“Our Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of it sorrows, but empties today of its strengths’ – Charles H. Spurgeon
What is Your Focus – positive or negative?
It just seems so natural to recognize and dwell on the negative. It can be like the Princess and the Pea. All we recognize is the irritation and nothing else.
The biggest enemy to creating and maintaining connection is a focus on the negative. Real beauty and strength are found in people who bring positive words and actions to their relationships.
As a young couple I would come home and only notice the negative. It seemed that all I saw was what she did not do. All I would notice was the things undone, I had trouble seeing the positive. Needless to say that did not seem to endear me to my wife. It would start or speed up a cycle of conflict and disconnect that got harder and harder to fix. It ripped the friendship and trust we were trying to develop as a young couple. The emotional bond is the label that research is giving for friendship, trust and connection that a couple needs to navigate life together. The biggest enemy to creating and maintaining that connection is a focus on the negative in the relationship.
Believing Brings the Action of Love
If I truly believed that God loved me and was with me, how would it change the way I loved my wife or daughter and son-in-law? When my heart and mind is focused on the truth that God loves me unconditionally and He is with me, I am more patient, kind, loving and I desire to serve them. My behavior is not a force of effort but a natural response to the understanding that I am loved and secure.
Is it possible to believe something without it producing some action or behavior?
faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. – James 2:17
Knowing the ‘right answers’ does not mean we believe them. To believe them means to act as though they’re true. – Dallas Willard
You will never know how much you believe something until it is a matter of life and death – C S Lewis
Most of what we think we see as the struggle OF faith is really the struggle to act as IF we had faith when in fact we don’t. – Dallas Willard
“Grace means there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and nothing I can do to make God love me less.” – Philip Yancey
10 Hours a Week to Affair and Divorce Proof Your Marriage
10 Hours…. Yes 10 hours a week. Less than 6% of the available hours that you have each week. You get 168 hours each week. How do you spend them? What takes the most of your time? Here is a rough guess.
- 40 Hours Sleeping – 7 hours a night
- 50 Hours at work – most of us work more than 40 hours
- 15 Hours Hygiene – a little over 2 hours a day.
- 20 Hours – Eating and preparing meals.
- 125 Hours total – Now this is the bear minimum you do for the basics of life
That leaves 43 hours left each week, 6 hours each day, for what matters to you most. How do you spend those? What will give you the most bang for your buck with the 43 hours you have left? Relationships are what will matter most over the span of your life. The quality of your relationships is the real health and wealth of your life. The relationship that you have with God, yourself and your spouse is what matters most. Here are 3 things you can easily do for around 10 hours a week, that will change your marriage.
The way you talk to your children
“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.”― Peggy O’Mara
This quote got me thinking. What does our children’s inner voice sound like? What does my inner voice sound like? My first reaction was to feel discouraged and beat myself up for all the things I had said and done in a negative, selfish or reactive way. Good indication what my inner voice sounds like. After I came back down from that negative reaction, trying to not feel defeated and inadequate, I tried to come up with some ways to be proactive. Below are just a few ideas.
We all do it… Self Talk
You have to learn to keep yourself company before you can truly keep someone else company.
We all talk to ourselves. We start it about age two, talking out loud. We have all seen the little toddler walking around jabbering. Around age four to six we start talking in our heads. We begin to understand it isn’t socially acceptable to talk out loud so we begin to do it in our heads.
Love Creates the Soil of Transformation in Our Lives
I have found as social media has grown, so has our ability to create a false self or image. Marriage is the one place I can’t do that. My wife sees my struggles and successes. She experiences how I handle disappointment….How I handle temptation….How I handle life and the relationships in it. She really knows me, and the amazing thing is she still loves me. God uses her acceptance and love to create change in my heart. Her love is a mirror of how Christ’s love and kindness leads us to repentance Romans 2:4. I think this is the mystery that Paul talks about in Ephesians. Unconditional love takes our breath away and creates the soil of transformation. The love a couple has should be a model of the true love and grace found in Christ. Ephesians 5:22-33
“It’s an act of our will to choose to see people simply as wildly loved by God, to assume their beauty before guessing their depravity.” Mary DeMuth
What’s God Doing with My Life?
“We are a Divine work of art, something that God is making and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character.” C.S. Lewis – The Problem of Pain
In the pain and joy of my life…especially the pain of my life. I find that the question “What’s God doing with my life?” always floats into my head. I have a Father in heaven that is involved and concerned with me. What is He doing? Has he forgot about me? I don’t think we have concrete answer to these questions. Job and Isaiah can attest to that. But God is doing something. I am convinced that He is constantly working in our lives. He is orchestrating and directing the world so two things will always happen:
Is it Possible to Change a Struggling Marriage?
I think every relationship has highs and lows, in fact many marriages really struggle. I am always concerned when a couple becomes so discouraged that they lose hope. They lose any expectation that the relationship will get better. This loss of hope creates the belief that they only have two choices:
- Stay in a empty painful marriage…..or
- Get a divorce.
Could a third choice be possible? Can you change a bad marriage? Is it possible to change a marriage that has been struggling? Marriages that have had consistent conflict, affairs, addictions and anger can change. I know at times it is hard to see but, there is hope. A third option is really possible. I have seen real change. I have experienced real change. Change is complicated and hard but small things can create big change. Remember attitude is everything. Allow God to create a teachable attitude in you and look for small consistent change. Here are seven ideas and actions that you can implement now.
Hiding Inadequacies
…most people at work, even in high performing organisations, divert considerable energy every day to a second job that no one has hired them to do: preserving their reputations, putting their best selves forward, and hiding their inadequacies from others and themselves. We believe this is the single biggest cause of wasted resources in nearly every company today. What would happen if people felt no need to do this second job?” – Robert Kegan, Making Business Personal, Harvard Business Review. April, 2014
Interesting quote. This part of the quote stands out to me “hiding their inadequacies from others and themselves”. If the goal is hiding, you never learn how to manage or improve the “Inadequacies”. You put energy into managing your struggles. There is less energy or focus to manage goals, priorities, people or programs.
Each of us has 100% available to us everyday. That is a metaphor for the time, energy, focus, or skills that you have available to use each day. This seems obvious but examine how do you spend that 100% – your time, energy focus or skills. How much is spent managing anxiety, depression, worry, fear, stress or addiction, the list could go on and on.
I learned a long time ago that the more I tried to deny or hide my problems the more they grew. My goal is to live in the sweet spot of my strengths, but that is not accomplished by hiding my weaknesses. I have learned that I need community, a desire to learn and grow and an intimate relationship with God. I struggle with keeping this in balance, but I want to live in the light not hiding in the dark.
Have you seen the truth of the quote above in your life or in the people or organizations you manage?