Creating the Marriage of Your Dream: Lesson One

Related Content

• Lesson Two
• Lesson Three
• Lesson Four

The Courage to Be You

By Rabbi Pamensky

The foundation of any relationship is constant growth. The first step is each spouse's commitment to their own personal growth.

Life Lesson: Complacency is Mediocrity.

What is a life well lived? How does one examine a successful life's journey?

Imagine living in a toxic dump, where pollutants are seeping into your body from every pore. You realize that you are not so healthy, so you decide to begin an exercise program. You resolve to take up jogging around the neighborhood. This would be ridiculous! Until you remove yourself from this harmful environment, the jogging will just exacerbate your condition.

This is also true in relationships. Trying to create a peaceful relationship with your spouse or your children while your mind is constantly stressed, fearful or anxious, is almost impossible. The way you relate to your spouse is always a reflection of how you are relating to yourself.

When couples come to me for counseling, invariably the first session is filled with blame; both of them blaming each other for the downfall of the relationship. Blame is the classic way of deflecting taking responsibility for your own actions. When you find yourself blaming your spouse, stop and ask yourself this question:

"Why am I choosing to get upset because of their actions?"

Since when did you abdicate the power of your emotions to your spouse? You do NOT have to react this way, you really don't. You could respond with amusement, pity, curiosity or humour. Why anger and stress? This, of course, is also very true when dealing with our children.

A life well lived is a life lived every moment. When you remove yourself from the present and obsess over the past (which no longer exists) or worry about the future (which has never existed), you are missing the wonderful opportunity of "now".

A peaceful mind is a mind that is present. All of your stresses and fears (our toxic dump) lie in your thoughts and mind. They are only as real as the power that you give them. If you take your attention away from them and focus your thinking on what you are doing right now, you will feel the incredible joy of the freedom of just living.

Your own personal growth is your commitment to your own inner well-being and peace of mind. You must nurture yourself before you can nurture others. A woman recently contacted me because she was feeling like a wreck. I quickly determined that she was giving herself away, bit by bit, to her husband and children. At the end of the day, there was nothing left for her. After a few years of this, she was just going through the motions in her life. She was feeling numb and on autopilot. Her zest for life had slowly extinguished.

The first thing we did was create a healthy schedule for her. We made sure to incorporate enough sleep, three healthy meals (not eaten on the run) and an exercise schedule. Just these changes alone made a huge change in her well-being.

We then discussed how to be totally present in the here and now, so that every person at the moment that she was with them got her full attention. Her husband became less withdrawn, and her children started to make less demands on her. Things were flowing smoother in her life because things were flowing smoother in her mind.

The first lesson you must model for your children is that true happiness is a choice to live life from the inside out. Your outer world is always a reflection of what is going on in your mind. The success in your relationships is dependent first on the loving and respectful way you treat yourself.

To be at peace with others is impossible if you are constantly having conflicting and fighting voices in your own mind. Inner peace takes commitment and effort. You must constantly rattle yourself out of your complacency and inertia, because this is the surefire path to mediocrity and unhappiness.

Model your commitment to your own inner well-being and your relationship with your spouse and children will reflect your inner peace and love.