Episode 152- The Most Valuable Thoughts for Your Marriage Mindset

Would you believe the concept for this podcast episode came from a Louis Vuitton bag I bought?

This particular pre-loved Louis Vuitton had a monogrammed tag attached to it with the initials MVT. Obviously they’re not my own initials, but something about the letters MVT struck me…

They swirled around in my brain until it hit me: Most Valuable Thoughts!

Leave it to me to come up with a coaching concept from a purse – very on-brand and I love it. I 100 percent amuse myself on a regular basis and think humor is such an important part of working through hard things, including issues in your marriage.

Thanks to my inspiration, the concept of our most valuable thoughts got me to thinking about:

What defines a valuable thought, and what makes it more valuable than other thoughts?
How does our marriage mindset benefit when our most valuable thoughts take priority?
How do our least valuable thoughts impact our relationships?

This is what we’re diving into today, and you’ll learn a simple coaching exercise to help you identify your most valuable AND least valuable thoughts, so you can choose exactly which thoughts to think more of and which to think less of.

Your Marriage Mindset is the combination of all the thoughts you think about yourself, your partner and your relationship.

When your marriage mindset is strong you feel amazing.

However when you have a steady diet of least valuable thoughts, it’s like eating emotional junk food every day. Those thoughts make your experience of your marriage a total drag. And sometimes you have big issues to work through which require you to have the strongest mindset possible, just like an elite athlete or the CEO of a big company.

What makes a thought most valuable or least valuable to us?

To figure out your most valuable thoughts, it helps to know how to define value!

The way I think about it is like this: our most valuable thoughts are the thoughts that get us more of what we want in our lives.

They create delight, connection, and positive experiences in our lives. Wonderful things happen when we focus on our most valuable thoughts.

A simple example of one of these is, “I can do this.”

“My marriage can get stronger every day.”

“I love getting to witness my partner’s life.”

Your best thoughts about your partner.

Our least valuable thoughts are the thoughts that take us away from the things we want.

These thoughts create disconnection, anxiety, or resentment. They don’t allow for any nuance or duality of human nature. Least valuable thoughts stop you in your tracks and give you nowhere to go.

Thoughts like, “I can’t do this.”

“I can’t figure this out – it’s too complicated.”

“They don’t understand.”

Your worst thoughts about your partner.

A simple coaching exercise to identify your most valuable thoughts

Your marriage is like a triangle: there’s you, there’s your partner, and there’s the relationship itself. It’s like its own entity, but it needs something from you to thrive.

Your relationship needs your attention, kindness, generosity, creativity, and commitment.

And sometimes, being human as we are, we’ll have thoughts that aren’t so great about our partners, about ourselves, and about the relationship.

We want to notice those thoughts, but we don’t want to focus on them. They don’t help us move forward or open us up to finding a new way to think about our relationship.

Simply noticing them gives us awareness, and awareness generates authority, and authority gives us the ability to choose. Then, you can choose to stay with your most valuable thoughts, think them on purpose, and follow where they lead you in your relationship.

You can also choose to shorten the time you spend with your least valuable thoughts and shift towards a more loving, empowering, and useful thought.

So here’s a simple way to figure out your most and least valuable thoughts:

Open up a Google Doc or Notes app or find a piece of paper.
Using the examples we went over, what are your most frequent thoughts?
List 3 of your most valuable thoughts about your relationship.
List 3 of your least valuable thoughts about your relationship.
Ask yourself: how much time do I spend with my most valuable thoughts? How much time do I spend with my least valuable thoughts?

Learn more ways to improve your marriage mindset with marriage coaching.

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: