Biggificating Marriage: Baselining 101

Photo courtesy lachlansear

Throughout the past few weeks, we’ve been on a journey through marriage biggification. The idea is this… get the most out of marriage, maybe even more than you thought possible.

Many people may think that life and marriage are what you settle on. You’ve heard the phrase “life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” This is probably true for most people. But the Simple Marriage Project is not designed for most people. I don’t want to settle on life. I don’t want to settle for an okay marriage. I want a marriage fully alive. A life fully alive.

To live this way requires more of you, and your spouse. It starts by getting buck naked. Then spending some time discovering what makes you excited about life and marriage. There are even a few tools you can use in this process, and many of you already have (these tools are found in the previous post).

Now it’s time to continue the process. And this is done through baselining.

Baselining is an idea I came across from Clay Collins and it’s different than Tim Ferriss’ dreamlining. I’ll explain.

Baselining involves writing down everything you don’t have to have, be, or do to live a passionate and fulfilled life. For example, you don’t have to move up to the next size house because everyone of you friends are. Or you don’t have to drive the newest model vehicle, or own the latest gadget to revolutionize the world.

If you seriously want to design a passionate marriage, you’ll spend some time with a sheet of paper or create a spreadsheet and write down everything you’d be willing to give up. Next to each item you could write down how much money, time and energy you’ll save by eliminating the listed possession, task, role, obligation. After you’ve completed this process, get with your spouse and create a list together.

After your lists have been created, it’s time to take out your core value list and do some dreamlining.

This involves writing down what you’d like to have, be or do in life. Anything goes. Dream a little. Then put a dollar value associated with each item. The idea behind this step is to help you get a more accurate idea about living some of your dreams. And again, anything goes at this point. Dream a little together. Dream a lot.

After you’ve completed these two things together, now you can start game-planning together what’s next. I’m interested in what you come up with. Please put them in the comments below. Your dreams will help spur on the dreams of others.

Have fun!

ABOUT THE WRITER

Corey is the editor of Simple Marriage as well as a licensed marriage & family therapist. While he has a Ph.D. in Family Therapy, he only occasionally likes to be called doctor. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe so you don't miss any future posts.