How to Increase Love in Your Relationship | Jonathan Ljungqvist | TEDxZagreb

Is there a tool to create a longer lasting

love

in Sweden, where I come from? We have about 40,000 marriages every year and every year we have about 20,000 divorces. Why is it like this? How many here have been in

love

? Raise

your

hand How many? Close I would say that love can be quite complicated, yes, so today has been today, it's been a year, it's been a year since my girlfriend Amanda and I started working on a project to scientifically

increase

love in our

relationship

and I. I'm not a scientist, I'm not a professor, I'm just a normal guy who did an incredible experiment and that experiment changed my life and changed my

relationship

and today I want to give you concrete tools so that you can do the same.

Sweating sounds like 16 minutes well spent of

your

life. Well, do you remember the feeling of falling in love with me? It happened 10 years ago with Amanda. I mean, every time I looked at Terri it was like my heart melted. I mean, she could. being away from me for 20 minutes and I would pick up my phone and text her hey love, I missed you, do you miss me after 20 minutes? I mean, I was the guy who could go to work with flowers and I usually played these songs for her and I couldn't even play the guitar but time flies huh and seven years passed and after seven years it's not the same just when It's more you, she's been gone for ten hours and you take your phone and you send her this text message hey, don't forget to buy some boats for tonight, the movie will start mine, don't be late, no songs, no flowers, and Last year we reached a turning point in our relationship.

I still remember that October afternoon when Amanda called, she was crying and said, Jonathan, I don't think our relationship will work. I sat that night wondering why this happened. I mean, I felt ashamed of myself because she was the love of my life, but why did it happen? Then I was thinking about it and I realized that I had been living this success chasing life chasing fame chasing glory as an adventurer in the world doing expeditions after expeditions and for what because at some point on that path I lost the feeling of feeling certain emotions towards myself and towards others.

I could feel the emotions of stress, anger, frustration, but the emotion of love, gratitude, empathy, it was very, very difficult for me to feel those emotions and I guess that could be a big reason. Why the relationship wasn't working out, a couple of days later I went to my mentor and told him everything. I told him about the feelings about Prabha's love. I told him everything and he smiled, smiled, looked at me and him. playful smile and took a glass and said Jonathan I will have explained this in a very simple way because you are only 26 years old and he took his glass and added some water and then he also added ten straws in the glass and then he said Jonathan the glass is yours brain the water the liquid are your emotions and these straws are the receptors okay Jonathan okay and Manny said Jonathan now the water the liquid are your emotions of frustration stress anger the feelings it is easy for you to feel and here Here you have 10 straws, strong straws and it is very easy for these straws to convey these feelings and you can feel them, it is easy for you, right, and I said yes, and when Jonathan said, now the problem of water, the liquid, is the emotion of gratitude, love, empathy. the feelings you have no longer have a hard time feeling good and then he removed nine straws and only one remained and then he said here you only have one straw and this straw could even be blocked and this straw is called oxytocin oxytocin receptor and oxytocin has the following effects

increase

s your feeling of love increases your feeling of gratitude and increases your feelings of empathy you want to feel more of these emotions Jonathan yes, I do and he said there is one thing you need to understand if you want to grow a muscle if you want to grow a muscle you need to exercise almost every day for a long period of time, if you do it you might get muscles like me.

It's the same with the growth of new pathways in the brain. new receivers you need to work on certain techniques basically every day for a long period of time. If you do that, Jonathan, you might draw new oxytocin receptors and you might feel more of those emotions again and if you apply that to your relationship let's love, love Jonathan, so I ran home to Amanda and told her about this. She looked at me quite impressed. She was studying medicine and we decided to give our relationship one more chance and we were going to do a project.

We were going to do the oxytocin project and that meant we were going to work on creating oxytocin techniques every day for a couple of months and see what the result would be. It sounds interesting, huh, so we Googled, we analyzed, we searched for these techniques. and we found about 20 and today I'm going to share three of them. Are you interested in knowing what is good? Because the first one can change the atmosphere of the room in seconds and we are going to try that technique. Okay, and this might even be a little scary for someone, but okay, okay, so I want everyone to get up quickly because I don't have much time, so we stand up and now I want you when I count up. three.

I want you to hug me. I want you to hug the person next to you or behind you, so I'll count to three, so 1 2 3, let's hug you and hold you, wait, wait, good job, give yourself a round of applause for your work, can you sit down? , can. sit down, would you say the atmosphere in this room has changed? Yes, hugging and touching increases oxytocin production and I mean starting the day with some hugs and ending the day with some hugs. There are other, more tactile techniques to increase oxytocin levels, but I won. I'm not talking about that dirty audience, a man is an expert at giving and receiving hugs, so this is so simple but so powerful to have more hugs every day.

The second technique I want to talk about I use every day and I have done it for six months. I've done it for six months and that's gratitude. Meditation teacher Robert Hammond said gratitude blocks toxic emotions like envy, depression and anger that can destroy our happiness. Study after study study says that gratitude itself increases. our well-being and for me the meditation of gratitude has incredible value. I start every day by going down to the bridge, I put calm music in my ears and I focus on memories of gratitude, often from childhood, because when we were children I felt emotions more strongly I look for moments of gratitude with Amanda I look for moments of gratitude in the future that I really want and I mean start your day I spent four months in Africa working with these kids and some of these kids basically ate the same food every day, we had a soccer ball to play with and some of them slept on the Same bed, but they were the most grateful kids I've ever met and I can sit there all morning.

Some think about them. I think about whether they can. I feel more grateful than today I can also be grateful because in the society we live in today many people take life for granted, but gratitude, gratitude, I would say is the key to happiness. The third. The third. I want to talk about this. Communication When we had our point of success or failure, we had a huge lack of communication, so this technique for us was essential and communication in a way that increases oxytocin production can be done easily, researchers have provided us with that information . and the first is eye contact eye contact triggers oxytocin production a deep sensation of eye contact how does it feel a little creepy?

The second is to dare to be personal, to dare to share your emotions because when I was in the army I was taught to be a man to be strong and not try, but when I tried, when I tried to really share emotions, what was here that It made a big difference in our relationship. I promise all the men who were here when I did it. that created more trust and trust creates oxytocin production, my friend said Jonathan, you are too much in your head, if you are in your head, there are too many buzzing that will disconnect you from your emotions, try to go from your head to your heart and Communicate with Amanda through your heart and I love that advice.

The third is to talk about fears in relationships. When we had a difficult road, there were certain topics, but I didn't have the courage to talk about children, like the economy, like the house of the future and him. It was pretty silly, I mean, I was with Mountaineer climbing mountains all over the world, but I didn't have the courage to talk about children because it scared me, but we did it, we sat down, I got up the courage and talked about it. and it was a great relief to talk about the kids, to talk about the economy and to talk about the future and we bonded a lot so it's a very secret tool to create a longer lasting love, yes, several and it's called oxytocin techniques and because just I had 15 16 minutes today I can't give you the remaining 17 but there is so much information about Efrat but there is so much information on the Internet about books and movies there is so much information about this and I dare you, I dare you If you can relate to my story with your partner to do it yourself to make your own oxytocin project, thank you.

I heard a question here. How do you feel? What does oxytocin feel like? Do you want to feel it? Yes, do you want to feel it? Do you want to feel it? Okay, why don't we get a man on stage? She is not beautiful? Well, Amanda. Wow, I loved you for ten years and I just want to say thank you. I want to say thank you for believing, thank you for being the most wonderful person I have ever met and thank you for everything we have been through and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

I ask you if you want to marry me. Thanks who. That was a speech.