Category: Marriage

Growth is Intentional

Are you able to tell when you are being driven by your emotions? The stereotype is that men aren’t emotional and that everything with them is at the surface level. 

That is a lie. Men can be just as emotional as women. What most have failed to realize is that it will manifest differently. Pushing down your emotions is not gender specific. Neither is wearing them on your sleeve. Do you know yourself well enough to know how your emotions impact you? 

As I learn about myself and with the help of my wife I’m beginning to see how my emotions impact me. Early on in our marriage, I didn’t talk much.  I would wait until everything seemed like it was too much for me to keep on the inside and then I would want to vent. 

For me, I handled my emotions like this because I never grew up knowing how to handle and process my emotions. 

Now I am able to process and talk about my emotions a little faster. I may not express them  in the moment,but I’m growing in effectively communicating in a healthy time frame. 

Commit to Growth

We should all have a process of growth. Growing is going from where we are now to a version of us that  masters every part of our lives. We have to grow mentally, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. Emotional growth is learning about how our emotions affect us. 

Becoming a better man doesn’t just happen when you reach a certain age. Your development as a person has to be intentional. 

If we were talking about money, we don’t wake up one day and become a millionaire, no we grow in our financial literacy and how to handle money. 

Read, Read, Read

The most successful people in any area are active readers. It doesn’t matter if it’s finances, marriages, or productivity, you have to become a reader. There are so many tools at your disposal to help with this. If you don’t like paper books, you can get ebooks. Maybe the thought of buying a book makes you nervous, then most libraries have an app where you can borrow the paper book or e-book or an audio book. The point is that you have to continue to educate yourself. Growth is intentional. 

Discussion Question:

What is one area that you want to grow in?

Practice Makes Permanent

“Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes Permanent.” – Eric Thomas

Practice is like Riding a Bike

We all remember Allen Iverson’s infamous practice speech. He had a lot of personal things that he was dealing with in his life at the time and the speech was his response to a question from a reporter. Have you ever thought about how that can apply to our marriage? What does it look like to practice in your marriage? 

Too many times we can have an attitude about our marriage that mirrors Iverson’s attitude from the video. We may think that the everyday aspects aren’t important. As long as we try to do good during the “games” then we’ll be successful. The ‘games” being the special days that we tend to pay attention to; birthdays, anniversaries and the occasional holiday. 

At the beginning of this year me and my wife set out to do something special for each other each month. This was all in an effort to practice our marriage. I’ll admit that we did good for the first couple of months. Then the spring/summer came and I missed a month. Thinking that I would try to make up for the next month and that never happened. Have I gotten back to it, no but I’m going to. 

This is the point of practice. We don’t start with excellence. You don’t have a great marriage right from the start. Any hall of famer in any sport didn’t start out that way. There is a level of practice that is required to be great. The same applies to our marriages. We don’t start out as great husbands and wives. We may be good but there is always another level to go to. We can strive to be better.

1. Practice is hard

There’s no denying it. Practice is not easy and it can seem hard. When it comes to practicing in your marriage, means setting yourself up for success. 

Practice is all about building habits and routines that will benefit you when times are hard. 

Find areas that you haven’t practiced in and begin.

2. Stop pursuing perfection

What I’m not saying is that we shouldn’t pursue growth. What I am saying is that we need to look at our idea of perfection. We should lose that. 

Instead of pursuing perfection, aim for growth. Try to grow into the best person you can be. Through your growth you will become better, and your marriage will get better. 

3. What should be permanent 

What are the aspects, characteristics, and qualities that you want to be permanent in yourself? What are the things that you want to be permanent in your marriage?

The things that are permanent are the foundations to who we are. We want to make sure that we’re setting up a strong foundation for ourselves and our marriages. 

Discussion Question: 

What are you practicing in your life?

How 3 insights will change the way you look at your small dreams

Dream small

Don’t bother like you’ve gotta do it all

Just let Jesus use you where you are

One day at a time

Live well

Loving God and others as yourself

Find little ways where only you can help

With His great love

A tiny rock can make a giant fall

Dream small

All Dreams Matter

I like to talk a lot about getting back to the place where we dream again. We should all dream a little more and then take it a step further and chase those dreams. We want to dream of the future and what could be. Our dreams tend to consistent of vacations that we want to take, cars we want to drive and homes that we want to own.

I recently attended a benefit dinner where Josh Wilson was the musical guest. Those are his lyrics at the beginning of this post. It was a pleasure and he performed one of his songs called Dream Small. It was this song that had my mind thinking about the small dreams in our lives that we can let drift away.

I listed the big dreams that we tend to have and if you polled most people what you find is that the big dreams tend to fall into the same categories.

Your small dreams are what separates you. It is in those small dreams that you find your uniqueness.small dreams that you find your uniqueness. You will find yourself in the small dreams. What does a small dream look like?

1. Small Dreams are from the heart.

We can find ourselves in a space and time where we know the big things that are out in front of us. However our aspirations can seem so far away. They start in our hearts but because they are so far away we can lose sight of them. Small dreams are the issues from your heart that you hold on to.

2. Small Dreams aren’t always tied to money.

The dreams that are in your heart aren’t always tied to money. Our small dreams can be things like losing weight, or eating healthier. What’s in your heart to do? To be a better person, do you want to read more? How about learning a new skill or hobby. It’s what’s in your heart to do.

3. Small Dreams don’t need to be classified as Small Dreams.

We should stop classifying our dreams as small or big. That inherent classifying makes us value the big dreams over the small dreams. We have to just think of them as dreams. What are our dreams? We want to focus on our dreams being from our heart.

Discussion Question:

What are your dreams?