MindFlex - Five Ideas to Transform your Marriage with the Buxbaums

[Music] good evening everyone welcome to mind flex we're very excited to be back again on mineflex my name is ravi buxbaum this is my wife tavare bucks velm and uh we're thrilled to be back for another round of mineflex this time the topic is the five ideas to transform your relationships and uh we have a two-part series together tonight we'll be discussing a little bit about marriage and five ideas that will transform your marriage as these ideas have transformed ours and tomorrow night we'll be speaking about parenting and five ideas to transform your parenting and what a perfect incredible time of year to be discussing these things because it is pesach in a couple of weeks and it's a time of renewal it's a time the spring is coming and you feel the energy change there's there's a powerful energy about this time of year and that has to affect all areas of of our life our spiritual life our physical life and certainly our family life so we felt that it's a wonderful time to piggyback off of those who might have joined mindflex last week where they discussed five days to transform your life and this week to speak a little bit about all of the relationships that have to do with our home as we try to build our home during this time of year we live in the silver spring area in maryland and we run an organization called the lev experience which engages jews of all backgrounds to come and learn um from all that judaism has to offer and we find that in engaging in so many different types of people questions are constantly coming to us regarding relationships and people are always wanting to know what does judaism teach about this what is the torah i have to say about this and somehow it just reiterates the point to ourselves that judaism's lessons are so timeless everything always has such a beautiful way of fitting into this picture in a way that we can really tangibly understand it and grow from it and we love sharing those values with everybody who we um coach and who we you know engage with um in addition we have been married for 16 years like said and we have six children and we have found a number of different things over the years that some things have worked great some things not so great and so we compiled this class based on things that we really have found have helped our marriage and we are very excited to share them with you tonight absolutely and there's so many places in torah to glean these ideas these insights and therefore while maybe one might think about pesach coming and it's a time to speak about our growth as a jewish nation and freedom and liberal personal liberation but if we look at the pesach story there are so the passover story there are so many different lessons just about what we need to do to build that jewish home in our marriages and in our parenting so what i want to begin tonight is to structure our five ideas that we're going to be sharing with you to structure them around the pesach story around the exodus story it's also super helpful because we find that whenever we're giving a class we want people to be able to remember our points so if you know anything about the story the story should help you trigger these um thoughts about our ideas exactly exactly so i want to start in maybe a place that you wouldn't expect the marriage class to start with and that is to discuss the cups of wine that we drink at the seder not because i'm encouraging you to drink wine and if you'll get your marriage because each one symbolizes and signifies something now you're probably wondering um if there's four cups of wine and the class is called five ideas where is he gonna get the fifth cup but as you are aware there is that fifth cup at the seder and that is the cup of elijah eliahu so there are actually not four cups of wine there are five cups and therefore we have five ideas to share with you um interestingly enough as a quick digression you know everyone knows the four sons right the four children the four sons at the seder but we know that the very great is a beautiful beautiful idea that they say that there is there is actually their five sons their five children only four of them at the seder but there's always that fifth child the one who maybe is not there who's not sitting at the table so that's the same way there's that kind of invisible fifth cup there's also that invisible child we have to be thinking about and we'll speak about that a little bit more tomorrow night when we speak about parenting but just we see the theme of five uh certainly is there it's present at the seder and the reason is that all of that is based on the fact that the the jew the story of mitzrayim the story of the exodus is broken up really into five different stages when god took the jewish people out of egypt of mitzrayim it it wasn't just like boom right we're in and we're out we're enslaved and we're free but it was a slow there was a slow um unveiling there was there was a slow evolution of the exodus that it was broken down into five different parts and i think that if we look closely at each one of those parts we have a powerful lesson to learn from each one what are those five parts and then we'll begin but if you think about stage one the first stage of the commentary say was the jewish people went from being enslaved having to work day in day out day and night go all over egypt and then when god brought about the plagues the macot the enslavement stopped the jewish people were still in egypt stage number two is when they actually left egypt that's the second cup that's the second stage the third one is when they entered into the yamsuf the sea of reeds and they experienced all of those miracles stage number four which is the fourth cup the fourth stage of redemption was when they received the torah and then the fifth stage of redemption was after they had gone through the desert and they went into israel so we have again five stages and from each one of those we're going to build one idea that we could apply to our marriage again it's the stopping of being enslaved leaving egypt jumping into the sea receiving the torah at sinai going into israel let's speak about how each one of these things relates to our marriages okay beautiful so the first the first idea that we would like to share here is the idea of sacred time we see this from the oppression when we were enslaved in egypt the oppression actually first stopping and then the jewish people receiving you know the mitzvah of sanctifying the new month and the myth of the passover seder and what we understand from here is that within our marriages the concept of sacred time is so important so often you'll hear people talk about you know the importance of a date night and keeping a date night you know always having a date night so we want to suggest that it's a little bit more than just the date night because if you make a date night and it's marked on the calendar and it's you know it's great and even if you might even have an activity planned but if the conversation is not somewhat thought out or somewhat planned or even if you have your go-to um you know place that is just constantly falling into the same rut then the date night can actually end up using working almost to a fault it almost it almost causes more issues than what the date night can accomplish and so what we want to suggest is that it's creating sacred time together but also involving ourselves in conversations that will create more um unity more more love and um we have found that when you can talk about certain things and you know that those are your go-to conversations they really do help in that so we want to suggest that sharing your growth when you know that you're having the time to discuss something with your with your spouse and you can get into a conversation that you are talking about how you've grown if you're showing up in in a certain way and you're working on something and you could just constantly go back and forth and talking about you know this is what's going on this is where i'm holding this is how i'm growing and that's a conversation that you can have when you do have those date nights or you do create that time to go for a walk together or whatever it is it's a wonderful thing instead of getting into kind of like the same conversation that a lot of times pull us away which is like we're talking about the kids again it's very important to talk about your children it's very important to be on the same page but if that's the only conversation that's happening between the two of you it's not necessarily the best tactic for really creating a fantastic marriage yeah so that is a powerful point that when when the enslavement stopped this transition where remember the very very first commandment that was given to the jewish people was that of sanctifying the new month of being able to say time is in our control like time happens whether you want it or not but god says and it's it's it's an unusual mitzvah to be given where god says you have to declare the new month which means that you have to be conscious you have to be aware that we're now transitioning from being enslaved right our jobs our life the daily grind the busyness and saying no no no we're in control of our time and this is sacred time during this time nothing interferes we're completely locked in we're completely focused the world could be undergoing a nuclear explosion i might backtrack on that one right if it's a nuclear explosion maybe you want to push it off until the next day right but but there are going to be things that want to stand in the way um and there's a lot of excuses there are so many excuses you know we are a family of six children and it's hard to make the arrangements um and and another thing which is also what makes it difficult is okay well how are we going to spend that time and when you make all of those arrangements and you go on you know the date night whatever it is you know if you go out to dinner or whatever the activity is but you find that over the course of that time it wasn't meaningful it wasn't special instead of feeling whole after that instead of feeling like you connected you're just like what's going on it sometimes doing things to try to grow your marriage can actually call into question one second we did the date night and it didn't feel like we were bonding what's going wrong what's happening why are we struggling like this and therefore it's not enough and and this is really what i find with many of the couples that we coach it's not enough to just say okay we're having a date night we're going on vacation we're doing it we do right we we we think that if we just sort of plug in these rituals suddenly the rituals themselves are going to do all of the work for us the date night's going to do the work for us the vacation is going to do the work for us it's not that's just the the vessel in which now we have to say okay how are we going to properly use that so what are going to be the conversations that are going to connect you so again for us what we have found is that it's a time for us to share the growth that we're trying to do outside of our careers we work together right we're having conversations all day uh we're raising these kids together but if we don't if we're not building an inner world outside of that then we have nothing to bring to the table that is that's fresh for each other um you know it's like the the couple that's been married for a billion years and then the kids leave the house and they've got nothing to talk about there has to be that growth so then when we have that date night hey what what books have you been reading what what interesting podcasts what have you been into what have you been up to we're getting to know that part of ourselves that's not about those other things it's not about our children it's not about our job and once we have that model and again for us very much it's been the fact that we do we both read our own things we read different types of things we're both into our own sort of growth and it's it's it's so much fun to come together for a date night and be able to share that um and and that brings us closer and it makes the other person so so interesting yeah another idea is that you can talk about something kind of like what's your next big thing we're going to get to this further down but just you know kind of discussing like all right what's going to be the next our next big thing that we're up to and that is very exciting even if it's a very long term goal sometimes just the creation of that conversation and and thinking about it and dreaming about it and planning it together can be very very helpful in that sacred time together all right we're going to move on to number two now and that is from the idea of the jewish people leaving egypt and that is the marriage idea of getting unstuck because many many times within our marriages it's like we have these mouse traps in our storage room that are like the awful awful glue traps where like you get stuck in it and once it's stuck like you're done so if you get stuck in that we have no mice with a lot of shoes that are stuck in the glue traps that's exactly right no mice um but but it's like if you get stuck in that trap and you're trying to like yank out that that shoe from the glue you know it's very it's very difficult but what we want to encourage is this idea of getting unstuck not making it so difficult to pull back and that is the idea of being able to pivot being able to move being able to not only see either the circumstance that had just happened and just you know keep on fixating on it fixating on it thinking about it rethinking about it not moving on and thinking like then you kind of go into this like place where you're like you know what it wasn't just this time it wasn't just this conversation it wasn't just this episode it was also and then suddenly you're like retracing your whole steps and you're going into this very dark place and when you're trying to get out instead of trying to get out you're just pulling yourself right back in so it's very very important to really it's it's something that has to be developed but it's the power of being able to pivot it's the power to being able to say you know what there is so much good in this marriage there's so much good that this marriage has to offer and instead of falling into that same chapter we're just looking at all the negatives why don't i do the same thing and just go down that path where i'm only focusing on the positives and literally say them to yourself do whatever you got to do to get yourself to a place where you can recognize no i need to get back to that place and be able to pivot you can even say out loud you know time to pivot power of the pivot the word mitzrayim itself many of the commentaries point out that the word mitzrayim comes from the hebrew word maitsarin which means a narrow strait a narrow place constriction and marriages all relationships life goes through these these highs and these lows and the trick to living a happy life is learning how to navigate and move move gracefully between those highs in between those lows and realizing that when there are lows the world is not falling apart things are not caving you you're riding the wave like waves go high and waves go low and in marriage itself so many especially younger couples in here we have such a a wide audience watching this but especially many young couples who are finding early on in their marriage that they're getting into you know everyone is prepared there's going to be disagreements uh you know even fights you'll call them um but it's more than that sometimes it's like doris said earlier it's a rut it's something that okay well i thought we made up but yet we seem to be right back in it like this has been going on now for two weeks or two months yeah and sometimes it happens like you don't even recognize you know like someone will call us up and just say like it felt like it was one isolated episode and now i'm looking at it it's actually been like almost four months you know so that doesn't necessarily mean that everything is falling apart and it doesn't necessarily mean that things will never be the same again which is why we we always try to teach um young couples not to ever use the language when you're in a rut saying like you know things that that seem to make it seem like the relationship will will never go back to i can't believe this has happened to us it's never going to be the same again you know things like that because it's just season and don't be stopped don't get stuck in in the fight don't get stuck in the season learn what are the tools how do we move from mitzrayim outward how do we move beyond the situation is it a change of behavior is it just the conversation um sometimes after the so when when there is the the the the fight when the fight happens so sometimes there is the initial right there's the first there's the makeup afterwards but then there's that the second conversation right the one that happens not to move past the fight but two weeks later to say okay now let's revisit it now that we're in a healthy place and sometimes if you didn't do that second one right so yes you've moved beyond the battle but you're still in the middle of the war yeah and now what we want to do is make sure okay now we are ready to start a new season and to move beyond that now we're ready to start to change our language to change our behavior to change our nature to get unstuck from that place that we were before but we need to be conscious we need to be aware this is what's happening and now we're intentionally moving we're letting go of this and we're moving now into that next period yeah it's so powerful and here's the thing because as human beings the way that we're conditioned is that when we get to some place or we cross some kind of you know hard situation and we do it and you know we tell ourselves look i did it you know i was able to then automatically what our brain does is it programs us so that next time we're standing at a very similar crosswalk you know we're like oh right this feels very familiar i know exactly what's going to happen like i know that i'm going to be able to get through this one and we continue that hopefully that's the pattern that we want to create but we want to make sure that when we do have these difficult times within our relationship which like said it's normal this is you know that is a relationship we want to constantly be able to remind ourselves and even sometimes say out loud like this is gonna pass this is just a hard a hard season whether it be a few hours or a few days till that passes but it is going to pass i will we will get unstuck we will get through this and when you can condition yourself to see those patterns when you look back at your marriage and you look and you're like oh yeah like we did get into that fight but look how much closer we became afterwards you know and you look at the history and and and you can see how much that actually brought you closer it's very comforting to see that so create those patterns and if it's not something that you've been cognizant of until now then this is your reminder um to really start paying attention to we can get unstuck we can pivot and we can conquer and become even stronger than before yeah let's let's review these two ideas before we move on to number three perfect idea number one again is sacred time we're moving from enslavement to owning our time right we're moving from the hustle and bustle of life we're forgetting to connect and we're creating sacred time but we're going into that time intentionally we're going into that time with the plan we have mapped out how we use our secret time to connect with one another that's idea number one idea number two is getting unstuck and understanding that it's whatever we're going through now it's just the phase that we're in and let's figure out how we could move past the space and move into the next phase and not get stuck get lost get into that rabbit hole that black hole other different types of holes there's a lot of holes yeah but not get into that hole that we're going to always be falling falling farther and farther but that we can pivot great word pivot get out of it move on get out of me try and get out of that that place of stuckness and now why don't you introduce number three idea number three okay so remember in the third stage now the jewish people they're out of egypt now god says okay in order to really really step it up really create that relationship you gotta jump into the sea of reeds the yamsev and this powerful imagery of the jewish people entering into the sea entering into water we know in kabbalistic language and jewish mysticism water is a symbol for love water is a symbol for intimacy water is a symbol for closeness right hydrogen and oxygen i'm not i'm not you know i didn't do that well in chemistry but this is one thing that i know that hydrogen and oxygen is those two right hydrogen and oxygen right they come together to create water the two things that are they're actually polar opposites from what i understand but they come together to become one to become this clear uh flexible flowing water and therefore water in many ways not so much for tonight to get too far into this but water is a symbol of love and of intimacy and that brings us to this idea of constantly constantly being aware that in a marriage we're always trying to grow our love to grow our intimacy to create an environment of closeness and endearment between one another yes and it might seem like a very no-brainer you know of course that's what we're trying to do but sometimes in the day-to-day you know the little things that happen we miss opportunities we want to be looking for opportunities to connect whether it be something that creates laughter you know if it's a joke or some sort of sense of humor we also want to make sure to look for ways to complement one another and to make sure there's a difference between complementing somebody you know in to their face um and also in their presence they're two different types of complementing i can say you know you did a great job at x y and z or i could be talking to somebody about what you did and and say that also and so just creating more endearment to our spouse to create more love and more um it also builds respect when you're able to do that it's very very um important and i think we also have to recognize that we have to be very um aware of what the other spouse is trying to accomplish through their language because sometimes one spouse can be trying to really create more love creative bonds create you know intimacy and it's a missed opportunity you know if if you turn on a certain song and in your mind this is like this was the song that you played you know way back when you first got engaged and you're trying to create like this beautiful moment and you're like do you hear do you hear the song that i'm playing and your spouse is like yeah you know good song and like you know what's for dinner tonight and you're like what do you mean i'm trying to bring us back to that moment you know you have to be aware of the of the words that your spouse is saying first of all you yourself have to be aware that you're trying to create that intimacy and then for the other person to just be aware of the messages that are trying to be delivered through the other person don't miss an opportunity to connect not only is that a lack of opportunity to connect but it hurts it hurts when you're putting yourself into that place it's almost a little bit vulnerable you're trying to create that connection and it feels like that door was just shut and we know that one of the game changers and i'm sure that you know many people in our audience are aware of this and if you're not then i'm happy that i can share this with you but there is a book that has really transformed relationships and it's become one of the one of the go-to books in understanding marriage and that is the famous gary chapman's five languages of love and um and if you're not familiar with it uh what dr chapman does is he sets out that there's five different ways that people express their love and if you're not expressing your love in the way that the other person needs or feels their love language you're kind of going to miss the boat they're not going to feel that and it is so important to make sure always to go back to that and again gary chapman you know the way he says it is he believes that the five love languages are very much you know embedded into the person and some people agree with that some people don't perhaps some uh love languages change who knows but the point is that you're constantly aware um of what language the person is at least speaking at that point what language they need to hear um and like where was saying what language is my spouse what language are they speaking because maybe they're not speaking my language but they're trying they're trying they are making these gestures of love and even if it's not necessarily my love language but if the if my spouse is trying to do it and i'm not even acknowledging or making an effort to receive that language that could be very very hurtful to the spouse and make them not motivated to continue trying uh dora mentioned laughter it's not one of the love languages but definitely if you can get laughter as part just for it for your for your children for the marriage for everything laughter is really hashem's gift of creating an environment that is conducive to the growth growth of a relationship i was speaking yesterday to a couple where you know they were going through a couple of different uh a couple different struggles but one of the major for them one of the major red flags for them was that their humor was getting on one another's nerves they were not finding and it was falling flat it was creating a tremendous strain on the relationship you know heads up to all you dads that are making dad jokes out there right you know thank god i still have a wife still laughs at my jokes but if you create laughter in the house laughter you know i heard once when i was training to be a rabbi so one of my rabbi said the reason that it's a jewish custom to open up all speeches with a joke is because once you get people laughing you can say anything and it's so true laughter creates that bond it creates affection so make sure that there's all of these ending put laughter if i were to if i if i would you know run into gary chapman in the kosher supermarket and he would say buck spam if you had to add something to the love languages i would say use laughter as a love language create that laughter create that feeling because it does create endearment so read the love languages create that environment of laughter create that environment of love and of affection that's just the natural feeling within the home and everything else really pours out from there so that is idea number three is increase that intimacy so again idea number one sacred time idea number two getting unstuck idea number three increase that intimacy again that's through love languages through laughter and through acknowledging when you see that the other person is making those vids for your affection okay well now we're up to number four and we see this beautiful idea of the way you know matan torah like when the jewish people got the torah it is such an incredible thing to think about like what a sight to behold you know like really just absolutely incredible and there's this idea that when when god actually you know was giving us the torah and he was building us up as this nation he was really calling us like you should be for me for this treasure and then there's a mattress that talks about how god put these craft and we said the words not ishmael god crowns the jewish people with these beautiful crowns and he was creating this incredible um way of elevating us as a nation and so here we really focus on the idea in marriage um of elevating rather than denigrating and we i we we think about the idea of um you know if you poke too many little holes into a boat eventually that boat will not float any longer and so we like to remember um the importance of the little things that we're doing i'm gonna say it in the positive but the little things that we're doing to actually elevate one another the little pokes that we're making make a difference when you poke and you poke and you poke and you throw them a little even if it's with a sense of humor if it has a negative connotation or if it's lack of taste it creates a negative impact in the marriage and you want to look for opportunities to constantly build up with praise and just create this this bond and this um unity through um elevating one another um rather than denigrating so i also i agree it's one of the most beautiful images in all of torah the jewish people they're standing there at mount sinai they say we will do we will listen and according to the major shekharan midrash god places these crowns on their heads and the the whole scene if you look especially in the midrash the measures the whole imagery the jewish people they're standing there under mount sinai measures says that god lifts it up over them like a chuppah puts crowns on their heads uh in the famous in shlo muhammad king salman's book shira shirum song of songs it's referenced in the verse you shall cami minishiko's pew kiss me with the kisses of your mouth the midrash says that's that's referring to mount sinai but at that moment god looks at the jewish people as his bride and elevates the jewish people and just says you're my segula you're my treasure you're you're holy the the fourth term of redemption is is which is which is the same term that the torah uses when one is taking a spouse that will take you to me like a spouse so it's this whole elevation of making the jewish people who not so long ago were slaves they were living a life where they didn't feel good about themselves right we know a slave is they're they're they're not proud of who they are they look at themselves they don't feel good and god says when you're standing at sinai you're going to feel you're going to be on top of the world i'm going to place that crown on your head and you're going to be says that at that point the jewish people their souls left them because they were literally in such an elevated state in in a marriage there is no one other individual who my self-esteem my self-confidence my feeling of self-worth is so dependent on and again there's so much in psychology about not having anything dependent on anybody else but the reality is that there is no one there is no one who has as much of an effect on my feeling of self-worth than my spouse and if the spouse doesn't take that as a real responsibility then that is where we see that really marriages do struggle and people do not pay enough attention to what the small likelihood was saying the small pokes in the boat those are the things there are times when we have to deal with a marriage where something major happen that needs to be dealt with but those major things if there is a solid boat if there's a solid foundation then major things come and major things go but one of the things that are very very hard to mend is when there's been so much criticism therefore i can't even stand in front of you anymore because i know right every single thing that i do is criticism here criticism there and whereas all of that can be replaced with every single opportunity that i have to build you up to tell you that you're wonderful to tell you that you're amazing to tell you why you're you're building you're building the human being one of the rules that they say is that with criticism and if it's not something that you are actually in control of then better not to say anything at all you know if there's something that you could say and even when one is criticism criticizing it should never be directly directed towards the person you're always so you're why can't you but but it's my needs it's always about me what are my needs i you're amazing i have a need i am concerned right things like that you're couching it and making it about you never an attack on the other person yeah i love that you use the word responsibility because i think that when we think of our marriages in those terms you know like this is a responsibility and responsibility comes along it's an amazing thing when a cert when a person is given certain responsibility to take care of certain things that's how you know this happens you're given this responsibility and therefore it's going to happen in x y and z way and so when we think about our role in terms of being the one responsible for our spouse to get it's it's more than just respect but it is also respect and it's it's elevating them and constantly just giving them that place to know like well i know that my spouse thinks that so highly of me and i know that my spouse feels this way about me and only in those best ways also to just remember that when we are um when we are constantly thinking of ourselves in the in that way and building them up they likely will respond in kind meaning if you're saying that and there and and your spouse is like really you really think that of me they're more likely to fill those shoes because they know that you think that of them so that's awesome right if you're so convincing and obviously i don't mean this in like a very like you know it's so far off just say you know they're gonna grow into that but if if your spouse if you know that they have the potential we're going to discuss this a little bit with the with our with our parents but even when you say that and your spouse is like wow you know she she really does she really thinks that i'm i'm neat like i guess i'm neater than i thought and like suddenly the socks won't be on the floor anymore and like the hamper is not overflowing and you know whatever it is but um they will they will take those compliments very seriously and hopefully you know live a little bit more stepping into that which brings us to point number five point number five and again so we have we have idea number one sacred time again you're keeping track of that also have great notes yeah here getting unstuck idea number three we have expressions of intimacy expressions of love idea number four elevating rather than denigrating and finally the last stage of the redemption the last stage of the exodus was bringing us to the holy land bringing us to the holy land bringing us to israel that that is the final that is the cup of elijah the cup that will be that revolves the prayer not only for bringing us to the holy land of the past but looking forward to us going back to the holy land in the future and that brings us to the final stage number five in marriage and that is that marriage is always about looking ahead for us we are a team and what is our next what we like to call it what is the next big thing we're always aware that okay we're on a mission right now and what's the next goal what is the next milestone what are we working towards what's going to be that next big thing that we're going to accomplish together yeah sometimes it's so hard because our lives are like on this like everything is so fast-paced and so fast-moving and you're really just trying to get by day by day so that like you know you could just even have a conversation and quiet and it just feels like it's so busy that you're like the next big thing are you kidding like i'm not thinking about the next big thing but we feel that when you can pause and think together about the next big thing and know that you have something exciting to look towards that you're working on together and just in general i think that marriage in general you can't only just be living in like the right here and now you have to kind of like pull back the camera and look at the next big thing in general because that's really what keeps the marriage alive and growing and bonding and creating that connection and um it's it's a wonderful idea to you know whether it's taking time and just kind of like um painting out that picture of what that next big thing is sometimes it's just you know you don't you don't even think like oh yeah you know maybe we shouldn't really think about what our next big thing is what is our next big thing you know you might need to go for a long walk together and start having a conversation like all right well what's our next big thing and then you kind of go down this conversation where it's like well let's start dreaming let's talk about that what could our next big thing be it could be something very simple it could be something very major but i think that as long as you're having that goal of the next big thing and you're both cognizant and you're both actively working even if it's very slowly in that direction it creates a tremendous amount of connection you know living life even as an individual living life with a goal is always going to be what's going to get me out of bed in the morning you know the life needs to have that sense that feeling of freshness the feeling of renewal i'm working towards something and the same way that that's what fuels our individual gas tank that's what's going to fuel our marriage as well and you know as as coaches we get to see this all the time because really a lot of what we try to do is not just focus on the here and now the couple trying to get unstuck the couple trying to work through that thing that happened yesterday but to say what is the vision of the future and what what we see is that you typically find two different types of paths to take one could just be directed to the marriage itself if let's say we want it we feel like our marriage is good but we want to take our marriage from good to great so what are going to be how is that going to look what's a picture of a great marriage which by the way takes attention otherwise marriage is plateau they do just by nature if a couple is married and is not paying attention to pulling back and saying like you know what we have a good marriage we really do but are we settling for god i mean is that really where we want to just end like our marriage is good it's okay or do we really want to get to great i think it's very important to pull back and even if let's say you look at your marriage and hopefully hopefully you could look at your marriage and you can say you know what there's things are going great things are wonderful don't stop there don't stop there's always that next thing so now take on what is with ourselves what is our next major goal i think for us one of the most wonderful wonderful years of our own marriage was within one year we purchased a new home it was the very same year that we actually or more or less the same year where we had our sixth child we bought a home and started a new organization together a lot of big things all within one year and that could have been a disaster because there was so much stress and it was so busy but because early on we looked ahead when we said okay we have a lot going on now this is going to be major but now let's do it as a team yeah i remember i was even working with a coach at that point and i remember saying like this could either be wonderful or this could be an absolute epic failure and like you commit you're like no no we're gonna make this wonderful we're gonna be cognizant of it and if it's something that you haven't done yet if it's something that you're like well i would love for this to be our next big thing we're like we haven't really done that yet like okay so you haven't done that yet so now it's just time to try it now is your time to make that happen like for example let's say like a family vacation might be you know something so you know again if you have a large family it's expensive right or you're looking to purchase that first home or something like that so that's a major method well how are we gonna do that where are we gonna get the funds together okay you know what well we can do it we just have to save a little bit here and then suddenly now as a team you're coming in you're strategizing as a team right so first of all i just gave you conversation now for your next 10 date nights at least that's right because now you have so much to speak about because you're dreaming together but also you have the sense of okay we're going to tag team now we're going to figure this out and we're going to accomplish this and now the the goal itself is bringing us forward and you know what listen we never want to think about what it's like we don't reach our goals but i'll tell you one thing even if you never reach that goal the fact that you worked on it together and you failed together will also bring you closer as long as you're intentional about that yeah listen that's part of trying you know so then you try you try out for goal and if you fail you fail but at least you fail together so these are let's just review from the beginning we have the idea of sacred time we have the idea of getting unstuck the idea of increasing our expressions of love with one another the idea of elevating instead of denigrating and now our final idea of really focusing on the next destination we feel that these are truly five ideas that can really transform your relationship we know that they have tremendously helped us we hope that they help you as well and thank you once again to project inspire for having us here tonight and we wish you all a wonderful evening we have five more lessons for you tomorrow night that has to do with parenting so we hope you'll join us again and our blessings to everyone that in all of our relationships and all of our marriage they should continue to soar they should continue to grow continue to build one stage upon the next upon the next and through the ups and downs through the ups and downs and to realize that this is why we're here in this world we're here to learn how to love to learn how to connect and to learn how to build beautiful marriages in beautiful homes have a wonderful night