What’s really, really important to you?
What’s really, really important to your life-partner?
What’s really, really important to both of you?
I invite you to talk about it. Now choose what you are going to do!
I was going to publish those four lines for this month’s article, but when I asked Carol for her feedback, she said, “Dan, I’m wondering if you’re taking brevity to an extreme. It’s a great article, but maybe an explanation would be helpful.”
OK, here goes then.
In our 27 years of marriage, Carol and I have made some really good choices, and we’ve made some really dumb ones too. The good choices were made because we had honest dialogue about what was really, really important to us, and we had agreement. The poor choices were because of lack of conversation, dishonesty, and disagreement.
Examples:
We chose to get married. It was just a little piece of paper, but it was a commitment to our lives together – for the long-term. Is marriage right or wrong? It doesn’t matter. It was really important to both of us. Although that piece of paper doesn’t mean much to us now, it helped us to weather many fiery storms where it could have been really easy for us to end our relationship.
Several years after marriage, we chose to have children. It was really important for us to experience our kid’s lives with our own young energy and vitality. It was really important to us that we raised our kids with our morals and values. It was important to us that at least one of us was able to put them on the school bus in the morning, and be there for them when they arrived home.
So we consciously chose that Carol give up her teaching position to raise our kids. We did without many things that 2 income families had, but there was an abundance of love, great conversations, and games in our home. And our sons have grown up to be outstanding young gentlemen.
Oh, we made many crappy choices too. Sometimes they cost us a lot of money, and often they created a ton of relationship GUCK – anger, frustration, arguments, guilt, attack, and counter-attack.
Now, because experiencing happiness, contentment, and joy are so important to us in our relationship, we’ve decided we’re not going into relationship GUCK anymore – no way.
So we consciously choose to apply really simple, easy strategies that are GUCK Preventers. They are organic, super-healthy, recyclable, re-useable, no-cost yet priceless, and provide a huge return on your investment of time.
I invite you to consider these in your relationship.
– Genuine hugs and kisses (at least 10 every day). These are real hugs, not a quick wrap-my-arms-around-you-slap-you-on-the-back kinda deal.
– Coffee and inspiring conversation in the morning. It’s always a positive way to start our day.
– Meals together (as many as possible), without TV, radio, or other distractions.
– Regular walks together with conversations about anything.
– Focussed and honest dialogue – when one of us needs to work something out for ourselves, needs feedback, or needs to talk about mini-guck situations.
– Use technology – when having meals or dialogue, we let the phones take messages. This demonstrates respect, and a desire to really hear and understand each other.
– Regular words of praise, gratitude, and acknowledgement.
– Evening together-time. Most evenings we take at least an hour to be together. We read together. I don’t mean we sit and read our own books. We read “a book” together – sometimes I read out loud to Carol, and sometimes she reads out loud to me. We compare our schedules for the next day or two, to ensure we are both aware of commitments, meetings, coaching calls, presentations, required support, and anything else that is important.
– Go to bed together. I can’t think of a better way to end the day – with hugging, kissing, and snuggling together. Oh yeah, sometimes there is more, usually the result of flirting throughout the day.
That’s way too much stuff for you to start on right away. It’s taken us years to create these habits.
So just find ONE that you both think is important and start on that ONE – just ONE. Anybody can handle that, don’t you think?
I guess my article got un-brevitized, but the ending is still the same.
What’s really, really important to both of you?
I invite you to talk about it. Now choose what you are going to do!
