Marriage is like being in a boat with your spouse and both of you have a paddle, in order to move in one direction you need to communicate and collaborate to cohesively move the boat in one direction. I can’t tell you how many times my wife and I have been in our boat of marriage vigorously paddling without communication and collaborating which led us to being exhausted and not getting anywhere. Marriage is a partnership that takes intention and planning in order to get together, together and experience all the joys and fruits that marriage has to offer.
Treat Your Marriage Like Your Work
Whether you own your own business or work as an employee within an organization, we all have been part of the structure that the workplace offers. Quarterly goals, weekly meetings and sometimes even daily check-ins. These are the norm at a high performing company. I remember the first time I began to treat my marriage like a business, my wife and I were amazed at how much value this structure offered, we wondered what had taken us so long to make this shift.
It was bizarre really, we worked during the day with agendas, timelines, goals, and accountability and yet we came home and our best technique was to “try our best”. I know right when you look at it like that it almost seems obvious. Let me share with you some of the structure we have brought to our marriage that has truly revolutionized our household.
Structure Equals Success
- Family Values & Vision Statement
One of the first things we did as a family was we came up with a family values and vision statement. This is where you sit down with your spouse and even the kids if they want to participate in the conversation and you list what your values are as a family. Once you have the values listed, put them together in paragraph form and hang this beauty somewhere everyone in the family can read it. Here is ours as an example:
“Faith in our God is at the core of our family and guides every decision we make in our lives. We tenaciously pursue truth through intentional learning. We strive to be excellent stewards of our time, money and God given talents. Quality and quantity time with our loved ones is non-negotiable. We receive and give unconditional love always. We take personal responsibility for our lives and we intentionally live out our core values daily.”
- Season Focus
The season focus is designed to help each one of the spouses and everyone in the family hone in on what the most important goal or vision is for the season of life you may be in. I remember when my wife and I first started this idea, I had just ventured out to full time self-employment. Guess what our Season Focus was for that season, it was “Get profitable as soon as possible.” It is very important to communicate with each other in this step. There cannot be two focuses in one season otherwise you both will be paddling but your boat won’t be going anywhere. Take time to brainstorm, discuss, and agree what the most important focus should be for that season. Also, a season is whatever timeframe you and your spouse decide on, it could be for a month, or quarter or even a year.
2 a. Activities to Help Achieve the Season Focus
Once you decide on the focus for the season you are in and what the timeframe will be, you then need to outline the consistent activities that will help you achieve success during that season. For example, when my wife and I were in the “Get profitable” season some of the activities that needed to happen to ensure we achieved success were attending networking events, gaining new potential client contacts weekly and practicing my craft as a business owner. You can have as many activities as you need.
- Harmony Objectives
In addition to the activities to help you succeed and achieve your seasonal focus, you and your spouse need to outline the actions and activities that will help maintain harmony within the day to day household items as you are striving for this seasonal focus. For example when we were in the “Get Profitable” season the harmony objectives were things like, dinner by 5:00 pm daily, husband and wife date nights on Fridays, and Church on Sundays. The point of these harmony objectives is to ensure your household does not fall apart while you are striving for your seasonal focus.
- Weekly Meetings to Check in
Last but certainly not least is having the weekly check-in with your spouse. This is where you check-in with each other. See how your spouse is doing, check to see if she needs help with anything. This is also a great time to plan and schedule the coming week. The most important thing you can do during this time is check-in on how you and your wife are progressing on your Seasonal Focus Activities and your Harmony Objectives . My wife and I still do this, and we use a simple three color check-in system. We use green to indicate all things are good in a category, yellow for progress but not where we would want to be, and red for not making any progress that week on that activity.
We Spell Love T-I-M-E
Yes, I know this is going to take some initial time to coordinate and communicate to your wife and even to execute on these four items. But let me tell you it is so worth it. Remember any time you invest into improving your marriage is directly felt and appreciated by your wife. Also, get around some other men who actually want to improve their marriages as well and this will be a huge encouragement. Now go out and take some action on treating your marriage like a business.