Couple Goals - Making Your Time Together Count

Happy, healthy couples strengthen their marriage bond through the pursuit of shared goals and by encouraging and supporting one another in accomplishing those and their individual goals. 

Goals harness and order the energy required to follow the associated structured activities that will result in achieving those goals. Sharing a goal with your mate can be a wonderful way to connect and invest in personal and couple growth and avoid the boredom and monotony of aimless efforts that can often result in fussing and disagreements.

Why not set aside some time or better yet, plan a weekend away when you and your spouse can dream and discuss goals that you would like to pursue together and individually. 

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”  Will Rogers.

1)    Be specific.  Instead of saying, “We will learn to play tennis, be specific and say: “We’ll spend 30 minutes a day hitting balls three times a week and take a tennis lesson on Sunday afternoons at the Tennis Club.” The goal now expresses not only a desire, but the means to accomplish it.

2)    Be realistic.  Consider your time and resources and set goals that you can accomplish and feel good about.  If you make them too easy, they will be meaningless and if you make them impossible to obtain, you will lose heart and become discouraged.  Strive to create positive versus negative energy!

3)    Include a way to measure your success.  A good goal will answer the questions of what, how, and when; it’s measurable.  Instead of saying, “We will learn new recipes and cook meals together, say:  we will research recipes online and find a mutually agreeable one, grocery shop together at Whole Foods and cook together on the first Saturday evening of each month.”

4)    Think short-term and long-term.  Short-term goals (cleaning one closet a week) allows us to experience success at smaller intervals while working toward long-term goals (de-cluttering an entire house.)

5)    Review periodically and be flexible.   Goals are the defined destination of a journey.  If you don’t know where you are going, guess what?  You are already there!  Remind yourself that life is a journey, and developing a passion for the process is the key to embracing and enjoying each day and learning to live in the moment.  Priorities arise that will take precedence over structure you have established to accomplish a goal, which may require taking a detour, adjusting expectations or putting a goal on hold for a while.  Utilize the power of prayer when setting daily priorities, which will result in PRAYORITIES, which will keep you in line with your dreams and the heart desires of God.

Got Happiness? (4)

Much research has been done to determine the causes of mental health issues such as depression, bi-polar disorder, mania, etc., but fewer studies have focused on what causes a person to be happy.  Henry Cloud authored The Laws of Happiness, which highlights the life principles of people who experience higher levels of well-being and happiness.  This article summarizes one law of happiness.

Happy people pursue goals.  Goals help order our time and energy, promote growth and the hope of things to come.  The way to accomplish a big goal is to break it down into little goals.  What small, specific and measurable thing or things do I need to accomplish today that will work toward my end desire?  Cloud encourages us to consider how we get to the end of a day able to know “today was a good day!” What needs to occur during the day to make that happen?

Getting in touch with our heart’s desires is key to setting goals.  Sometimes, like a child digging around in a toy box for a favorite toy, we have to rummage through our thoughts and life experiences to discover goals that when achieved will satisfy and fill our hearts with joy.

Got Happiness? (3)

Got Happiness?

Much research has been done to determine the causes of mental health issues such as depression, bi-polar disorder, mania, etc., but fewer studies have focused on what causes a person to be happy.  Henry Cloud authored The Laws of Happiness, which highlights the life principles of people who experience higher levels of well-being and happiness.  This article summarizes one of those laws.

Happy people don’t compare themselves.  Using another person’s performance to judge personal worth is unhealthy and sinful.  There is nothing wrong with observing a person and emulating their behavior for the purpose of learning and growing.  However, when we beat ourselves up because another person does something or has something that we want, we are wasting our precious time and energy.  Those types of comparisons and negative self-talk zap our energy and cause depression.  We will receive a performance review at the end of our lives and it is our gifts that will be evaluated to determine whether we embraced, developed and used them to make a difference in God’s Kingdom and in the lives of others.  Galations 6:4-5  -Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.  For we are each responsible for our own conduct.

Talk Love!

The Five Love Languages (click for website)

The 5 Love Languages® has helped countless couples identify practical and powerful ways to express love, simply by using the appropriate love language. Many husbands and wives who had spent years struggling through marriages they thought were loveless discovered one or both spouses had long been showing love through messages that weren’t getting through. By recognizing their different love languages, they witnessed the rebirth of the love they thought had been gone for good.

THE 12 TESTS OF TRUE LOVE! By Dr. Dave Currie and Christie Rayburn ® 
http://www.marriageuncensored.com/assets/ShowDocuments/612-%2012%20Traits%20of%20True%20Love.pdf

For those considering the lifetime commitment of marriage!

How to Forgive and Forget (click for website)

If you're married, you've been there. Your spouse has said or done something that has
wounded you. It may be something small, or it may be a major betrayal. Either way, your pride
screams at you to take revenge. If you don't strike back immediately, you at least want to keep
this "guilt card" in your pocket, to be pulled out at a later date - "Oh yeah, well what about
the time when you...

My Favorite Things, Great Couple Activity!

My Favorite Things

About ten years ago, when our daughters were school-aged children and their activity schedules drove our lives, I began to miss the times when David and I did things that were couple oriented.

One day as I was shopping at Central Market, I noticed an advertisement for a gumbo-cooking contest. I harassed David until he conceded and agreed to enter the contest with me.  We selected several cookbooks from Louisiana and started reading the recipes to identify the ones with ingredients we thought would make the best gumbo.

Over about a three-week period we tried four different recipes.  I was convinced that okra was the secret ingredient to a really great tasting gumbo and David’s opinion differed. So we prepared our original recipe partly with okra and partly without, poured it into Tupperware containers and headed to the tasting kitchen at Central Market to win the Blue Ribbon.

It was fun to have a focus for our date nights and to cook something together with the purpose of perfecting it and making it our own family recipe.   We were dumbfounded when our gumbo was not selected as the winner and decided that Texans do not have the same discernment that those native to Louisiana possess. 

The Hatton Family Gumbo is among the best in the country (at least we think so) and is definitely going into “my favorite things” album.  It always tastes the best when David does the laborious job of making the roux; you can see from the photo that he cooks it until just before the burning point, which gives it a rich, smoky flavor.  

What can you intentionally do with your spouse to create a fun memory?  Any suggestions?

Leave and Cleave

Launching Your Adult Child

After watching this 2-1/2 minute movie preview of Meet the Fockers, determine which parent does the best job of modeling the ‘launching process’ of their adult child.

Is it Robert de Niro, who warns against getting a chink in the chain?

Or is it Dustin Hoffman, who clearly has a separate identity and charming life of his own? (We can talk about his lack of boundaries another time.)

Robert de Niro plays the role of a father who expects his adult children to naturally conform to his values and ideals, despite the reality that God has granted freedom for adults to make their own choices and decisions, and to experience the corresponding consequences.

An adult is one who is willing and able to accept complete responsibility for self.

Dr. James Dobson states two reasons parents are reluctant to step out of the parental authority role:

1.  they fear their children aren’t ready to stand on their own, so they want to protect them from harm and failure,

or,

2.  they hate to see childhood come to an end.

A Memorable Valentine

Answering a telephone call before my first sip of coffee in the morning is a stretch for me, but this morning was Valentine’s Day and the caller ID showed it was my mother calling. I clicked on ‘answer’ and mustered up my best, although slightly trite salutation of “good morning, Mother.”

I had not talked to her in a while, so despite my early morning funk, I was happy to hear her voice.  We chatted about my daughter’s recent activities and I heard updates about a house renovation she is working on and the activities of my niece and nephew.  I was happy to hear that she was staying busy with her real estate job and had recently sold several properties.

This is such good news in light of the loss she experienced just over a year ago.  My dad, her husband of 55 years went to be with the Lord after having battled cancer for several years.  The final year he was pretty much bed ridden and her life slowed to a near standstill as she cared for him around the clock.  I never heard her complain and knew she considered it a privilege to be the one to assist him in his final days on earth - this faithful and hard working man who devoted his life to loving and caring for her and his family.  Toward the end of his life, when she had to get help to maneuver him physically, I begged her to get hospice to take over but she resisted until the very last two days of his life. (If you are doing the math and wondering how my Mother achieved these stressful feats physically, she is ten years younger than my dad.)

Holidays are always challenging for those who have recently lost a loved one, so I was expecting to reminisce with Mother about the jewelry Dad would have picked out for her on past Valentine’s Days, or the lovely bouquet of flowers he was always faithful to deliver.  But our conversation stayed focused on the busyness of our lives.

Then almost as an afterthought, she told me that she had gone out to get the paper at 6:30 a.m. as always and saw Mark, her neighbor.  Mark was a regular visitor during Dad’s bedridden days.  Mother and Dad both looked forward to his visits because he was loud, rather gruff and always had a story to tell that made you feel like you had just paid money to see a Paramount Picture Show.  I think my dad represented a father figure to Mark and that their admiration of one another was mutual.

Anyway, Mother didn’t see her newspaper, and Mark yelled to her from across the street that her paper was by the front door.  She walked around the corner and there on top of the newspaper were a dozen red roses.  Her voice began to break as she tried to read me the note he left, and I couldn’t make out her words.  All I heard was that he signed off as “your pecan-pie loving friend.”

The love my father and mother experienced together through service and devotion to one another left an indelible mark on all who knew them.  How sweet and enduring is the power of love, having tender affection and compassion for another.  The richness that comes from years of devoted commitment to another is indeed the best thing this life has to offer.

That love was the inspiration for Mark to buy a beautiful bouquet of roses to place on my mother’s doorstep on Valentine’s morning.  He knew there was no greater way to honor my father than to bless his Valentine during his absence, and in so doing it was almost as if the sentiment was not from Mark, but from my father himself.  It sent a powerful message to my mother's heart.

Later I called and she told me that these were the words written on the card:

For my special friend,

Some gifts you hold in your hand and some you hold in your heart

Your friendship makes my life sweeter and my heart very glad,

Your pecan-pie loving friend, Mark  (my mother makes pecan pies for Mark)

Who can you bless today with an act of kindness?  Ask God to show you someone who needs encouragement or a helping hand and realize the power you have to use your time and resources to make a real difference in someone’s day.  Make your day special.  Make your life count.