Today’s Strong Marriage Challenge is the perfect way to wrap up the Marriage Portion of the StrongLuv Experiment. We are writing a Relationship Roadmap that will serve as a guide for us moving forward.
In light of what we have learned about ourselves and each other over the last 21 days, instead of dreaming about our greatest hopes for our life together, like we did on DAY 2, today is all about what specific actions we need to take in order to achieve them.
Dr. Gail Matthews, professor of psychology at Dominican University in California, completely blew my mind with the results of her study that found that you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down. JUST BY WRITING THEM DOWN!
Strong Marriage Experiment Day 21 – Write a Relationship Roadmap
Define what a compelling marriage is for you and write down specific actions you’ll take to nurture that kind of relationship.
For David and I compelling marriage is one in which we:
- Laugh Often & Have Fun Together
- Respect Each Other
- Forgive Often
- Serve One Another and Work Toward Common Goals
- Use Our Life and Story as a Restorative Tool to Help Others
Specific ACTIONS we’ll keep from the experiment that will nurture the kind of marriage we want:
- The only time we will critique each other is during the weekly State of the Union Meeting. This means we will continue to discipline ourselves to use our speech as a way to build each other up. Any criticisms that need to be addressed will be done at our SOTU Meeting so we aren’t so tempted to react out of anger or frustration.
- Date night will occur every week. We’ll rotate between date night out and date night in. During date night in we plan of cooking together.
- We will continue to genuinely serve one another and work on meeting each others daily needs.
- The 15 Second Kiss.
- We are committing ourselves to having at least 2 overnight dates per year. Oh my word — we have been missing out!!!
- We will keep the gift list that we made updated to make it easy to buy gifts for each other and continue with many of the smaller gestures that we practiced during the experiment.
The thing that surprised me the most was how the little things added up to make a big difference in how we felt towards one another. I am so glad we did this. We really didn’t know whether the experiment was going to be a complete bomb or a raving success — and I’m surprised that it has actually worked.
Join the LUVolution!