Relationships shape personal happiness more than anything. So, before focusing on that new year’s resolution to exercise more, eat less or learn Chinese, consider making one change that will revolutionize your life: resurrect love in your most important relationships.

You can resurrect love in any relationship. Every relationship is packed with potential to explode with resurrected love. Here’s the problem: Our victim-obsessed culture tells us to get rid of anyone who annoys us and to surround ourselves with happy people who always love us. And so we feel like we are helpless, victimized by our bad parents, disobedient children or crummy partners. Feel familiar? Well, it’s a lie. As John Ortberg says, everyone is normal until you get to know ‘em! Same with you. Same with me.

Here’s the truth: Relationships can be awesome when we are willing to work at them. In fact, I believe that we have all of the love and ecstasy we can handle right now right under our nose. We just need to learn how to unleash it. In fact, the most destructive belief in the human race is the belief that people don’t change. People change. Relationships change. And you are the key to making it happen.

So, how can you make 2016 your year to resurrect love? Get out your journal and start with three action steps:

• Get clear about what you want. Your heart and your desires are critical. You must start there. What do you want? What do you deeply desire? More laughter and fun? More cooperation and support? More time? More respect from your child? More space from your parents? More connection, adventure or sex from your partner? Something else? You will never transform a relationship until you begin by looking inside and getting clear about what you want. We must become friends with our desires.
• Get clear about what you’ve been doing to get your desires met. Do you ask? What do you say? What do you do? Is that working? Would it work if others used that strategy with you? Just collect data for now.
• Get honest feedback about how well you are loving other people. Collect some data about how you are loving others. Consider asking key people, “How am I doing in our relationship? What can I do to love you better?”

For the first series of blogs in 2016 I will be offering specific strategies that flow from breakthrough research about how to resurrect love in close relationships. These strategies will offer specific guidance about how you can make important changes, including how to revolutionize communication, release longstanding resentments, eliminate conflict, energize play and fun, and recover passion, to name a few.

Nothing will improve the quality of your life like resurrecting love in your key relationships. Start preparing now for the best year of your life. Happy New Year.