Communication is Key

I like to think of myself as a Master Planner: I have a pretty good understanding of my husbands’ schedule (as ever-changing as it is), my schedule, our dogs’ needs, vacation schedules, etc.  When I make an action plan, I usually take everything into consideration, I try and look at it from all possible sides and like a box of 500 puzzle pieces, dump it out and try and make it work.  This was the case earlier this week.  I have a couple of opportunities for conferences abroad this year (one in the summer and one in the fall) as well as vacation goals as a family.  So, in true fashion, I dumped all the pieces out and went about sifting through them until I could find a way that we could experience all the events this summer/fall season and not have to sacrifice or miss much.

 

My husband is in and out of the field, so when he called that night, at 10pm, I couldn’t wait to tell him my brilliant plan that I was super proud of and have him remind me of what a great wife and human I am.  Well, that isn’t really what happened….at all.

 

Throughout our relationship, we have always communicated well (we learned to), and my husband relies on my ability to handle things when he is unavailable.  It works!  However, the thing I usually forget, is that sometimes my husband likes to be involved in the planning of things.  So, whereas I took his schedule into consideration when I made the Master Plan for our summer/fall, he likes to ask questions, give his input, and be involved.  

 

Not going to lie, I was a bit annoyed that he didn’t just hail my brilliance, and he was a bit annoyed that I was a bit annoyed with his questions.  Instead of continuing to grind our way through it, we tabled this talk: it was after 10pm and I am not at my best that late, and he would be home in a day or two and we could hash it out then.  Perfect.

 

When he got home, we did talk it out: we talked about how he is frustrated that I have these great conference opportunities and he isn’t sure he will be able to attend both and support me like he wants, we talked about how we want to do vacations and places we want to go, we talked about how I wanted him to be impressed with my plan, we talked about it all. 

 

So, what is the point of my story?  

 

Sometimes you need to know when to hit pause on a conversation if it will only end up in an argument and talk about it when you can be face-to-face and not be so emotionally attached to the subject of the discussion (for me it was my plan, for him it was his ever-changing schedule).  It is easy to argue, and sometimes it’s good to get it all out, but it can also be more beneficial to prevent the argument and revisit the topic when you can communicate effectively without the added emotion.

 

What are some ways you have learned to communicate with your spouse/partner?

 

Time Management

I have always been under the assumption that multi-tasking was the way to be; I can focus on and complete multiple things at once and get twice as much accomplished in half the time.  Even if I am not performing multiple tasks at once, I am usually thinking about more than one task at a time.  I attended the Women's Assembly Zoom from Echelon Front this month and this was actually one of the things they recommended steering away from...color me shocked!  But why?  Why focus on one thing when I can focus on two?

One hostess of the Zoom talked about how she would have 15 things on her list to get done and only manage to get 3 of them accomplished; she couldn't believe it!  So she did an audit on her time and found that she spent the majority of her day wasting time versus actually getting after her to-do list.  She said that one of the reasons she wasted her time was that she wasn't prioritizing tasks, she was multi-tasking and trying to get everything accomplished at the same time.

This made sense to me and made me reflect on my own To-Do list that I have; and in thinking about priority, I re-wrote it to have the higher priority items towards the top and then rank the rest of the list.  Normally, I don't even list them numerically, I just put a dash and write and item and do that for the entire list.  Basically, all levels of priorities are a jumble and there wasn't any formal organization-everything was listed in the order it came into my brain.  

For this upcoming week, I am going to try and be more intentional with my To-Do list: I am going to break it down by day of the week and prioritize my items by importance and day.  This way I am not overwhelmed by completing all necessary and high ticket items on one day and fluffing the rest; my goal I to have more order and structure to my lists and therefore, less wasted time.  

We shall see how it goes! Does anyone else find that they get scattered when they try and multi-task?  Any other good planning tips?

For more information on the Women's Assembly, please check out their website here

When You Need to Detach

     One of the things my husband and I like to do together is listen to a book on Audible, either together or separately, and have discussions about it.  The types of books he is drawn to are leadership books, books on strategy, and books by military leaders.  To be honest, I'm not super interested in battle strategies or recounts of success by military leaders (some, but not all) and he is not going to have any interest in my Outlander adventure; but, leadership is something that is critical in his line of work and something I hope to also have an impact in.  Leadership books it is!  

    We started with Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin and that was so good we moved right into Leadership Strategies and Tactics by Jocko.  His books were encouraging, motivating, eye-opening, and very pleasant to listen to (anyone who listens to audiobooks understands how important that is).   I was fascinated by his notion of "detaching" from the situation and immediately recognized it as something I do not do very well.

    I am an emotionally based person, I feel with my whole self, am very empathetic, and anyone who is around me can usually tell how I'm feeling by looking at me.  I wouldn't say emotions drive my decisions, but they are a factor.  Even with communicating with my husband, he detaches and focuses on the issue, and I don't quite operate that way.  After listening to Jocko's two books, I decided that this is something I wanted to work on; how to take a step back from the situation, and analyze it more critically versus emotionally.  

    I would be misleading if I said this is something that has been a snap, in fact, quite the opposite.  It is something that I actively have to incorporate into my life when situations don't go as I want them to or unexpected chaos pops up that I have to handle.  But, I do find that when I detach successfully, I find the mental energy spent on the angst of emotions actually goes into handling the situation itself.  In my goal of finding mindfulness and being resilient, this notion of detaching is something I am going to continue to work into my regime.

Do you detach?  Does it help you analyze situations more clearly?

*I have also enrolled in the Women's Assembly from Echelon Front (the organization Jocko and Leif have built) and they give a free one-hour seminar on different tactics once a month.  If you are interested, you can find their website here for more information*

What’s Your Love Language?

Until a few years ago, I had never thought of love languages as anything, but the languages derived from Latin such as Spanish or French (these are in fact romance languages, not love languages…the things you learn).  It turns out love languages is not only a book, quiz, and fascinating topic, it is an eye-opener.

 

Being the constant learner I am, I made my husband and I take the love language quiz (I googled one online, there are several).  My highest score for Receiving love was Quality of Time and my highest score for Giving love was Acts of Service.  What an epiphany!  I thought back to the little squabbles and tiffs my husband and I have had over the years and some of them now gave me so much clarity, it was like I was just given an answer key to a test.  I would always get upset when he would be preoccupied with work when we spent time together, or when we had intended to do lunch, but our lunch spot was closed, and he decided to just head into work.  It wasn’t the actual lack of lunch that bothered me or that he would get calls when we were together, but it was the quality of the time we spent together that bothered me.  When I explained this to him, he too had an epiphany.  

 

Part of having mindfulness in your relationship is understanding what makes your partner tick and love languages are part of that tick.  Now that my husband knows that I value quality of time, he can plan/act accordingly to make sure I don’t feel slighted or dismissed.  His highest score for Receiving love is gifts, so I can drop off his favorite snack at the office or grab something I know he likes to satisfy his love language.

 

Knowing your own and your partner's love language is not meant to stress you out, it is simply another tool to put in your toolbox to NOT stress you out.  This is simply another way to know your partner and understand why they get upset over certain things or why they seem to appreciate random things a little extra.  After all, if knowing your partners love language eliminates some stress or unwanted tiffles; isn’t that worth it?

 

Do you know your love language?

When Partnerships Need to be 80/20

Relationships are supposed to be 50/50; you each put in the work and dedication to make the relationship bloom and last.  But there are times when putting in your 50 is just not possible; I’m talking about when life is throwing you all kinds of curveballs and you are at your wit's end.

 

Every relationship goes through periods of growth and expressing to your partner that you are running on empty presents an opportunity for growth.  When I am overworked, overwhelmed, and feel like I am barely treading water, I will tell my husband “I need you to be 80% right now” and he responds with a “Not a problem, let me see your list and what I can take off it”.  This was not always an automatic response as we had to learn it, I had to figure out how to tell him I needed help and he needed to figure out how to ask me what I needed without me adding that to my list to also figure out.

 

It sounds simple, but it's oddly complex.  Asking your partner to take up some of your slack until you get your bearings is uncomfortable.  I hated asking my husband for help at first because he also has a job, demands on his time, and a long to-do list.  But I was not being a good partner if I couldn’t be honest with him about what I needed and I realized that feeling guilty for that was a complete waste of emotion and a way for me to stay in my frazzled state.  My husband felt better taking a few items off my list and when I was able to breathe again, I would simply state “I’m good now, thank you for stepping in for me”.  There are times when he tells me that he needs me to be 80% and I am totally good with stepping in until he feels better.

 

You aren’t asking your partner to now be 80% of the relationship all the time but asking for help and being honest with what you need is the first step to feeling better.  Being a good partner means knowing what you need to get back to a calm state, and sometimes, that means being 80/20.

 

What are your thoughts on 80/20?

Communicating Effectively

Talking is easy, we do it on the phone, via text, in person, on Zoom, on social media platforms…you name it, we chat about it in one form or another.  But talking, texting, emailing, and posting is not necessarily the same as communicating. Yes, they are all forms of communication, but are they always effective uses of communication?

 

My husband and I have been together over nine years and in that timeframe, we have spent over 3.5 years apart due to his Army service.  When he deployed the first time, it was a whole new experience for both of us: he was 9 hours ahead of me in time, he was in a combat zone, we had no idea what deploying really meant, and we were just green.  We had the ability to talk on the phone only a handful of times on that deployment, the way we communicated the most was through Facebook Messenger (thank goodness for modern technology!).  However, how easy is it to misinterpret tone on a text or email?  For me, it was super easy!  I attributed so many emotions to his messages it wasn’t even funny, and usually not the ones he was actually feeling.  It was a learning experience for both of us in so many ways.  I learned how to ask him questions such as “I am interpreting you sounding like this, is this how you meant it?” or “Can you clarify what you mean by that?”.

 

Communicating effectively seems so easy but can be a bit tricky when it comes to interpreting or misinterpreting emotions.  Even when he is home, sometimes I double check to see if what I am hearing is actually how he means it and vice versa.  When you are feeling like you’re not communicating effectively with someone, you get annoyed, stressed, and upset.  Taking the time to check in and double check meanings can take some of that away and allow you to focus your energy on something else.

 

 

Does anyone have other ideas to help communicate effectively?