Listen Now

Episode Transcription

📍Phil Jackson knows this better than anyone.

He's a winning coach. He knows what he is talking about when he says, if you can take the me to a we, that's when you become a winning team.

You've built the business, you're 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 dread 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 out of roommate-ville 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 have been reading the book, the 200% Marriage, your Winning Playbook to Be An Unstoppable Team, and we are starting part four, chapter 15. I am reading it because I wrote this chapter, so let's get it going.

Part four,the commitment to your team and your teammate. You don't inspire your teammates by showing them how amazing you are. You inspire them by showing them how amazing they are. Robin, Ben, and Cassa,

chapter 15, kick Ass. Chew bubblegum, take names. Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the me for the we. Phil Jackson.I'm back. It's me, Craig. We promise we'd make transitions crystal clear and I think we're doing a hell of a job if I do say so myself. We'll celebrate that fist bump.Relationships are a team sport. Your marriage is a team, which also means you and your partner are by definition teammates. When you enter into a marriage, you are sacrificing the me first mindset that may have gotten you to that point in life.Just like the quote at the start of this chapter from Legendary basketball coach Phil Jackson says, teams go from good to great when they surrender the me for the we.

The faster you can replace the me first approach with the we first approach, the better your marriage will be.Think about your favorite sports team. If you don't have a favorite sports team, it's okay. We can still be friends. Just picture your kids' sports team.If that doesn't work either stop being difficult.

You've definitely seen a team somewhere. Just imagine a team, any team.Now picture how that team would perform if every player only cared about themselves. If they only played for themselves, if they only practiced when they felt like it or worse yet, didn't practice at all. If they only thought about what was best for them.

Suppose they did what they want regardless of what the team needed, how successful do you think that team is going to be?Unsuccessful supremely bad, 0% chance of winning, and yet that's exactly what we see so often in relationships.This was old me, by the way. The version of me who didn't understand he was entering a team sport when I said I do the first time,I never shifted from me to we. I was a bad teammate. In fact, I was so bad that I didn't even recognize that I was a teammate at all. I continued playing my own game on single player mode. To win the marriage game, we need to act like a team. But what does that actually mean?

What does it actually look like in practice? How do you make the shift from a single player game to a team game?How do we create an unstoppable team?All great questions, and the fact that you're asking them means you're already on your way to being a fantastic teammate.The first way your team wins is by listening to your coach.

Coaches bring wisdom and share strategies to help you succeed on the field. Every unstoppable team needs a coach to guide them, to avoid pitfalls and to see what they can't see themselves.If you're trying to create a new marriage, which as we established back in chapter one, we're assuming you are. You need a coach who already has the kind of marriage you want.

You also need to assess whether their heart is true, whether they genuinely want what's best for you, and whether their values and personalities align with yours.If you find a coach who checks your boxes, firstly, understand how rare that is, they're worth their weight in gold.

Hang on tight and never let them go. Don't be awkward, break any laws or anything, just let them know you appreciate them, and most importantly, follow their advice.That's enough. No stalking required.We are honored to serve as your coaches as you work through this book. The book you're holding is your game plan. As your coaches, we play a vital role your team's success,but, and you remember how we feel about big buts. We like them. No lie,we cannot play the game for you.We're doing everything in our power to set you up with a solid game plan, a strong strategy, and the necessary skills.

But you still need to play. You need to execute. You need to ask questions when you don't understand. You need to show up, day in, day out, and put in the work.Ultimately, you are the one who controls your outcome, and the best way to ensure a winning outcome is to do what other successful teams do. We call these the five Rules to be an unstoppable team.

Follow these rules and your team will kick serious ass, chew bubblegum and take names all at the same time. You will become unstoppable. Hashtag winning.Boom, chapter 15.Chapter 15, kind of an intro to part four and what's to come. Short and sweet. It's short and sweet. It's, um, most of the intro chapters are, they're just kinda laying the groundwork.

They are. Yeah. And this one's no different. So the next, the next five chapters of the book are going to be going through each of the Unstoppable team rules before we get into some of the othertactics and strategies for working with your teammates.It's interesting. I love the Phil Jackson quote actually.

Then the, it's a fantastic quote for this chapter right. To kick off this section. It's a fantastic quote for just in general marriage in general. Yeah. Um, but for this particular, and it's not even a marriage quote, that's the thing. Yeah. Like that's it's a ba it's a basketball team quote. Right. It's like, it's literally, he used it with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

Yeah. But it works so fantastically well for relationships. Yeah. Because, well, the basketball team is a relationship for sure. It's, and it's actually more complicated 'cause you've got more personalities. There's five guys on a floor and you got Dennis Rodman like, come on. One of the things, Dennis Rodman one a complicated I'll say, but a basketball team has five different personalities on the floor at any one time that you're trying to, to gel into a cohesive team, at least in a marriage there's only two of you.

Yeah. And in the locker room, there's like 15, 12 to 15 of them.And so I, the, the quoteso beautifully sets the stage for what we're gonna talk about, especially in the next five chapters for the Unstoppable Team rules. But really throughout this whole part as we and, and the rest of the book, as we really dig into the team together, because this the first part of the book, the first two parts of the book,part two and three are individual. Yeah. Like you taking your accountability and then you working on yourself. Yeah. And then these last three parts are all about the team. Yeah. This, this is the, the kickoff to working together and creating that unstoppable team energy. And how do you do that?

It's, well, this is the section that's gonna talk about, it's a tough shift, right? Becausefor our whole life to this point, it's always been about me. What's best for me? Every decision, every action, everything I've done in my life up to the point where we get married, where we get together is what best serves me.

Mm-hmm. It's not an easy, like, it's a titanic shift to start thinking about what's best for us. If ingrained behavior for sometimes 30, 40 years, by the time you, you know, find your person start to, to think about marriage in your twenties. Anyway,that's a long time to be ingrained in thinking a certain way.

It's a huge ship to turn. Mm-hmm. Now, because it, there's so much stuff going on with, with decisions you've made, the history, you've had all of the, the, your way of thinking for so long, and now you have to switch that mindset to something completely different. You're thinking of not only you, but of another person and then the third entity of, you know, your, your relationship and what's best for that.

And turning that ship of that mindset of 20 years, of 30 years, 40 years, 50 years of being ingrained a certain way, and now thinking a completely different way. It takes time and, and, but when, but if you can do it.You become a successful team, and, and Phil Jackson knows this better than anyone being the coach.

How many championships does he have? Well, he, I don't know, like six with Michael and a couple more with Kobe and the Lakers. And so he, he's, he's a winning person. Like he, he's a winning coach. He knows what he is talking about when he says, if you can take the, the me to a we, that's when you becomea winning team.

And to your point,it's a tough, it's, it's a tough transition. Because you've been conditioned for so long to think of yourself first, and so it's gonna require some grace. This is gonna be a bumpy transition for both of you as you make this transition from me a me first approach to a we first approach.

So have grace for yourself and have grace for your teammate. And then to your point, Phil Jackson's a winning coach and he is a winning coach because he was able to think from a we first perspective and he could get his playersto buy into the strategy. And in the book we talk about when you can find someone, when you can find a coach who has your best interest at heart,like, hang on tight, hang on tight.

They're, they're not always gonna say things that you agree with. And that's the point. Like if Phil Jackson always agreed with everything Michael Jordan said, Michael Jordan probably would like that on the surface, but then they wouldn't have won five championships or six championships together. Yeah.

The other thing that's really critical about this chapter that we say here. Is that the coach can lay out the strategy and they can give you the advice and what all the tools, what to do, what not to do. You know, based on experience. Based on strategy,but it's on the players to execute.

You gotta run the plays, so you can have the game plan, you can have the book.You have to do something with it. You have to take the plays and actually do something with it to, to create change, to move forward in the game. To win. And so the, while we think the book is totally awesome, obviously it's a winning playbook.

It's a winning playbook, and it's fun. It's, it's your winning playbook. It's, it's a fantastic book and it's fun to read, but if you just read it and don't actually run the plays that are in the book, you're not gonna get the result.So read the book and while you're reading the book,run the plays. Do the things like we just talked about a couple chapters ago. Those four happiness habits. Did you run those plays? Are you running those plays? Are you doing that? Are you taking a walk in nature for 15 minutes? Are you expressing gratitude? Are you breathing? Are you showing appreciation to someone? It takes 18 minutes, and that's just one example.And there's gonna be so much like we're not even, I don't think we're halfway through this book.

No. And there's been so much, so far. But are you doing the things? So check in with each. This is a really great opportunity. As we're diving into the next section here and really diving into the relationship with the team and your teammate is, are you doing the things up to now?The relationship with yourself, the mindset work?

Have you started doing that stuff? And if not.Why not? Check in with yourself? Becauselike we say, this is a, this is a winning playbook. It's your winning playbook. But if you're not running the plays, then nothing's gonna change. It's a playbook. It's meant to be executed.We can give you all the strategies, all the tactics, all the things, but it's up to you to execute the plays to become a winning team.

So moment of reflection time. Get honest with yourself. Are you running the plays? And if you're not, let's draw a line in the sand and start running the plays now.On that note, we'll see you next week. We'll see you next week for chapter 16.

📍 If today's episode gave you a new lens for your relationship, don't let it stop here. The best teams never stop trainingOn Thursdays, we drop the Unstoppable Team newsletter on LinkedIn. It's our high-performance briefing designed to give you one tactical drill you can run with your teammate over the weekend So just search Meredith and Craig on LinkedIn or click the link in the show notes to subscribe.

Get the briefing, kill that domestic drag, and we will see you next Tuesday