“Thanks to a series of influential research studies, the things people who succeed in intimate relationships do differently from those who fail have been discovered by researchers. One of the most important differences involves how people react when they feel upset. All partners in long term relationships feel upset with each other at various […]

“Roll away your stone, I’ll roll away mine Together we can see what we will find.” I have had this lyric from Mumford and Sons playing around in my head for the last couple of months. Probably because those two lines remind me a lot of the concept of boundaries and differentiation in relationships (i.e. […]

The topic of emotional infidelity is a very common one in therapy. Sometimes the topic comes up because one spouse has a friendship with someone of the opposite sex that their other spouse feels is inappropriate…lots of texting…hanging out at work too much…grabbing lunch together. And more often than not the topic of emotional infidelity […]

Short…Simple…Quick…Easy to Implement. If someone asks me about trying to use Patrick Lencioni’s book, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family…the above phrase is usually what I say. And it’s true. Last week I started my five-part series on this book, and today is the final post. Usually when I do a parenting class […]

“How do you talk about and use the answers to these questions?” So last week I began a five-part series on Patrick Lencioni’s book, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family. First, we looked at Question #1: What makes your family unique? Second, we looked at Question #2: What is your family’s top priority–rallying […]

“What is your family’s top priority–rallying cry–right now?” This is the third post in a series on Patrick Lencioni’s awesome book, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable About Restoring Sanity to the Most Important Organization in Your Life. Yesterday we looked at Question #1, “What makes your family unique?” And […]

If you have been following me online, you have now realized that I really love the book, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family by Patrick Lencioni. I first came across the book when my good friend and colleague Todd Sandel recommended it to me. He and his wife had been using it in […]

If you are like me…then a lot of times parenting is less intentional and more fly by the seat of your pants. Even though I have all the desire to be intentional about various aspects of my parenting, I often let it get crowded out by other things. One area of parenting that I talk […]

For many of us there is a gap between the marriage we have and the marriage we thought we would have. Sometimes the gap is created by unrealistic dreams and expectations. But more often that gap is created by a subtle equation that defines many marriages: Time + unintentionality = ordinary marriage. It isn’t that […]

It probably took me a good 5-6 years of marriage before I realized that the fights my wife Heather and I were having were rarely ever about the issue that we were fighting about. The fight is just the top of the surface, or as I like to tell couples — the top of the […]

Often in the midst of a therapy session a couple will frustratingly declare to me, “We never communicate.” The truth is that they are communicating all the time, but they just don’t like the message their partner is sending them. If my wife decides to get up when I’m talking to her, walk into our […]

The annals of history are filled with people who have done great things (inventions, writings, art, building, etc.) at great cost to their personal and family life. So it was not a surprise when I read Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson say the following: Mr Jobs then explained why, despite his famous reclusiveness, he had […]