Either way, there should be something that you and your spouse are trying to achieve through your marriage. That could be something as simple as staying married another year. Or it could be a more lofty goal, like positively impacting other marriages around you.
But once you’ve set goals in your marriage, how do you actually achieve them? How do you take them from idea to reality? Here are a few steps that you and your spouse can take to accomplishing your marriage goals.
Discuss Them
Believe it or not, it’s difficult to finish a goal you don’t know about. So if you have a goal for your marriage, but haven’t told your spouse (or vice versa), how do you expect for it to happen?
Having a conversation to decide what your goals are—for both the coming year and beyond—will help you both get on the same page. This discussion will also help you filter through which goals are actually realistic to achieve, and which are just pipe dreams.
Write Them Down
Once you’ve taken the time to discuss and decide your marriage goals with your spouse, write those goals down. As in, physically write each one down on a piece of paper. Because the act of actually writing these goals on paper will help show you’re serious about committing to them. Take that sheet of paper and put it in a place that you’ll both see it regularly—on the fridge, on your bathroom mirror, in your car. This will help you keep those goals top of mind and serve as a subtle reminder to continue working towards them through the year. Now, you may also want to transfer these goals to a digital format, too. Maybe it’s easier for you to remember them if you add reminders to your online calendar, or put them on a digital task list.These are perfectly fine options, too. But having the goals written on a physical sheet of paper will help to raise them above the clutter that comes with technology solutions.
Check on Them Periodically
Even if you have your goals in a place that you see them often doesn’t mean you’ll actually do anything to achieve them. After a few weeks of glancing at them taped to your bathroom mirror, they’ll probably become invisible. Just another thing to ignore.
So how do you make sure that doesn’t happen? How do you help these goals stand out during a long and busy year? Carve out more time to occasionally check in with your spouse on your progress. Go ahead and schedule a few meetings now to discuss this during the year.These check ins could be monthly or quarterly—however often you think is realistic to helping you meet these goals. Scheduling them ahead of time helps make sure they actually happen.
This may sound too corporate to you, but I’d argue that businesses are usually better at finishing goals than most marriages. Even if marriage goals are more important.
Give Yourself an Incentive
For some, the accomplishment of actually achieving the goal might be motivation enough. But most of us aren’t like that. We need another reason to keep us focused on the goal in mind. How can we encourage ourselves now to make the goals happen?
What goals do you have for your marriage?