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📍 You've built the business. You are crushing it in your career. You've scaled your impact, but are you winning at home? Welcome to the 200% Marriage Podcast. We're Meredith and Craig, and we're here to help you kill that domestic drag and turn your partner into your most elite teammate from Russian taxi mishaps to hailstorms on the summit, we're sharing the raw and real stories and tactical drills you need to move outta roommate Bill and into your 200% life. 

So grab your gear. It's time to build an unstoppable team. Let's dive in.

  📍 Welcome back to another episode of the 200% Marriage Podcast. We are continuing to read the book, the 200% Marriage, your Winning Playbook to Be an Unstoppable Team. We are going through the book, chapter by chapter, reading the chapter that we each wrote. And uh, so we're gonna do chapter seven today, and then we are going to have a conversation about it, little chitchat, if you will.

Little chitchat about, we'll see what comes up. We'll be a surprise. We have no idea. You'll learn as we do. We'll learn with you Chapter seven. Just own your shit. Everything is my fault. Now what? Mark Manson. Whenever we share the idea of the 200% marriage mindset on podcasts or TV shows, someone inevitably misunderstands what we mean.

They assume it's about 100% effort. Like we're saying, you each have to give a hundred percent of your maximum effort, always 24 7, no days off. That's not it. Don't get me wrong, effort is essential. Some days you're going to have more to give than other days. The mark of an unstoppable team is that you both give whatever you have on that particular day and you pick up the slack for your teammate when required.

Some days you're gonna feel like your tank is full, and on that day, that's your 100%. On other days you're only working with half a tank. So on that day, that's your a hundred percent. Other days may feel like a struggle to get out of bed and put on pants. So on that day, that's your a hundred percent. Yes, effort counts.

But the 200% marriage mindset isn't about squeezing every last drop of effort out of yourself every day. It's deeper than that. It's about responsibility. You are responsible for the current state of everything in your life, what you've chosen, the actions you've taken, and where you are right now. Sitting here listening to this book with us, at first, that could sound heavy. And if you're not where you wanna be in life, it might feel downright discouraging to think this is all on me. But in reality, that approach is freedom, because if you're responsible for it all, then you're also in control. You get to change your situation from this point forward.

It's empowering to know you control your future. You are 100% responsible for everything in your life today and everything that will be in your life tomorrow. Now, imagine if you and your teammate both show up in your marriage with the 200% marriage mindset.

Each of you saying, I own my stuff. I take responsibility for my words, my actions, and how I am showing up in this relationship. That's when the whole game changes. Your mindset doesn't change your circumstances. It changes how you experience them. What you look for, you'll find and get more of, look for things to be grateful for.

You'll find them, look for ways to grow together, and suddenly there are more opportunities than you thought. When you adopt the 200% marriage mindset, you see the good you take responsibility and it becomes easier to be happy and connected. Your marriage starts to feel easier, even if adopting that mindset feels uncomfortable or challenging at first.

Here's the situation we hear from clients all the time. A wife says, my husband won't open up. He never shares what he's thinking or feeling. Most of the time that complaint is followed by blame or frustration stemming from her husband's close off nature and her feeling disconnected from him. But when she leads with a 200% marriage mindset, she starts by taking 100% responsibility, which means looking inward first and asking herself, what am I doing or not doing that makes him feel unsafe to open up to me.

At the same time, her husband takes 100% responsibility examines why he might struggle to open up and works to understand and remove those barriers so he can begin to share his feelings with his wife and feel more connected. He could ask himself, this clearly matters to my wife. Why does it feel so hard to share?

What's blocking me? Am I willing to look at it? Honestly, you'll notice that both of them are approaching the situation from a place of curiosity. Curiosity is such an underrated superpower in your relationship. Curiosity is about understanding, seeking knowledge. It doesn't come from judgment. Instead, it comes from a genuine desire to understand and improve.

When you each get curious about the part you play in any given situation, and you always play a part in every situation, and then you work to address it, everything changes. So let's continue to play with that example. The wife might realize, oh, the last time he tried to open up, I was busy and distracted and I brushed him off.

That probably didn't feel very good for him. No wonder he hasn't tried again. I need to own that. Apologize and show him I value what he shares. Meanwhile, the husband might realize, yes, she dismissed me last time, but I never explained how much her actions hurt me. I just shut down. Maybe she has no idea and she was in the middle of doing something else when I tried to have that conversation with her, am I really willing to hold onto that hurt forever and never share with her again? Or can I trust that she loves me, tell her the truth, and give her the chance to show up differently, different outcomes from each of them, but both are rooted in personal responsibility.

Now, let's be clear. This isn't easy. We made it seem neat and tidy for the sake of the story. In real life, this is going to be hard, uncomfortable, and take a lot of practice. We're here to hit you with straight facts. We won't bullshit you. This level of vulnerability and honesty is going to take practice, patience and a whole lot of grace as you figure it out.

Sometimes it's messy. Oftentimes in the beginning, especially, you won't nail it and you'll backslide to old score keeping habits. That's normal. You're both human. When it happens, take responsibility, apologize, and then try again. Because over time if both of you keep showing up this way, each taking 100% responsibility, instead of pointing fingers at each other, you stop playing the who's right game.

There is no being right on an unstoppable team. There's only responsibility. And in a marriage, there's always plenty of responsibility to go around. When you fully adopt the 200% marriage mindset. You will both feel as though you're in it together no matter what it is.

A 200% marriage is not about perfect effort or flawless execution. It's about owning your part every time and trusting your teammate to do the same. That's the foundation of a truly unstoppable team. When each of you takes full responsibility, your marriage stops being a tug of war and becomes the rocket fuel to take your life to infinity and beyond.

Do infinity and beyond. That was, that was perfect. Acting Call you Buzz. Oh, I love that chapter. So this is an interesting one because it is, it does address a, a fundamental misunderstanding or misconception that we hear all the time. That it's, it's always about effort and everyone giving 100%, I give a hundred percent.

You give a hundred percent and that's what makes it 200% marriage. The effort is, it goes without saying. Mm-hmm. You are always giving effort. Mm-hmm. And to our point in the book, effort is on a scale, it's a sliding scale. It's a sliding scale. Some days this is a hundred percent, some days this is a hundred percent, and some days it's way in the middle.

It's not about the effort. Let's just assume that we're always giving our best effort, our best effort on that day with the resources that we have available to us. Energy, time, all the things. We're giving the best effort. That's not what this is. No, this is about responsibility. Taking responsibility for everything in your life, and I love how you say that.

That can be jarring to hear. Yeah. Like you are 100 wherever you are in your life, you are 100% responsible for the circumstances that you are experiencing and living in right now. Yeah. And I would say there have been times in my life where if you had told me that I would not have loved to hear it. No. I wouldn't wanna punch you in the face or something.

Right. Yeah. Like you hear someone tell you that and it's like,

initially it's jarring. I don't love it. No. The economy sucks. Housing prices, I'm where I am and I don't love it, and who can I blame? Yeah, that's way easier. The reality is though, the, the external circumstance we have no control over. The only thing you can control is your actions within that, that environment.

You can, you can play the victim and you can just. Blame and blame and blame and you'll get nowhere. Mm-hmm. Or you can take the bull by the horns and try to make a change and figure out how to, how to navigate and play within this system or in this environment that you're in. And initially I did not like that.

Mm-hmm. And it, it, it goes to what we talked about a few weeks ago in that that's where the only power that exists is in your responsibility. If, if everything is not your fault. If you can point fingers and blame everyone and everything else around you for where you are, then you're essentially saying, I have zero control over my life.

Yeah. Nothing that happens, I have any control over. And none of us wanna feel like we are out of control in our own life. And I, I say none of us. I know, I don't. I'm most people. I love to have control. I think people are, I think most people are not looking to be out of control in their life. The only place you have control is in what you are responsible for.

When I turned 30, I did not love turning 30. I felt like I was behind. I did not love where I was in my life. And if you had told me that you are responsible for where you are, I would've punched in the throat. Yeah. I probably wouldn't have actually, but I would've wanted to.

I would've been real pissed with that. You would've resentful about it. Yeah. Point fingers and cast blame and do all the things, but it's not wrong. It's not. As jarring as it is and as uncomfortable as to hear that, or at least was for me when I first heard it on second thought of that, it really is empowering.

It's like, oh, okay, well then that means it's all within me to change. Mm-hmm. So from here on out, let's do things a little differently. 'cause I, this is, this is where I, this is looking for me. This isn't where I wanna be. I wanna be over there. So I gotta, how, how do I get there? If I want something different, I have to do something different.

I wanna have a different relationship. I wanna have a different business. I wanna have a different health outcome. I wanna have a different fill in the blank. I then have to do something different because I'm responsible for where I am. It's simple. It's not an easy concept to adopt. 'cause I think we're all very comfortable in playing the victim sometimes and blaming other people for what's going on, blaming circumstances for what's going on, but you've got no control over that. I love how the the chapter ends actually with, um, instead of playing tug of war, you're rocket fuel for each other and for your life.

And it reminds me, and I should have looked it up, it reminds me of what do they say about Clydesdale's. You know, a single Clydesdale can pull like 800 pounds or something. I'm gonna have the numbers wrong, but multiples. But two Clydesdale not hundred 60. Do 3,200 or something like it's, it's orders of magnitude more by having two.

So instead of you two kind of pulling in opposite directions, when you both start going the same way, it's not just like one plus one equals two, it's exponential. One plus one is in infinity, to, infinity and beyond. One might two in.

it's such a, a good point. Really what it comes down to is just owning your shit. You know what I mean? You are where you are. The quicker you just own that and make the decision to change it. If you don't like it, the quicker you're gonna get to the place you do wanna be.

Mm-hmm. Because the only way to get from where you are to where you wanna be. By acknowledging where you actually are. Like if you're trying to get somewhere , so let's say you wanna go from Chicago to LA but you, you're not actually starting in Chicago. You put Chicago in the GPS, but you are actually in Dallas. How likely is it that you're gonna get to LA to this, whatever it is that you want? This relationship of your dreams, this dream business, this health situation.

If that's your outcome where you're driving for, but you don't actually acknowledge where you're starting from, you're not gonna get to where you need to go. So you need to take responsibility for where you are in the situation that you're in. And that gives you all the power to change, to get you where you wanna go.

Basically what it comes down to. Just own your shit, own your shit, and it's not easy, but it's really important. That's it for this week. Join us next week on the 200% Marriage Podcast. When we read chapter eight, what's it called? And we're getting into an interesting story about how. We got into a situation while we were in Russia.

This is the Russian cab story. Russian Cab Confession. Oh, chapter eight. Chapter eight. Love it. Bye.

  📍 And that's a wrap on this week's briefing. If this episode hit a nerve, don't let your momentum die. Head over to the 200% marriage.com/unstoppable team. Take the Unstoppable team audit. Find out exactly where your domestic drag is hiding so you can start optimizing your team today. And if you love the show, share it with another power couple who refuses to settle for fine because a 200% life is better with a community.

See you on the next adventure.