Brad Miller 0:01
pathway to a promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller, Episode Number 96. The grey dance of love with author George Aramark.

Unknown Speaker 0:15
Hi, my name is Nicole Carlson. I am producer of flip the switch Facebook show, and I help high achievers overcome stress, anxiety and overwhelmed so they can level up in their business, with their health and in their relationships. And Dr. Brad Miller will help you find your promised life, peace, prosperity and purpose here on the pathway promise podcast.

Brad Miller 0:43
You're on the pathway to a promise with Dr. Brad Miller. Brad leads every person has a god given promised life of peace, prosperity and purpose and that you must have a plan and a guide to get there. The pathway to promise podcast Not only is your guide through the woods bitterness of depression and disappointment that stand between you and your promise life, but also brings you insights and direction from inspiring successful thought leaders who have transformed their lives. Welcome to the pathway to promise. Now here's Brad. Hello, good people. Welcome to the pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller. It's just a great honor to have you join me today, here on the pathway to promise where we talk about things that matter, including things that impact the most important relationships that you have in your life. And I'm talking right now about your romantic relationships, particularly when your romantic relationships go south. You know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about a breakup of a marriage or a divorce, or a breakup of a long standing relationship that is devastating. We're going to talk with a great author today, George Ehrman who's going to be bringing us some, some insights about marriage. And what and with his book called The grey dance of love. We'll get into what he has to share in just a few minutes did want you to know, here on the pathway to promise podcast we're all about helping you overcome adversity, including things like divorce and breakups by helping you understand a process in order to overcome adverse conditions and understand that you have a promise life a god given promised life of peace, prosperity and purpose, but you need some directions and how to get there and we are here to be helpful to you. In that process, I have a lifetime of, of be having some positive input on people in their relationships as a counselor and as a pastor, and deal with this and terms of process I like to call the 40 day way process which helps you move through adverse conditions in your life. And we have some helpful, helpful information at our website pathway promise.com Particularly some back episodes of our podcast, and some other helpful things for you there, including the free gift. So go there and pick that up. And we can be helpful to you pathway promise.com. Today, we're talking about the ad verse condition of divorce, or a breakup of a romantic relationship. You know how devastating that can be. This actually is a very common experience, isn't it? Very few of us have not gone through a very severe, dramatic, traumatic breakup, which has impacted every other aspect of our life, our mental health, our depression, our physical health. People gain weight, they lose weight, they have stress, they have other physical things that come up in their life because thats related to other relationships. It impacts other people like our family members or children, if they're involved. It can be a factor in all kinds of things.

If you don't deal with relationships, particularly the breakup of a romantic relationship, you're gonna have a hard time function in this world. So we need to have some helpful things in that. Our author we guest today, George Aramark had a terrible breakup in his life, and he could not let it go. It kept lingering it kept impact in his life and he had to figure out a process a means to work through that breakup and then move on, to have other to help to learn for that experience and to invest himself into a new relationship. And he wrote this book called The gray dance of love. And it's for folks to understand and to have an understanding about the enter the intermingling or they enter the the the integration of the mind and the heart when it comes to relationships. He did an awful lot of research. After he had this terrible breakup. He considers himself a relationship entrepreneur, and incessant researcher, and incurable romantic. And he has devoted himself to a 50 year vision to bring down the rate of divorce. That's a noble vision if I've ever heard one, and to spread some needed love into this world, he wants to help that have to happen. And he has done the research and the process and he shares it here in his book, The gradients of love, and he shares it with you right now, my friends here on the pathway to promise podcast author George Aramark, of the great dance of life is our guest.

Unknown Speaker 5:47
Thank you for this beautiful message and warm welcome.

Brad Miller 5:51
Thank you, sir. It's an honor. It's honor to have you on the pathway to promise where course we've shared we're all about helping people overcome adversity and one of the greatest adversities that people deal with is the challenge of relationships. And that's indicated by the high rate of divorce and the high rate of the challenges that people have and the popularity to be honest with you books like yours and programs they have to do with dating and relationships. And, and just but I know that almost always, when someone writes a book like this or has something to share, it comes out of their own personal experience of dealing with something that's been an adversity or challenge in your life. So, share with us a little bit the story of what happened to you that gave you the idea of the incentive to write this book.

Unknown Speaker 6:38
Yes, actually, three years ago, I was actually friends over my ex best friend. So I really wanted to find a solution. Of course, there was this one week of morning where I was acting the victim and trying to blame it on everyone and everything and why me and why this is this happening with them. I run to myself, I thought, George, you've been into the personal development world for quite some time. It's time for you to step up and prove that actually, you can do it yourself. So this is what actually my journey started. And I read more than 200 books more than 1200 plus articles. I did an index in depth experiments, and I put them all inside this book.

Unknown Speaker 7:16
This is how it went.

Brad Miller 7:18
You not only had your own broken heart or the own situation happened to you, but you took some action. You got into the research big time. What was some I know you came up with your own conclusions, but what was some of the things you learned from all this research that you did?

Unknown Speaker 7:36
There's a lot of things that I learned and I even add on top of it some stuff. So what I've learned basically is that it's all about the great dance. It's all about not being purely masculine or purely feminine. It's about having a blend of both have we're both masculine and feminine, whether we're man or women, irrespective of our gender, and for relationship to survive, for us to be happy in relationships for us to find the right partner, it's important for us to be balanced and whole and complete from within. So there are, of course, other other important parts such as having a fixed mindset versus having growth mindset. We today have a lot of issues in relationships, because we tend to have a fixed mindset when it comes to relationships.

Brad Miller 8:24
More with that, what do you mean by a fixed mindset, as opposed to the open mindset? Just break it down for me a little bit what you mean by that.

Unknown Speaker 8:32
So someone, for example, that has a fixed mindset tends to see for example, or marriage, for example, as a goal. So for example, we're getting married and that's it. That's the end of of my independence. Instead of looking at it as it like, no, it's actually a place for us to grow together. It's a place for us to start a journey together. So it's this whole dilemma where instead of having a fixed point of view and not being able to change Not wanting to change. This is actually the dichotomy between the two. So someone with a fixed mindset would be okay, for example, I love to do this. You don't like it? That's fine. That's your problem do with it. This is how I are.

Brad Miller 9:13
Okay. Yeah. And what's the opposite of that will be the counterpoint to that.

Unknown Speaker 9:18
Someone that has a growth mindset to be someone who would want to work on themselves and their relationship with their partner with the help of their partner being vulnerable, being open, wanting for example, okay. So for example, let's say I'm jealous. So my partner made me made something or something happened that made me jealous. The fixed mindset person would react to that and they would say that, why do you Why are you doing this? Why is this happening? And start naming and oldest name and victim scenario, whereas someone that has a growth mindset, they would come from a place that Okay, now this scenario happened? How can we sit together and make sure that this actually doesn't happen again, what are the steps that we can do? How can we help each other out to actually move beyond that? Kind of how, instead of having me versus you, it's us together? How can we help each other and grow further together?

Brad Miller 10:17
I hear what you're saying here. George, one of the things I do a fair share of my life is premarital counseling. I am a pastor. So I have married probably know probably 300 couples in my career. And I always do premarital counseling. And one of the things that we talk about is some people say that, you know, when you when you get together relationship, it's 5050 when I was like to share this 100 100 you know, we all integrated completely and totally so it's not totally equal, it's integrated. And so that's part of what we're talking about here. And that's, if I'm hearing you correctly, then the the fixed mindset would be kind of you know, we are just this independent, independent agents. It just happened to be together. Whereas if we are in a growth mindset, we're, we're in this together, we're integrated together. That's awesome. So tell me more about what are some It seems to me that you yourself. When you had this situation happened, you took the action of reading and studying and developing this process and and you're involved with the self development world. What are some pragmatic actions that you've learned some bold steps, that other than what you did that people can take? When they have had a bad breakup or they've had a divorce or they've had something happen? And you you said, maybe you have this type of depression for a week or two, but let's say you want to get out of that. What are some of the bold action so some of the action that people can take to break out of that depressed state?

Unknown Speaker 11:48
There are a couple of things that can be done. The first is to move into action. So by just sitting on the couch and blaming yourself or life or the world or or anyone else is not going to help We can, we should do that there's, of course, a period of mourning. And this is important to allow our, our feelings to be felt. But once this, this time is done, it's important to start moving on, depending on the different scenarios that are happening. And so by action, I mean, for example, one of the first things that helped me a lot. Personal Development was actually visualize a lot. So by visualizing, and there are different types of visualization. So you can visualize yourself already being with the partner that you want to be with. Or you can you can visualize the whole process, but it's also important to feel the feelings behind it. It's not just about having this picture. Prior to that, I would say what's actually very important is to know what you want in a partner to know exactly what you want. Of course, I'm not meaning by I don't need to say like, what's the color of the hair or, like if they're short or long or it's not about that it's more about okay. I'm someone who's spiritual For example, I want to find my I want my partner to be spiritual. So this for me is an important value. I am someone who, for example, like sports. So I want my partner to be into sports, because it's important to have common values, common habits, common goals. Once you do that you already have a strong base strong foundation. And once you have all the list the characteristic that you are looking for in your partner, here's one thing that's very important to take into consideration. It's important to look at that list. And if you see that there's one of the any of those that are actually missing in you. In order to attract your partner, you should actually fulfill this, this action or this value or this thing before looking for it in your partner, because you can only attract the partner who is at the same vibration that you are in. Okay.

Brad Miller 13:57
I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I just hear you saying that You need to have some clarity about your own, about your own values, your own expectations of the other party. And that's part of the action that you want to take even, you know, as part of the process of attracting other people, including my clarity about your own life. And that's, that's awesome. Heard you mentioned, I heard you mentioned there about spirituality being important to some folks. And that's what what role do you think, if any, do you think some sort of a sense of, you know when we talk about people falling in love or being loved things like that we talk about this, this sensation that is kind of beyond our, you know, we talked about sparks fly magic, I knew that type of thing. But I wondered if there is any kind of spiritual element of a power beyond yourself that is involved here, or do you think it's a factor at all? speak about that a little bit.

Unknown Speaker 14:57
It's actually a very interesting question. So when I first wrote the book, it was around 800 pages. And I turned it down to around 300 pages. But there's a big part of it, where that was based on spirituality that I actually removed. Because I felt that it was too soon for that and I'm actually going to be writing more spiritual, more spiritual book on love a bit later on. Okay. And hence, for example, in my book, there's the spiritual chemistry, which I completely okay. To answer your question. Yes, definitely. Spirituality is very important. And so there's a lot of talks about soulmates about finding the right person, and all this is important. So in order to find the right person for you at the same time, you need to be at the same vibration or the same level that they are in and you need to merit actually your soulmate. You need to marry the person you're going to be with. Yes, and tomorrow. that you need to do the internal work within. Once you do the internal work within, once you're complete and whole from inside, you don't have this media energy, I need to be with someone I need to be with, with with with this person, when it comes from a place of unconditional love from place of Okay, I love myself, I love everyone else. I'm good, I'm happy, I'm centered. And I don't need this person I want to be with someone. This is actually when it comes when it's good. This is actually the type of relationship where you can attract your soulmate. your soulmate will only come when you come from a place of unconditional love from a place of growth mindset as you were mentioning before when you're ready, and when you're ready. This is totally cool calm and this is actually if we need to be spiritual in order to to have this this work because it does take a lot of work.

Brad Miller 16:51
Let me interject a term here that I think might be important for us to consider and that's the word covenant and that in in many ways Religious descriptions of good healthy relationships, it's described as a covenant relationship where, you know, as opposed to a contractual type relationship, where a contractual is kind of, you know, I do this for you, and you do this for me, or covenant is where we agreed to be in this relationship regardless, but as also covenant relationships, also often a, you know, a spiritual description of relationships as well. So do you think that the, as you said, looking for your soul mate, would you consider that a way of having a covenant title type relationship with

Unknown Speaker 17:37
someone else? I would say yes, again, it depends. So we're very different people in lots of people around the world there are people that are more spiritual than others. Sure, in general, like people that are not very spiritual wouldn't really want to be with their soulmate, because when you're with your soulmate, they're going to be challenging you and the whole point of it is For you and your soulmate to bring each other closer to you to higher powers who whoever you believe in. And it's, it's actually very, very important to talk about. Absolutely yes, covenant is important if we are spiritual beings, and if we really want to challenge ourselves and be much more spiritual and much higher and, and really try to attain a different kind of love, not just the physical type stuff, but more to transcend, actually and come from unconditional love rather than

Brad Miller 18:33
the deep abiding love that goes on a really deep level. Well, this is all a lot of we use the word love a lot in this whole process. You know, we talked about you know, finding the love of your life, your soul mate, and so on it love is all about emotion. And just tell me the part that emotion plays in this and how it can be channeled appropriately, how it can sometimes be, perhaps out of control or not always is hopeful the emotion of love? Or how maybe the love your history, your history of love what I mean by that, how you experience love with your parents or other folks, how that impacts a new loving relationship. I just like you to speak about this the emotion of love as it applies to finding your soulmate here.

Unknown Speaker 19:20
Sure. So the two or three topics that are interested, interesting from the question you asked, which is a very interesting question. Thank you for...