Marriage Advice: Upgrade Your Marriage By Changing Your Focus

As the story goes, a Cherokee elder was sitting with his grandchildren. He told them, "In every life there is a terrible fight-a fight between two wolves. One is evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, and deceit. The other is good: joy, serenity, humility, confidence, generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion."

One of his grandchildren asked, "Grandfather, which wolf will win?" The elder looked him in the eye and replied, "The one you feed."

This brief story contains a far-reaching truth. You choose which traits, attitudes, beliefs, and values you will give attention to. And what you focus on will grow and expand. For example, if you value honesty, this value will affect all of your dealings and interactions with others. If you nurture and "feed" resentment, it will eventually take over your life.

Continually focusing on marriage problems makes the relationship seem even worse than it actually is. If you continually talk about how you've been done wrong and how angry you are at your spouse, your anger will grow and blot out your memories of more positive times. When that happens, you are unable to see a balanced picture.

The more energy you devote to focusing on the negatives in your relationship, the worse and more hopeless everything seems. And when you're feeding your negativity, your creative energy is frozen. Thus, you don't have the ability to generate helpful options or a fresh perspective.

You influence your perception of reality by the thoughts you think, the beliefs you hold, and the attitudes you cultivate. According to Katherine Mansfield, "Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude."

In each moment, you decide whether to make negative or positive interpretations about the events and people in your life. These interpretations shape your experience of reality and impact your capacity to be all you can possibly be. They also affect your expectations about what is possible.

Choosing to develop qualities such as compassion, honesty, serenity, and joy can transform your marriage and your life. And choosing to reduce the resentment, anger, deceit, and fear in your life can lighten your emotional load and leave you will more energy to generate creative solutions to your marriage problems.

As you become more positive, you bring more positive energy into your interactions with your spouse. When this happens, surprising things can happen in your marriage. The sharp, prickly edge of anger can start to soften between you and your partner. New insights and understandings about a situation can occur, and you can be more likely to find the middle ground of compromise.

The following tips can assist you in training yourself to focus more on what's right with your marriage and your life:

1.Take the time each day to list the things that you are grateful for in your life. Remember to include the things people often take for granted, such as three meals a day, a hot shower, heat, a stove and refrigerator, running water, medical care, and friends.

2.Each day, remind yourself of your spouse's positive qualities and contributions to your life. Think back to what attracted you to your partner initially. Reflect on how your spouse has caused you to stretch and grow and on how much you've learned from the experience.

3.Write in your journal about what positive qualities in yourself you want to cultivate and develop. These are the attitudes, beliefs, and values that you want to focus on and encourage to take root, grow, and thrive in your life.

4.Visit a library or bookstore and select some inspirational reading material and inspirational tapes or CD's. Find the time each day to read or listen to something that is positive, encouraging, and inspiring. It's important to refill at the well of inspiration daily.

5.Spend less time with friends and family members who are negative and leave you feeling depressed and fatigued. There's a name for those individuals who drain your positive energy-"energy vampires." Instead, cultivate new friends who are positive, supportive, and encouraging and who bring out the best in you.

Nancy J. Wasson, Ph.D., is co-author of Keep Your Marriage: What to Do When Your Spouse Says "I don't love you anymore!" This is available as an e-book at http://www.KeepYourMarriage.com ,where you can also sign up for the free Keep Your Marriage Internet Magazine to get weekly ideas and support to help you improve your marriage. Nancy can be contacted at Nancy@KeepYourMarriage.com.

Telegraph.co.uk
Pioneering lesbian rights activist dies just weeks after wedding
Independent, UK - 8 hours ago
In later years, Mrs Martin was at the forefront of the long-running campaign for same-sex marriage. At her wedding to Mrs Lyon in May, which was broadcast ...
US lesbian pioneer, 87, dies months after wedding Reuters
Lesbian rights pioneer Del Martin dies at 87 San Francisco Chronicle
Del Martin, Lesbian Pioneer, Dies at 87 Gay City News
USA Today - WeHo Newsall 355 news articles

Church puts vows at heart of new marriage prep
ChristianToday, UK - 14 hours ago
... about our wedding service and the vows we would make’. Thirty per cent said, meanwhile, that they would like a single-session course about marriage, ...

Wedding party booked with Zoom left scrambling
Globe and Mail, Canada - 4 hours ago
... marriage when they returned from Scotland with a reception for 250 at a Halifax hotel. Now it looks like that may be their only wedding celebration. ...

Wedding disaster part two, with love from Virgin
guardian.co.uk, UK - 2 hours ago
The venue was to be a "newly refurbished" beach resort in Barbados and Chris and Bethany Kerr had paid handsomely for the marriage ceremony and honeymoon. ...

Senegal jails Belgian, domestic helper for 'gay marriage': lawyer
Africasia, UK - 8 hours ago
In February, five people were detained for several days, then freed without charge, after a symbolic wedding between two men near Dakar.

San Francisco Bay Times
Law Schools to Honor Hyatt Boycott
San Francisco Bay Times, CA - 6 hours ago
18 that 1049 daily US newspapers now accept same-sex wedding announcements — a 15-fold increase since 2002.. According to the group, 83 percent of all US ...

How to survive your marriage: The first year
The Olympian, WA - 7 hours ago
The chances are, if you bring a loving attitude to your marriage and don't sweat the small stuff, your marriage will be fantastic." "After the wedding and ...

BBC News
Diana wedding cake sells for $2138
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 16 hours ago
A piece of wedding cake saved from Prince Charles' marriage to Lady Diana Spencer 27 years ago has sold at auction for STG1,000 ($A2,138). ...
Charles and Diana wedding cake sells for £1000 Telegraph.co.uk
Cleaner cleans-up with royal wedding cake NewsLite
Biggest piece of Diana's wedding cake to be sold Times of India
Fresh Newsall 49 news articles

How to recognize a bad suitor?)
Arab News, Saudi Arabia - 1 hour ago
JEDDAH: A woman, who asked her name not be published, mentioned that her marriage recently ended after two years of abuse when her husband threw her out of ...

Gay marriage's poster couple
guardian.co.uk, UK - 10 hours ago
While Edwards's affair stirred up a media circus and a political frenzy, the most impressive thing about Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi's wedding is ...

Wind Chimes and more...

Windchimes for great gifts!

Which Came First, Love or Marriage?