The Power of Decision: Creating a Relationship Vision for Your Marriage

 

What is a Relationship Vision? We meet, date, fall in love and oftentimes live each day without giving conscious thought what we envision an ideal marriage is in our hearts and minds….then we blame our partner when they aren’t living up to our ideal.

See what I did there?

A Relationship Vision gets those fuzzy ideas out of your head and onto a sheet of a paper so you can consciously decide what you want your relationship to look and feel like and then take the appropriate action to make that happen.

In my free guide, The Love Upgrade, 7 Steps to a 5 Star Marriage (which you can download here,) the first step in the upgrade process is to decide.

Choices are powerful. Choices reveal our priorities and form the basis of our results in life.

We can choose to make time for each other or choose to make other aspects of our life a priority.

We can make a choice today and change that choice tomorrow.

What I see most often when I am coaching a client is they are frustrated and upset because of the results of un-questioned choices. In other words, they made a choice 10 years ago that made sense then, then they put that choice on auto pilot and never thought about it again.

It doesn’t work for their life now because the choice and the vision they have for themselves, their life or their relationship don’t match.

Our vision is the map that guides our decision making. Our vision tells us where we want to go and our everyday choices build the road of experiences to get us there.

So we don’t start with the choice itself, because we honestly don’t know what that is going to be until we have the vision.

Change the vision. Change the choice.

Is it simple? Yes. Is it easy? Probably not. Sometimes. Maybe.

What makes it easier? Frequency and repetition, just like building a muscle, learning a language or a musical instrument, the more you check in with yourself and refine your vision, the easier it is to find clarity.

The more you practice choosing again, every day, the easier it is when you have to make a shift to a different choice.

Okay, so now you can clearly see the relationship between choices and visions, I bet you are wondering how you come up with a vision if you have never thought deeply about it.

It’s okay, I hadn’t either until I started studying what makes relationships work.

There are five areas I suggest defining a standard for,

1. Emotional & Sexual Intimacy – verbal and sexual communication
2. Appreciation – satisfaction and feeling good
3. Choosing Each Other First – fidelity, nurturing, shared commitment
4. Daily Acts of Love – friendship, time together, creating connection
5. Acceptance Safety & Power – trust, honesty, managing conflicts, non-violent interactions

For each of these areas ask yourself these questions…

1. How do you want to feel?
2. What does it look like for you?
3. How does that translate daily?
4. What do you want to give?
5. What do you want to receive?
6. What is missing and how can you add it?
7. What do you have so much of that you enjoy and appreciate? How can you keep creating more?
8. What is your personal standard of excellence with regards to this?

In The Love Upgrade I talk about how the way a 5 star hotel is run can inspire us to make our relationships feel like luxury love – not just run-of-the-mill-routine-auto-pilot love, but delicious, nurturing, I-can’t-wait-to-be-together-thriving-empowering love.

When you look at luxury hotels they have defined service standards. They answer the phone in 3 rings, they use only top of the line soap, and they greet you warmly by name, every time you visit.

Their vision is to bring you an experience that feels like a “welcome home.”

Then they define their standards and all their choices are based on creating that vision.

They don’t answer the phone in 10 rings because that does not align with that “welcome home” feeling.

So when you decide how you want to feel – it’s so much easier to make choices, because you can instantly tell if a choice is aligned with that vision or not.

Example: I want to feel connected with my husband. I want to feel loving and nurturing and also loved and nurtured.

I don’t typically work at night. No client calls. Very few networking meetings, etc. Why? Because evenings are time I spend connecting with the hubby.

My choice is to prioritize the connection and that choice aligns with how I want to feel.

I can instantly tell when I start to feel disconnected – I made a choice somewhere along the line that didn’t match with my vision.

When I notice it, I re-focus and re-adjust accordingly.

Because I have articulated this vision, I can also talk openly with my hubby about it and strategize to keep molding it and walking towards it every day.

Another example – I reply to my husband’s texts within a few minutes of receiving them. Always.

Why? My vision is connection. My decision is to prioritize all communication with my hubby.

I am breaking it down for you so you can see that it isn’t complicated but it can be super powerful to make a choice and then determine what you need to do to live into the vision of that choice.

Here is what you can do with a Relationship Vision –

• Write your own, ask your partner to write theirs, and compare notes.
• Take these questions and journal about them – even if you never share your answers with your partner, your clarity will empower you to handle your relationship differently
• Print the Relationship Vision Discovery Tool (link below)  and take it with you on date night and have a soulful conversation using these questions as a prompt.
• Once you have answered these questions for yourself then you can look at what choices you need to make to make the vision a reality.

Deciding on your personal love standards starts with having a clear vision of who you want to be in your relationship and is the first step in creating a 5 star marriage because we need to know where we are going first, then we can use all the tools available to us to get there.

Let me know how it goes! I love to hear from my readers. And if you want some personalized help to develop your vision reach out to me on my coaching page and we can see if coaching could be helpful.

I believe the better we know how to love ourselves and each other the more we reduce violence, gain peace and transform the world. Please share this post.