How to Be a Better Human

Work advice from the world’s favorite couples therapist w/ Master Fixer Dr. Orna Guralnik | from Fixable

December 22, 2025

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  • Dealing with difference is the basic of human experience, requiring a shift from a flawed premise of right/wrong to a state of curiosity modeled by emotional regulation like patience and breath. 
  • One person can significantly improve a relationship system (like a team or partnership) by taking responsibility for attending to the system, even if the other party is less eager. 
  • All relationships are a constant cycle of rupture and repair, and the muscle is in rebuilding trust, not avoiding breakage, with the key question for leaving being whether change is possible when issues arise. 

Segments

Working Through Difference and Curiosity
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(00:06:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Curiosity about difference requires managing emotional frequency, including patience and breath, to quiet the mind’s tendency to assign right/wrong judgments.
  • Summary: Working through difference is fundamental to human experience in all interactions. To foster curiosity instead of judgment, one must manage their emotional frequency, which involves patience and regulating intensity like anger or despair. This emotional regulation is necessary to reach the cognitive state of curiosity, allowing one to take in new information rather than just affirming existing knowledge.
Space Negotiation in Dialogue
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(00:09:46)
  • Key Takeaway: Effective interaction involves coaching oneself to reduce urgency, take up less space initially, and then make room for the other person to articulate their needs.
  • Summary: When feeling agitated, coach yourself into reducing urgency and calming down, metaphorically taking up less space to create room for understanding the other person’s needs. In a two-person interaction, both parties ideally monitor the shared space, flexing how much space they occupy versus how much they yield to allow the other side to speak.
System Care in Relationships
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(00:11:17)
  • Key Takeaway: A relationship is a system with its own properties that needs attending, and one person can often do a disproportionate amount of work to create an environment where others can flourish.
  • Summary: A relationship system has properties distinct from the individuals involved, and it requires dedicated attention. In workplace dynamics, the subordinate often bears more responsibility for attending to the relationship with their boss than the boss does. Creating a good system through actions like deep listening can foster an environment where mutual respect and better communication can take root.
Team Dynamics and Roles
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(00:15:39)
  • Key Takeaway: Effective teams function like a pack with clear, distinct roles where the unit’s success, rather than individual competition, is the priority.
  • Summary: Teams should ideally experience themselves as a functional working group where roles are clear, and members know each other’s strengths. Roles might include attending to relationships, generating ideas, or managing details. Competition, while healthy to a degree, becomes destructive beyond a certain level, shifting focus away from the health of the overall system.
Rupture, Repair, and Leaving
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(00:17:15)
  • Key Takeaway: All relationships are characterized by a constant state of rupture and repair, and leaving a situation should be considered if attempts to affect change consistently result in a bad feeling or if the system feels fossilized.
  • Summary: The attachment research suggests all relationships exist in a constant state of rupture and repair, meaning trust can be restored to be even stronger than before. The key question for deciding whether to leave a job or relationship is assessing how much change you are able to affect when something bothers you. If the system is dynamic and moving, keep working at it; if it feels stuck or fossilized, it might be time to move on.
Pragmatics of Deep Listening
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(00:20:25)
  • Key Takeaway: Deep listening requires quieting the internal wish to speak and distinguishing between listening to fortify one’s own position versus listening to genuinely understand the other person’s essence.
  • Summary: Deep listening involves shifting brain areas dedicated to listening rather than speaking, demanding the quieting of one’s own desire to talk. It is crucial to differentiate between listening to build your argument and listening to understand. A practical test of deep listening is successfully repeating the other person’s point back to their satisfaction, focusing on the essence of what they are communicating, not just the minor details.
Advice for Working Couples
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(00:22:38)
  • Key Takeaway: Couples working together must be mindful of shifting between the discourse used for work (optimization, bottom line) and the discourse used for romance or domestic life.
  • Summary: Couples who work together benefit from seeing more dimensions of each other, which enriches the relationship, provided they manage issues like comparison and power. It is vital to recognize and shift between different discourses: the language of optimization used at work should not be imported into romance. Trusting truth and adopting an adult-to-adult framing invites both partners to show up authentically.
Final Advice for Workplace Improvement
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(00:34:13)
  • Key Takeaway: To immediately improve workplace relationships, express genuine gratitude and commit to listening deeply to understand the other person’s needs, thereby creating a field where you want to live.
  • Summary: The most powerful immediate action is expressing sincere gratitude to colleagues for real contributions, which builds a positive field where people feel recognized. The second action is deciding to listen deeply to another person, introducing a spirit of generosity and inclusiveness into the interaction. One individual can significantly impact the system’s quality even without universal agreement.