Your Marriage in 2011

Ushering in a new year is truly a blessing. The New Year represents a wonderful gift with new possibilities and opportunities. We would like to offer the following suggestions as you embark upon the New Year.

1. Take Inventory

Do a life assessment of where you are right now. Where do you want to go—to achieve? What do you need to release—to let go of in consciousness, in your home, and work place to make room for the new? What do you want to manifest—to bring forth in 2009? Make a list and consider the steps you will need to take to achieve your goals.

2. Decide What To Focus On First

Of all the things you want to achieve, select one to accomplish first. By focusing on one goal at a time, you focus your energy thereby enabling you to achieve it faster. After you have achieved your first goal, you can take that positive energy and focus it toward successfully achieving your next goal, then the next, and so on.

3. Create and Implement Your Plan of Action

You will need a plan to succeed in achieving your goals. List all of the steps (tasks) that you will need to take toward achieving your goal. Break down each step into smaller tasks and decide what needs to be done first, then second, third, etc. and include timetables. Start with your first goal, then first step, then first task and continue to work your plan.

4. Reward Yourself

Reward yourself as you go. Intermittent rewards provide incentive and momentum to help you succeed. Include a big, really meaningful reward when you accomplish your goal.

Congratulation! You’re a winner! Now move on to your next goal. As always, we are sending our love and wishing you an abundance of all good things in 2011.

Marriage Advice: Persistence and Follow Through Will Pay Off

Marriage Advice Persistence PaysOne of the best marriage advice snippets we can provide to you is the idea that couples who are persistent and follow through consistently, together… tend to stay together. It’s about an attitude in the mind of both partners that we are going to stick through, whatever comes our way. These couples share dreams, they share a vision for the future.

We recently read an inspiring story of a young couple who dreamed of opening a health food restaurant. They had met in college, had recently graduated, and had a child and over $100,000 in college loans. They spent hours talking about ways they could help people eat and live healthy lives. The restaurant they envisioned would help people do that.

When they shared their dream with family and friends, they were discouraged. Some considered it foolish—that this was not the right time to take on such a project. But, they continued to pursue their dream by creating the best business plan they could put together and stayed focused on fulfilling their dream.

They decided that they were now ready to seek a bank loan to get the restaurant off the ground. They were turned down by bank after bank—11in fact. And while they were discouraged by so many rejections, they remained steadfast to their dream. The 12th bank approved their loan. Today, they have a successful business and are planning to open 2 new restaurants. Their real success was the fact that as a couple, they dreamed together, planned together, worked together, and were persistent toward their goal. And by the way, they paid off their student loans in 3 years.

It’s not just enough to have dreams or take action toward making them happen. Whether or not you succeed is determined by your persistence and follow-through when your first attempts fail. Thomas Edison tried and failed to invent a light bulb over a thousand times before he came up with one of the greatest inventions of all time.  In our marriage counseling experience, it is the couples who exhibit persistence and follow through who make it more often than not through the hard times.

Marilyn Vos Savant says that “Defeat is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.”

Don’t give up at the first sign of difficulty. Stay committed to see your dreams fulfilled, individually and as a couple.  Studies show  that couples who dream together, work together and achieve together… stay together!

We like how Michael Larsen put’s it. He says that a “diamond is simply a piece of coal that stuck to the job.”

Key to Marriage Success: Overcoming Obstacles Together

Marriage SuccessWhen I was about 8 years old, I met an uncle who lived out of state. I only saw him twice because he provided continuous and loving care for his gravely ailing wife. On one of those occasions, he gave me a gift that has lived with me all my life. He forced me to sit down and memorize this short but powerful statement–one, he said, that would help me throughout my life.

The gift he gave me was the message: “Make stepping stones out of downfalls, ring victory from defeat.”

Marriage Success Means Overcoming Obstacles Together

In pursuing your goals, you are likely to experience setbacks. In our experience of marriage counseling, we’ve learned EVERY couple experiences setbacks.  Setbacks are nothing more than “course corrections.” Just like airplanes use computers to make course corrections to help them reach their destination, we must also change course to reach our goals. We know when we are “off course” when we are not accomplishing the goals we’ve set out to achieve.

Everyone has challenges of some sort. It may be a business, career, health, emotional, spiritual, relationship difficulty and/or any combination of these. Some people use their challenges to become bitter; others use them to become better. So what’s the difference between those who overcome difficulties and those who are defeated?

Marriage Success Requires Resilience

Those who successfully overcome their setbacks learn from them and make course corrections toward achieving their goals. All setbacks are opportunities to learn–to figure out what has gone wrong and make the necessary adjustments. Setbacks do not have to be permanent. They are temporary if we approach them from the right perspective. Those who are defeated by setbacks tend to dwell on them, make negative judgments about themselves and others, become discouraged, and lose motivation, faith, and wallow in self pity and regret. On the other hand, those who “make stepping stones out of downfalls pick themselves up, dust themselves off, learn from it, and move on toward their success. At times, it may not be simple or easy, but it can be done.

If you are resilient together, your success together is inevitable.