Get Motivated

Where has the time gone! Looks like my vow to post something here at least once a month got lost in the holiday bustle. That and my laziness tends to go into overdrive between my birthday and New Year’s. But I have managed to pull myself from my preferred reclined position on the sofa watching ubiquitous Law & Order re-runs to jot down  another marriage-related epiphany.

This latest revelation came while sitting through a never ending series of motivational speakers at the Get Motivated! Seminar in Dallas. (Yep, some genius at my company thought it would be a good idea to send our entire department to this.) Between Zig Ziggler’s cute one liners, Emmett Smith’s robotic speech delivery (poor thing, he tried, but you could tell he was nervous) and Steve Forbes’ “make money, don‘t let it make you” talk, I actually kept my eyes open long enough to glean some universal advice from one of the speakers… “Words of encouragement can go a long way. Be sure to encourage and motivate other as they work towards their goals.” 

This advice is not only applicable to the workplace, but to a marriage as well. Its so easy to focus on your personal goals (finishing school, getting the promotion, losing 10 pounds) instead of shifting your focus to your spouse and their goals. They also require encouragement and as partners for life, you should be each other’s loudest cheerleaders. So if your spouse is working on opening a business or finishing grad school, you should be there to listen to his ideas and encourage him as he makes moves.

Now of course there’s always a caveat.  As each other’s BFFs, you should not hesitate to provide a dose of reality when needed. For example, if your spouse feels led to liquidate your retirement funds in order to pursue his goal of becoming a platinum rapper at the age of 40, you need to encourage him to reconsider that goal for a more realistic one.

So I’m making an extra effort at encouraging my spouse to achieve his personal goals and he’s doing the same for me. Now I just need to work on cheering for those “characters” that I work with…that’s going to take some extra effort!