Michael Fowler, LMFT
 When I was a kid, I really wanted to play professional basketball. That was my goal until I was in high school and Lebron went straight to the NBA. At that point, it occured to me, I was hopeless. He was just a few years older than me and I was nowhere near that level. Up until that point though, I played all the time. I started out watching. Next, I learned how to shoot and dribble. I picked up on some of the rules by playing NBA ‘95. I learned much more once I joined a team though. I learned more rules. I learned plays. I learned how to work with different players with different skills. I even played select for some time. My grandparents doled out extra cash to give me more tools to achieve my dreams of being in the NBA.
This way of learning is not unique to basketball though, right? There is a learning process to everything. You might shadow someone when you start a new job. If you want to learn a new instrument you might receive lessons or at least spend time with others that play as you try to figure things out. If we work so hard to learn how to play a sport, learn a new skill, or learn an instrument; why wouldn't we apply this concept to marriage? Premarital education significantly reduces the chances of divorce. So much so that the state of Texas offers an incentive program called Twogether in Texas for engaged couples in order to be better prepared for marriage.. This is a great thing! It offers couples a chance to talk about subjects they might not have covered yet, gives them some worksheets that can be used over time, and just helps build a foundation. I think we could take it further though. I think about how much I read about counseling before I actually met with a client face-to-face. Theory without application only goes so deep. It is one of those scenarios where you don’t know what you don’t know. Why don’t we apply the same logic of mentoring to relationships? Marriage mentorship can have a huge impact on a relationship. Everyone’s relationship will vary, but everyone WILL face challenges as a married couple. Marriage mentors can help you work through these issues to some degree, provide encouragement and perspective, and be a third party to help you work through something you are not seeing eye to eye on. Sometimes having someone to just talk to that cares about your marriage and is not just taking sides can give some good clarity on issues blinded by emotions. Maybe you are in a dating relationship, are about to get married, are newly married, or have been married and still know you could benefit from that sort of thing. Often times, people will not just offer a marriage mentorship but would love to help! I had a mentor like this when my wife and I were about to get married who very plainly said something to the effect of, “You and Shelbie should come over for dinner. You don’t have a clue how to manage money. Let me teach you some things.” It was a huge benefit to our young relationship, but he is the only person to be that forward. You could start this process by having a heart to heart with your spouse. Think about the older couples you know in your lives. Whose relationship would you like to have 20 years down the road? Who do you see treat their spouse in a way you have never seen? Invite them to have coffee or dinner and ask them if they would mind sitting down with you and your significant other once a month or so to talk about your relationship. Maybe you are an older couple. Hear this: YOU are desperately needed by the younger generation. You have wisdom to offer. Talk with your spouse about finding a younger couple to mentor. Seek them out. There will likely be times you offer and are turned down. That is okay. When you offer and a couple accepts, it will make the process that much easier because they are likely to be in a state of mind where they realize they need some help. That couple will be much more coachable than one that thinks they have it all figured out and marriage is no different than dating. The view on marriage in America has gone through some up’s and down’s. There are many in my generation that view marriage as the problem, coming from their family of origin that perhaps has been broken in some way. Many couples will cohabitate rather than wed because once it is official, it has the potential to go bad. I have a different view. Relationships are hard. If you could have “broken up” with your parents or siblings and not had to work on the relationship, many would have. Some have. Maybe instead of avoiding marriage, we need new ways to build strong relationships. We are in a revolutionary age where science backs up multiple ways to do this, but all of them take intention. This is the reason why those of us that can, should be willing to step up and be encouraging mentors to those that are growing up behind us and those who know they need mentoring should seek it out.
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Michael Fowler, LMFT
 In the past few years, I’ve seen the term “self-care” floating around on social media. It’s usually attached to a meme about quitting your job or eating pizza or ‘Netflix and chill’. I really hope those memes are exaggerations and just jokes but I want to answer the question: What is self-care?
You could liken self-care to basic maintenance or upkeep. Let’s consider our cars. Hopefully, you take steps to keep your car running well by getting oil changes, putting gas in, and changing filters or parts as needed. We need to take care of these things so that they can serve their function. Do we show ourselves that same courtesy? Sure some of us get to take vacations every now and then, but do you take time in between vacations in order to keep everything running smoothly in your life? Self-care is intentional time taken to keep yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally healthy in order to be able to strive towards your full potential. It should be a time where you feel refreshed afterwards-revitalized-ready to face the next thing in life, whatever it may be. You need to take an honest assessment of your “hobbies” and determine if you need to branch out. If your ‘hobby’ is Netflix or video games, and you feel deflated/gloomy afterwards, you may need to find something that gives you a sense of accomplishment. This looks differently for everyone. I tend to cycle between gaming, reading, and working out. My wife likes to read, get her nails done, do yoga, or deep clean our apartment. All of these things are helpful to us depending on the season we’re in or the time we have available to dedicate to our self-care. After reading the definition of self-care, most of you probably fall into one of two categories: You are either confident you have destressing hobbies and take part in self-care regularly or you feel like you are too busy to have the luxury of self-care. If you fall into the latter, you might be thinking you don’t have time for self-care or that self-care sounds selfish Consider the car analogy: our cars are in need of routine care otherwise things can go bad very quickly. We could end up broke down on the side of the road without a way to get to our next destination. People are a lot like a car: we need routine self-care in order to avoid having breakdowns and getting stuck in a bad place. When we neglect relationships, jobs, school work, health, kids, things go can go wrong. Our relationships deteriorate, we get fired, fail, get sick, miss out on fun; we simply lose out on life. These are reasons why self-care is not synonymous with selfish. We all need to find a way to balance the many tasks in life that can break us down if we neglect our own personal cares. I wholeheartedly believe you are busy. I also believe that if you take time to take care of yourself you will be better equipped to take care of your responsibilities. Self-care doesn’t have to be a week vacation or an entire day; it just needs to be revitalizing so you can continue to carry on down the road, no matter how rocky it may get. Here’s 3 steps to help you move forward with your self-care:
Shelbie Fowler, M.S.
 When given the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind.- Dr. Wayne W. Dyer Before the holidays began this year, a new movie called Wonder premiered based on a book of the same title written by R.J. Palacio. This is a story about a middle-school boy named Auggie who has a facial deformity and struggles to learn to trust new friends as he begins his journey in a public school setting. He is bullied, shamed, and loses a bit of his child-like trust on this journey. More importantly though, Wonder reveals through several narrators how one act of kindness by one person can make ripples throughout an entire student population. This story really left me wondering about the way I treated my peers growing up and even now. I have asked myself have I chosen kind over being right? The answer is: not always. R.J. Palacio wrote this story after her own child had an encounter with a girl with a facial deformity and her response was to remove her crying toddler and leave. Since that moment, she has felt guilty and angry about her actions. Why? Because she missed out on an opportunity to show her child how to react in kindness. She missed out on a moment to teach her child that just because someone looks different from us, our first response should never be to run away, even though that is often easier. We should choose kindness even in uncomfortable moments. The interesting part about how she tells the story of Wonder is that it is based on the children’s perspectives. The adults are shown through the eyes of their children which helps us understand a little more about what is being modeled in their homes. The bully in this story is shown with his parents one time and that one moment is enough insight for us to see that he has only be told that he is never good enough. We see how a friend’s home life is nothing but a mother who drinks and is never there to support her. This friend ends up lying all the time and distancing herself from what she sees as a ‘perfect family’. These are teaching moments for how quick we are to judge others, to be right, to justify our actions but we are often slow to choose kindness. Wonder does an excellent job of setting up how our negative reactions can bring another person down. As Auggie (main character) struggles to cope with overtly negative interactions, he becomes distant, sad, and disinterested in things he enjoys. The thing that begins to positively change him slowly is when one person makes a choice to sit with him at lunch. That’s it. One person showed up and started a ripple effect. I know it may seem like a fantastical set up, that only one person can have an impact, but according to relationship experts, multiple positive interactions with one person can actually make up for negative interactions. The magical ratio for positive to negative interactions is 5:1 and was originally developed by John Gottman. This ratio means that for every 1 negative interaction, it takes 5 positive interactions to overcome that 1 negative moment. How powerful is it that to overcome one negative comment we need five positive comments to feel better? Our human nature calls for us to need positive interactions on an emotional, physical, and spiritual level in order to thrive. Otherwise we simply struggle to cope as Auggie does in Wonder. I have no doubt that we can all remember a person who has hurt us and never made up for it in some way, those memories are more prominent because we need positivity to continue on. One moment of kindness changes everything within us. Our children and teenagers are especially primed to be shown how to be kind, what steps it takes to stand up to for themselves or for others, and the majority want to do what is kind but maybe intimidated. There are some simple steps we can all take to make the world a little more kind. One step Wonder talks about is using ‘precepts’ (which are words to live by) they’re kind of like life quotes that reflect a person's values. I think the easiest step to take in making a decision to be kind is to choose our own precept and then encourage teens to find theirs. R.J. Palacio even wrote a companion book to Wonder all about precepts because she believes it is important enough for everyone to understand how our thoughts speak into our words and our words are turned into actions. A second step is simply to model what it looks like to be kind to others. Adults can use uncomfortable moments to act in a kind manner to those who may look different or act differently from themselves. We can do this by starting a conversation, by offering a helping hand, by simply not staring or running away. These acts are simple by definition but can cause major ripples when acted upon. One more thing we can do to choose kind is to be sure that we are speaking kindly of all those in our lives. Words are powerful things that are used to tear people down to nothing or that are used to build people up to their fullest potential. When we actively choose to use kind words on a daily basis, our perceptions can begin to shift to become more positive which leads to more positive interactions. I hope that we all can work on creating those five positive interactions with the people in our lives in order to help them overcome any negative interactions they may have had. It only takes one person creating one interaction to change another person’s life for the better. Let us be the ones to create a more kind world. |
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