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 📍 Welcome back to another episode of the 200% Marriage Podcast with Meredith and Craig. This week we're diving into chapter five. If you're been paying attention, we've been reading the 200% Marriage, you're Winning Playbook to Be an Unstoppable Team.

We're wrapping up part one, right? Yeah we're introducing the 200% marriage, the framework concepts, the whole, the framework kit and caboodle here.

We're getting right into it. So we'll read chapter five and then we'll have a little. Chitchat about what's, uh, what's going on. Can't wait till we get to the part of the book where chit chat's gonna make sense. We're getting there.

Chapter five, let's get committed. A good marriage is one where each partner secretly, suspects they got the better deal.

Anne Lamont.

If your experience was anything like mine and Mer's and most peoples, your default assumption is that a relationship is about one big commitment. Staying together forever. You just need to commit to your partner, and that's what makes a good relationship, regardless of how happy or unhappy either of you are, if that is your assumption, we want to be very clear with you.

That is complete bullshit. That one commitment is simply not enough. If you continue to believe that your relationship will not thrive. Let's not make the mistake of assuming that longevity equals happiness. Many couples have been together for 35 or 40 years and are not in a healthy, happy marriage.

They're just going through the motions, waiting it out until one of them dies. Now, if that sounds horrible, it's because it is horrible. I know it's horrible because I lived it not the death part, thankfully. If your goal is merely to survive and not get divorced, your relationship may survive. You might make it to the end of your life with them if you're both committed enough to just hang in there.

But ask yourself how happy and fulfilling is a relationship where you're just staying together for the sake of staying together. I can tell you from experience, it sucks. The goal isn't just to stay together. The goal is to thrive together. The goal is to build an extraordinary life where you both feel seen, heard, appreciated, respected, and deeply loved.

It's about becoming the best versions of yourselves while having a ton of fun and co-creating your dream life. That's what's possible when you make and keep five commitments. For the rest of this book, we're gonna walk you through the five commitments step by step and to get you vibrating with anticipation.

Here they are.

Commitment. Number one, commitment to a 200% marriage mindset. It all starts with your mindset. If you want something different. You have to think and do something different. We're going to install a new marriage operating system because just like us, you're probably also carrying some old outdated software from your past.

We'll deep dive into what having a 200% marriage mindset means and how to anchor it in your relationship in part two.

Commitment number two, commitment to yourself. When you're in a relationship, it becomes about the team. But, and we like big buts and we cannot lie. You can't show up for the team if your tank is running on empty.

The most important relationship you will ever have is the one with yourself. In part three of this book. We're going deep into that relationship with yourself and making sure your tank is full and that you love yourself so that you can live in your own greatness and have all that love available to fully love your spouse because you can only give and receive love to others to the degree you have it for yourself. This is an adjustment for many people, and it holds the key to why so many relationships fail. When you understand that there is an epidemic of people feeling unworthy in this world, it begins to make sense.

This is where you learn to love yourself and cultivate a deep knowing in your bones that you deserve the loving, thriving marriage you want. Commitment number three, commitment to your team and your teammate. This is the commitment most of us think about when we think about committing to a marriage.

This is probably the part you were expecting in this book, and I promise it's going to include more gold than a leprechauns pot. It's the commitment to the marriage and your spouse, or as we like to say, the commitment to your team and your teammate to show up fully for your team and your teammate. You need to know what that means and how to do it.

In part four, we'll cover the five rules to being an Unstoppable Team we'll install the team frame in your relationship and we'll dive into communication, trust, intimacy, and all the other pieces that make an unstoppable kick ass team. Commitment. Number four, commitment to fun. Most people think fun is a nice to have.

Most people are unhappy. Don't listen to most people. You want something different from what most people have. So in part five, we're going to have a blast together, and we're going to reinject fun and joy, and we're going to establish an attitude of adventure in your marriage. It will be a wild and crazy time.

Shenanigans will be had. Commitment. Number five, commitment to the future. We have to know where we are going. What do we want to accomplish in this life together? What are we striving for? Having this clear shared vision is relationship rocket fuel. It gives you both a north star that you're aiming for together, and it is the secret ingredient to not sweating the small stuff and to eliminating score keeping and resentment.

We give you a roadmap for doing this in part six.

These five commitments are the key to being an unstoppable team, and when you nail them, everything changes. The arguments fade, the connection deepens, and suddenly you're both these high energy badasses charging toward the relationship hall of fame. So let's kick this thing off and jump into commitment number one.

Woo woo.

And that my friends was part one. That's part one in the bag. It's interesting because when we initially wrote this book, I think we had this here, but we also had the five rules to be in a mm-hmm. unstoppable team here. Yep. And it felt disjointed, confusing, and clunky.

So I really like how we nailed the five commitments here. And then in commitment three around you embedded this, the rules in there. Yes, I agree. But that was kind of a behind the scenes decision that, um, yeah, originally we were fighting with at the beginning of the, of the book when we were writing this.

Mm-hmm. I think the other interesting kind of behind the scenes of this particular. Chapter is a little deeper than just the book itself because we didn't just make these five commitments up for the book. They've evolved over time. It's funny because they started with three. Yeah. Did start with three commitments and it all go going full circle.

Back to the original 200% marriage episode of the podcast where we talked about the foreword and Greg Kimble. When he asked us to speak on stage at his event about relationships, we had to go away and figure out what do we do? What are the things that we actually do that make our relationship work so well?

We've never gone away and codified or formulated or figured it out in a systematic way. So we had to go away and do that work. and we themed it up into three commitments at that time. At the time they were the commitment to yourself, the commitment to the team, and the commitment to fun. Correct. So we didn't have the future or the mindset. The first and the fifth were missing. So the middle three, were the original three.

And as we were building this out further and further, again, before the book, years before the book. Just, yeah. Just as we were, going through our coaching it's like, ah, no we're missing a couple pieces that are critical that we were doing, but that we hadn't identify, codified or nailed as to, you know, articulated.

They weren't included in these other places. Like the North Star stuff, it was almost like part of fun. We had kind of bolted it on, but it's actually a very separate thing.

And through the experience of going through this journey and coaching and, evolution, we tweaked it. And I love where we landed. These are definitely the five key components to a 200% marriage. And I'm excited to dive into each of them separately in each section of the book going forward.

Because then we had four for a while. You talked about making the North Star one, separate ones. And then we added the mindset most recently because the whole concept of 200% marriage from the a hundred percent ownership, like ditching the 50 50.

And most people, and we'll get into this more when we get into this part of the book, but they think it's about giving a hundred percent Yeah. Effort. It's about taking a hundred percent responsibility. That was the last piece of the puzzle of this framework for us, of these five commitments. It was the fifth commitment that we pulled in a couple of years ago. I don't even specifically exactly remember, but I think it came out on some different podcasts that we were guesting on.

And that's usually the way things work, right? Is like as you build something and then you start to use it and talk about it and you have experience with it, then it's like, oh, okay, let's refine it a little bit.

I like this piece, but I think this could be a little bit stronger. Or this piece comes up in the client sessions, we're missing a piece and accountability and ownership and Exactly, so then you, it just evolves. Yeah. And, and I like, and plus I like that there's five, like five's a good number.

So, chapter five is a little short. It's just to kind of briefly overview the five commitments and then use the next 300 pages or whatever it is in the book to explain these five commitments and what is a 200% marriage.

Next week we're gonna jump into part two of the book, commitment to a 200% marriage Mindset. And, start with chapter six.

Eat Your Own Damn Pie. We'll see you next week. Join us. Bye.

If you want to turn your marriage into the engine that drives your business forward instead of the brakes keeping it stuck, book a free marriage and business strategy session with us at 200percentmarriage.com/strategycall. We'll see you next week.