Are you creating your Best Life? Do you have a Life Vision? Do you have a Joint Life Vision? How do you know what you are working towards every day? Are you just focused on making ends meet, or are you working towards something?
Are all your choices in alignment with your values and creating your Best Life? Is all your effort put towards it? Or are you squandering your precious resources, your focus, energy and time? Becoming a strong partnership is key to creating your Best Life.
It is very common for people to not have a Life Vision and goals for the future, as is also very common for couples to not be on the same page about their future and working towards a joint vision together. Couples don’t usually have a Joint Life Vision.
When couples don’t have a Joint Life Vision, they don’t have a North Star guiding their life. They don’t have a way to filter their actions, their activities, their habits, their routines, their lifestyle, their spending – all their decisions and approach to their relationship and their life.
A Joint Life Vision is the map to where you want to do, what kind of life you want to create. Not having one means you are banging around through life, creating by default, and possibly focusing on the wrong things.
Having this map, doesn’t mean the route is written in permanent marker, that you can’t take the scenery route here and there, or park by the side of the road every so often. Having this map, a Joint Life Vision, does mean you are going in the right direction and enjoying the ride.
Creating a Joint Life Vision is much easier to do when you are operating as a strong team, when you become a strong partnership… Partners that feel stuck and are pointing the finger at each other, that can’t get on the same page, who keep having the same issues and can’t get out of their own way, and who feel disconnected have a hard time with this.
Setting common goals, working towards them and collaborating is not easy to do with our partner if the rest of the relationship is off…
To create an awesome life, we need to have an awesome relationship… When our relationship is off, it is challenging for the rest of our life to feel right and be epic…
Where does this leave us in terms of creating our #BestLife? It means we have a dream, a Life Vision, and work towards it while we give our relationship a lot of TLC…
Here is a quick formula to wrap our mind around this:
👀 Have your own Life Vision, flesh out all the life areas and then focus on your top 3 💗 Always make your relationship part of the top 3 👏 Once you are in a good place with your partner, share your Life Vision and create a Joint Life Vision 📐 Align your whole life against this Joint Life Vision 🛠 Create systems with your partner for easy collaboration and a divide and conquer approach
What does it mean to align your whole life against the life vision?
That you spend time on activities that help you complete projects that flow from your goals
That you spend time on goals that move the needle forward in creating your life vision
Make the Baby Steps Count
What kind of habits and activities are we talking about?
Let’s say, that you are focusing on the 3 main life themes: Wellness, Connection and Success. You’d make sure that you have habits and activities in these themes (their related life areas), to accomplish goals in these areas and move the needle forward in creating your life vision…
This can look something like this:
🌟Wellness (Spiritual, Physical, Emotional, Mental): Meditation, Intermittent Fasting, Exercise, Reading >> For fitness, vitality, longevity, resilience and personal development
🌟Connection (Relational, Social): Check-In Chat, Delight Partner, Sexy Time, Fun Outing/Event >> For a radiant and successful relationship, and strong community
🌟Success –(Financial, Lifestyle): TimeMapping, Networking, Budgeting, Writing >> For wealth, social impact and great life
Making daily habits and actions of these is the easiest way to stay focused and cranking along…
In the daily routine is also where the managing the business of life, the domestic, personal tasks and projects, and other ventures and life projects happen, and which are best tackled in collaboration with your partner.
The divide and conquer approach and the synergy inherent in your partnership propels your creation and manifestation forward. This is how you seamlessly create your Best Life, your (Joint) Life Vision.
Collaboration FLOW
Here are some Collaboration Flow suggestions that work super well for our couples when they need support in this area:
💫 Bulk food shopping, grocery deliveries (sun, wed) – Keep a running shopping list to easily grab everything in one shopping event 💫 Laundry (sun, wed) – Throw in a couple of loads as needed (don’t do laundry every day, don’t let it pile up!) 💫 Food prep (sun) – Cook/bake a couple of things, cut up veggies and fruit – portion out and store (freeze if possible) 💫 Synchronizing Meeting (sun) – Have a moment on Sunday evenings to get on the same page about the upcoming week 💫 Check-In Chats (daily before or after dinner) – Have a moment to catch up on the day and get on the same page as needed 💫 Weekend Planning (thu) – Map out the flow, and plan the activities and fun for the upcoming weekend 💫 Integrating Meeting (sat) – Make time to meet to plan, discuss, share or what work on yourselves, the relationship, your finances, home renovations, and other projects
Creating structures, systems and automations makes it much easier to run a joint life freeing up time, energy and attention for Being and Enjoying.
Here is to your smooth, harmonious, and joyful home and family.
Here is to seamlessly creating your Best Life with your Partner!
Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
PS: APPLICATION – Consider where you have glitches in your weekly flow and collaboration with your partner and implement any Collaboration Flow suggestions that fit your needs.
🌟 Feel free to create your own. The key is to create an ongoing solution to address a need or recurring glitch…
Copyright (c) 2021 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
Sometimes we might get cranky, moody, impatient, and easily annoyed, and want to bite someone’s head off. Have you ever stopped to consider what is happening for you when you feel this way? You can probably guess that you are not well resourced, that you are running on empty.
Therefore, you don’t have much bandwidth to be tolerant, patient, understanding, flexible, compassionate, giving, nurturing, and loving. But did you know that we can fill our tank by being in Connection?
At my last yoga class, the instructor was so tuned in… She actually made reference to this concept. She said something to the effect of, We get cranky when we need connection. 🤯 I was so excited to hear this and other beautiful golden nuggets she had to offer. Inspiration and affirmation come in all shapes and when least expect it.
I teach this concept to our couples:
We don’t get annoyed with our partner’s imperfections when we feel connected.
When partners report their partner is really getting on their nerves, or that becomes apparent simply by how they share about how they are doing, it becomes obvious how disconnected they might be feeling…
Partners that are feeling connected get along much better. The little things don’t annoy them, they are more able to give grace, to focus on the positive, and to be more compassionate and generous.
But it is challenging to feel connected to our partner when we choose to look at them in a negative light, when we get in their circle (and become codependent), and our focus is “what about me?”
It is challenging to connect with our partner when we are being messy in how we show up to our interactions, and the rest of our lives…
So, this might seem like a Catch22. We need to feel connected to let go of annoyances, but we can’t connect because there are annoyances… Putting this concept together in this way, or having this logic or mindset, doesn’t serve us.
There is a better way of putting this together. We have the power to choose how we interpret things, what meaning we assign things, how we respond, how we show up, how we feel, what we focus on, and so on…
The empowered state allows us to see our partner with imperfections and all, and still think they are awesome. And still want to be with them. And still feel connected…
I get that this is difficult to do when we are running on empty… The littlest of things can grate on us. Some partners expect to get all their needs met through their partner. This is really a toll order and an unrealistic expectation… Something to be revisited immediately…
Therefore, it’s super important to replenish ourselves, to fill our tank, outside of our partner…
When we are resourced, we have more bandwidth that allow us the ability to choose to look at our partner in a much more positive light. When we choose our focus better, we are better able to overlook imperfections and see the Essence of our partner.
It is then much easier to connect with our partner when we don’t focus on their faults but focus on their awesomeness instead… AND, when we are connected it becomes easier to ignore their imperfections and not get annoyed. A beautiful Catch22 after all.
Connection to Ourselves
How do we resource ourselves to be able to do this? The answer still lies in being in Connection… But being in Connection with ourselves, with our Higher Self… The part of us that is one with the Universe, or our Higher Power.
This is the easiest and simplest way to recharge ourselves and fill up our tank! When we are in Connection with our Higher Self, we are plugged in, we are Charged. And, then we can easily connect with our Partner. Voila!
Mindfulness Practice
Our Mindfulness Practice can take on any flavor we desire. Mindfulness is a moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience without judgement.
The key is to go within and be still. To quiet our mind. To not engage with our usual thoughts and scripts, but just notice them and let them go.
To focus on Being with ourselves – to hear surrounding noises, to feel body sensations, to notice our breathing, to go further within.
To connect with our Core, our Self. To connect with our Essence…
This can be done through meditation and movement like yoga, tai chi, qi gong, walking, cleaning, coloring, knitting, and other repetitive activities where we can transcend our thinking, ego, fear…
APPLICATION: Connect with your Self, connect with your Partner, note a deeper Connection…
Make a commitment to Connect with yourself daily…
Embrace a Mindfulness Practice that fits your lifestyle and integrate it into your daily routine.
Take note of how differently you feel when you practice
Take note of how differently you show up when you practice
Take note of how much easier it is to let go of annoyances when you practice
Take note of how much easier it is to connect with your partner when you practice
Take note of how you don’t even notice annoyances when you feel connected with your partner…
Connection is a goal to strive for daily…
Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
Copyright (c) 2021 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
Communication skills and tools are not just necessary for getting on the same page, making joint decisions and problem solving effectively. They are also indispensable for more deeply understanding each other and warmly flowing in our interactions with our partner. Excellent communication also helps increase our bonding.
Feeling understood is an existential human need… In feeling that the other “gets” us, we feel Known and that we exist… Feeling understood engenders feelings of belonging, being accepted, and safety. This is pretty much at the core of things! This is why it’s super important to use our skills and tools to make sure we get our partner, and others, when we are in our interactions with them.
And, with that it goes without saying how super important it is to show them that we got them… This is where the validation step in the Intentional Dialogue comes in. This is the step that partners forget in interactions that crashes the conversation and possibly even leads to a fight.
Equally important is to communicate so our partner can understand us, and to seek confirmation that we were understood.
Interactions don’t have to go south… Most of the time when couples refer to communication problems, they are actually referring to emotionally charged issues and conversations. They can’t communicate well when they are triggered… Which makes complete sense! Employing communication tools and skills has a lot to do with managing ourselves and being mindful to not trigger our partner… Removing roadblocks to communication goes a long way.
And most importantly, when we are mindful of how we show up and how we communicate we are investing in protecting, nurturing, and strengthening our bond…
Strengthening Our Bond
Therefore, it is imperative that we are very intentional and mindful about how we communicate with our partner and what the focus of our conversations are. For who doesn’t want a lovely and strong bond with their Lovey? Right?
I invite you to add having Meaningful Conversations to your Couple Time… Let’s not use couple time for just more binging on Netflix.
Awareness and consciousness about yourself
Do you know what triggers you and why? Do you know what core wound and defense mechanisms you keep playing out, what you contribute to your repeating patterns? Do you know what your needs are and how to meet them? Do you know your Love Language? Getting a deeper understanding of yourself in this way is enlightening and a great investment in your personal development…
Then, sharing this with your partner and integrating your new awareness into your interactions is truly transformative…
Then, you can share your understandings, discoveries, and what you make of them with your partner. Isn’t this a gorgeous conversation?
Aspirations and passions about yourself
Have you identified your Purpose, what drives you? Are you focused on that purpose daily? Do you have a vision of your future and your life? Do you have clear goals and milestones? What are you working on? Are your projects, tasks and routines in alignment withyour Vision? Getting some clarity around these and aligning your life accordingly makes life so much easier and pleasurable…
Then, share what you are up to, your desires, fears, and possible roadblocks with your partner for additional alignment and meaning…
Aren’t these delicious? Imaging these are the topics of your conversations most of the time… This is what gives our interactions depth and meaning. These interactions are what strengthen our bond, bring us closer and guide our relationship and life. This is how we create radiance and meaning in our relationship.
APPLICATION: Select the area about you that you want to explore, gain a deeper understand, more clarity and direction to play with… Set some time aside to indulge in this exploration, and then bring your discoveries, insights, and desires to your Couple Time
Awareness and consciousness about yourself
Awesomeness and uniqueness about yourself
Aspirations and passions about yourself
In developing ourselves and owning our sparkle, with bring more radiance to our relationship…
Be curious, be playful, be vulnerable, be available…
Share yourself more in your interactions and communication, strengthen you bond!
Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
Copyright (c) 2021 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
Do you think that you love your partner more than they love you? That you care more? That you do more for the home, the family, and the relationship? That if it weren’t for you, things would fall apart? You are not alone in this. It is very common for one partner to do more nurturing, caring, and making sure everything is ok. Does this sound like you? Do you do the caretaking for the family and the relationship? Does it feel like you Love TOO Much?
If we care more and love too much, then by implication it feels like the other cares less… Nobody wants to feel like their loved one doesn’t care as much… It doesn’t feel good to feel less cared about… It doesn’t feel good to love too much…
What happens next is that our whole routine revolves around our loved one/s, our whole week and lifestyle revolve around our loved one/s, our whole life revolves around our loved one/s… We lose sight of who we are, what we are meant to do, of our growth, of where we want to go and who we want to become, and of our actual Journey…
We become myopic, we miss the forest for the tree. We focus on the minutiae of the everyday. We get distracted by others’ whims and agendas and by bright shiny objects. We bang around without purpose.
We fill our days with crap – a bunch of meaningless tasks and a lot of running around. Our tasks are not related to projects. Our projects are not related to goals. Our goals are not related to our vision. We are just wasting are precious time, our precious limited Life Energy…
Some don’t even have outlined tasks, clear projects, established goals or a driving vision… So, you see how easy it is to get lost in the everyday. To focus on what our partner is doing or not doing. To micromanage our home and our loved one/s. To get overly involved in other people’s business. To care about the concern of others. To take over other people’s responsibilities. To take it all on because it’s easier to fill in our void with others’ stuff…
Then we wonder why we feel overwhelmed, anxious, lost, blah, bored, resentful, exhausted, taken for granted, lonely, alone and the like.
It’s easy to distract ourselves from ourselves by loving too much… This is easy to do when we don’t fully own ourselves, for what else are we supposed to do… If we don’t have ourselves, at least we have others…
We have nothing else to care about so we put all our care on them… But then we feel bad because we care more than they do… Then we don’t feel cared about enough…
We create a super hurtful and harmful cycle… We neglect ourselves and our lives. We feel stuck, empty and unhappy. We wonder what’s the meaning of it all… We are missing the forest for the tree!
Stop doing for your loved one/s what they can do for themselves.
Stop micromanaging.
Stop obsessively checking in and on everything.
Stop redundantly tracking everything.
Stop doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff.
Stop filling your life with junk.
Stop doing stuff that doesn’t serve you.
Stop saying yes to other people’s agendas.
Stop __________________.
Stop wasting your precious Life Energy on pursuits that don’t enhance your Journey in some way… Minimize the chaos, the mundane, the minutia, the redundant, the excess, the spinning, the grind…
Stop loving too much, for when you do you also enable others to not do for themselves… This is actually not helpful, you cheat them of the possibility of them figuring it out… Being too helpful is not helpful… Just stop.
Focus on what brings you joy and helps you create your Best Relationship and Life. On what moves the needle forward in your Journey. What enriches your life and the life of the people you love… Not by fishing for them but by teaching them how to fish and by collaborating…
Loving TOO Much is not a great quality, it’s not a character strength… It is actually a sign of codependence, a quality that holds back the people involved…
When we love too much, we become codependent where the members of the relationship/s are held back from their full potential by the dynamics they create. The helped person can’t learn and have self-agency. The helper becomes obsessed with the other at their expense. Neither side wins. This contributes to stuckness in relationships…
APPLICATION: Find three behaviors/tasks you do on a daily basis that are Life Energy sucking and Signs that You Love TOO Much… Figure out how to stop engaging in those behaviors by replacing them with healthy, effective and productive ones, for example:
Have a system for doing food and other shopping so you don’t run out of things
Prep food and snacks
Teach children how to make their bed and make it their responsibility
Teach children / discuss with partner how to pick up their stuff and put dirty clothes in hampers
Agree on who puts the dishes in the dish washer and who empties it
Design lunchboxes duty and agree on who is responsible for putting them together
Create a morning routine where everyone is responsible for getting themselves ready and ready to go
Have a place for backpacks, lunchboxes, school papers, school activities supplies/equipment, etc. (to have been packed up or prepped the day before!)
Have a place for coats, gloves, scarves, shoes and such
Don’t run stuff your children forget to school
Prioritize money producing tasks at work or completing your important project’s tasks
Block off time to do focus work
Don’t have a million errands to run after work
Have a streamlined afterschool, evening and bedtime routine
Block off selfcare time, couple time, social media engagement time, etc.
Have a system for doing laundry a couple of times a week only
Select a recurring time to do home admin tasks and synchronize with your partner
Loving too much is not the way to go. To create a radiant and successful relationship, and meaningful life, we are to fully own ourselves and empower others to do the same… We are to shoot for Interdependence in our relationship/s with extreme personal ownership, reciprocity and collaboration.
We want to love compassionately and passionately and give our relationship/s our best, not our worst by loving too much…
Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…
Copyright (c) 2021 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
It is not easy to live a successful and meaningful life. It takes intentionality, focus and dedication to stay the course. Our life Journey has ups and downs, and at times it can feel like an obstacle course.
With the many demands of today’s modern life and specially recently as we’ve weathered a global pandemic, things can be challenging. It can be overwhelming to manage all the demands and responsibilities. This is why it’s so important to uplevel your support and collaboration.
Imagine having world-class support and collaboration protocol to help create your Best Life. Then the Universe becomes the limit…
It is no fun going it alone. And most importantly when we don’t have the proper support, we hold ourselves back from creating the life (and relationship!) we desire… For you see, when we try to do everything by ourselves in a vacuum, it shows in our results…
When we go it alone:
We are limited by how much we can do, by our knowledge base and by our skill set
We are focused on doing and forget Being
We elude our creativity and our knowing
We are flooded by the minutiae of life and miss the forest for the tree
We miss savoring life experiences, the simple pleasures and amazing people
We cheat ourselves of connection and intimacy
We hold ourselves back from the potential that leveraging and connectivity can afford us…
These limitations have a massive impact:
We hold ourselves back from our true potential and from living our full Human Experience
We settle for less and can’t even imagine having something special to contribute
We erode our connection and bond and jeopardize the essence of our relationship
We subscribe to subpar parenting tactics
We neglect, abandon and even abuse ourselves
We end up:
Settling for a job we hate and merely getting a paycheck to live from month to month
Creating a mediocre relationship, tolerating our partner, missing out on our epic love
Misparenting our children to the point that they become ill, symptomatic, misbehaved, maladjusted
Damaging our body, mind, and spirit
For those that are still carrying the badge of honor for: Sacrificing themselves, exploiting their every ounce of living, and running themselves into the ground – I implore you to reconsider your approach!
It behooves partners to crack the code on how to better support each other and implement a Collaboration Protocol into their lifestyle to create the life of their dreams. They can easily accomplish this through the Relationship Enrichment Lifestyle™.
What does support and collaboration look like in a relationship? Every relationship has their own flavor of this, but the essence is to have a divide and conquer approach. Where one partner picks up where the other leaves off. And, where both partners are in the loop and current on everything that’s going on in their joint lives. But, most importantly where the partners are working together to achieve a common goal.
The partners designing and working together towards a Joint Life Vision is the key towards creating your Best Life and having your fullest Human Experience…
Ok, so how do we create a fabulous life and epic love relationship when we are already stretched thin and overwhelmed? You set yourself up for having better support and collaboration, you create a Strong Partnership.
Setting Up for Success
Success and creating awesomeness doesn’t happen by accident. We have to be intentional and proactive about it.
SECOND – Envision: Design your Joint Life Vision that flows from your values and has clear goals
THIRD – Structure: Create your Ideal Day (daily routine) that you’ll follow as a template
FOURTH – Systematize: Set up systems for sharing responsibilities, completing tasks, building Habits
FIFTH – Flow: Include buffers and transitions into your routines
This formula helps reduce the overwhelm and set yourself up for a productive, meaningful and joyful life. It:
Creates space to operate differently
Identifies your North Star to guide your aspirations
Provides a structure to contain your endeavors
Promotes an effortless approach to managing your days and the business of life
Supports operating with ease and joy
What’s important to note hereis that our ability to implement this depends heavily on: Our mindset, communication skills, how we meet needs, and bond with our partner. Partners who jump into problem solving and changing up their lives have a hard go of it if the other relationship Elements are not robust
If it was easy to create a fabulous life and epic love relationship, then everybody would have these things. Our job is to invest in ourselves and our relationship so that we are in good shape to create our Best Life. And so that we have an amazing Human Experience.
ASSIGNMENT: Identify where the weak link is in your life and relationship right now. It can be within one of the Elements, or in one of the steps in the Success Formula.
Decide how you will go about addressing your weak link… Take an immediate action to get the ball rolling in creating your radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life…
As with anything, when you bring consciousness, focus and attention to something, Awesomeness happens. I wish this for you in your life and your relationship.
Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…
Copyright (c) 2021 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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