Eli Finkel

When we were first dating, you know...

People are falling in love and they often say, I love you or whatever.

But I was very partial to this idea of belly full of wine, right?

I want to tell her that I love her a lot, but I got to get a belly full of wine.

And eventually saying belly full of wine was our little replacement for wine.

I love you.

And what was neat about the way we used the phrase belly full of wine is it was able to contain like a whole terabyte of information about love and respect and affection in this like one second phrase.

We could turn to each other and just say belly full of wine and just really communicate so much information in that very little space.

just those few words and this is an example of a broader idea that we don't appreciate enough which is that every marriage has its own culture that has its own language and its own expectations and we can leverage the features of how culture works to benefit the marriage with a sort of emotional shorthand that can help express affection and it can be especially crucial

If you're going through a difficult time and maybe things are getting a little hot and maybe you're on the verge of a fight and you can say, hey, baby, belly full of wine, and you might be able to diffuse some of what could have been a pretty problematic episode.

My name is Nick.

The advice I have begins with a statement that you probably may have heard.

We judge others by their actions and we judge ourselves by our intentions.

And I've heard that a lot of times throughout my life by many different people.

But something I didn't understand was what to do with that information.

Me and my friend talked about it for a long time.

And we came to the conclusion that you must flip those two to really understand

be able to understand others and have empathy for others.

You must judge yourself by your actions.