You're listening to the Fulfilled Dreams podcast with your host Ray Ramos. Most cemeteries are filled with people whose dreams die to them. It doesn't have to be that way. We will be talking about fulfilling your relational, spiritual, personal, and business dreams. Let's go.

My name is Raymond Ramos. The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships. Secondly, secondly, to understand, I want to make it very clear. The quality of your relationships is determined by your ability to have courageous conversations. If you're not able to communicate how you feel and what you need, there's a good chance that your feelings will never be understanding. Courageous conversations are, I believe, the key that will give you access to new levels of intimacy, to new levels of love, to new levels of fulfillment. So I'm a person long-term recovery, I'm a Christian, I'm a pastor, I'm married, I'm a father, I'm a coach, I counsel people. And so my name is Raymond Ramos, and you're meeting me, maybe for the first time. And I want to let you know we're going to go through a process. We're going to talk about some difficult things. What makes a conversation courageous? And I want to, we're going to get into it, but that's who I am: a regular guy who's been able to in the last 30 years to experience incredible life transformation, uh, miracles, growth, success. And I want to share some of that with you today, particularly as it pertains to courageous conversations. The quality, this is what I believe, this is what I've learned. The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships, right? That's a powerful statement. That's something that I've had to learn. Um, first and foremost, my spiritual condition, my relationship with God determines a lot in my life. So your spiritual health, again, this is not a religious, your spiritual health, whatever spiritual health is, if you're spiritually healthy, that if your relationship, your higher power with God is where it needs to be, and you're experiencing spiritual health, that's going to determine a lot of factors in your life. Okay, a lot of factors. You can write that down. Your spiritual condition will determine how healthy you are in other areas of your life. So that's very important to get that. So horizontal versus vertical. So if my relationship with God is where it needs to be, and I'm talking about a relationship. I'm not talking about I'm talking about healthy spirituality, healthy spirituality. Then I have relationships with my wife, my mother, my sister, my brother, relationship. We all life is about relationships. The relationship with the guy in the I'm in New York, the guy within the bodega, uh, my neighbor, the guy across the streets, the guy, you know, on and we all life is about relationships. The quality of your life, listen to me, very important. The quality of your life will be determined by the quality of your relationships. So you want to be able to lock that in, get that in, know that that relationships, that the quality of your relationships is a big deal where you're at relationally, your ability to connect with others, your ability to communicate, your ability to have to you know to resolve conflict, your ability to your ability to navigate through um significant, intimidating, and sensitive topics in relationships, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationship. You want to be able to understand that because what happens is a lot of people they don't understand that how you interact with other people, how you communicate, how you are you able to listen, what issues from the past are hindering you from experiencing peace in the present. Are you, for example, if you're angry at someone for you in your past, which a lot of people struggle with, resentments and bitterness and anger towards someone in the past, everybody has a story. No matter how great your upbringing, no matter how wonderful your family system, everybody has experienced some type of hurt or trauma. And you might be angry at someone that that did something that you don't deserve, that should have never been done. They they lied on you, they betrayed you, whatever it might be, you know, that you you were disappointed somehow, somehow. And what happens is if you're angry at someone in the past, right? What happens is for every minute that you're angry at someone in the past, that's 60 seconds that you're not available for love in the present. Did you get that? For every minute that you spend angry at someone in your past, that's 60 seconds that you're not available for love in the present. So there's a lot of times that people have issues from the past, past relationships, past hurts, old anger, old hurt affects us and our ability to communicate and relate to other people in our present. And again, we'll get into some of that in the process. But there are many things that affect the quality of your relational health. There are many things that will affect your ability to engage in a healthy relationship. I I tell people in the relationship workshop that I do that only healthy people can have healthy relationships. Only healthy people can have healthy relationships. I want to encourage you to know and to be committed to working on your relational health, on your ability to communicate, on your ability to be present uh in during dialogue, and your ability to look someone in the eye and not let something from your past rob, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships. I'm sure you understand that. I'm sure you got that. If the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of your relationship, then what determines the quality of your relationships? That's a good question, right? So if the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships, your ability to have courageous conversations, your ability to have courageous conversations. I want to talk to you about being able to have courageous conversations. And so it's important that you understand, it's important that you get it, it's important that you don't get defensive. Courageous conversations have a lot to do with conflict resolution. Courageous conversations have a lot with finding your voice and speaking your voice. Courageous conversations have a lot to do with dealing with problems immediately in a healthy, loving manner. Courageous conversations are, I believe, the key that will give you access to new levels of intimacy, to new levels of love, to new levels of fulfillment. So many people, right? What makes a conversation courageous? What makes a conversation courageous, right? Think about it. You know, there's a lot of conversations you have with people, but but why would something what would be something categorized as a courageous conversation? So there's something. So when I'm talking about a courageous conversation, right, free people are afraid of rejection. People are they don't feel if they don't feel safe being vulnerable. So a courageous conversation is is a correct is a conversation that must be had. It involves risking being rejected. A courageous conversation usually exists when two people have opposing views. That's what makes it courageous. If we agree, right, then it's not courageous. If we both agree that, you know, if you we're both democratic or we're both republican, or whatever the if it, you know, whatever religion, a hot topic, politics, hot topic, sometimes siblings don't know how to have the you know these these conversations, but they involve intimacy, it involves getting vulnerable, it involves the the put the possibility of being rejected. Many people feel like they're never they're never understood, nobody understands me. You don't, you're not getting what I'm saying. Why don't you many people get lost on rabbit trails, right? They want so we're gonna address all these particular areas of courageous conversations.

Thank you for listening to the Fulfilled Dreams podcast with your host Ray Ramos. If you found this helpful, please don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and join Ray's free Facebook group. The link is in the description. Until the next episode, God bless you on your way to fulfilling your dreams personally, relationally, spiritually, as a leader in a business.