At the end of your life, men, can you say you were successful in putting your marriage first, before your business? David O McKay, an educator and religious leader once told men, “No other success (in life) can compensate for failure in the home.”
Message to Businessmen and Job Workers : Where’s your wife and family in your calendar? Are they the first priority in your mind, and therefore scheduled in your calendar or daily activities before you enter business appointments or personal interests? Do you make time for them? Do they have your undivided attention at least 3-4 hours every day?
Prioritizing Your Marriage Relationship
A successful marriage must be worked every day just like your business or job.
- When couples make time to connect daily, the marriage is strong.
- When couples re-connect and stay connected, everything gets infinitely better.
- Show your passion in your marriage by being there when they need you.
- Show your passion in harmonizing your marriage by planning with your wife.
- There is great rewards in spending time with your wife and children.
- Powerful men are compassionate, caring and loving of family members.
The two most important areas of focus are first, “Self” and second, “Relationships” in marriages. Working on “self” first prepares you to be the sunlight in your relationship.
Focus on Self: Be Aware of Your Needs
Coming from work, men, too often, show up at home and expect their wife to fill them up. They come in as needy—an empty vessel needing filling. This is a recipe for a fractured life.
Your wife has been busy handling the events of her own business in addition to needy children. Her plate is full of home and family duties. Coming home and expecting your wife to be fresh and full of energy, ready to give you her full attention is extremely naïve and selfish. You and she will be forever disappointed by such an expectation.
You must first remember that you are responsible to fill your own needs cup. And the best way to fill your cup is to have a great relationship with your Savior and Father in Heaven. They have the love to fill your love bucket. Choose to love them and receive their love.
You can appeal to them in prayer to help you solve your “self” issues. Remember, you are a son of God. He loves you and wants the best for you. God and Christ will answer your prayers with inspiration to answer your needs and concerns. The answers may be direct revelation or inspired counsel from close friends and/or your church leaders. You make time to implement any solutions you receive or find.
Implementing self-care solutions is a daily process. It involves putting simple actions into your daily routine that improve your self-care. There are eight areas of self-care to consider–Physical, Mental, Emotional, Positive Environment, Financial, Social, Recreational, and Spiritual. You may find that you are doing fine in some areas, need improvement in some, and are totally lacking in others. Check out the actions you can do in each area in next week’s blog post.
No man is an island unto himself. You need a community to help you have love, peace, joy, gratitude and enlightenment in his life.’ll benefit by searching online to discover how to fill your own self-needs. Once your needs (love bucket) are filled, you can positively focus on family relationships.
Focus on Family Relationships
With your self-care needs filled, you can switch your orientation to serving others. And your first service needs to be your wife, followed closely by your children. As your wife’s cherished husband, she needs you to be there to help her. You need to reach out to her in continuous communication to know what actions to take to show you love her.
Here are some actions you need to prioritize in your marriage:
- Do you have a weekly date night with your wife in your calendar which is inviolate?
- Do you pray with her every morning, using meeting apps when you are away on business?
- Do you check in with her every evening if you’re away?
- Do you schedule time to exercise daily with her?
- Do you listen to her needs and concerns without interruption? …without giving any advice? Most of the time that’s all you need to do.
- Do you pitch in and help with family chores without being asked by her?
- Do you both discipline and counsel with your children to teach them to choose the right things to do?
- Do you counsel with your wife in all family decisions, especially each child’s welfare?
- Do you seek her input in all expenditures of money that affect the family and her?
- Do you seek and get full agreement on actions you wish to take? Do you refrain from taking action when there’s no agreement?
- Do you pray with the whole family in the evening before the children’s bedtime?
- Do you study the scriptures as a family for a few minutes at a designated time each day?
- Do you have a scheduled family night every week where family members learn from each other?
- Do you schedule time to play with your children at least once a week (preferably more)?
- Do you spend time telling each other how grateful you are for five specific things they did that day before you head to bed?
When you can say you are doing all the above, you are a man who prepares himself through self-care to be first a loving husband, second, a caring father, and third, an effective steward in all other things that are important in your life. Your priorities are in order.
Be a full partner in your marriage. Come home from work or the business with your focus on her, the children and your family. Leave thoughts of work and work in your office or work stations. Come into the family home as the husband and father who’s fun to be with, who’s joyful to be around, who loves his sweetheart and shows her with a hug and kiss. Make it so normal, the children love to see you do this. They’ll feel secure and at peace in their home.
Remember, praise is more powerful than any disapproval. Praise the things your wife and children have done well that day. Focus on them. They will strive to do those positive things to please you in the future, because they love “the you” that loves them.
You are living the life God wants you to live at the high emotional levels of love, joy, peace, gratitude and enlightenment when you do these things. Congratulations. Stay humble, prayerful and caring, and you’ll be richly blessed.