Nashville Marriage Studio

What you do with 40+ hours of your week matters when it comes to your relationship. Because spending the majority of your time doing something you hate or that you find no value in will take a toll on your relationship. The depression, anxiety and insecurity that crappy jobs breed do not understand boundaries and will be more than happy to ooze their way into your relationship.

What are you doing to protect yourself and the person you love?

For many, we hear the dreary job reports on the news and assume that there is nothing we can do about our job situation until the economy gets better. Or until some magical job fairy comes along to save you. Whichever comes first.

Today, I would like you to step away from the excuses and introduce you to a (free) resource that can help you gain a sense of power over you job situation. This What I Know About Getting a Job is a (free) ebook from Brazen Careerist is a wonderful collection of advice from top HR professionals on tips and insights on how to get your job search truly rolling.

Here’s the thing: Deciding to take ownership of your career and finding what value you bring to the world could possibly be one of the best ways to improve your relationship.

The most common piece of advice I hear is for the couple to try and take it all in, that the day will be over before they know it. Remember to breathe, they say.

The same is true for the time that it takes for your relationship to grow from friendship, to dating, to engagement, and to marriage. It’s easy (especially for us females) to get caught up in getting to the next stage.

When you’re single you want a boyfriend.

When you have a boyfriend you want a fiance.

When you have a fiance you want a husband.

Just like you don’t want to rush through the hours leading up to your wedding day, don’t rush through the relationship leading up to your wedding day.

Remember celebrating Valentine’s Day with your single friends. Remember saying goodnight on the front porch at 3 in the morning. Remember the dreams you shared when you first started talking about building a life together.

Remember to breathe.

If you read personal development/self-help books you’ve probably heard the parable of the Jar of Rocks.

You have a jar and you have rocks in various sizes. Big rocks the size of your fist, pebble sized rocks and grain of sand rocks. The question is how do you get all the rocks into the jar?

Well, you put the big rocks in first. Then the pebbles. Then the grains of sand. Any other order would not be successful. Or so the personal development books say anyways.

So what are the big rocks in your life? What do you make sure makes it into your Franklin Covey planner, and what do you merely hope fits into the crevices of the important things?

Deep down I think we all know what the big rocks should be. They should be  our family, friends, and of course our special sweetie. But those are usually the ones we just wish we had more time for, and in the end they get the leftovers when it comes to time and attention.

A big reason that they fall into the crevices of our schedule is because we don’t have a plan (another self-help book nugget of wisdom: “Failing to plan is planning to fail”). So let me help you out:

15 minutes daily
1 evening weekly
1 weekend monthly
1 week a year

In an effort to help couples in Nashville do a better job with Love Management, I’m starting a weekly newsletter with ideas on how to work this time into your busy schedule. Just sign up here (and it’s free)!