In today’s post, I am going to be talking about the power of your thought in transforming your marriage. I have been reading a book written in the 20s and 40s, so the author is long gone. However, her works are really the basis of all the theories of manifestation or the power of our thoughts. If that term freaks you out, just hang tight. I might talk about a lot of stuff that is new and different in today’s post, but I just want you to just stay with me. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Before I move on, I want to give credit where credit is due. I joined a transformational group coaching program, so that’s where I’m getting a lot of these new books and ideas. We just had our first set of 12 sessions and it’s already paying off. Coaching works, everybody!

The book is called “The Complete Works of Florence Scovel Shinn“. This won’t only help your marriage, but it will help your finances, your health, your happiness, your faith, and all of that stuff. In the book, she references the word God a lot, which I’m totally comfortable with, but a lot of people like to use other words like the universe or divine spirit or energy, Mother Earth, whatever term you want to use, it doesn’t matter. For me, it means all the same thing.

Thoughts are powerful

Our minds, and our thoughts, are able to change reality. This is backed up by science. If you want to go and look for the double-slit experiment on YouTube, you will find that consciousness can actually change matter, which is totally in the realm of my belief system. I believe in the harmony of science and religion, I’m a Bahai, and that is one of the principles of the Bahai faith. This all just totally made sense to me. Florence came at it from a biblical perspective, which is totally fine.  Truth can be found in so many different areas.

Before I go on in talking about how it can transform your marriage, let me talk about how it’s transformed my life since reading it just in the last week. One really practical example is my husband has been looking for a jacket. He had one in mind because his current jacket wasn’t really working for him. We live in a smaller town and shopping is kind of hard, so we thought well, might as well go and try to find something.

Probably won’t find it, but maybe we will.

As I’ve been learning, the power of my thought can change my reality. Right before we went into the store, I thought to myself, I had a picture in my mind, his jacket was going to be black, the same kind of fabric, it was going to be North Face because I love North Face, it was not going to have a hood, he wanted one but I don’t like them, so I said no hood. Lo and behold, we walked into the store, and there it was. I had never actually seen this jacket before, I didn’t know it existed, I made it up in my mind and there it was.

As he reached up to look for the size, I thought to myself, “And there will be a large.” Guess what, the last jacket in the back was large. Put it on, fit him perfectly. He’s now wearing it.

Every time I see it, I’m reminded now of the power of my thoughts.

Another really practical example is my two girls and I and my mom went to a town about an hour and a half away, again, to do some shopping. We see a theme here. But, typically, the girls will argue in the car. They’re 9 and 10, I’m sure, maybe that’s just my kids, but I think probably other kids argue in the car and sometimes it can be really draining and really painful.

I thought to myself, “Well, the jacket thing worked,” so I said, “I expect the kids to get along beautifully during this car trip, three hours in the car.” Guess what, they got along beautifully. And no, they weren’t on their tablets the whole time! I mean, granted, there was a little bit of music listening and stuff, but for the most part, they were chatting, they were drawing, they were talking to us. It was awesome.

The Power of Expectation

That brings me to the power of expectation. You can use this in your marriage in so many really practical ways. For example, if you’re thinking about going into a conversation, maybe it’s about housework or sex or in-laws or money or any of the other really hot button topics, think to yourself, “I expect this conversation to go really well. In fact, I expect it goes so well that at the end of our conversation, we’re feeling way more intimate and connected than we’ve ever been.” Give it a try.

Another thing, maybe you’re going out on a date night or maybe you have sex planned (which you should, scheduled sex is the best). Then you can think, “I expect that date night or that intimacy time to go really, really well. We’ll be talking, we’ll feel connect, we’ll uncover something new about each other, conversation will flow nicely, we’ll both feel relaxed. At the end of it, we’ll feel so connected and so together.” Anything around your marriage, you can do this, but make sure that you’re clear with God or the universe or whatever term you want to use that what you are expecting because it’s our thoughts that really do matter.

Of course, there is some combination of divine will and freewill, but at the end of the day, we have to put one step in front of the other and our thoughts are actually what drive our actions, which drive our outcome. Okay?

Affirmations

You could also just use them as affirmations. The power of affirmations are really well-documented. You want to make sure that they are positive and you can also make them in the present tense. For example, “my marriage is awesome”, could just be the simplest one. Or, “we are on the same team always” or, “we are 100% connected and intimate all the time”.

The most important thing about using affirmations is that they “click” – that’s what Florence calls it, clicks. You have to read it and say, “Yeah. That’s totally it.” For example, I just said my marriage is awesome, and you might have kind of inwardly cringed like, “I would never say that”. So, don’t use that one. Try something that really makes sense to you. It’s usually going to be around something that you find really important in your marriage. For example, for me, it’s about being on the same team. Whenever I feel like we’re not on the same team, that’s when I feel the most desperate and scared. For me, saying we are 100% on the same team all the time is really going to change how things are happening in my marriage.

I want you to just put this to the test. Try it out. Try it for a week. You could always go back to having negative thoughts and expecting the worst, that’s fine. You can do that. But I just challenge you, give it a try and let me know how it goes.

I’ll talk to you in a week.