Key Kris Krohn here with Limitless TV and today I have my amazing lovely wife
Kalenne Marie Krohn here with me and today we're going to be talking about
our five sacred rules of communication in marriage.
We are celebrating 17 years of marriage
15 and a half years of marriage and in that period of time we have
definitely learned some very fascinating things about the way the two of us
communicate and the more we've been out in the world, we meet couples and do our
work with a lot of people we find that there's a lot of people that have been
going through some very similar challenges on learning how to get on the
same page with communication style. So today we're going to be sharing our five
rules for us these are five sacred rules of communication in our marriage and
we're sharing them with you in a space of love and hope that they will help
help you on your journey. Alright the first rule is say yes. Say yes to your
spouse. Say yes when your spouse wants something say yes when your spouse asks
for something. If it's important to them say yes. I mean do you remember when you
guys were first dating each other? and you were in such a good habit of saying
yes? And then let's just be honest, most of us go through a pattern that eyes
half-open get married open her eyes the rest of the way. And then after it
doesn't take many months of marriage before you start realizing that your
spouse has a lot of flaws right? And you're starting to see the things that
you don't like and all the sudden it's like, well I saw everything I loved that
I got married and now it all went downhill from here
and what that means is that when we're in love with each other and seeing
everything we love, we'd love to say yes but the moment we start bickering and
fighting or start noticing the flaws yes is turn into no's. And it could be
anything from you know, honey I really want a guys night can I go out with the
guys tonight? And you know maybe I've had a long day with the kids or long didn't
work and I'm like, oh I just want you to be with me I don't want you to do that
but you know maybe on another night I asked to go out with my girlfriends and
I want him to say yes to me, you know? It's a give-and-take of supporting
each other when we ask everything. You know it's also about developing an
unconditional love. You know when when we're saying no we're often stepping
into a space of conditionality. It's like unconditional with you. I love you when, I
love you if, I'll say yes if, but these are my terms. And now it turns into a
scorekeeping game. It turns into trade and I'm just inviting you with this
first rule of saying yes to let go. Go back to the beginning, go out
of your way, don't keep score. Say yes as much as you possibly can that's why you
married this amazing divine human being was to do everything that you could for
their happiness. This goes to number two, advocate for your spouse. And that
means to me is I want what you want because you want it. Did you get that
right? There's a gold nugget that just got dropped on you right there. I want
what you want because you want it and I want to if you want and I want to amend
it and even add to it this idea that says, especially if I don't want it I
want what you want because you want it especially if I don't want it. That's
where you show up as the hero. And you know what we need in marriages today? We
need spouses that can pull off hero status. I'm gonna demonstrate right now. I
know we're leaving for Africa in a couple of days between now and then. What
do you want? how can I serve you? like, like, how can I help you get everything
done that you need to get done? Well you could put the kids to bed tonight so
I can work on my project. I want that I want that so desperately. Yay!
okay advocating for your spouse is really really fun. You did that for me a
couple months ago for our Spring Break. You know, now Kris especially loves to
travel abroad. I love to travel abroad and for spring break I wanted to take
the kids on a desert road trip. Does that sound exciting?
It did to me. I wanted to go see the Grand Canyon, I wanted to go see Bryce, I
wanted to go see Moab. And Kris was just like rolling his eyes at me of oh, that
sounds so unexcited. Sounds so domestic. Domestic and I'm like these were the
most beautiful places in our whole country and we're gonna go see our kids
have never seen the Grand Canyon. You've never seen the Grand Canyon, So I invited
him. I said, would you take the kids on this road trip with me for a whole week?
and would you choose all in? would you choose all in and be passionate about it
and loved every minute of it and help me with the kids and just go play and have
an outdoor adventure? And
I said yes and I chose in. he said and he ended up
wanting what I wanted or choosing to want what I wanted and we have the most
magical trip and took the most amazing spectacular pictures, went on the most
the coolest hikes. Saw the most amazing formations and we had a blast. You know,
it's interesting that we live in a world today where there's a lot of selfishness
that's one of the rules that really reigns supreme
and yet learning how to know know the balance of how to honor yourself and how
to take a stand for what's important to you, even if at times honoring
yourself means going against your spouse's wishes, there there may be those
moments in life but for the most part the moments really get to be constructed
from this selfless giving that says I love you and I promise to do everything
and anything for you. And for me that means, let's be each other's heroes. Kalenn
shows up as my hero all the time. And there's things that she may not want to
do but if they're important to me, then she makes them important to her as she
chooses into an energy that isn't filled with a begrudgingness it's filled with,
all right I'm here, I'm gonna play. Yhis is important to you so this is important
to me. Advocate for your spouse. Now number
three is maintain boundaries and what that means is allow husbands problems to
be separate from wife's problems. And what that means to me is, you know if
Chris comes home from work and has had a hard day or things have happened and
he's got like a negative energy coming from him. Which almost never happened. It
almost never happens now. It used to, it means that I don't get swept up in that
negative emotion and negative energy because, have you ever noticed if
someone's in a bad mood like if mom's in a bad mood then the kids all of a sudden
are in a bad mood because they're, they feed off that negative energy. And you
know I can show up in a in a neutral space and say, hey babe looks like you
had a hard day tell me about it. And he can tell me about it and I don't have
to take on that negative energy myself. I can stand there and be a support
to him and help him work through it. A lot of us become very empathic when when
there's someone that we love in our air space. If they're having a good day we'll
allow that to build us up and if they're having a hard day we'll actually use
that as a reason to build ourselves down. But I want to ask you this question, do
you really want your energy to be directed by
other people? Do you want the emotions of other people to determine your state
of happiness or sadness? that's an emotional incompetency that most of us
bear in this world until we wake up to this consciousness that says, you know
what? I may be married to you and you may be the love of my life
but right now you have a problem and here's the rule, the person with the
problem is the person with the problem. And the person with the problem is also
the person with the solution. so if Kalenn is having a day or if I'm
having a day, part of this rule of maintaining boundaries says alright I
love you you're having a problem and you're even maybe directing that
projecting that problem on me. Maybe you're so upset about what's going on
that you're now projecting that anger towards me and guess what? That's okay. I
can hold space for that. that's your problem. Or if I have a problem, that's my
problem. And what it means is that we can actually help build each other up
way faster because we're not buying each other's story of garbage. We're actually
able to hold space for that individual and show up and love because I want to
ask you this, when you got married did you agree to love them when it was
convenient? or didn't we really make the commitment to love them especially at
their hardest moments? It's the times of crisis when we need each other the most
and we're not going to be able to rush to each other's aid if we're too busy
feeding off of each other's negative energy and tearing each other down as a
downward spiral. You want to create an upward spiral then set a boundary in
place that says, hey you've got a problem how can I help? how can I serve? In other
words, it doesn't have to become my problem. I love what you said about
emotional intelligence and if you are allowing someone else to make you feel
bad or make you sad or make you upset, you're giving your agency away. That's what it is.
On Facebook I happen to be scrolling and I saw a post and someone said, well today's
tomorrow is going to be an awful day. Oh well that's a strong prophecy that you
are gonna sell fulfill. Well if you believe that probably but why would you
do that? why would you say that? why would you call that into the universe that
it's going to be a horrible day. Yeah so that's why this maintaining
boundaries number 3 goes into number 4 which is mastering neutrality. And here's
what neutrality means, it means that I can consciously choose
to remain neutral no matter how triggered your spouse might be. And it's
not even just about marriage it might be a boss it might be a co-worker it might
be a friend. You know let's be honest, we live with people you know eight
billion people on this planet and we get triggered or on a regular basis. We have
our issues and we have our problems and then when we have a problem here's what
most of us will do, some of us will internalize and say I'm bad. Most of us
will project onto others and say you're bad. And so we live in a world where
people are gonna vomit energetically on us. They're nasty yucky pastiches yuck
and if you're the master of neutrality, then you can choose to be perfectly
happy whether someone is happy, sad, having the best moment of their life, a
peak moment or they're having one of the worst day of their life. Either way, that
neutrality says I love you and I can hold space for you and when I maintain
the space of neutrality I can serve you. I can show up. I can help because I'm not
being affected by choice of that negative energy around me. Now you know
in like Star Trek where where they go shields up and like they have this force
field around them? Okay that's what I think of when it's maybe someone
negative coming into your space oh shields up! And I just imagine this like bubble
of protection around me. it's real you can touch it and feel it
will zap you. But it's sorry you can't you can't penetrate this force field because
this is my special protection area and I I don't allow that into me, into my body,
into my airspace. I might be getting a little grouchy, I might be
having a moment and Kalenn is so good at coming up to me and and she got here by
choice. You know it wasn't always this way but she'll come up to me I'll she'd
give me a hug. she'll connect with me, she'll look right in my eyes, and she'll
ask what do you need right now? Or sometimes it's the other way around and
I've had, so we have four kids. And sometimes they are as every family knows
a lot to handle. Little beasts. Little beasties sometimes. And I've had times
where crystal crystal come home and I'll just be like I'm done. I'm done
talk to you, I'm out. Check out and I'm going to lock myself in my room by
myself and you get to put them to bed and like mommy's done. And I'll advocate
for that. We'll do it. Show up but he doesn't have to take that negative negative
energy on either.
It's not yours it's mine.
And he knows Kalenn needs space. Kalenn get some space and when she you know has
that then I can pull myself out and I'm like okay I'm good again. Or Kalenn just
needs a foot rub. Okay here's the final of our five sacred rules that we
wanted to share with you today. Strive for unity to be one. Okay so what does
that mean be one? I think being one doesn't mean being the same. It actually
means that we can celebrate each other's differences, strengths, and weaknesses.
We live in a very judgmental world that says, I celebrate your strengths but I
come down on you for your weaknesses but you know what? Here's the way I look at
it, Kalenn is a brilliant mother. I feel like between you know, when it comes to
parenting our kids I want to be the best father I possibly can be but man I
married up. Kalenn has got that skin covered so well. And what that means then is because
she possesses that gift, we possess that gift. I on the other hand, I'm really good
at working. Kalenn is the master of our domestic household and she's the chief
engineer that keeps her home running. She doesn't have a technical job. She's got a
harder one I think
I have a hundred job. I'm saying mom's you have
about a hundred jobs and that is you know a lot of people in this day and age
will compare you know jobs you know women working versus men working maybe
they want to be able to both you know bring in the same amount of income. Maybe
they they feel like they need to match each other financially or or in talents
or gifts or abilities it doesn't have to be that way. And to all those moms out
there, being a mom, being a stay-at-home mom or a working mom is not less than a
man who works full-time. It is probably more but equal but they're different. It
doesn't have to be the same and it's to be equal in effort to be equal in heart
to be equal in what your giving to your marriage and your family. Yeah
for us it goes beyond equality and it's about equity right? I'll use my muscles
and Height to grab things off shelves or open things that Kalenn's not going to
be able to do as easily. Okay tell me can you shop for kids clothes at Target? I
think that if you passed away I think I would have a panic attack on isle 13.
He doesn't know how to buy kids clothes and that's ok.
I'm better at that one but I don't know where any of the thing is I'm what a
shoe shopping?
no no no no no
So the cool thing is between the two of us, we got it
figured out. And I've got my weaknesses. And Glen has
hers but we come together and we celebrate our differences. We celebrate
the strengths and weaknesses. A weakness is not you know one of the things I
can't tell you how much we squabble about you know how to do dishes and we
squabble about how to clean closets and how to color coat hangers or the
floor was our our coding system for where things belong. And for years,
this would be the source of contention and today it's like you know what? you
clean how you want, I'll clean how I want. You honor you, I'll honor me. I'll advocate
for you, you advocate for me. We're going to love each other no matter what. Things
just aren't worth fighting for. No fighting for love is the most
important and I want to throw a little bonus. We talked about our five
secret rules. We talked about saying yes. Advocating for your spouse. Maintaining
boundaries. Mastering neutrality and celebrating our differences. But I want
to give one little last bonus here for everyone that's watching this video. One
of the best piece of advice that I can give is that if you have problems in
your marriage when it comes to communication, the same amount of time
that you could spend trying to solve problems could be spent enjoying what
you guys do well together. Enjoying your marriage and I had a friend come to me
recently she's newly married and she was totally stressed over the problems and
she just said there's so many now and I said, well it sounds like you're really
good at focusing on your problems and solutions can be hard to come by when
you get two people that are problem centric trying to find a solution. I said,
what if you only had five more minutes with this person would you choose to
spend time doing something that you enjoy or
solving problems? And she said, oh I'd rather do something fun. I said okay well
let's extend it. Let's say you had a week. And you're kidding you only won last
week with this person would you want to play and have fun and
enjoy being married with them or solve problems? Oh well I would choose that one.
Okay well let's let's up the Emmy. You only get one lifetime.
One lifetime with this person. You could spend that time building, creating, and
having fun or solving problems. Solving perceived problems. Yes maybe they're not
even problem and most of the problems just lie inside aware aside who we are.
So you know you have this one life to live live it to the fullest with your
spouse. I find that problems work themselves out through love instead of
fear. Go play, go have fun, go build, go create something together.
Focus on what you want and that's gonna create an amazing marriage for you.
I sure hoped you enjoyed this video. Isn't it fun fun having Kalenn here? we should do this a lot.
It's just nice.
It's nice to be able to to interact with you and see you and please comment below and
thanks for watching this video. And if you want to see more of Kalenn and you
want to learn more about how to break unconditional love about in
your marriage, invite you to get involved on our limitless and seminar come spend
three days with us. We really expand these principles deeply and really fun
super deeply impactful ways. It's three days of incredible transformation and
you know if you and your spouse are looking for a solid pick-me-up, then take
a three-day vacation in limitless land and come experience the incredible
greatness that is inside both you.
Click your comments below about what
others rules that you might have. Click the link below if you want to
get more information about the next limitless event and you got this one
life to live so have this most amazing amazing marriage. Limitless land. you
might even like it better than Disneyland.