• Book: I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships (Amazon, Audible)
• Article: Is Your Partner Making You Unhappy?
• Article: Boundaries: The Secret to Finding Balance and Happiness in Life

Forgive typos and odd grammatical mistakes—this was transcribed using the magic of AI.

[00:00:00] Hello, hello and welcome back to the I Hear You podcast, I'm your host, Michael Sorensen. In today's episode actually picks up where we left off in last week's episode, talking about personal responsibility in relationships. And I know that doesn't sound very sexy when we're talking about relationships, but this is my second episode here because this is a foundational principle, a core principle that we all have to understand if we truly want to live happy, healthy, connected lives. So today we're going to explore a handful of different things. We're going to explore resentment, including how resentment forms in a relationship and whose responsibility it is to clean it up. We're going to discuss the sneaky little lies that we buy into that sap, our happiness and energy, as well as ways to get out of that victim mentality and regain our power and happiness when we feel we've lost it.

[00:00:53] This is a powerful principle that applies to every relationship in your life, romantic, professional or otherwise. Let's get to it.

[00:01:20] All right. I want to start off with a question. Whose job is it to make you happy?

[00:01:27] Who has the power to make or break your day? Who is it? Can just get underneath your skin and then 30 seconds can can set you off on this downward spiral for the rest of the day, week, month, year. I don't know. Or on the flip side. Who do you feel you are supposed to make happy?

[00:01:46] Are there people that you feel like their happiness hinges on whether or not you show up a certain way, whether or not you say the right things, whether or not you dress a certain way? Do you feel like you have a responsibility to control other people's happiness or satisfaction with you?

All healthy relationships require a solid understanding of the following truth: you and only you are responsible for your own happiness.

[00:02:11] No one can make you happy or sad. No one can ruin your day and no one can break your heart without you letting them. Now, to some of you, that might sound crazy, you might be calling B.S. right here, right now, saying, I don't believe that. Well, I have to be very clear here. First off, I'm not saying that people's actions won't affect you. I'm not saying people can't say hurtful things, they can't do things that will affect you because they absolutely can, both physically and emotionally.

[00:02:38] But what I'm talking about here is that your happiness is not contingent on what other people do want and on what other people say your happiness as a direct result with how you interpret certain things. It's a direct result of how you choose to react when things like that happen, because people will absolutely do things you don't like. They're going to forget important events. They're going to say unkind things to you. They're going to show up in ways that you that you don't want them to show up. All of t...