felt almost like magic to me.

So I put together an online relationship course to share this method with a broader audience than I could reach one-on-one. You can read about it, just click here.

But this report you're reading now is about a slightly different concept.

It's about clearing emotional pain to make way for beautiful new memories.

Cleaning Old Memories

Because memories trip us up in so many ways, Dr. Hew Len believes the answer is cleaning.

He's a therapist who has lectured widely about an ancient Hawaiian practice called ho'oponopono.

The Ho'oponopono philosophy can get pretty deep, but I'll just summarize the gist of it by saying this: Asking for forgiveness resets your mind back to its original state of limitlessness.

Your mind wants to constantly replay old memories, so your job is to clean them up so you can truly be present.

"Cleaning" means removing the negative pull that past memories have over us. It's like you're scrubbing your memories clean so they don't stick to you anymore.

This is where ho'oponopono comes in.

You stop seeing through the lens of old memories, which are painful and limiting. With your mind free from the past, you start seeing what's really possible in front of you.

This is obviously very different from the traditional view of forgiveness.

Traditionally, asking for forgiveness is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Someone did something wrong; they need to apologize to the wronged party.

Ho'oponopono recognizes that it's never that simple.

Maybe what he said hurt you, but only because you'd been hurt before. If you'd never been hurt, his comment wouldn't have bothered you.

So what needs to be forgiven?

Maybe what needs to be forgiven is the memory of being hurt.

This is internal forgiveness work, because all forgiveness starts in your heart. You don't need his apology. You don't even need his participation.

You have all the power you need inside you to heal.

And that healing process will help the future of your relationship.

So what is the magic formula that cleans old memories?

It's a 4-part mantra.

All you have to do is repeat these 4 phrases to yourself while reflecting on what you want cleared.

That's it.

So simple, right?

But so, so profound.

Let me (Amy) share a little bit of what happens to me when I do ho'oponopono.

The other day, my father made a rather sharp comment to me. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I found myself having a terrible week, because my mind wouldn't let go of the pain his comment had caused.

What was hurting me most:

His comment ... or my memory of his comment?

Clearly, it was the memory. The incident was long over. I was the one who wasn't letting it go.

So I did ho'oponopono on it.

I like doing ho'oponopono when I've got a stretch of time where I don't have anything else to think about and I'm not distracted. So it could be
during my commute, or during a run, or during a bath.

I started out with the first ho'oponopono phrase.

"I'm sorry."

What was I sorry for?

I was sorry for the relationship I had with my father. I was sorry I never knew how to respond to him in a way that would help him see how his words hurt me. I was sorry I felt so much resentment about the comment. I was sorry I still wanted his approval so much that
his disapproval cut me like a knife.

When I couldn't think of anything else, I went on to the next ho'oponopono phrase.

"Please forgive me."

I asked for forgiveness on behalf of that wounded child inside me. I asked for forgiveness for anything I had done to create the relationship I had with my father. I asked for forgiveness for the pain I was inflicting on myself, by holding onto the memory.

When I couldn't think of anything else to ask forgiveness for, I went onto the next phrase.

"Thank you."

I felt gratitude for having the awareness to see my own part in this drama. I felt gratitude for the opportunity to clean these painful old memories. I felt gratitude that I was an adult now, with the maturity and peace of mind to respond in healthier ways.

Finally, I concluded with the last ho'oponopono phrase.

"I love you."

I poured love onto the situation. I poured love onto myself. I acknowledged all the times I needed to hear loving words. I acknowledged that my father needed love as much as I did. Even though the incident had not been loving, I poured love onto the memory.

When I was finished, I felt so much better.

What I had done didn't change what had happened but it changed what mattered most:

My memory of what had happened.

Now, when I thought about the incident, I felt layers of understanding compassion, and acceptance.

It no longer kept me up at night or intruded into my thoughts.

This is the power of ho'oponopono.

Using the 4 Magic Phrases in Your Relationship

"Judgment is harsh and mean and meant to hurt, as if the pain of what we do or say will slap others into our way of believing."

Iyanla Vanzant

When your partner does something to hurt you, the first thing you want to do is lash out or accuse him.

You want him to see that what he has done is WRONG.

And when he doesn't acknowledge his misdeed, or brushes off the pain it causes you, the emotional scar hardens a place in your heart.

How can you love someone who doesn't care that he hurt you?

This is where ho'oponopono can work miracles.

When you do ho'oponopono, you're not asking him to make amends.

You're starting inside yourself. You're looking at why you felt the pain you felt, what it means to you, what it relates to, and what you can learn from it.

Once you do ho'oponopono, you may find that he comes to you to apologize on his own. Your energy surrounding the incident has shifted.

You're no longer radiating judgment and disapproval. You've become softer, because you've given yourself the understanding and love you needed.

You see, one of the biggest sources of pain surrounding forgiveness is wanting to get something from the other person. You want to see that he has repented. You want to see that he's feeling some pain.

As long as you put your own healing on hold, waiting for a response from him, you're choosing to draw out your own suffering.

You're holding onto pain. You're replaying the memory in your mind. The memory is compounding your suffering.

Ho'oponopono helps you process an experience, so that when you do finally talk to your partner about what happened, you're coming at it from a much wiser and compassionate place.

But maybe your man is the one who pulled away. And maybe it's because he believes you hurt him in some way. In that case, I have good news.

Ho'oponopono is just as effective when you're the one who hurt him.

With ho'oponopono, you take responsibility for your experience. You're not trying to play down what you did or shift the blame onto him. Rather, you're facing your actions squarely.

You're doing the work of understanding what made you act the way you did. You're healing those old wounds, so you don't do it again.

That's the work of love.

How Ho'oponopono Strengthens Your Love

We've seen so many relationships where each partner is just waiting for the other to make a misstep.

When he does something wrong, you get to jump all over him. You get an excuse to say the things you've been thinking all along. You get to feel self-righteous and better than him.

Not a fun relationship to be in!

But what if you had a relationship where both of you could make mistakes-even really horrible, seemingly unforgiveable ones-and you knew your love was strong enough to see you through?

Could you envision that?

Unconditional love is love that challenges itself to see past mistakes to the soul beneath. It leaves room for both of you to be human. As long as you keep on healing what has been hurt, there is nothing your love can't survive.

You may have heard lovers say, "If you ever do X, I'll kill you."

If you ever cheat on me, I'll kill you. If you ever lie to me, I'll kill you. Easy to empathize with that sentiment, right?

But is that really a sign of love?

Or is it proof that their love is merely conditional?

Forgiveness is scary. Most of us really don't want to forgive and our friends don't want us to forgive. It's more fun to be judge and jury. We feel safer when we are condemning other people.

But every time you judge him, you kill part of your love. You're telling him, in effect,

"This part of you is not lovable."

That's not how love works. We can't just love the parts we like about our partner. Genuine love allows us to be whole.

Using Ho'oponopono Together

Although ho'oponopono is essentially a private mental activity, it can also be used in dialogue with your partner.

Imagine what would happen if you were in the middle of an argument, and you stopped and told your partner:

"I'm sorry for how I spoke to you just then. Please forgive me. Thank you for hanging in there with me. I love you."

Do you think it would make a difference?

Practicing ho'oponopono can help you feel more comfortable apologizing and asking for forgiveness from those you love.

It makes you better at admitting your mistakes, because you understand they don't make you a bad person. You can take responsibility for them without feeling ashamed.

The more you tell yourself, "I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you," the more those words will flow off your tongue in everyday life.

How often do YOU say those words to those you love?

How often do you say them to yourself?

I invite you to experience the power of ho'oponopono for yourself.

Use the 4 magic phrases as often as possible. Use them on yourself, and use them on those you love.

Use them on stuck patterns in your relationship, like the one thing you always seem to argue about or the fight that comes up over and over.

Use them on stuck patterns within yourself, like feelings of unworthiness or shame.

Don't wait for him. You have the power inside you to pour love, understanding, and forgiveness on what hurts.

And, if it feels right, introduce him to ho'oponopono. Share what you've learned.

If you want to be together forever, then forgiveness must become second nature.

As you learn to accept everything about each other, both good and bad, you'll find that your love fills corners of your heart you never even knew existed.

This is the love you've always dreamed of.

A love where you're always welcome, no matter what you've done wrong.

Wishing you love and happiness!