I bet you didn’t think you could find ways to improve your marriage from Formula 1, but you can, and in today’s podcast, I covered 10 of them for you. Don’t worry – you do not need to follow racing or have any interest in Formula 1 at all to get a ton of usefulness out of everything I offered. 

At its core, this episode is a guide to help you find inspiration from different arenas of life and different areas of the world, whether it’s creativity, art, science, or sports. Refreshing our perspective helps us see a new side of things and think about them more deeply. What better time than the start of a new year for a new view of creating a healthy relationship?

Marriage Lesson 1: Trying new things with your partner is almost always a good idea.

I got into Formula 1 because of a Bridgerton fanfiction story. Yes. 

In this fanfiction, Anthony and Kate are a Formula 1 driver and a racing engineer, respectively. It was actually a beautiful backdrop for the story. So I suggested to my husband that we watch Drive to Survive together, which is this incredible Netflix documentary series on Formula 1 racing. I thought it could be fun, and if we didn’t like it, no harm done. By the second episode, we were hooked. 

We watched every episode available and even got to attend a race in Miami, where we live. We read articles, we watch driver interviews. It’s become a shared passion we love exploring together, and it’s all because we were willing to try something totally new. 

Marriage Lesson 2: Small things are big things.

This is one of my core philosophies. Your marriage is not made in the grand, epic rom-com moments. Your marriage is made in the small moments when you decide to be kind, or give a hug, or spend a little more time together. 

In Formula 1, races can be won or lost by 0.3 seconds. Imagine what a difference 2 full seconds could make in a race OR in your marriage. 2 seconds could create space for a pause, a breath, a decision to relate to your partner differently. It can be the difference between having a fight that ruins your day, or just having a moment that feels uncomfortable before you move on with the rest of your day. 

Marriage Lesson 3: It doesn’t work when you both want to be #1.

When racing teammates excessively compete for what’s best for them as an individual, they tend to crash into each other and nobody wins.

In racing and in marriage, there’s a balance between managing what’s best for the team and what’s best for you in that given moment. 

How often does it happen in a relationship where you have a priority, your partner has another priority, and no one’s willing to let the other pass, to give way, or open a space? You both end up crashing and losing. 

When is there an opportunity for you to let your partner go forward? And when is there an opportunity to ask your partner to let you go forward? And how can you balance managing what’s best for you two as a team with what’s best for you as an individual? 

Marriage Lesson 4: You need a solid car to win.

Formula 1 cars, because they’re custom-built, cost millions of dollars. Yet they still have breakdowns in the middle of the race. They just stop running, computer at zero, engine dead. Without a proper foundation, the car just doesn’t have the ability to win.

The first thing we need to work on in a marriage is the foundation. Very often, it’s the friendship side of cultivating connection, forgiveness, or understanding – depending on the situation. 

There’s a foundational concept I teach called Sexy Besties, which is friendship and nourishing physical connection. When you have that foundation of being sexy besties with each other in your marriage, that’s when you’re building a solid car that wins races. 

Marriage Lesson 5: In order to win, you have to give it everything you’ve got.

Hesitation loses races and kills relationships. 

Very often when drivers are speeding around racetracks at hundreds of miles per hour, they have to make split-second decisions: swerve here, go there, turn here. If there’s a moment of hesitation, they crash into the wall, they make a mistake, or they allow someone else to get ahead.

Where are you hesitating in your relationship? What do you need in order to stop hesitating about that thing? If you stopped hesitating, what would that open up for you in your relationship?

Marriage Lesson 6: A boring race is a good race… but we love the drama.

Highly skilled drivers on a racetrack with no collisions can sometimes feel… boring. 
It’s like when you pick a fight for no reason. When it’s been normal for you to feel emotional upheaval and you go from a rollercoaster relationship to a calm relationship, your brain can interpret that as unfamiliar – AKA, potentially dangerous. To the most primitive part of our brain, anything unknown is a potential danger.

So even though we don’t like emotional upheaval in our healthy relationship, if that’s what we’re most familiar with, there’s a part of us that finds safety in the drama. So if you’ve ever picked a fight for no reason (I know you have because I have, too), just know the reasoning behind it is your brain is seeking safety. 
Sometimes boring is a good thing! 

Marriage Lesson 7: Play to win versus just treading water.

In Formula 1, the Haas team seems to me to be a team that treads water, only doing the absolute minimum to stay in the race.

Aston Martin, on the other hand, was recently bought by a billionaire who came in willing to do whatever was necessary to create a winning team. Over the last few years, he has methodically executed that – even while losing. 

So often when you’re working on your relationship, you’re wanting it to be better, you’re turning a corner, things get better for a while, and then something goes wrong. You’ll feel like you’re losing, but if you just keep doing all the things that make your marriage stronger, and playing to win, your marriage really does get stronger. 

Are you playing to win in your marriage, or just doing what you need to do to get by?

Marriage Lesson 8: Think about how to make it easier.

If you’re playing to win in your marriage, how can you make that easier and more sustainable for yourself? How can you make it work for you?

Formula 1 has an app where you can view the race in whatever time you have available: 2 hours to watch the race from start to finish, a half-hour recap of the race highlights, or a 10-minute replay of the qualifying sessions and practice runs.

They make it so easy to follow and become a fan. What would be your relationship version of that?

I’m working with a couple who, because of kids and personal challenges, can only create more time for each other during a weekly lunch date. That’s all they have capacity for, but they’re committed to doing it because they made it easy for them to follow through. 

Marriage Lesson 9: Your work begins when you qualify for the race.

Before the race starts, drivers have to do practice laps and various car demonstrations to prepare for the race. And one of the things they do is a qualifying session where it’s decided who goes first, who goes second, who goes third and so on for all the drivers.

In a marriage, I draw a parallel between qualifying and the wedding day. So much of our focus goes to getting married and planning the ultimate wedding like it’s a race with a finish line. But the wedding isn’t a finish line, it’s just the beginning of your marriage journey and it’s up to you how you want to show up for it. 

Even now, in this new year, you can start a new race like a new chapter of your relationship.

Marriage Lesson 10: Mistakes don’t have to end up as penalties.

There’s a whole system in Formula 1 for how penalties are given. Penalties affect the driver’s and team’s standing, like where the drivers will place (1st, 2nd, etc.) and how many points they get. Points are a big deal because the drivers who receive the most points earn financial rewards for their team. 

So penalties are given when something goes wrong and there was truly a driver error, like when one driver intentionally crashes into another driver, and they should get a penalty for it. 

But there’s also something called a racing incident. A racing incident is when no penalties are given and no points are deducted. It’s like two drivers both sort of did something that would naturally happen when people are racing. No one is technically at fault. 

I love the idea of having racing incidents in our relationships. If no one is at fault, and it’s just the natural course of life, could we just let our partner go on their way as opposed to how often we might be penalizing them? Maybe there’s an opportunity to step back and decide whether these penalties are really merited. 

Discover more ways to improve your marriage with support from a relationship coach

If you want to stop being frustrated with your partner’s behavior and how you respond to it, and start showing up as the person you want to be, I want to invite you to enroll in The Marriage MBA.

The Marriage MBA — the Mindset Breakthrough Activator — is the 6-month group coaching and mentoring program that teaches you the relationship skills you weren’t taught in school. And helps you reimagine marriage so you can have a relationship that works for you. 

What you’ll learn inside draws upon cognitive behavioral psychology — how your thoughts and feelings impact your actions and outcomes —  to equip you with the kind of mindset that activates breakthroughs in ANY area of your marriage that feels less than 5-star.

You have so much more power and influence in your marriage than you realize. In The Marriage MBA, you’ll build the skills and tools to and deepen the level of connection in your marriage, then use them over and over for the years to come.

If there is a foundation of love in your marriage and you’re ready to figure out how to have a stronger relationship for yourself and your honey, this program will help you. Use the link above to apply today. The application itself is quick and simple but also deep and powerful – and designed to help give you even more clarity about how you can move your relationship forward. 

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• The Questions for Couples Journal
• Join The Marriage MBA Waitlist
• The Marriage Mindset Makeover
• Follow me on Instagram