The Surefire Way to Revitalize Your Relationship This Year - Part II (of II)

“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise, we harden.”- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In Part 1 of The Surefire Way to Revitalize Your Relationship This Year you identified and wrote down what you want to improve about your relationship using the SMART method.Lisa and Jeff set their SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time Bound) goal:

“We will plan 2-3 Saturday night dates per month without kidsor friends, to focus on us and increase our feelings of connection,beginning next week and continuing forward.”

Part 2 is putting the goal into action and making it stick. Though we all intend to keep our New Year's resolutions, studies show that for many of us, they don’t last. A study at Scranton University found just 8% of people achieve their New Year’s goal. The data showed 75% kept them after one week, 71% after 2 weeks, 64% after 3 weeks and 46% after 6 months.The reality is our follow through doesn’t hold up. Though we begin with robust determination, we either fail to launch or have too many competing priorities and give up (i.e., the first time we “fall off the wagon” our resolve wanes and we slip slide back to our former behavior.)Lisa and Jeff did manage to plan 2-3 dates per month for 2 months. Then life got in the way - jobs, travel, kids, sports.So what can we do to address our slip slide back to equilibrium?“Actively persevere.” Anticipate and expect to fall backward at some point and understand that when we do, we have to “start again,” and again and again…Realistic progress toward a goal looks like this:We improve and then we fall back. We reach a “pivotal point” where we decide to either give up or start moving back up the hill. Change will be determined by what we choose to do at each pivotal point.The conscious decision to start again at each pivotal point is our definition of “active perseverance.”What do you usually do when you reach a pivotal point: give up or start climbing back toward the goal? Identify whether your automatic response is to give up and consciously plan to do something different.Here are some tips to achieve that:

1. Make only one change at a time. Start small so that it would be really hard to justify not succeeding.

2. Break the change into manageable pieces or steps; e.g., one of you call babysitters and one plan the date.

3. Put the small steps on your calendar. If you can do this for work, there’s no reason you can’t do this for your relationship.

4. Hold each other accountable. Check in with your partner each week.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about revitalizing your relationship in 2016 on our Facebook page.