What do you do when you don’t like your spouse (but love them)? (Episode 82)

You love your spouse, but do you like them?  Any one can find moments in their life when they love their spouse, but are having trouble liking them! Having these happen briefly are a normal part of living with another human. But, if this persists, it is a sign that we need to take a closer look at our relationship and get some tools to help build a more fulfilling life and relationship.  Brent and Janis explore how this happens and how we can actually make changes in our attitudes and interactions that can add liking to loving your spouse.

Transcript:

Welcome to Life and Love Nuggets, where licensed therapists Brent and Janice Sharpe share how you can thrive in your life, your love, and your relationships. Hello, friends. Welcome back to Life and Love Nuggets. We're glad that you're with us again. We're gonna look at a interesting topic, something we come across a lot in our work as marriage counselors, and we're kind of titling this, what do you do when you don't like your spouse? You find yourself not liking your spouse, but you love them. So what do we do about that, and is that a thing? Well, you know, in all the years that we've done marriage counseling, we've heard a lot of couples come in and say things like, we love each other, but maybe we've grown apart from each other, or we love each other, but we just can't get along.

We seem to argue all the time. Or maybe we love each other, but we just can't communicate, which usually means my spouse can't communicate, but they're just not saying it that way. So a lot of times, I think you do, I do, I'll say, you love each other, but do you like each other? And sometimes there's like this long pause or deafening silence, and I'm like, okay, well, we can work on that. Other times, we'll have couples that will laugh and go, yes, we do like each other and love each other at the same time. And those I find are usually the ones that don't take quite as much work. We have to work on some things, we have to get some patterns going, but they're not the ones that you have to do the deeper foundational work with.

You know, it's normal to be irritated with your spouse from time to time. I'm sure you've never experienced that, but most people experience being irritated with their spouse from time to time where things aren't going well in the marriage or something's been done or not done. And we start getting those non-liking feelings, which makes sense because we are humans and we are married to humans. And so we're gonna have some of those times from time to time. Yes, and of course, again, we've never experienced this. We're just sharing with you all what we deal with with clients, you know. I usually just say, your perceiver is off.

You're perceiving what I said wrong. And I just explain how you took it wrong and that usually clears it right up. Which could also be, I mean, you could also translate that as you're just broken. Well, but it's much nicer to just say your perceiver's off. Either one, I don't recommend it. It doesn't go well. So ultimately liking our spouse is important.

This is why we got married. We wanna be able to enjoy this journey. Yet there's some messages in our culture that have suggested that all you need is love. I think there's a song by that title. I won't sing it. Okay, if you're our generation, there's a movie that talks about love means never having to say you're sorry. And I'm like, and how is that working for everybody?

But we have to be able to get along. And we believe that we need to be able to like each other most of the time. There's gonna be times where yes, irritations are gonna happen there. So this idea of friendship even is one of the best signs of a healthy marriage. Studies show marriages are healthier and happier if you like each other. Unfortunately, life stressors, jobs, kids, sleepless nights, financial stresses, or just getting into the rut, the mundane, everyday life can cause us to lose our liking of each other. And I think we found that most couples still need tools no matter what.

Most couples need some kind of habits or tools to help their marriage grow stronger, whether they like each other or not. But those that don't like each other, or if they don't know if their partner likes them, it's like, well, I like him. I don't know if he likes me. We really have to work on rebuilding some foundational things that are there to help them really grow. A lot of times it's because they build up resentment. They've swallowed things for too long. They're like, yeah, I can put up with that.

I can put up with that. So they've built resentment and they haven't communicated some of the needs that they have. But we all have to work on some foundational tools in our marriage. And as we talk about all of this, remember the principles involved in this are that feelings follow behavior. The feelings, when we have that I don't like you so much kind of thing, it's because the behaviors have changed. And most everybody started out liking each other or we wouldn't have gotten married in the first place. And so somehow the behaviors of how we're treating each other, what's going on in the relationship has changed.

Therefore, that irritation sets in or those, again, that feeling of I don't like you so much sets in. Resentment, that kind of thing. So one of the first things that we work on with couples is how to value and affirm their spouse. Because most of the time when people don't like each other, they've gotten out of the habit of really being appreciative and really affirming their spouse. They tend to take them for granted and they end up becoming roommates or co-parents or co-home owners, easy for me to say. They live in the same house but they just don't feel connected and that can cause that extra irritation. So what happens that causes us to not like this person sometimes that we really do love?

Again, we hear a lot of that, that I really do love them but just they're driving me crazy. And so the first one is that we've lost focus. You referenced that, that we are dwelling on the negatives instead of the positives. And so we found, we kind of coined this term, the 90-10 lie that affects all of us. And this seems to be what we tend to slip into. And so most people marry somebody, initially we think, oh my gosh, I have found the one. I mean, this is everything I've ever been looking for, which is extremely idealistic to think that a human, one human could be a hundred percent of everything we're looking for is really just not possible.

So don't want to forget premarital couples listening to this, we don't want to break your bubble here but the reality is we're going to marry somebody that's about 80 to 90% of everything that we would hope for which leaves 10 to 20% of what we would like, they don't have. Now as marriage counselors, we try to help people develop some of those things if possible. So we try to help people go from 75 to 78, to 80 to 82 to 85, but it's never going to be a hundred. And so that leaves this gap of what I wish isn't going to be there. And that sets us up. Now this affects all of us in some way because there will then be people that we will encounter in the world that will have that 10 to 20%. And if we're not careful, our focus can slip to that.

Gosh, I wish they were more like that. And when, even though it's only 10 to 20%, if you don't have it, it feels like 50%.

It feels like 80%. And so we just have to realize this is a thing. This is a real phenomenon. And how do we manage this in the right way? Now this affects all of us on a continuum. The low end of the continuum is kind of what we're talking about today that I just kind of lose my like and I get a little more irritated. And so, and it really is more of an attitude thing.

I don't really say anything. I don't really do anything. I just internally have kind of some negative feelings. Then you move up the continuum a little longer and then I now start picking at you. You know, I start correcting or wish it could be more like this or I wish this was like this or whatever. And then what we deal with a lot of course is you go up to the high end of that continuum and it's I can't live without that 10%, without that 20%. And a person goes after that.

They find somebody that's got that and they go after that. And unfortunately it's again, very tunnel vision.

It's not objective. It's I just want that 10%, 20% and they get out there. And yes, I may have gotten the 10% or the 20 but then I, this person will never be the 80 or 90%. They're never gonna be the parent of my children. They're never gonna be even some of the kind of core qualities and so forth that this other person has, my spouse. And so we have to just recognize that how do we guard our hearts here and recognize that this will impact us. And so we just encourage you to begin to, you know, an application or a practical step here is just begin to look purposely for the positives.

What are the good? What are the qualities that I was attracted to in the beginning? What are those, what's the 80 to 90%? And I even have some couples go, but what if it was never 90%? What if it was never 80%? Maybe it was always 50% or whatever. And, you know, we do kind of rewrite history a little bit.

Especially when we're irritated with our spouse. And I say, you know, reality is you thought it was, you saw all this stuff in them that you so highly valued. I know it's all been poisoned a little bit because of certain other things, but look back to what were those things that I really was drawn to? And as we begin to recognize those things, do we ever say those? Oftentimes we don't say it. We just assume that they know that we love them. Well, do they?

And so the idea is how do we focus on the positives? How do we focus on the strengths? And how do I keep practicing that, keep purposely refocusing on that? And when I see them do those qualities, say it. You know, begin to speak that. There's something that's very life-giving about just, even if it's a faith statement right now, believing in something you can't yet see, where you're, I see this in you, I know this in your character, I appreciate and value this about you. It really does bring life into the relationship. And so what tends to happen is we start focusing on the negatives and then we don't really bring those things up.

We just get a bad attitude and we get kind of passive-aggressive about it and get quiet and cold and distant, which is all just such a killer. So just like having a thankful list is a good mental health practice for us just as individuals, where I am just stopping and what am I thankful for? And remind ourselves of that. This is the same kind of thing. What am I thankful about them? And so what the point is, is whatever you focus on determines your attitude. If you focus on the negatives, you're gonna have a bad attitude.

If you focus on the positives, you'll have a good attitude. Philippians talks about that. Think on those things that are good and pure and lovely and of good report. And the peace of God is a result of that. And so it really is choosing to refocus our attention. And it's easy to not like someone when you don't feel appreciated or you don't feel valued. If you don't think they noticed what you're doing for good, then it's easy to get some irritation towards them.

It affects both sides. It affects, yes, yeah. Yeah, so most of us are working really hard on doing things. Most of us have a lot of things going on and both people and the couple are really working hard on things. But a lot of the things that our spouse is working on or doing are unseen. Sometimes we just have no idea what it takes to do some of the things that they're doing. I'm just like, we have our family joke of, if we had, if I die before you, Christmas is gonna be just a whole different ballgame.

I mean, it's not gonna be the same. You make Christmas amazing. I just think we should talk about that a lot. From decoration to present giving, none of that is really my gifts. It would probably be a little bit, I would try, but it would be pretty bland and boring. Just make sure you get out the Christmas sheets.

That's all I ask. That's right, yes. No, we joke that it would be gift cards and takeout food, which is fine, but we're different because I see you sometimes working on taxes, working on year-end reports and a lot of the financial things that you do. And I'm like, I would rather have someone poke me in the eye with needles than to do some of that. I just, I'm sure I could do it if I needed to. But I don't ever want to, unless I have to. So oftentimes we don't notice those things or we don't take the time to thank the other person for that.

So it's just expressing gratitude. Thank you for doing that. Thanks that I don't ever have to worry about some of that stuff because you take care of it. I like the way you keep things orderly and the way you do things. So it's expressing that gratitude. Sometimes we lose some liking when the other person has done something or not done something that we want them to and we develop an attitude. It's that he should know that's what I want.

She should have known I would never want that. But you know, we're two different people. Even as long as we, you know, in May we'll be married 47 years. And as long as we know each other, we still don't have the same brains. We still don't fully know each other. And so we have to communicate those. And if we can't communicate and work through some of these things, we're gonna build that resentment.

And when we have resentment, we pull away. And the distance between us gets greater and greater and greater. So we deal with, you've kind of already said it, but we deal with some false beliefs that we have of, again, if you really loved me, you would know what I need. And I don't know how we could possibly, you know, unless we do brain transplants, there's no way you could totally know what another person needs. And people just let stuff fester. They just let unresolved issues sit. Now, they may flash and argue about them for a little bit and then they pull away from that and then they just don't deal with them.

Stuff it back in the box. Yeah, and so we find the number one reason for lack of emotional intimacy is unresolved conflict. So if we're coming together and we're bumping heads, nobody likes that. Nobody likes the negative feeling that has. So people tend to just pull apart from each other and it goes unresolved, which creates more and more distance, more and more roommates, you know, kind of feeling. And so we tell people, if you don't know how to, we've got to talk about stuff, but if you don't know how, get some help. It is the most underdeveloped skillset, I believe, that we have relationally in our culture because we're not supposed to need to do it.

Because we fell in love with each other, we're really not supposed to have conflict, which is ridiculous. When you put two humans together that are totally different and we are drawn to somebody that usually is quite different than we are for good reasons because there's a strength in that difference. So conflict is going to happen, you know, but we're scared of it. And so we just let it go undealt with. And so get some help, get some coaching, get some training. It can really turn things around significantly. And so- Yeah, one of the things that I think I've seen, that I think you've seen, is sometimes we don't like our partner because our life hasn't turned out the way we thought it would be.

It really is a kind of grief. But it's, when I met you, we were going to be missionaries. And now, you know, we were going to save the world. We weren't actually. Well, no, we weren't. But yeah, we've heard that story though. Yes, over and over again.

Yeah, remember I'm the one that doesn't do camping. But I thought we were going to be missionaries and now we're in boring old jobs or we're in regular jobs. We're not changing the world. Or I thought we were going to have a big family and we ended up with two or one or whatever. I thought I'd be a stay-at-home mom. Or I thought I'd be able to finish my degree after we were married.

And neither of those happened. Those are the things that can cause that resentment. But it's grief. It's not, oh my gosh, you caused this to happen. It's grief. And we have to acknowledge it as grief. Which is the vision of what I thought was going to happen.

The ideal isn't ideal. It's way down here someplace. The real is messier than that. And the difference between that is like a death. That's why we call it grief. Most grief in our life is the loss of a dream or the loss of an ideal. And so that's happening a lot for couples.

And it's hard because it's not as tangible as I lost a person. It's a grief that's there. And so sometimes it goes so underground that not only does the person themselves not acknowledge it, but if they try to share it with their spouse, their spouse is like, so what?

This is how things work out. Get over it. So it's allowing yourself to experience that grief. To not let your grief spill all over each other so you're blaming the other one for it. But saying this is a real loss for me. This was something that I'm trying to deal with or I'm coming to terms with. Dealing with grief is very undeveloped in our country.

We're not good at grieving. We've talked about that in past podcasts. But most people are dealing with unresolved grief and they need to share it and work through it. Now, you can't say to your spouse, yeah, well, you just need to work through that. That's where we go back to your favorite word is validating. We need to be able to share with our spouse and be validated. But we have to be careful how we express that.

So if it's something like, I'm realizing that I didn't have as many children as I wanted because you thought we should do this and this and this. That's not sharing our grief.

That's placing blame. We want to share a real honest feelings and be able to validate one another. Because as I said, we all have some degree of grief. At this age, I thought we would be able to travel more. I thought we'd be able to do this and get it instead of blaming the other person that you've not provided that or, you know, whatever. It's just I'm just sad about that and learning how to sit with each other and just I'm so sorry. And that actually is healing to be able to be a safe presence in each other's life that they can bleed and I can be with them and not fix them and not fix them.

But we're not bleeding on each other, you know, in the anger reactions towards each other and so forth. Absolutely. So another way that we kind of lose our like is that we've become roommates. We just turned into old married people, which is not what we plan to do, you know, and we don't do dating kinds of things anymore. We don't do boyfriend girlfriend kind of things anymore. Again, remember, feelings follow behavior. And so the behavior during courtship was dating and courting and sending each other notes and, you know, showing up for fun events and surprising them with all these kind of things.

And then if all that changes, the feelings will change. And again, it's not rocket science. I'm not saying it's simple to do, but it's it's it's not complex. It's simple, but it's not easy. That's right. Yes. And so we get lost in the midst of sport of sporting events with our kids and doing homework with them. And and we're couples, you know, couples who don't even have kids that end up there in separate rooms all evening.

You know, one of them's watching some show over here, the other ones on the Internet in the other room. And and they're just very little connection beginning to happen. And even though they're in the same house. And so we got to pay attention to that. We got to realize that will have an effect. And so we can begin to purposely change those kind of behaviors and it will create more liking and more connectedness. But it is it has to be intentional.

You can't just go, well, maybe next year things will be better. We have to be intentional. It doesn't happen magically for sure. No. And and we have to talk about the distance that's developed, but not in a blaming way, in a way where we have plans. Many men and I'm that stereotypical because I am finding younger generations don't fall in the same male female categories that our generation. Completely. Not as completely. Yeah. They become deer in the headlights.

If you bring some men and some women bring up relationship issues, it's like, I don't know what to say. And if you say things like we never spend time together or you don't do thoughtful things for me, we're going to get rationalizing, denial and anger. But don't you appreciate that we have this, this and this. So people who communicate in order to solve a problem or to accomplish a task are going to struggle with this because it's going to be like, well, we need to do this and this and this. But it's not in a positive way. It's not an affirming way. So we have to watch how we share that with our spouse.

You know, when we say things like never, it's saying you failed at the task of marriage. You blew it. So we watch our words.

There's power in that. And I do think most women overall kind of have an edge on guys of knowing what it takes to have a good relationship. And so it's like they're born with a little bit of a chip in their brain, relational chip. And so it's always felt unfair to me. I've always envied the box that you have that you can put things in and that you don't ever have to think about it. But, you know, we we so often do thoughtful things for people that we work with, for our friends, for our kids. We put so much energy into that.

I think we most of us put a lot of energy into encouraging our kids, but we don't do that as much with our spouse. We tend to go, well, I'll take care of everybody else. No, we don't do that intentionally. But we put a lot of energy in other people and not in our spouse. And often to your point, we don't do it intentionally. It's just the demands of life. Kids will demand your attention and focus and your job will demand your focus and attention.

And so just realizing that the natural tendency is to begin to pull apart from each other and focus on those things. And if we are not practicing the muscle of pulling back towards each other, then we will find ourselves will wake up one of these days feeling very distant. Very. Yes. So we have to learn what each other needs. And really, in a sense, we have to teach each other what we need because we are different people. So it's this is what you need in order to feel loved and cared for.

This is what I need in order to feel loved. And I always say to couples, there's one person you need to learn out of all the seven billion. It really is just this one person that you need to learn how to love them in a way that's meaningful to them, whether you feel like it's a right need or they why do they need that or whatever. This is the person you picked. So this is the person I need to figure out. How do I love them in a way that's meaningful to them?

Yeah, yeah, that's good. So so we watch how we say it instead of saying we never spend time together. We may say something like, I'm not feeling connected right now or I'd love to do something fun with you. There's a concert or a game or a play that I saw that I think we would enjoy. It's offering those suggestions in a positive way instead of a negative way. And of course, if you're hearing your spouse say this, try very hard to not react negatively and go, oh, OK, they're communicating this to me in a positive way. So if that's a need that we have, we can work on that.

Yeah, instead of getting caught up that you're saying I failed, just, OK, how could we move forward and begin to change that? We can't change the past. We can argue about it all day trying to convince the other one to see it the way we see it, which keep trying that, guys, that'll never work. Or we can say, OK, how do we change that going forward? Now, we have exercises in our book, our podcast on how to reconnect everything from love nuggets to date night, couch time, affirming exercises, how to grieve in healthy ways, even how to resolve conflict. So so if you're new to the podcast and just know in the in the history here, there's all kinds of practical solutions to these things. As we go into this new year, we're just suggesting let's pay attention.

If we find ourselves in that, don't like them so much, you know, then how do we turn the tide of that this year? And then bottom line, maybe most important thing finally is we really need to look at ourselves because we can look at the other all day, even if I'm not as happy with you as I wish I would be. And sometimes that's I need you to do stuff you can't really even do. And it really is about me. It's a really about sometimes unrealistic expectations. Sometimes it's it's I have a certain need that is really my responsibility to me, but I'm trying to get it from you. And so we have to be honest and humble with ourselves and realize, OK, I do put a lot of energy into other things.

And so my partner could be missing it. And, you know, oftentimes we wait. Well, they haven't really been doing nice stuff for me. They haven't been really affirming me, so I'm not going to do anything nice for them or affirm them. And then it's a stalemate, you know. So what could I do to start this? How could I move towards them to just get this energized?

Sometimes people will go, you know, I'm doing all the giving. Well, if you've ever had a 15 year old daughter, you know what it's like to be in a relationship where you do all the giving, not trying to pick on them, but you can do nice things for them. Well, actually, some of our two and three year old toddlers, we have the same thing. You can do nice things for them and you get snippiness. You get a lack of appreciation and you feel like you can't do anything right. But you love her anyway. And so you keep trying, even if you feel like she hates you.

Or as one of my friends said, my daughter broke up with me and now I'm suddenly embarrassing or unwanted. But we keep trying and we keep loving that child because they're ours and because we care about them. We have to ask ourselves, do we do that with our spouses? Do we realize that they're stressed and maybe not as happy with the relationship or their lives right now, but they aren't saying anything. It's taking responsibility for our part and loving them, even when sometimes they don't feel as lovable. Now, I always go search my heart, help me love my partner with the energy that I put into my kids or my work. Sometimes we've talked about this before.

Sometimes it helps to get a picture of your spouse as a child to just go, OK, this is the little one within him or her. And so I want to treat them as loving as I would my kids. And then we have to realize sometimes, am I being that 15 year old that isn't grateful or that's critical and demanding? And have I lost my filter? Sometimes the way we speak to our spouses is just horrible compared to how we'd speak to anybody else.

Have I lost my filter? I'm nice to others, but I'm really not nice to my marriage partner. This is going to have an effect. In some ways, we need to be arrested, convicted of that and begin to move forward in different ways. If we recognize that the whole process of marriage is to becoming one now, some people are a little worried about that, that that means we're not our own person and that we're enmeshed in some ways. That's not what it's saying. We're still two whole, fully functioning individuals, but we're blending our lives together.

And so if that principle is that we're one, if you're mean to them, you're mean to yourself. And again, back to how's that working? And so we have to be honest with ourselves, search my heart. Oh, God, is there something I'm doing here that that is contributing to this problem? It's really it's a humility that we need to take on. And sometimes that's hard. OK, all the time.

It's hard to really sit down and take a look and saying, what am I not doing? How am I contributing to this problem? Am I the 15 year old? What am I doing and how can I change my behavior? You know, one of the things I encourage people to do is to to think about what are some things I've heard my spouse say over and over again that they want me to change and that it's in my power and it's reasonable for me to change. And I have to go. Have I ignored something that really would make a difference in our relationship or have I waited until they do something nice for me?

It's it's that kid in all of us that goes, well, I'm not gonna be nice to you until you're nice with me. But it's taking that step to say, what can I do to help the relationship? Now, I do have a caveat there and here, and it's if there's abuse, addiction, a lack of safety, infidelity or betrayal of any type, those are things that you can't handle on your own. Those are things that you need professional help for. You know, a lot of people beat themselves up because my spouse is an alcoholic or my spouse has a gambling addiction or some other kinds of things. When really the addiction needs to be dealt with first, people who come in for marriage counseling, we say we have to deal with addiction because it really is so essential to having a really healthy marriage. If you don't get with those, you can do a lot of changes, but it's not going to make any difference.

We have to get the health there. God wants us to live that healthy whole life, and it sometimes requires professional help for that. I tell people you can't do surgery on yourself. Sometimes you have to have that professional there to help you. Good book that I recommend if you don't know if you're in one of those situations that's abusive or addictive is the Emotionally Destructive Marriage by Leslie Vernick. She's got a lot of good things, but that's a good one that you can look at and go. Okay, is this just we've grown apart, or is there really some very destructive things in our marriage?

If we don't have those factors, if those aren't happening in the relationship, things that you really can't fix, you can't fix your partner's addiction. They have to own that, and they can't blame you for their addiction.

That never works. We're all unhappy, and really, we all own our own happiness, responsible for our own happiness. If I'm not happy in that way, and I'm trying to get that from you, that's not going to work.

I can't suck it out of you. Maybe we're missing a lack of purpose or a sense of fulfillment in our life, and you're blaming your partner for that.

Are we nitpicking? Are we being perfectionistic, expecting something that's not even reasonable? Are we comparing ourselves with others? Is there financial stress going on that we need to grab a hold of? Where does that come from, and what can we do about it? What's our responsibility? So that inward look again is what we're suggesting that's really critical. Yes. It's that, even are you parenting your spouse, trying to tell them what to do?

You should do this, and even this is how you should love me. But so much of it does come down to what are our words? How do we speak positive words? So we talked about kind of from a woman's perspective and from a man's perspective here. I think what I hear oftentimes from a woman's perspective is things like, why aren't you the spiritual leader of our home? Or you're not the spiritual leader of our home. Or I hear things like, I just want you to step up and be a man.

That never goes well. That is just not something that goes well. So inspiring. Exactly. Or why can't you be more like my dad or my brother? Or the guy next door? Or the soccer coach?

Why can't you be like that? Why do you have to be like this? That's never going to be productive. Right. And from a man's perspective it might be, you give all of yourself to the kids and don't have anything left for me. Everyone else gets the best of you and I get the leftovers. You act happy around everyone else and then you're always sad and depressed around me.

And so these are just killers. Your spouse is going to feel judged, worthless, like a failure. It will not motivate them. Criticism is never a motivator for healthy behavior. They will shut down. And so focus on what you can change.

How can I be happy in my life? Happy marriages come from two happy people. Are you doing what you need to find fulfillment, to become fully who God has made you to be? And then look at what it is you can reconnect in your marriage. What are some of the purposeful things that you can do? We talked earlier about being affirming. Write down the positives that you see and then say it to them when you see that.

Think about those things. Speak up in love. Don't just stuff things hoping they're going to change. Present it in a positive way but speak up. We see too many women especially that stuff it, stuff it, stuff it and then after 20 years they become the runaway wife.

It's like, I'm done, I'm out. And it leaves the husband and sometimes the other way around just going, wow, what happened? Spend more time together. I'm finding more and more couples are connecting a lot by walking every day. They, after work they get home, they walk every day, they get a chance to decompress and talk about the day and that's been positive. Set healthy boundaries. I have, and part of it's our culture that swears more but I have couples that have gotten in the habit of when they get mad they swear at each other or there's some other way that they're being disrespectful.

So we want to work on what is my behavior and read books together, listen to podcasts, find some things, find some ways that you can grow and you can connect. So once again in earlier editions of this podcast we've given some action steps really for all of these and so maybe go back and see if there's something that just you can grab a hold of. Now don't go back and try to do 10 things by the end of January or February. Grab a hold of something, you know, one thing that we could start doing and then maybe add something else to that. The thing is just don't let things happen. Don't let it just keep happening. Don't drift.

If we just keep doing the same old thing we're going to get the same old reactions and so take a hold of our lives. That's kind of always the potential we have in a new year where we're turning the page is that what could we take a hold of that could get a different outcome and recognize that if you're feeling this lack of like when people get there they get a little bit paralyzed because like well how can I ever get that back again because they felt like it was magical in the beginning so I guess I have to get just re-zapped, you know, with those positive feelings. No, you can actually cultivate it.

No zap required. No zap required.

You can actually build it and cultivate it and those feelings will follow different kinds of behaviors. So hold on to something and begin to start putting something new into practice. So for today, go in peace. Blessings as you go.