Whether your engaged, married, single or somewhere in between, relationships are so important! Creating strong bonds with the people you love is key to so many “success” factors in your life whether its networking, feeling secure, or having a team of supporters in your life. While we all want to have strong, thriving relationships we continually see articles and research pointing to the fact that we’re the loneliest generation of all time. The effects of the internet & social media on our generation is crazy & it’s getting harder and harder for us to connect. Believe us when we say we know we’re guilty of it ourselves. So, what can we do to change our relationships for the better? We’ve got 3 ways we’ve done this in our own lives and the impact has been awesome!
Put Away Your Devices
Duh… right? While we know this might seem obvious, it’s so important. Our technology is one of the biggest things that takes our attention and its addicting. We found that setting a reminder on our phones to turn our phones off from 8-9pm took our days & our marriage from stressed & lacking communication to super productive & fulfilling. It caused us to relearn how to spend the time we would have spent on our phones or tablets together. Now that time has become our favorite hour of the day as we get work done, take walks together, & just make time to intentionally talk.
Create a Real Plan
Don’t just talk about making a change. Do something about it! It’s so common for us to talk about what we don’t like & how we want things to be different but how do you actually make a change? Create a game plan with someone you want to connect more with and make it happen. Write it down and put it somewhere you can see it regularly, or like us put it in your phone to pop up every day or every week. You won’t regret it.
Commit
After you’ve brainstormed ways to create time to connect & came up with a game-plan its time to put it into action. Commit to making the changes you want to see happen & don’t let up. It’s so worth the sacrafice of a few hours of screen time or pointless habits to grow deeper connections with the ones you love.
While you may have heard these before in some context, we promise that they aren’t cliches for nothing. Combining these three strategies can radically change your perception of relationships & create the margin you need to foster more life for yourself. You’ll be happier, have a better support system, and find yourself feeling free from the small addictions you never knew you had. We’ve seen it work in our own lives as we’ve watched our marriage & friendships grow deeper with time. Below are just a few practical ideas for how you can start doing this in your own life!
Ideas for Creating Margin
Put away your phone for 1 hour a day
Turn off your wifi one day a week
Fast from watching TV for a week or two
Set a solid date night/girls night every week
Sign up for a small group at church
Go to the library to work
We’d love to hear from you! Let us know below how you make ways to create deeper relationships in your own life so we can keep going on this journey together! Drop a comment below 🙂
Blessings,
Katie & Alec
Check out more of our tips for brides like:
