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Brian Mayer is excited to take about 10 episodes of the podcast to talk about communication.  It is probably the most talked about issue that couples have together that can sometimes not work well.  We will take some time to dive into this topic to help give you better tools to work on and things to consider to help communication between you and your spouse be more effective and more loving.  We hope you are inspired by today’s message.  For more information and additional resources please visit our website at http://www.theremarriedlife.com

Today's Goodies

• Today we are talking about self reflection. Self reflection is the idea of thinking about ourself more than our partner and to understand how our actions and reactions affect our partner. 
• Self reflection is a lost art because we often thing about the people and world around us as affecting how we respond. However, it can be argued that we learned how we react long ago to things going on outside ourselves. 
• For example when our partner keeps repeating themselves over and over again, usually our first thought is how irritating they are being. We might say back I have heard you say this over and over again to me and I am tired of hearing it. 
• But what if we flipped it and said either to our partner or to ourselves, I wonder what I might be doing that might that could be increasing my partner repeating themselves.
• It could be that you don’t acknowledge genuinely what your partner says. Or maybe you don’t take at least some responsibility for your part in the interaction or thing your partner is upset about. 
• So again very easy to focus on what others are doing that are causing us issues, but more difficult to shine a light on ourselves.
• Now of course as with anything the pendulum can swing too far the other way where we constantly let others off the hook for their actions but if we can work to have the balance of our thoughts stay centered on how we are thinking feeling and acting in a situation the better our relationships generally can be.
• So how can we focus on this thing called self-reflection? Let’s talk about some ways: 
  • Ask yourself where you learned to respond in a particular way to an issue or event. For example where did you learn that being a harsh disciplinarian was better than encouraging a child to voice their feelings about something they did wrong?
  • Ask how your action/reaction is affecting your partners action/reaction. We often think in reverse about how our partners action causes us to respond. 
  • When your partner asks if you can do something differently, if you are able to simply and genuinely say that you will consider it an issue that needs to be worked on. Again we typically do not respond in this manner.  We usually get defensive and explain this will not change until the other person changes. 
  • Take a personality test like Myers Briggs or the Enneagram. The goal of taking these is to of course understand what you are doing, but more importantly to understand why we do what we do.  Often the things we learn about ourselves can be a positive or healthy but when out of balance can be very unhealthy. 
  • Speak to a good therapist who is trained in helping with self reflection.

• Stay tuned for more communication series episodes in the next several weeks.

Resources:

• None Mentioned

Thanks For Listening!

• With so many things that take time in our lives, I am more grateful than you know that you took time to listen to this podcast episode. 
• If you liked this episode and believe that it would be beneficial to a friend, family member, or colleague, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

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As always remember that marriage is not something you have, it is something you do.  Talk to you next week unless you are binge listening in the future in which case I will talk to you in about a minute!  Take care.