Eight Ways to Enrich Your Marriage Life and Relationship
Every Relationship including those with your spouse, children, friends, and others tend towards entropy, disorder and dissolution. Marriage and divorces can be disastrous for those concerned, especially for children. Based on Stephen R. Coveys book, Principle Centred Leadership, these eight principles help to make marriage last: Principle 1 – Retain a long-term perspective: Rise above the inevitable rigors, struggles and challenges and focus ahead. Balance the long and short. Often we find we live our lives narrowly focusing on work or home. The daily grind becomes our focus to the exclusion of others. For marriage, it is essential that we continually review and draw our attention to our physical, intellectual, social and spiritual selves to ensure entropy is arrested. Taking a long term view on our mind, body and spirit and striving for growth, change, and continuous improvement is challenging but necessary. Focusing on short-term tasks and ‘to dos’ must happen but it needn’t be to the exclusion of focus on long-term goals. In fact some of these tasks need to be actioned today to reach those long term goals tomorrow.
Principle 2 - Rescript your marriage and family life: Discussing task allocation that occurred in our family of origin and understanding that there are ingrained assumptions etched into out brains - who did what and when - is an important first step in recognising the basis of conflicting role expectations in our family life. The challenge here is to uncover those assumptions and to rescript an approach that works for your marriage. A practical approach is to list all your weekly household tasks and allocate ownership for each. Remain open to change and decide an approach that is balanced for both you and your partner. If you have children old enough to contribute, engage them in the conversation and explain the benefits of everyone contributing to the smooth functioning of your home.
Principle 3 – Reconsider your roles:
Whether producer, manager or leader, understand your role and ascertain whether this is the best role for you. Perhaps moving from producer to a manager who delegates, trains and guides your family is best for you and your family or for you and your colleagues. Or even as a leader who provides direction and vision, through love and inspiration will work best. Producer, manager or leader. Producer does the work and ends up tired and exhausted. The manager delegates, trains, communicates and compensates. The leaders role is to provide direction through modelling and vision, to motivate through love and inspiration, and to build complementary teams based on mutual respect.
Principle 4 - Reset your goals: If you tend to spend a lot of time doing things that are not that important, identify what 'is' important in order to keep you heading towards your destination. Stay on track, take the initiative, exercise willpower and get the important things done. Imagine the end state and do things in a disciplined way. Balance the short and long-term priorities and ensure your effort is expended effectively. A practical approach to keep you on track is to review and/or reset your couple or family goals on a quarterly basis. Resetting your goals can free us up to be a more effective spouse, parent and worker. If we appreciate that ongoing change is inevitable and constant, we therefore must realign goals regularly. Be flexible and open, and allow for error and therefore alleviate any anxiety. Realigning your goals can be and encouraging and energising experience.
Principle 5 – Redesign family systems: The way we communicate and solve problems in our home is vital to ensure a lasting, satisfying marriage. Additionally the modeling we provide our children shapes them and sets them up for their own relationships. By reviewing our family systems, goals and plans, discipline systems and the way we model appropriate behavior, can revitalise marriage and sustain it. Delegation of tasks and bringing more order to the everyday workings of our home can provide the jolt that our family needs. Simply through the process of engaging all family members to review family systems ensures everyone has a voice, is heard and can impact in ensuring a more pleasant home environment. State and restate your goals and plans. Think and talk about the short, mid and long term objectives and things that need to happen now to achieve the larger, more audacious goals.
Principle 6 - Refined 3 vital skills: Time management, Communication and Problem Solving Skills:
- Time Management: Successful people have a plan for time with and time away from their partner. They have an honest and regular look at short and long-term plans and progress to plan. They know what they need to achieve, they know what each other is doing and they understand that they may need to adjust their behaviour or strategy to ensure that they reach their goals. They manage their time, talk about plans and goals regularly. They chunk down the larger tasks to smaller, more achievable items and this keeps them motivated from start to finish, because they can see progress. They build in time for contingencies and they learn from experience.
- Communication: Communication is the answer to successful relationships - but you already knew that! Whilst the absence of communication may be a leading cause of divorce, fulfilling our wedding vows is easier if our marriage is based on open communication. Learning to communicate well with our partner and often is not as easy as it sounds, but it can help resolve problems before they start to affect our relationship. - Problem Solving: Couples that are compassionate and share recognition and power are good at solving problems. Whilst challenging, they resist criticism and contempt. They are rarely defensive and never stonewall the other. Drop the usual win-lose mentality and think abundance for both you and your partner and cooperate for mutual long-term benefit. Choose the positive response and imagine hope and faith. Learn from experience and be open to changing your position and attitude... discover a new, better way and the intimacy that it creates. Imagine a relationship where both are equal and can make suggestions. Listen to your partners comments and desires. Be direct and express your needs clearly – when you need space, say so. If ever your point of view is different to your partner, they try to understand and then aim to reach a reasonable compromise. Communicate effectively with your partner, developing the habit of listening carefully and really understanding your partner BEFORE giving your thoughts. Its about seeing how your partner sees the world - through their heart and mind. Listening with empathy and have the courage to really stop and listen, to consider, to restrain, respect and act with reverence.
Principle 7 – Regain internal security: Take the time to focus on your physical, intellectual, social and spiritual self. We are all in a state of entropy and only consistent and continued refinement and attention to all of these areas will ensure an upward spiral of growth, change, and continuous improvement in ourselves and our relationships. Learn to take care of yourself. Exercise whenever you can and feel the chemical change in your body. Get out doors and enjoy the world. Despite the challenges, it truly is a beautiful world we live in. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Improvement becomes the norm and if we take this into our relationship, we can focus on improving it rather than thinking that it ought to be perfect. If we appreciate that change is inevitable, therefore focusing on getting better through enhanced awareness and careful exploration of issues and by developing and improving skills to deal with those issues we remain flexible and allow for error and therefore alleviate anxiety. Enjoy the journey as well as the destination. Enjoy a rich private life, give service and show integrity. Participate in community events and work on at least one area where you can give service to benefit others. Be it via a volunteer organisation or individual seeking support, connect and assist others.
Principle 8 – Develop a family mission statement. Define core values and goals : The urgent things are often those that keep us away from focusing on what is important. If we don’t have a clear idea of what is important, of the results we desire in our life, we will be easily diverted into responding to the urgent. A practical approach to keep you on track is to establish a family mission statement. The process of discussing our values, individual and shared goals can change the dynamic of family life. Then through considered thought and understanding we can work towards agreeing our mission statement. It will change overtime, so revisit it. Reconsider and reshape family roles if required. Ongoing we can direct our efforts towards common goals ensuring efforts are not misdirected. Through the mission or vision and through love and understanding, we can build an atmosphere based on mutual respect.
