Marriage – Dan Greer

How To Help Your Spouse Cope With Work Stress

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 19:56:29 +0000

The hardest part of the day for most of us is when we get home and finally look forward to not having to be the person who is on in the room. The challenge: that is the exact same expectation everyone else has who walked through the same door. This HBR post was very helpful for me:

“Home is a sanctuary from work stress, right? Not always. Even if you are able to leave your projects and worries at the office, your spouse may have difficulty doing so — and that stress can rub off on you. How can you help your partner cope? What’s the best thing to say when your partner starts complaining — and what should you not say? Is there a way to help them see things differently? And how can you set boundaries so that home can be a haven again?”

What Busy Leaders Really Need From Their Spouses

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 11:00:14 +0000

My passion is to help develop leaders so they can fully integrate their personal and professional lives. This is not about balance but the willingness to be a great leader in every area of your life. If you don’t develop the ability to lead yourself first and then at home you can forget reaching your potential at work. This post by Andrea Williams was excellent:

“With divorce rates hovering between 40 and 50 percent, experts spend countless hours discussing the reasons why so many Americans can’t make their marriages work. Arguments over money, sex, and kids are perennial fire starters. But there’s another issue that is critically important—especially for husbands and wives with demanding careers.”

10 Hardships In Marriage And How To Overcome Them

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 11:00:08 +0000

I was married at the age of nineteen and had no idea what I was getting myself into at the time. After being married for a long time, I am still trying to figure it all out. One think I know is that there are many things in this life that threaten any marriage and if you are not committed to work through those things it will not last. Mark Merrill has a helpful list and good advice:

“Every marriage faces hardship. It’s a given. This list covers most of the common troubles, but your situation is unique. The key point here is to face the difficulty – whatever kind of struggle it is – together with your wife.

Do you remember your marriage vows? “For better, for worse…” “In sickness and in health…” “For richer, for poorer…”

These promises presuppose tough times. We went into our marriage with our eyes open, so there’s really no excuse for not bringing everything we have to the table when things – once in a while – get dicey.”

The 10 Best Decisions I’ve Made In Marriage

Fri, 08 Sep 2017 11:00:06 +0000

So many ups and downs, good days and bad describe most marriages. You are living with another person that deserves your best while seeing you at your worst. If our primary motive is to manipulate change in the other person for our own benefit then the marriage will probably never last. Mark Merrill and his wife Susan always provide great wisdom:

“As my wife Susan and I were writing our newly released books, Lists to Love By for Busy Husbands and Lists to Love by for Busy Wives, I spent a lot of time reflecting on our marriage and life together. I also thought about some of the choices I have made along the way. Here are the 10 best decisions I (and Susan too) have made in marriage.”

8 Things To Avoid For A Healthy Marriage

Fri, 11 Aug 2017 11:00:14 +0000

This is a subject I know far too much about when in the category of what not to do instead of follow me. Probably learning how to communicate effectively when your feelings are hurt would move to the top of the list. On the one extreme we can’t stuff our emotions inside and on the other we can’t just dump them out either. This post by Mark Merrill is a good reminder for all:

“It’s not that there’s anything really wrong with your marriage. You love each other and do life together pretty well. It’s just that you sense that things are not really humming along. They are more ho-humming.

I’ve previously shared with you what you can do when you want more, when you want to enrich your marriage. If you are wanting more out of life and more from your marriage, I’d like to share with you 8 things not to do in your marriage.”

How To Know What’s Important: Calendars and Checkbooks

Sun, 18 Jun 2017 08:05:44 +0000

We all want to accomplish the things that are really important in life and learn the discipline to walk away from everything else. Most of us have not taken the time to write down specific goals in a life plan that involves everything personal, family, faith, friends and our professional lives. Best practice Living Forward by Michael Hyatt.

So how do we know if we are just filling our schedules with things to do without any serious evaluation or if those are the things that should even be done at all? We don’t want to get to the end of our lives and look back realizing that a lot of our time was totally wasted on things that don’t really matter.

A great place to start is to evaluate how we are spending our time and our money. Calendars can tell us a lot about our core values and priorities because they reflect the choices we are making. No doubt some of our time is not our own to schedule but how we are spending a large percentage of it reflects what is really a priority and what is not.

Are you making time for the people and relationships that you care about the most or are they getting the leftovers at best? If you really want to know, take the time to track how you are spending your time for at least a month. You will be amazed how much of it is scheduled based on what appears to be urgent at the time but in the end is not really important at all.

The next big indicator of what is a priority in our lives is to look at how we are spending our finances. If we are living beyond our means and accumulating unnecessary debt then we have a major character problem that must be addressed.

More stress is brought into marriage by this one area than almost anything else. The only solution is again to write down a budget that includes all of your expenses and then have the discipline to post all your transactions and make necessary adjustments to live within your income.

You may think this sounds like way too much work to me and I am already busy enough. Trust me you are already using calendars and checkbooks anyway but you may not be gaining any of the benefits of leading your life instead of just letting it happen.

How To Stop Taking Work Stress Out On Your Family

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 11:00:59 +0000

By the very nature of our work we have to be on almost all of the time. We put up with a lot of drama and the productivity demands alone build up tremendous stress. If we don’t develop habits that allow us to come home with some emotional margin, we will take all of that frustration out on the people who matter most. Amy Morin has two great proven strategies:

“Do you ever come home irritable because you had a rough day at the office? Do you take out your frustrations from work on your family? If so, you’re not alone. It’s an issue I address in my therapy office often. I hear from parents who are disappointed in themselves for yelling at their children. I also hear from spouses who are tired of walking on eggshells in an effort to avoid becoming the undeserving target of an entire days’ worth of frustration and anger.”

3 Steps To Resolving Conflict

Fri, 19 May 2017 11:00:43 +0000

All of us at some point in time will have conflict and disagreements with someone else either in our personal lives or professionally at work. These situations can be painful at times but seeking resolution is the only way to maintain positive momentum in your life.

There are at least three critical steps that you must take if you want to restore the relationship and move forward in your own life.

Own Your Part—In every disagreement there are always two sides to the story. I have never known a situation where there was not some responsibility for the problem with both parties. If we think the other party is the major offender then we tend to wait for them to make the first move. Instead we need to take whatever percentage of the problem is ours even if it’s minor and do what we need to do to admit it and ask for forgiveness regardless of what the other person does.
Talk To Person Privately—Most of the time when we are having problems with another person we tend to go to other people first and complain or try to find emotional support. What we should do is go privately to the person who offended us first and tell them in a respectful way why we are offended and give them a chance to respond. When we are talking about someone else to another person rather than talking to them the situation will only get worse.
Give Them Benefit Of Doubt—When we sense that a conversation is not going well and we can tell it may hurt us we have a decision to make. We can either assume the worst about the other person’s motives or we can believe the best. Many times if we can give them the benefit of the doubt at this critical moment then even though it may still hurt there will be no lasting damage because we give them a pass because we trust their heart.

The reason many times we can so easily see problems in other people is those same things live within us.

How To Deal With Anger In Marriage

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 11:00:01 +0000

Sadly, I know far too much about this subject, especially from the giving end. When our feelings are hurt we must not stuff inside or dumb our emotions on the other person. I have built in the discipline to first filter my emotions before I share them. Then it’s all about saying the right thing, the right way and at the right time. This post by Mark Merrill is great:

“The famous American humorist and actor Will Rogers once said, “People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing.” It’s hard to deal with an angry person and it’s even harder when the angry person is your spouse.

Anger, only one letter away from “danger,” is poison to the soul and corrosive to the bonds of marriage. You may have heard the idea, often associated with Alcoholics Anonymous, that holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

How To Find Margin For Your Total Life

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 06:00:45 +0000

If there has ever been a day when the demands of work and home have been greater I am not aware of it. The sheer pace of life today leaves us emotionally and physically worn out and feeling empty at the end of most days.

Technology keeps us connected all the time and people in the workplace culture almost demand that we stay available 24-7. Our families are all running on the same high speed treadmill that produces stress in every area of our lives.

There are several key principles that must be in place if you want to create margin for the people and priorities that you care about the most:

Lead Yourself First—it is impossible to successfully help lead other people at work or in the home if you are not able to accomplish what is most important in your own life. You should set specific goals in the areas of health, personal development and faith with the necessary time allotment to make sure they get done.
Prioritize Your Family Next—at the end of your life it will not matter how much professional success you have had if you consistently neglected your role as a spouse and parent. There are no guarantees that time alone will produce a great marriage and character driven children but without it there is a high probability that both areas could fail.
Choose Right Career—most organizations are looking for people who will perform and improve their bottom line. However there is a growing awareness that if you want to attract and keep the best people you have to give some deference to work-life balance. The key is you have to be outstanding at what you do and you have to be in a culture that will reward that effort by giving you more time off and not more projects to accomplish.
Develop Life Plan—it never ceases to amaze me that some of the most effective leaders in the corporate arena do not practice any of the leadership disciplines that made them successful in their home and personal life. The can lead multi-million dollar projects from start to finish at work but not take more than 30 minutes to plan the annual family vacation.

When you develop a total life plan with goals and strategies for everything personal, private and public you just assumed the C.E.O. leadership role for your whole life. You will never have a more important job.