“My wife left me,” said one financial advisor to the other.
“Why?” questioned the other financial advisor.
“I don’t know,” was the reply.
The other financial advisor questioned, “You didn’t have the conversation, did you?”
“What conversation,” said the financial advisor?
How do I know?
I’ve had countless spouses of clients tell me the following over the past twenty five years: “You saved our marriage.”
This Goal Setting Process Will Save Your Marriage
Practicing the One Minute Manager, catch your spouse doing things right. Go out of your way to notice and express all of the great things that they do to contribute to a quality home and life.
Go back to when you first met your spouse and think from the past to present day and write down everything that you love about your spouse, their talents, their skills, and their strengths… all of it. You could then transpose that onto a card and put it in writing saying:
Dear ______, I remember when we first met and these are all of the things that are attractive about you: ______, ______, ______ & ______. I love you today just as much as ever.
Sing the card. This will help your spouse to remember the truth about himself/herself.
Love strategies – Ask your spouse, for them to feel totally loved, do they need to receive a look from you? Do they need to hear something? Or, do they need to be held or touched in a certain way? At the same time you can ask them about the gifts and tokens they prefer, like flowers, dinners, trips. It’s really important that you find out what is most important to them in their love strategy communication, because you may very well be communicating through the wrong pathway, so to speak. Once you get a clear understanding about what your spouse’s love strategies are, you can also communicate your own love strategies to them.
Have a conversation with your spouse about what the next 10 years look like and what you are both working towards. Talk about all areas of your life that include auto, clothing, home, vacation home, health, hobbies, intellectual pursuits, family, family education, friends, travel and above all, faith. Write down smart goals: Specific, Measureable, Actionable, Realistic and Timely. Once this is done, talk about the financial investment that it is going to require.
To this end click here for 22 Goal Setting Areas For 2021.
Next, ask your spouse for their understanding that it is going to take some extra time on your part with the investment of the odd evening and a Saturday here and there to realize these goals. Remember to paint a picture of what 10 years and 15 years in the future will look like after having invested in these goals, and that the future will include more time off, more travel, more time for the things that both of you enjoy doing.
Be the example. Start by making sure that all of your spaces are as clean and concise as you would like them to be. Again, catch your spouse doing things right. Make a deposit in their emotional bank account. For every request that you make of your spouse, make sure that you have made 10 deposits in their emotional bank account in advance.
When you ask your spouse for help in an area, frame it with, “Would you be willing to help me? Remember the vision that we talked about working towards?” Explain that you are both working towards that vision and putting in the hours to make it happen, and that when you come home you are looking to create an environment that you can relax in. So with, “Would you be willing to help me…” ask your spouse if he/she would be willing to work with you on cleaning up a particular area by picking up an item and identifying whether it is:
- something to keep and therefore needs to be put away
- no longer being used and valuable enough to sell and put it on a website like Craigslist
- no longer being used and not valuable enough to sell, and needs to go to goodwill
- something that needs to be thrown away
This work is about making a choice about staying conscious with your being, higher self, or soul… whatever your creed may be, versus falling sleep into the unconscious amygdala, ego, or limbic brain.
The amygdala, ego or limbic brain does not know what it wants or needs, but it is always wanting and needing and judging that some person, some place, some possession, or some position, is responsible for its lack of fulfillment as a result of its own unmet needs, negative emotions and negative beliefs.
You must invest in learning to become more values based.
As the matriarch or patriarch of the family, you must be the leader and remember for yourself so that you can remember for others that you are all infinite beings and not the amygdala, ego, or limbic brain.
Catch your children doing things right and make many, many, many deposits into their emotional bank account… but first, you and your spouse must fill up your bank accounts because if your emotional vessels are not full, there is a probability that your children’s egos will pick up on this and feed on it because that is what the ego does… as it is always judging, looking for something outside of itself that is responsible for how it feels.
You are all born perfect. The amygdala, ego or limbic brain is always looking for something that is happening or something that happened in the past that is a result of its negative experience, because it’s unconscious about unmet needs, negative emotions and negative beliefs. Again, it’s another person, another place, another possession or another position that is responsible for that, and if only that other person, that place, that possession or that position would change, then it would be fulfilled.
This judgment is a mistake in perception, because the being, higher self, or soul, was perfect in the first place. Of course the amygdala, ego, or limbic brain does not want to hear this because it is in competition for the light of the being, the higher self, or the soul to drag the soul into darkness and separation.
Separation results again because of unmet needs like approval, control, power, recognition or worthiness fueling negative emotions and negative beliefs.
The amygdala wants us to believe that some patriarch, matriarch, some father, some mother, some leader, some clergy, some government, some teacher, some parent, is responsible for it not feeling enough.
The amygdala, ego, or limbic brain is caught in a loop of not enough, and again, it’s projecting the needs, negative emotions and the negative beliefs out onto someone else and we must become aware of the operating system that may be running in us and override it with different practices so that we can be in a position where our emotional bank account is full enough to be able to give light, love, joy, happiness and peace to those around us.
Remember, thoughts are real forces. Whatever we as beings, higher selves, or souls think about, we will attract the evidence to make real, or whatever we allow the amygdala, ego, or limbic brain to think about based upon unmet needs, negative emotions and negative beliefs, we will attract the evidence to make real.
Remember, nothing outside of us exists. It is only our perception of what is happening.
No one else can make us feel anything. It is only our perception.
Only we can accept ourselves, our beings, our souls… we are infinite.
The amygdala, ego, or limbic brain does not want you to believe you are infinite; it wants you to believe that someone else is responsible again for the amygdala’s, ego’s, or limbic brain’s unmet needs, negative emotions and negative beliefs that go with it.
All that has happened, likely in someone’s past, there was a time when they perceived and the amygdala, ego and limbic brain compounded that they were not perfect, and all that happened, there was a mistake in perception about perfection.
And if one allows the unconscious amygdala, ego, or limbic brain to run its operating system of judgment and scarcity while the amygdala, ego or limbic brain is looking for outside fulfillment, no matter how much love or fulfillment another person tries to provide the person who is operating with an amygdala, ego or limbic brain that doesn’t understand unmet needs, negative emotions and negative beliefs, there will be nothing, any person or place, possession or position that will be able to fulfill the absence that the amygdala, ego and limbic brain is self-imposing on the being, the higher self, or soul.
So again, you as the leader must catch everyone – your spouse, your children, your friends and your team doing things right. This is because without judgment they all have amygdalas, egos, limbic brains that have unmet needs, negative emotions and negative beliefs that are likely linked to past events when they felt separation in some way, shape or form, as does your ex-wife ______.
And based upon the above theories it would be normal for ______ to be talking about her separation from the patriarch, which happens to be you, which is a mistake in her perception about her own fulfillment, and I say innocently in the process vents to your children, and in the process your children do not get their needs met and this in turn is going to trigger negative emotions and negative beliefs.
And on top of this, their egos makes them think that they are responsible for the separation, you are responsible for the separation, or your spouse is responsible for the separation… and frankly, the amygdala continues to judge and just goes from one person to the next, to the next, to the next, and keeps a person hypnotized with judgments and mistakes in perception.
Whenever a parent leaves a family early, it is likely that the oldest child, especially the oldest dominant male, will judge themselves that if only they would have done something then their parent would not have left… no matter what the circumstances. So this all becomes fuel and drive for the amygdala, ego or limbic brain. Some of it’s positive because great things happen, but then at the same time it also leaves a negative hangover that usually shows up later in a person’s life.
- Step 1 – Complete a 30-minute Interview Call with Laura Reilly which will create the foundation for me to give you our version of what’s working, what’s not, what you should do about it and in what order – your personalized Business Building Blueprint
- Step 2 – Complete our Online Business Building Assessment
- Step 3 – Complete a 60-minute Business Building Assessment / Blueprint Debriefing and again I’ll give you our version of what’s working, what’s not, what you should do about it, in what order, and the total time and money investment required; where we believe we could add the most value
- You are committed to making improvements in your business
- You understand that most of the time, it requires someone from the outside to:
- Help identify the improvements that need to be made
- Provide systems to make sustainable improvements
- Provide accountability
I love the homework assignments. At the beginning they seem to be challenging but once you get into them, they make sense. I’m surprised at how fast the coaching went and the volume of material we went through in a short amount of time.
Declan O’Reilly
Insurance Advisor / Owner
Saskatoon, SK
International Values and Behavioral Analyst, Business Coach, Speaker and Author
Executive Coaching Tips for Financial Advisors
Speaking at a City Near You