Working with Your Spouse
Editor’s Note: This is guest post from Julie Magro of Boardroom Couple.
Do you work with your spouse? My husband and I happen to work during the day together, but I am not referring to that kind of work. I am asking if you and your spouse work together to achieve your dreams?
- What are your dreams as an individual?
- What are your dreams as a couple?
- Have you and your spouse mapped out a plan to achieve these dreams together?
In organizations, it is fairly well established that to achieve a desired goal everyone must work together to be successful. Yet in our own families we often fail to set and work toward goals with our spouse. For a long time husbands and wives didn’t need to set a common long-term goal, because it often was just one thing, survival. I am not suggesting we move back to a time when every family toils for unspoken survival, what I am suggesting is that couples should not let their goals remain unspoken and assumed.
Setting goals with your spouse will not happen overnight. It will take time to determine your individual and joint goals. Incidentally, if you haven’t read Corey’s Simple Marriage book, I think you will find it tremendously helpful in laying the groundwork for successful goal setting. Think about what you both desire. What goals you can set for your finances? For your children? For your relationship? For your home? For your health? For your spiritual life? Once you have determined your goals, get to work.
When you think about how to implement your goals with your spouse, think about how a team at your work, school or church would work to achieve a new goal, and do the same. Usually they:
- Write it down so everyone knows about it.
- Communicate about it. There are memos, emails, phone calls and text messages to communicate what needs to be done, who is going to do it, when it will be done, and notification when it is completed.
- Get outside professional help where needed. Maybe you need to hire a financial planner, or a personal trainer or a house cleaner to achieve some of your goals.
- Value feedback and act on it. As you work toward your goal, gather the successes, failures and changes in your situation and make any needed changes to your implementation.
- Celebrate. As you begin to inch closer toward your end goal, celebrate the success.
When you begin to set and achieve goals with your spouse, you will realize just how much fun it can be to work together to achieve something great!
Julie Magro is the co-founder of Boardroom Couple, a site dedicated to helping couples manage the conference table to dinner table relationship while providing resources like the Free How to Build a Website Yourself Guide for the conference table side of these relationships.
This post was written by a guest author on Simple Marriage. If you enjoyed their work, please leave a comment and check out their site. Also be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future posts.7 Responses to “Working with Your Spouse”
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[...] post on A Simple Marriage. Aimed at busy moms, but good for anyone who needs better time management.Working with Your Spouse: Another great guest post on A Simple Marriage. Do you and your bride work together to achieve your [...]
Julie, my husband & I have been married for a long time and have accomplished many goals. On your list of the 5 methods to achieve goals, I hadn’t considered actually writing them down. That is a great idea and one that we will add to our little bag of tricks. Thanks for the nice post.
Beth
http://www.brthlamie.com
Beth, Thanks for the feedback. We have one of those photo memo boards on the wall of our home office where we both post our individual and joint goals. I have also heard of other people putting it on their bathroom mirror.
I write my goals down. I have a vision board, list of daily affirmations, and a list for career, spiritual, etc… But my husband is not really on board with the “couple/marriage goals”. We’ve talked about it before, but have made no steps to really get there. I’m going to pray and send him to check this post out.
My husband and I just recently began to share office space in our basement. He is working from home 1-2 days per week. I’ve my office here for a while, so it’s been somewhat of an adjustment to share the office space, nothing major, but certainly something to be discussed, so that we are on the same page when it comes to getting used to our work style and behaviors.
I will certainly the suggestions made above…thanks!
Angelica @ Modern Familia
Goal setting and achieving has been a great skill in our fledgling relationship. Gary and I were talking once about why things seem to change after people get married and I told him that I think it’s because after planning a wedding, if a couple doesn’t have more plans and goals, it’s too great a shift and all that exciting energy dies and then it’s such a bummer. We agreed it was very important to always have short term and long term goals and it’s served us well so far!
Mostly, we’re working on fitness goals right now. We sat down just yesterday and wrote down monthly goals and rewards for the next three months. I like knowing what he’s striving for so I know where to pay attention and apply a little more enthusiasm.
Your insight about the goal planning energy dying down after the wedding is a good thought, I think you are right. It is an easy trap to fall into. I think working with my husband has encouraged us to work together on our goals because our livelihood is so closely tied to everything we do, work or personal, that we are forced to continually have these conversations if we want our family to succeed.