Hi I'm Dr. Paul, welcome back to Live On Purpose TV. Today, how to improve your
marriage in a few short minutes.
As a psychologist, I've had a lot of really
cool opportunities. One of the things that I enjoy the most is working with
couples and marriages. So the question comes up all the time, how do i improve
my marriage? We've got a little video here where we should be able to handle
that whole thing in just a few minutes, right? There's probably more to it than
that but let me boil it down to a few things that I've noticed in my 23 years
of clinical experience and almost 30 years of being married, so I'll add that
to the mix too and by the way, in saying that, I have the best marriage I know of.
I have the best one, I choose to see it that way and that serves me well. Is it a
choice how you see your marriage? Yes, it is. Here's the first concept and this is
a paradox, see if you can wrap your head around this, paradoxes are seeming
contradictions, it's something that doesn't seem like it could be true but
it absolutely is. I'm going to introduce this paradox with a little story about
my son who several years ago, as a young adult, he wanted to buy a car, he didn't
have any significant work history at that point, he didn't have any money,
he didn't have a credit score, nothing yet and as a young adult,
he wanted to get into this car. Now it was only, I think, a three thousand dollar
loan so I took him down to the local credit union, not too far from my office
here and we sat down with a loan officer and this loan officer was taking my
son's information and typing it all into her computer and and she got this dark
look on her face and she turned to my son and she said, I'm really sorry, you don't
qualify for this loan. Big surprise, right? We kind of knew that he wasn't in a
position to qualify. So I threw my hat in the ring, I said, "How about if I co-signed
on that loan with my son? How's that work for you?" This loan officer gets excited
and says, "Oh sir, that would be awesome." So she starts to enter my information, she
gets an even dark look on her face as she looks at me and
she says, "Sir, that makes it worse." Okay, no, I was kind of playing with her. I'm a
psychologist, I do this sometimes. I knew that my credit was wacked, I had been
through some, well read my book, the first chapter of my book is lightning strikes,
it's about a time in my life when I went through some economic challenges that
left me in a position where I didn't qualify for the loan either. That was
kind of funny to me but I was ready for her and I presented a third option,
I pulled $3,000 out of my own pocket, I set it on the desk in front of her and
I said how about if I lend you the $3,000, you lend it to my son and then you let
me co-sign on the note? How would that work for it? She brightens up immediately
and she says, "Oh sir, we could give you really good rates on that." Thank you for
the good rates on my own money, right? It's called a secured loan, the bank is
not taking any risk at all, I'm assuming all of it but I had reasons for doing
that because I wanted to help myself and my son to build up some credit. So you
see where I was coming from on that, here's what I learned, you can get the
loan as soon as you prove that you don't need it. Is this true in the world of
finance? That matches my experience. You can get the loan as soon as you prove
that you don't need it. Now let's shift back to marriage for a minute. Can you
improve your marriage? Can you upgrade this thing? Can you make it better than
it is? Absolutely and you're most likely to improve your marriage as soon as you
realize you don't need to. Okay, now that's going to strike some of you
different than others. I had a couple on my couch here not too long ago, they're
telling me about their marriage and everything that's going wrong and how
terrible and awful it is and they had already talked to an attorney about
divorce. I mean, it was it was a mess, right? And I jumped in with one of my
psychologists questions and all of my questions are loaded by the way, so just
watch out if I ever ask you a question, and I said to them, "How's your marriage?"
She looks at me like I haven't been paying attention, "Doctor you listening to me?"
Do you remember I shared a model in another video, I shared this model.
In fact, you can link to that video, we'll put it in the description here. I shared
this model of evaluation and creation, what I'm talking about is two different
processes in the mind. We do evaluation of our current circumstances and then we
create what's coming. My whole point here is that you can make an upgrade to your
marriage and it best starts in evaluation mode by acknowledging that
your marriage is already good. It is good and I can share stories with people that
will help them to see that their marriage is good. I had for example, I had
a couple I was working with, I just realized they might be watching this
video, oh well, I'll tell anyway. It's confidential, I had a couple I was
working with where he had an affair, this happens, right? With her mother. I know,
don't think about that too much. How you feeling about your own marriage right
about now? Another one where she fired a 45 caliber handgun at him,
another one where he hired a hitman to kill her.
You can't shock me honestly. I've been in practice for 23 years, I've heard some of
the darkness crap you can imagine. How does your own marriage seem when you
compare it to those? See, it goes back to the model that we talked about with
evaluation and creation. You're always judging this thing, just notice that
you're judging it in a certain way. Why? Because that sets up the energy for what
we're going to do to improve it. Think about how you feel when your spouse is
constantly telling you how bad this is. How's your spouse likely to feel if
you're constantly telling your spouse how bad this is? What changes if we shift
that perception, that evaluation choice to how good this is?
And all the reasons that it is. So here's the first strategy that you can use to
improve your marriage and it ties right into this paradox, you realize and
acknowledge and catalog and document the ways that it is already good.
Full, rich, blessed, pick your adjective. Go there and here's how you
can do it, practice a simple gratitude exercise for each of the next five days,
come up with 25 things for which you are sincerely grateful and these can be
anything, they can be hot water, indoor plumbing, puppies and rainbows, anything
that you're grateful for, you can put it on the list.
Now half, at least half, that's 13 if you're doing the math, at least half of
your list every day is about your spouse or your marriage. Your spouse or your
marriage, you come up with things that you're sincerely grateful for.
Now if you're struggling in your marriage, it's because you're focusing on some
things that you're not happy about. I'm asking you to shift gears, to shift
direction, to steer this in a direction that allows you to see what's good
already. That will power up your mind for creating an upgrade. So the paradox is,
you can have the upgrade and you're more likely to have that upgrade as soon as
you realize you don't need it, that it is already good. Okay, so gratitude exercise,
five days, you come up with 25 things for which you're grateful, 12 of those
can be about anything in your life that's awesome,
the other 13 have to be about your spouse or your marriage and don't repeat
anything on tomorrow's list that's on today's list, this will immediately
improve your marriage and it's interesting that it didn't even change
anything, except your focus. You try that, that is a relationship saving activity,
give it a try. Okay, one more. For the same five days, you intentionally give a
social gift to your spouse on each of those five days, you intentionally give a
social gift to your spouse. Here's what I mean by social gifts. I'm referring to a
book by Dr. Anne Demory
and she is the one that identified these
four social gifts. So let's use Dr. Demory's four social gifts. You can pick any
one of these to give to your spouse every day, intentionally, for five days.
The first one is appreciation, this one shouldn't be too hard because you're
already doing the gratitude list. So from your gratitude list, you might choose the
one or more of the things that you're grateful for, related to your spouse or
your marriage and give that to your spouse as a social gift. It is simply
expressing appreciation and be specific. "Honey, thank you for.." whatever it is that
you picked from your list. "Sweetheart, I really appreciate that you.." give them
something from your list, it's a social gift. Okay, that's one, appreciation.
Two, connection. Connection is something that we have in common. With your spouse, you
can pick a common interest, for example, if you if you share a common interest,
the social gift for that day might be something like bringing home a favorite
meal from that restaurant that you both loved. It might be offering to share
a television program that you both enjoy. So that's the connection piece,
it's common ground. The third social gift is elevation.
Elevation is just what it sounds like, you know, an elevator lifts people so
this is something that's intended to lift the mood or the spirits of another
person. Elevation, sometimes it takes the form of humor, laughing, a smile could be
this social gift but I don't want you to get off easy, so don't just flash a quick
little smile. I mean a genuine, elevating smile or humor or fun,
that's elevation and then the fourth social gift is enlightenment.
Enlightenment is increasing their fund of knowledge or information. So you want
to tell them something or give them access to some information that they
didn't have before. It could be in the form of sharing this video with your
spouse, that would be enlightenment, it could be that you just
say, "Hey, did you know..." and then you give them some factoids you know,
something that you heard on the radio or in a podcast or something.
It's increasing their fund of information. Okay, so we've got four social gifts.
Appreciation, connection, elevation, and enlightenment. So each of those five days
that you're doing your gratitude list, also intentionally give one of those
social gifts on purpose to your spouse. How do you improve your marriage?
You can do that.
Paradox is that you're most likely to improve your marriage when you
realize you don't have to, that what you have is already good and rich and full
and amazing and awesome. Find the ways that it is and it immediately improves
for you, that also changes the energy for your spouse who is probably craving a
sense that you are pleased with them and with the situation. You know, I think the
most amazing feeling happens when another person says, "My life is better
because you're in it."
Let's see if we can give that kind of a social gift to our
spouse and then we can start to practice the things that will immediately improve
our relationship.
Will address some other topics and other videos too like
communication and how to work together and how to solve problems creatively,
there's all kinds of resources available. Let's start with this one where you get
to practice that gratitude and give some of those social gifts, let's see what
happens in just a few days.
So is your marriage better already?
I hope it is. Share this episode with someone that you think would benefit.