The family is the micro unit of the larger society. Success in family life is critical to success in the society. As a result, the pursuit of success in family life is something we all should be anxiously engaged in.
Those working to build their own families through marriage spend an awful lot of time, energy and money preparing for their wedding instead of preparing for the marriage. It is more troubling because while busying about their wedding, they think and feel that they are preparing for their marriage. These are two different things. A wonderful wedding do not contribute anything at all to a great marriage which is the only road to a successful family life. For those who are not yet married, efforts in preparing for marriage would pay more dividends if it is employed in learning the purpose, principles and practices of marriage according to the author of the marriage and family life, God the Creator.
There are five key tips that can support your effort in attaining a successful family life namely:
· A firm foundation
· Commitment
· Teamwork
· Respect
· Forgiveness
A Firm Foundation
Just like physical structures such as buildings need a foundation that is firmly established to stand the test of time, windstorms, rains and other natural vicissitudes, a family need a firm foundation to be able to stand and grow and provide the platform for people to attain a successful family life.
For some families, this could be a philosophy they came together and formed and decided to live on as their guiding light. For others, it is religion. For some families, it may be a book. However, from my own experience and with some people I have been acquainted with, the Judeo-Christian Bible and some other scriptures used by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are where they draw the ideology that cements firmly on the ground their family foundation.
The Bible contains information, ideas and strategies God Himself established which represent a firm foundation for building a family.
Faith in God is one of the foundational elements for joyful relationships.
Commitment
Raising a family is a tough job. It is fraught with challenges. One of the key attitudes towards raising a family is commitment. Commitment also means dedication, promise, vow, obligation, guarantee, duty, responsibility, etc. This attitude is so important that it seems everything else depends on it. It is not possible to attain success in family life without seeing the creation and sustaining of the family life as your responsibility, an obligation and a cause that you have dedicated the whole of your life to. Failure at the family level rubbishes all other forms of successes we can claim as human beings. A commitment to live and die for your family is the only way to feel and think about your family. It must be total. As you think about starting your own family or as you run the one you have now, one thought should pervade all others – I live and die for this family.
Teamwork
When you have not decided to marry, you are a lone-ranger. But when you get married, you have formed the nucleus of what might become one of the greatest teams in the whole wide world. The word team also means squad, group, unit, etc. The word work also means effort, labour, toil, action, exertion.
A marriage relationship is sustained by a team effort, labour, toil, action and exertion. For many couples, marriage relationship is a competition. It should not be so. To have a successful family life, you should work as a team. Think about a typical soccer team. They win only as they work as a team. Think about the relay race team, they win only when they work as a team.
Respect
Respect also means reverence, veneration, high opinion, regard, value deference, admiration, etc. Mutual respect is one of the foundational elements for joyful relationships. Mutual respect is so critical in a marriage relationship that I strongly recommend that if people in a dating relationship could not respect each other totally, that relationship should be cut at the point of realization of disrespect from any of the partners. It is challenging to maintain a state of mind of mutual respect. However, if your desire is to attain a successful family life, you need to learn to respect your spouse and this respect should be mutual.
Forgiveness
Forgiving those who wrong you is more relieving than the most powerful pain relieving drug on earth. In our efforts and attempts to build a family which involves marriage – a fusion of two different people – think about what happens during the scientific process of fusion – leading to the bringing into the scheme other lives. The process uses heat and also produces heat in the form of arguments, offences and quarrels. All these are necessary challenges of building the most important purpose of the life on earth – a family life. We offend one another – our spouses and children and parents – during this process.
Those who are married for even a few months can attest to the fact that there is always some form of misunderstanding in the process of building a family life.
The challenges may come from family finance, extended family, neighbours, environmental issues, religion, etc. There myriads of sources for problems on the road to building a family life.
The only known cure for these and other challenges of family life is forgiveness. Being right, logical, emotional and deeply sure about the issues on hand cannot help here. Even the apologies of one or both of the spouses cannot help. The only known panacea is forgiveness.
Forgiveness frees both partners and helps them regain the energy and focus required to continue in the process to work for and achieve success in family life.
At present I am theorizing and practicing advanced forgiveness both in family life and in my dealings with all that I have business with.
Think about it.
