Marriage and Family and Attitudes of Successful People

If you rely on luck, good looks and/or connections to get ahead, you are taking yourself out of the equation and counting on the actions and reactions of others to carry you forward. In the everyday world you will probably be passed by and maybe even stepped on in the process. How about entering your willful, take-action self into the equation and see what happens. But how and what should you do?

This suggestion is good for the world of work, but it is also good for your world of marriage and your world of your family. Look at your marriage and family as if they were a project because they are. Your marriage and family are the most important project in your life. Apply the following “business” suggestions to you marriage and family and watch what happens.

First, define success in your marriage and in your family for yourself. What do you want out of life? When you strip it down to the essence, all people really want the same three things: wealth, family and friends, and free time. These three conflict. Amassing wealth takes time. Family and friends take time. Money and free time mean no time for family and friends and no time to amass wealth. So time, those minutes and hours and days, drifts away while you drift along without goals. Stop the drift and define marriage and family success for yourself

Second, armed with your definition of marriage and family success, find and study people who seem to have achieved your personal definition of marriage and family success. What did they do? What didn’t they do? What did they do that is different from others?

Develop a plan with steps to take and steps not to take and begin.

Here are some general suggestions adapted from “5 Things Successful People Do that Others Don’t.” Add them to your action plan.

• Work to have your marriage and family prosper. Your definition of success defines what prosper means to you. Get something accomplished. Work is not a daily grind. Work is a means to an end. Set goals and work to make your dream a reality.
• Exercise drive in your marriage and in your family. Set targets and stay focused. Do hard things. Don’t waste emotions that lead to rationalizations which become excuses and bog you down. Drive is a muscle that withers away if it is not used.
• Never make excuses in your marriage and in your family. Problems are only opportunities in work clothes (Henry J. Kaiser). Excuses do not change the outcome. Excuses take energy and time that can be used to prosper.
• Focus on marriage and family goals daily. Your goals become real in your mind and keep you from drifting. Time is the limiting factor, namely, we only have so much of it. Every day, every hour presents an opportunity to take actions that will lead you to your goals.
• Be willing to fail regarding your goals, but not regarding your marriage and your family. You have to pull the trigger, take the first step, take a leap of faith and make a move. Your limited time does not let you play it safe. People will always judge you. Not succeeding is not a failure. Not succeeding is simply learning that that action did not work as you expected it to work.

If you are drifting along and can’t seem to take charge of your life, if you cannot grow your marriage and your family, a professional counselor can help you break the pattern you have fallen into and begin the journey to a better life.