Maren’s Book! Plan Your Wedding, Build Your Marriage
I am absolutely thrilled to share with you that I have a new product available!
It’s not an Arden Coaching product, but rather for my other coaching company: Our Best Marriage.
Our Best Marriage provides relationship tools for engaged couples. It’s a project I have a great deal of passion for, and since many clients have inquired about it, I share it with you here. In general you won’t find anything about it through Arden Coaching.
If you want to follow it, you can go to: OurBestMarriage.com
“Like” the facebook page: facebook.com/OurBestMarriage
Thank you for your interest! ~Maren
Here’s an excerpt:
So… you’re almost there. The big day is approaching. There are fewer and fewer X’s to mark off on the calendar. Congratulations! Especially since you’ve used this planning process with this program to really build a relationship with your SOON-to-be-spouse, there is much to be proud of. Some things have gone perfectly and some have not. Some things will go perfectly on your day, and some may not. I’m going to ask you to do something now that may seem completely antithetical to all the hustle and bustle of the final days. I know there are thank you notes to write and speeches to plan, and last minute things to order, try on, taste and pack. But I’m going to ask you to LET IT ALL GO. I don’t mean you shouldn’t do all those things you have planned. Go ahead. But I’m going to invite you to pick a specific time: today, tomorrow, the day before you walk the aisle, whatever, but some specific date on the calendar, when you will be at peace with it all. This is being ‘Complete.’ Now, being Complete is not necessarily the same as being ‘finished’ and the definition I’m talking about doesn’t exist in any traditional dictionary, though it draws on that definition. ‘Being Complete’ is allowing the past to be as it is and not dragging around any burdensome energy about how it went. Unless you have a time machine somewhere, the past is ALWAYS going to be exactly that way, so since you can’t change that, you have to change your response/reaction to it. If you are ‘Complete’ you are whole and the past is finished vs. still being re-enacted in your head in a negative way. Mind you, you don’t have to LOVE how the past went: you don’t have to have wanted it to go that way; you just have to acknowledge that it did and isn’t going to change. Your friend did leave, they did say that really nasty thing, you did trip walking into the interview, etc. Being Complete with those things means acknowledging that it happened that way, and that you can move on from here without constantly wishing it had been some other way. It DID happen exactly that way… now what?! Note: by this definition, you can be Complete with something still in process. For instance, my relationship with my mother is Complete: I’m not holding anything on her, not frustrated about something she said four weeks ago, not waiting to say something to her four weeks from now. Our relationship is far from over; I see her regularly. But our relationship is Complete, as in whole and unburdened.
Complete:1. To bring to a finish or an end, 2. To make whole, with all necessary elements or parts. (thefreedictionary.com)
I like to think of Completion as allowing things to be as they are. Because things ARE as they ARE, and they are no other. They ARE. It’s our unhappiness/disappointment/frustration about how things are that gets us out of whack. It’s that part in our heads that creates the unhappiness, not the thing itself. But if we can’t change how things ARE, then what we can change is OURSELVES. We can align ourselves to the way things ARE, however that is. That doesn’t necessarily mean we will love the way things are, but fighting what IS, is futile. It’s like being frustrated that Mount Everest is 29,029 feet high. You can get frustrated about it, but that’s just what IS, and it isn’t any other. Try this: think of THAT person who makes you a little crazy. Who did you pick – an in-law? A parent? Pick the person who gets under your skin. Now think of them as Mount Everest. I’ll use “Andy” to demonstrate: As annoying as Andy is, Andy is just Andy. Andy IS that way and won’t be any other. I may make requests of Andy not to be that way, or wish Andy weren’t that way, but let’s just say that Andy doesn’t change since that’s the worst case scenario in our minds. So Andy IS how Andy IS. Now what? Well, I can fume about it: “Why can’t Andy be differently?! It’s so frustrating! I’ve asked Andy not to be that way a thousand times! Why can’t Andy just see how important it is for Andy not to be that way?!” But, as you may have noticed with whomever the Andy is in your life, this generally does as much good as screaming at Mount Everest: “Why are you 29,029 feet tall? It’s so frustrating! I’ve asked you, Mount Everest, a thousand times not to be that way! Why can’t you, Mount Everest, just see how important it is for you not to be that height?!” It’s absolutely absurd when you say it that way, right? And yet we somehow see it differently with people. But… it’s not. So here’s the time where you get to come to terms with the fact that Mount Everest is exactly 29,029 feet tall. And that Andy is that way. And that the cake is that way. And the guest list is that way. And the flowers are that way. And most importantly, that your spouse-to-be is that way. Use this time prior to the wedding day to allow everything to be as it is – exactly how it is and no other – and you will allow yourself to be fully present on your day, which is what you want, right? To be able to soak it all in and look your partner in the eyes and actually be present with them as you take your vows.
Drama-Busting Tools
Here’s another tool that you and your betrothed may find handy – in general, but certainly in these last days prior to the big event. It’s to keep you focused on the things you want to be focused on and reduce the attention on – or at least the upset about – any last minute dramas. Because you know someone will get stuck at an airport, or the cake will be the wrong color, or heaven forbid, it may rain…. Not getting wrapped up in the drama of something, and being able to actually laugh about it right in the moment is a tremendous skill for relationship. Most of us have a certain amount of this ability over time. We are able to take the thing that happened long ago and laugh about it; gaining some appreciation for the absurdity of it, or the wackiness of it, or even the just-when-you-thought-it-couldn’t-get-any-worse of it. Those stories are usefully the ones that result in spit takes or falling off sofas when re-told in the right hands. Imagine if rather than laughing about a situation in the re-telling of it around a dinner table three years from now, you and your partner were able to laugh about something in the moment it was happening. It would certainly be more enjoyable! And, it takes some practice. Here are two helpful tools to get there: …
To read more, get your copy of the program here: Plan Your Wedding, Build Your Marriage
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