Cultivating Healthy Relationships | Psychologist, Dr. Melanie Joy

Melanie Joy (0:00)

The formula for a healthy relationship can be boiled down to a relationship in which you practice integrity.

That means you practice the core moral values of compassion, sometimes called caring and justice or fairness. You practice integrity, and you honor dignity in that process. Like, it's really that, that's what it would boil down to. And this leads to a greater sense of connection.

Michael Gervais (0:37)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. My name is Michael Gervais. By trade in training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. And the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn, but not just learn in a passive way, to learn in a way to understand how people that are pursuing mastery in their life, how do they organize their inner life? What are they searching for? What are the mental skills that they use? And then so that we can apply those same insights and practices in our own lives in our unique way. And so there is a nice blend between the science that we're gonna stand on of psychology, as well as the art of practice.

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On Wednesday, March 6th, at 2 p.m. Pacific. Go to findingmastery.com/training to sign up once again. That's findingmastery.com/training. And I'm really excited to see you there.

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Now, this week's conversation is with Dr. Melanie Joy. She's a Harvard educated psychologist specializing in relationships communication for social change. And Melanie is best known for her groundbreaking theories on the psychology of violence and non-violence and really helping to explain why people engage in non-relational behaviors.

And why that's important is because we are relational creatures, so why do we do, why do we act? Why do we engage in non-relational ways? And what does that mean? It means like the behaviors that harm people, animals, harm the planet and themselves sometimes. And then she's focused on not only those systems and structures, but how do we help people change those patterns? And then my experience is that most people don't intentionally want to be violent, to do harm to others emotionally or physically.