Marriage & Family

Transitions occur at the inception of experiences that bring new dimensions to our lives. Marriage is a life transition for which most of us have no previous experience. Marriage opens our lives to changes in our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual responses. Marriage, as a new experience, brings a change to our perceptions and our expectations about how we view our life pathway. As we travel through our marital journey, we form new boundaries and set new goals. Along the pathway, we discover that we have experienced changes in the way we view our world. Our core values have been tested and validated or changed to accommodate the new experiences and expectations of our changing perspectives.

Because marriage brings about changes in the colors and textures of our lives, we are constantly growing…our personal envelopes are expanding. With newfound growth comes the task of adapting to our developing perceptions. How do we manage our emotions? What perceptions about our lives do we use to facilitate our growth? How do we include others (our spouses, children, and friends) in our emotional and spiritual growth?

“Looking through the eyes of others” is a continual process that we develop through our experiences as we travel the pathways of life. We find that it is essential, in the context of relationships, to recognize that our decisions often affect others in our circle of family and friends. By considering that others may encounter consequences of our decisions beyond those that we expect, we learn that our core values help to guide us in the consideration of others in our decision making process.  We gain the vision to comprehend the unintended consequences of our decisions by developing the skill to “look through the eyes of others”. The process of developing this skill promotes more authentic and lasting relationships.

“Servant leadership” is, simply stated, leadership that evolves through our efforts to facilitate the success of others. Successes throughout the life transitions of marriage and family are the result of the growth in our ability to expand our cognition envelopes. We learn to accommodate others through our understanding of their perceptions…looking through their eyes. We  develop our servant leadership skills through the evolution of our perceptions which facilitates the success of our marriage, our family and our friends, as well as our own.