What I Have Learned In My First Year Of Marriage | Life Lessons to Business Lessons | Lifestyle Blogger
The Caroline Doll, CEO of POSH PR®, shares a few life lessons one year of marriage has brought to her life and her business! One thing? Focus on the haves, not the have-nots!
On Monday, my husband, Costa, and I celebrated his birthday and our first year wedding anniversary on a cruise to the Bahamas! It is so funny to look back on the difference a year can make, and the different person you become as a wife. In today’s blog, I wanted to share three life lessons I have learned over the past year. And, as most essential truths prove to be, they are applicable to every aspect of life, from relationships to business!
Happy wife, happy life? Not quite so.
You know how people say, “Happy wife, happy life?” Going into marriage, sure. That may have sounded ideal to me. But after a year of being in this partnership, I have an entirely different perspective.
On the cruise, we played a couples game with one prompt asking, “Who’s been married the longest and what is your secret? The veteran wife answered, “I tell him what to do and he does it!” This was received with a laughing applause I just couldn’t contribute to! “What’s wrong with me?!,” I thought. “How come women loved that?!”
A successful marriage, to me, possesses a shared understanding that neither person is perfect, and therefore neither person possesses sole power over the other. Instead, you both acknowledge that each person falls short, and can only grow toward wholeness if your focal point is God. The secret to success? God is what binds us; He is our foundation. People tend to think dating is the time to build a strong foundation.
I respect my husband. I respect who he is as a man who knows that it is by grace, alone, that he moves forward through every day, good or bad. In respect, we choose to live in that grace, together.
Don’t assume your husband is a mind reader.
I now tell Costa to bring me flowers.
I think a lot of us girls tend to dream up this man who can read our minds. Who knows exactly when we want flowers or knows what questions to ask and when to ask them. He doesn’t exist, dolls.
I can’t stress enough the value in honesty and open, and even over-communication. Really, over-communication is just good communication in disguise.
In business, I tell myself to put my employees in roles where they will thrive. Set them up for success. I want to do the same for my husband. I tell him what is on my mind or what I want to talk about, and he listens, readily. Instead of pouting that he did not ask how my day was, thinking I am the better spouse for wanting to know and asking how his day was — I start the conversation! (Yes, sometimes I do still pout. But starting the conversation is so much better than holding resentment for a conversation that was never had!)
Focus on the have’s not the have nots.
As opposed to focusing on what I don’t have in Costa, I try to focus on what I do have with him.
Words of affirmation is my love language. Costa is a man of few words. Of course I would love to be lavished with compliments on the daily. But instead? I have a man who fully supports my dreams and wants to do whatever he can to make sure my business can flourish. I have a man who wants half of his next house to be his wife’s office space. I have a man who doesn’t know the slightest thing about professional photography, but who went out and bought a professional camera and tried to teach himself how to use it when POSH PR® was photographer-less.
As in most things in life, sweet dolls. Marriage is about what you put into it, not what you get out of it.
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