Tom Philp (LPC, CEO) shares insights on why creating shared goals as a couple is so important.
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Vlog Transcript:
You know, one of the things we see a lot with our couples is the lack of shared goals they have together.
One of my favorite quotes is from Zig Ziglar, he says that “if you aim at nothing, you hit it every time” and so, one of the things we see here a lot, is couples that are busy and hey, I get it, we're trying to balance kids if you got them, we're trying to balance careers, spending time with family and friends. We've got so much on our plate as a couple, sometimes it's really difficult to sit down and talk about where do we want to go, what's important to us as a couple.
So, let me just take a minute here and talk about a couple of things that I think are really important about creating goals. First of all, the reason we have common goals as a couple is because it means we can row in the same direction as a couple. It means we understand the end point we're trying to reach, whatever that endpoint is, it's going to differ wildly from couple to couple, but we get where we're going and we can row in the same direction. So, it's a bonding event, really, for a lot of couples to be able to sit down and say “what do we want, the end result of our time, our life to be together and how can we work together to accomplish that?” More than just say, “okay, we want to have enough savings so that we retire someday”, but what do we want that retirement to look like? What do we want it to look like along the way? What are the most important things for us to not only invest our money and time in, but for us to invest our talents in as well as we move forward?
So, creating shared goals means that we have an opportunity to really bond over those goals and to feel like we're rowing in the same direction.
The other thing that I think is really important is, no organization in the world goes into the next fiscal year without creating some kind of goals for itself and I don't believe couples should do that either, because in creating goals, what it also does is it forces us to come down and sit down together and line out shared values, “what is important to us as a couple?”
When we have those shared values, when we know the 4 or 5 different things that we value the most in our relationship and in our family, things we're constantly spending our money and time and talent on. Things that we want to push down to our kids, to make sure that they know, that they value as well, then that's really easy to take those values and line them up with our goals as well.
One of the things that we really value in my family is music. We love music, my wife and I met through music, my sons play musical instruments, I play musical instruments. So, it's no doubt at all, that we actually invest quite a bit in musical equipment. We have a little bit of a studio in our house and so, that's something that's a real shared value for us and creating goals like music lessons or learning music or being able to play all together and do something, is a goal that we have for our family as well.
Hey, we just wrote a new e-book. If you want to download it, some of this stuff I’ve talked about is in there, there's a lot more in there as well. It helps you walk through as a couple, what your goals and shared values look like. It's got some graphs and templates that you can use; I think it could be really helpful and again, I see with a lot of our couples, that they don't have those shared goals and in doing so, sometimes it feels like they're just floating, there's no end result for them to be able to hit.
Hey, I hope this video was helpful. Shoot us a message down in the link below, let us know what you thought about it. See you next time!
- Tom Philp, LPC & CEO Stonebridge Couples Therapy
(918) 398-7678