self-help – Bryan's Blog

What Rhymes With Husband?

Jaron and Christine just celebrated their first year of marriage. That made me reminisce about our first year of marriage, and what Lianne and I have learned over the course of 27 years. Idioms can be useful. For example, “Happy wife, happy life.” I admit to feeling kind of left out though, what does a happy husband get you? Another pithy saying is, “Marriage is a marathon, not a sprint.” Well, marathons are miserable. Similar to marriage, when I ran a half marathon all I could think was, “When will this be over?” 🙂

Of course, that’s not what the saying means. The idea is that marriage is something you have to commit to long-term, like a marathon. My first piece of advice is to determine from the start that you are dedicated to making the relationship work. Divorce is simply not an option. This is why my Indian friends with their arranged marriages have such low divorce rates. They expect to stay married. A lack of commitment is one of the leading causes of divorce.

Secondly, get your finances in order. Money problems lead to stress and tension, particularly when there are differing views on how to spend and save. If you are both spenders, God help you. 🙂 Set up a budget and if you need it, seek advice on how to save. If you are both savers, loosen up and have some fun every once in a while. If you are a mix, recognize the positives of both approaches and agree on a way forward. Both of you need to be invested in your financial decisions.

Which ties in to my third point. Marriage is an equal partnership. One spouse shouldn’t be in charge of all the decisions, neither should one partner give up and give in to what the other wants. That’s not a partnership, that’s a dictatorship. As couples we don’t have to discuss every choice in depth, but there should be some understanding about when a major decision needs to be agreed upon. For example, early in our marriage we decided to touch base whenever we had an expense over $100. When we come into agreement on major decisions we know that we are in it together. It also prevents any blame down the road on those rare occasions when things don’t turn out the way we expected. “That son was your idea, you deal with him.”

What is one major requirement for agreeing on something? You have to talk about it! Communication is critically important, but all communication isn’t created equal. Some of us aren’t good at it, while others are too good. I think that the key is to start from an attitude of love. When something bothers you, it is important to communicate it but to do so in a non-critical, loving way. The other half of that equation is that this requires the ability to receive criticism in a loving way as well. It is even more important to communicate the positives and this is so much more than simply saying the right words. Humans express our feelings with words, actions, touch, and smiles. Show your appreciation with more than just words. What does your spouse value? What is their love language? It could be words of affirmation, but it could also be acts of service or physical touch. It may not be natural for you but finding out what is natural for your spouse is key. Do that. To show my love for Lianne, I know she enjoys catcalls and a slap on the butt, for example, so I do that often. 😀 😀

My last piece of advice is to quit being selfish. Marriage and parenthood are the ultimate tests of selfless love. I give myself a ‘C’ on this one. The good thing about my grade is that we’re doing fine as a couple, but if I can improve to a ‘B’ or an ‘A’ we’ll be really rockin’. I have something to work on to make our relationship even better. Most of the times that we’ve made each other angry it’s been a result of selfishness. Our tendency as humans is to think of ourselves first, so we have to fight against that natural instinct and put our families above ourselves. I wanted to watch NCAA basketball non-stop during March Madness, and I did. So that’s an example of what NOT to do. Be better Bryan!

My goal in our relationship should be to make Lianne happy. I love her. That’s what I want for her. “Happy wife, happy life.” In the same way, it is what she wants for me. If we are both consistently trying to make each other happy, how can we fail? I still haven’t had any luck figuring out something that rhymes with husband though, so I’m settling for alliteration instead.

“Happy husband, happy home.”

Too Much Free Time

What’s the most useful thing you’ve done today? We have a lot more free time than our ancestors did. In Colonial times people worked from dawn until dusk every day. During the industrial revolution, factory workers logged nearly 70 hours per week. In modern times we work around 40 hours per week, and in some European countries, they’ve moved to 35 hours. It’s illegal in Italy to work more than 48 hours a week.¹ We don’t have to spend all of our waking hours struggling to survive, so what are we doing with all of that free time?

I spend some of my free time on family activities, some on working out, and a fair portion on social media, TV, and video games. A Nielsen study² in 2018 found that American adults are spending 11 hours per day consuming media. During the pandemic, we streamed media an average of 8 hours per day.³ As someone who enjoys chilling, I have to argue that this is way too much. Our minds and bodies are not engaged. We’re sitting on our cans like zombies, not connected with what it means to be human. It’s a form of hedonism, and it is draining our souls.

I was at an arcade, dominating some ski ball when I noticed a guy my age at a slot machine. It was dark in the arcade, but the glow from all of the games lit everything up with eerie, unnatural colors. I watched this grown man, gazing vacantly at the digital screen, playing slots. Pay, push button, stare. Pay, push button, stare. His face was illuminated by the bright blue of the display, washed out and emotionless like a corpse. Chills went up my spine as I imagined a dystopian future where our humanity was sapped by machines and we became addled soulless beings. Like that guy. Pay, push button, stare.

Folks, based on the studies I cited above, we’re already there and it is getting worse. Futurists predict that automation will give us even more free time than we already have. There’s talk of a universal basic income (UBI) to help those who are displaced from their jobs because of technological advances. What happens when we don’t need to work to survive? Where will we find purpose and meaning in life? If current trends are any indication we’ll fill our time by binge-watching all 9 seasons of The Office, again, for the 4th time.

I’ve found myself slipping into this consumer-centric life since the pandemic began. I used to work 50 hours a week and I was involved in all 3 of my kids’ activities, from sports to music. Now I’m working 40 hours a week, two of my kids are in college, and we’re still working our way out of virus-induced lockdowns. I have free hours to fill. This is a privileged place to be. I recognize that and I want to do something meaningful with that privilege. It is too easy to fill those hours by staying up late watching sports and playing video games. Sometimes I am that that zombie slot machine player. Pay, push button, stare.

I don’t want to be that guy so I decided to pick a few things to work on and to set some realistic goals. For example, I’m going to write a blog every week for the rest of 2021. I’ve got a schedule for getting Dad’s book completed. I’m sitting down with my brother to do our podcast more regularly. These are easy and obtainable goals that add some purpose to my hours.

I’m not just focusing on new projects though. As the lockdowns end, maybe we just need to reconnect with people. We now have family over for brunch every Sunday after church. Lianne goes on regular walks with new friends. We started meeting up with a local running club. One of the things that automation will never replace is relationships. Let’s strengthen them.

We should also stay engaged with our faith. Religion, in its purest form, gives us a deeper perspective about life and helps us cultivate meaning. When we see the world through the eyes of a loving God, we see His heart for others. Life is precious and we are connected with every living thing. We can find purpose in helping others and in caring for God’s creation.

Western society may be moving toward useless frivolities, but we don’t have to follow along. We can enjoy our free time without becoming consumed by consumption. Instead, we can put our free time to use by finding new tasks and new goals, we can foster relationships, and we can serve God by serving the world around us.

¹https://www.ilo.org/ifpdial/information-resources/national-labour-law-profiles/WCMS_158903/lang–en/index.htm

²https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2018/time-flies-us-adults-now-spend-nearly-half-a-day-interacting-with-media/

³https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/average-american-streaming-content-8-hours-a-day-during-covid-19-according-to-new-research/

No Regrets

Generally, I’m a laid-back sort of fellow. There are only a few things that make me angry, and I recently discovered one source of my anger for the first time. This thing can throw me into a rage, like Bruce Banner I become an irritable, discolored monster. The thing that triggers me is regret.

I absolutely hate the helpless feeling of looking back on a decision or a moment in my life and being unable to change it. Regret often manifests like a physical weight in the pit of my stomach. My typical response to feelings of regret is to shut them out. I don’t want to think about it or hear about it. Lianne will sometimes bring up something as innocuous as how we parented our children when they were younger, “We should have made them do more chores.”

It’s irrational, but when she says those types of things it makes me incredibly frustrated. I think the source of my anger is twofold. First, I take any feelings of regret personally. If I regret the past it means I should have done something differently to prevent it, but I didn’t. I failed. Second, there’s nothing I can do now about that situation. It is done. I can’t fix it. So why waste time and energy thinking about it?

Many of the definitions for regret use the word “wish” in them. Regret is “remorse about something that one wishes could be different.” What is the point of that? Wallowing in regret exacerbates the negative feelings, and if we stay in that place it never leads to anything better. This ties into my previous post about focusing on the things we can control.

Regret is not a proactive feeling. It is situated in disappointment, sorrow, even remorse. It merely wishes things were different without an act to cause a difference.
Monica Johnson

Regret is also backward-looking. You won’t get very far if your focus is on the rearview mirror. This is one of the ways regret leads to discontentment. We have a sense that things could be better, so we become unsatisfied with the way things are. Instead, we should use regret in a positive way. The key is to recognize it and figure out how to learn from the past in order to improve the present and the future.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
Henry David Thoreau

I think I’m a little too quick to smother my negative emotions with denial and a cheesy joke. Emotions are useful tools … ALL emotions. Labeling them as “negative” isn’t the right perspective. A negative emotion makes us feel bad in the moment, but it serves a greater purpose. We shouldn’t park ourselves in a pool of regret. We’re likely to drown. We shouldn’t jump out of the water and start drying off immediately either.

We run into difficulty when our emotions are in control and we never let go of the regret, but healthy emotions help us improve. They lead to personal growth. We don’t like feeling regret, so we’ll take steps to prevent that decision from happening again. Maybe regret can lead us to reconcile with someone we’ve offended or to think twice before making that large purchase. For this reason, it can be therapeutic to name the regret, call it out, and spend some time with it. Then recognize that nothing can be done about that past decision, but we can surely change our future.

Wisdom To Know the Difference

My daughter, Ava asked if it ever bothered me that I was short. I thought for a moment and honestly replied that it didn’t. I will joke around about it. My wife says I’m 5’6″, but I know for certain that I’m 5’7″. I recently went in for a physical for the first time in 25 years. The nice, elderly nurse wrote down my stats. I was excited to finally have proof that I was, in fact, 5 feet and 7 inches tall. I couldn’t wait to tell Lianne. The nurse was holding the chart so that I couldn’t quite see it. I had to ask her how tall I was. She replied, “5 feet, 6 and a half inches.”

I teasingly gave her a hard time, “C’mon!! You couldn’t just give me that extra half an inch?”

She looked at me with a flat stare and said, “I already did.”

Joking aside, my height has never been something I think about. Neither is my hair, or lack thereof. My Dad started losing his hair when he was young. Mine was getting thin in my early 20s. I had already bamboozled Lianne into marrying me, so what did I care? I’m vain enough to know that a comb over is a no-go. Like Dad used to say, “God only made a few perfect heads. The rest He covered with hair.”

Fortunately, I have a perfectly shaped head. It’s Jordan-esque, really. So I started shaving my head when I was 24 years old and I’ve never looked back.What else was I gonna do? Which is the heart of the matter … What else was I gonna do?

Height, hair, handsomeness. Those are things I can’t really control. Why should I take credit for my beautiful eyes and perfectly symmetrical facial features that make all the ladies swoon? In the same way, why should I fret over my stature or defective follicles? Instead, I should focus on the things I CAN control.

The Serenity Prayer is used in 12 step programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. That’s a more serious concern than my receding hairline, but the prayer is apropos.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold_Niebuhr

I can change how I treat my wife and children. I can change what I eat and how much I exercise. The list of things I DO have some control over is infinite, so I’ll focus on those and let everything else go. I made a poor choice when Lianne asked me about the jeans she was wearing. I answered with a frank assessment, “Eh, they look OK.”

That was a poor choice. Can I go back and change it? No. Can I learn from it? Yes. I can give those jeans to Goodwill and then steadfastly refuse to take the bait when asked anything about appearance from a female member of my family. That’s the lesson I’ve learned. Always forward. That’s my motto.

When Ava asked me about my height I recognized that I already have some serenity with the things I cannot control. Our self-esteem is often tied to outward appearances, and we spend far too much emotional energy on those appearances. Instead, let’s identify the things that we CAN control. This is the key, we first need the Wisdom to know the difference between what we can and cannot change.

This is how we grow and mature as individuals. First we define what we can control, and then we exercise courage and discipline to initiate the change in our lives. So I’ve got a simplified 2 step program.

Step 1: The wisdom to know the difference between what I can and cannot change.

Step 2: The courage to change.

It sounds easy, but there wouldn’t be life coaches and self-help programs if that were true. Despite the challenge, it is worth it. Our happiness is worth it.

My name is Bryan. I’m 5 feet 7 inches tall.